The Swiss foreign ministry is examining the possibility of a permanent Swiss diplomatic representation at the Vatican, it said on Tuesday, confirming media reports. At present, the Swiss ambassador to Slovenia, Denis Knobel, who is co-accredited to ...

In the latest version of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, eight Swiss or Swiss-resident names figure among the 500 richest people in the world. The richest of the Alpine-based billionaires is Geneva-based Ernesto Bertarelli, who according to his o...

Reports to Switzerland’s Money Laundering Reporting Office (MROS) rose 25% last year, with many of them related to Covid credits, the office said in its annual report published on Tuesday. MROS received 5,334 such reports in 2020, concerning more...

The Swiss contribution was made at a donor conference organised by the United Nations in Geneva on Tuesday, which is hoping to raise almost $1 billion to help the Rohingya. The Swiss offer of $8.7 million (almost CHF8 million) will mainly go towards...

Swiss people’s trust in their country’s banks is at its highest in 20 years, boosted by Covid credits and a commitment to sustainability, according to a new survey. People from almost all political camps have a positive perception, with 75% de...

The amount of hours worked by employees in Switzerland in the pandemic year 2020 saw a collapse unprecedented since records began three decades ago. Faced with the restrictive health measures, both the total number of jobs (down 0.7%) and the weekly...

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has been forced to cancel its flagship annual meeting that was due to be staged in Singapore this summer. Singapore has recently seen an escalation in the number of coronavirus infections, forcing the island state to t...

Sales of meat substitutes in Switzerland hit CHF117 million ($130 million) last year, with plant-based burgers being particularly popular. The Covid-19 pandemic also played a role. This figure has almost doubled since 2016, the Federal Office for Ag...

An organisation representing the LGBTQ community in Switzerland says complaints of abusive behaviour have not declined, despite the law against hate crimes currently being tightened. The “Hate Crime Report” from Pink Cross, the Lesbian Organisat...

More than 300 victims of human trafficking in Switzerland received support last year from the “Advocacy and Support for Migrant Women and Victims of Trafficking” (FIZ) service. This is a “sad record”, FIZ said in its annual report on Monday....

The Covid-19 pandemic is suspected of having played a role in a significant drop in criminal convictions in Switzerland last year. There were 11% fewer convictions (95,000) in 2020 than in the previous year, according to official statistics publishe...

In Switzerland only people who have been vaccinated will be able to obtain a Covid-19 certificate by the end of June. Those who have received a negative test result or who have recovered from coronavirus will have to wait until an as yet unknown date...

Video surveillance will be expanded in federal asylum centres over the coming months, with more cameras being installed in exterior and interior areas of buildings. Not everyone agrees that this will improve security, however. The State Secretariat ...

The Lauterbrunnen parish has inaugurated a memorial dedicated to base-jumpers and mountaineers who lost their lives in the pursuit of adventure and adrenalin. The memorial comprising two stone slabs and a plaque was unveiled at the Lauterbrunnen ce...

A report by the Swiss financial regulator FINMA claims that the bank had ignored over 100 warnings of potential breach of regulations. On Sunday, the NZZ am Sonntag paper reported that the management of Credit Suisse had overlooked breaches of regu...

Of the 1.2 million fully vaccinated people in Switzerland, 129 contracted Covid-19 after their second dose. On Sunday, the NZZ am Sonntag highlighted the risk of getting infected even after being completely vaccinated against Covid-19. According to ...

Around 300 people gathered in Geneva on Saturday to show support for the Palestinian people, as clashes between the Israeli army and Hamas intensify. The rally was organised by the group Collectif Urgence Palestine. The demonstrators denounced the I...

An initiative to exempt the Swiss Guard from paying a penalty for not completing their mandatory military service in Switzerland does not have support from the government. On Thursday, the governing Federal Council decided not to exempt the Swiss G...

Switzerland's largest insurance company Swiss Life has agreed to pay CHF70 million ($77.4 million) and enter a deferred prosecution agreement in the United States to resolve accusations it conspired to help wealthy Americans to avoid taxes. The co...

The United Nations special rapporteur against torture, Nils Melzer from Zurich, has condemned the "violent repression" of demonstrations in Colombia that has killed dozens of people. Speaking in Geneva on Friday, he called for an independent investig...

A German court on Friday officially declared billionaire Karl-Erivan Haub dead, more than three years after the head of retail group Tengelmann went missing in the Swiss Alps. Haub, who was 58, was training for a ski mountaineering race when he vani...

Nine climate activists who blocked Credit Suisse’s Zurich headquarters in July 2019 have been given a suspended fine. Zurich District Court found all nine guilty of coercion and eight guilty of trespassing. The court sided with the prosecutor in ...

Researchers at the federal technology institute ETH Zurich have discovered an important weak point of Covid-19: if a key process for the production of its proteins is disrupted, viral replication in infected cells can be significantly reduced. This ...

More than 40,000 people in the Swiss hospitality and catering industry lost their jobs last year owing to closures triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. Restaurants that rely on business tourism were hit particularly hard. What’s more, the Swiss Sta...

The Facebook-backed digital currency project formerly known as Libra, says it is shifting operations from Switzerland to the US. Now called Diem, it has withdrawn its Swiss licence application. Geneva-based Diem said it planned to launch a cryptocur...

Switzerland’s foreign minister has called for the violence in the Middle East to stop immediately and has offered his condolences to the families of the victims. Ignazio Cassis’s comments, made on Twitter, come amid days of violence between the ...

A Swiss and an American have died on Mount Everest in the season's first casualties on the world's highest mountain, expedition organisers said on Thursday, as the Nepali region struggles with an escalating Covid-19 outbreak. Both climbers died of e...

In 2024, Swiss administrations will start using a new IT system that will recognise special characters from, for example, Eastern European languages. The current character encoding system allows for western European signs like the Spanish ñ, Danish...

Switzerland plans to allow larger gatherings, re-open wellness centers and let restaurants serve food indoors as the country gets a better grip on the coronavirus pandemic. “We want to enable a return to normality – and restaurant interiors are ...

The average global temperature during the last ice age was some 8°C cooler than today – several degrees colder than previously thought, according to scientific research with Swiss participation published on Wednesday. The last ice age, when much ...