Switzerland and Ghana want to jointly promote the issue of electronic waste internationally, saying e-waste should be among the exports subject to authorisation worldwide. Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga signed a letter to this effect in Acc...

A former local official in Switzerland has been found guilty of election fraud in parliamentary elections in canton Thurgau. A district court on Wednesday handed the former secretary-general of the town of Frauenfeld a suspended prison sentence of 1...

The number of participants in the Swiss “bike to work” challenge has increased, recovering from the slump experienced during the first wave of Covid-19 in 2020, a report said. Between May and June over 60,000 people took part in the “bike to w...

Switzerland has widened its sanctions against Belarus, joining other countries in acting after Belarusian authorities triggered outrage by intercepting a passenger flight in May and arresting a dissident blogger on board. The Swiss government has ad...

Switzerland has again failed to meet its goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, prompting a rise in CO2 taxes. Last year emissions from fuel, including heating oil and gas, were 31% lower than 1990 levels, according to data released by the Fed...

Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga has signed a climate agreement with Senegal, the third such agreement to compensate for CO2 emissions under the Paris Agreement. Switzerland signed corresponding international agreements with Peru and Ghana a...

The Covid Delta variant is progressing in the country and currently accounts for some 30% of new cases, the Federal Office for Public Health (FOPH) said on Tuesday. Virginie Masserey, head of the FOPH’s infectious diseases section, told a news bri...

Up to a quarter fewer people in Switzerland were enrolled in further education courses in 2020 than in previous years. However, the numbers graduating from university continued to rise. The sharp dip in further education last year comes after a deca...

Four out of ten people still report symptoms of Covid-19 more than seven months after infection, according to a study by the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE). The study, published on Tuesday, was conducted am...

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis has begun his trip to the Baltic States with an official visit to Latvia. European policy was at the heart of the talks with Latvian President Egils Levits and Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs in the capital, ...

The government has launched a detailed testing procedure to determine whether the latest Swiss Post e-voting system is fit to be rolled out by cantons. Two years ago Swiss Post shelved its e-voting system when bugs were found in the source code. At ...

Getting a place in a Swiss day care centre is harder for children from disadvantaged and migrant backgrounds, finds a study calling for more, and cheaper, crèches. There are a few factors behind the discrepancies, including employment rates, irregu...

A ban on cigarette sales in Switzerland has not prevented people under the age of 21 from smoking, a new study has found. Researchers at the universities of Basel and Lausanne found that young people are not deterred by bans put in place in Switzerl...

Statistics show television viewing increased slightly in Switzerland during the Covid-19 pandemic last year – the first time in more than a decade. Researchers found that notably the over 60 age group contributed to the hike. Overall Swiss consum...

A former Syrian army chief has alleged that a 2014 shipment of chemicals from a factory in the Swiss city of Basel, intended for medical purposes, was used to make chemical weapons. The SonntagsZeitung newspaper quoted on Sunday ex-brigadier general...

The unilateral decision to call off negotiations with the European Union (EU) was beyond the government’s remit, legal expert Thomas Cottier has said in the Sunday press. Cottier, a professor emeritus of international economic law at the Universit...

Urs Karrer, Vice-President of Switzerland’s scientific coronavirus taskforce, reckons that the “uncontrolled” football fever in stadiums around Europe will lead to further breakouts of the virus. “It astonishes me how nonchalantly we continu...

Switzerland’s health minster told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper he would prefer to see more over-80-year-olds and more healthcare workers getting vaccinated. While he told the newspaper he was more or less happy with the “positively develo...

After a spirited Euro 2020 quarter-final defeat to Spain, praise has been pouring in for the Swiss national football team from supporters, newspapers, and ministers. “Heroic to the end,” wrote the Tribune de Genève newspaper, summing up much of...

Switzerland crashed out of the European football championship by losing their quarterfinal match against Spain on penalties on Friday. The match ended 1-1 after extra-time but Spain scored three penalties to Switzerland’s one in the Euro 2020 knoc...

The average CO2 emissions of new cars in Switzerland fell more than 10% last year to 123.6 grams per kilometre - but still missed a target of 95g/km. This is despite CHF132.5 million ($143 million) in financial penalties being levied on passenger ca...

Calm is returning to UNRWA, the UN’s embattled Palestinian refugee agency, its new Swiss head says. Philippe Lazzarini, who took up the job on April 1 last year, told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) that the institution had overcome its crisis of ...

Swiss electricity providers are vulnerable to a Colonial Pipeline style ransomware attacks, according to a report from the Swiss Federal Office for Energy. While certain weaknesses against cyberattacks have previously been identified, progress towar...

Young Swiss people are much more concerned about climate change than their peers in other countries, according to a survey by consultants Deloitte. Global warming was the largest worry for two out of five Millennials – those aged 27-38 years old. ...

Despite its reservations, Switzerland said Thursday it will go along with a global corporate minimum tax. Breakthrough negotiations yielded consensus on the issue at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). A Th...

Women make up less than a quarter of people appearing in Swiss print and online media articles, a figure which has hardly changed since 2015, according to a study. Apart from a short-lived small boost in 2019, most likely due to the women’s strike...

Most Swiss accept the idea of legalising cannabis for recreational purposes provided there are rules to protect minors, according to a survey published on Thursday. Nearly two-thirds of people surveyed want the minimum age of consumption to be set a...

A day after the government’s decision to opt for US-made fighter jets, some papers praise the pragmatic and cost-effective choice. Others consider it a geopolitical mistake and a setback for Swiss-EU relations. On Wednesday, after months of specul...

Switzerland has announced new sanctions against the Myanmar’s ruling junta in retaliation for the ongoing repression since it took power. Eight individuals were added to the list of those targeted, including the attorney general, four ministers and...

The Swiss government has set out plans to contain the impact of a potential new wave of Covid-19 infections later this year. At the same time, it said it will donate four million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to the Covax global distribution allia...