The three remaining Swiss employees at the cooperation office in Kabul have been evacuated and are on their way back to Europe, foreign minister Ignazio Cassis has confirmed. The three staff members of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperatio...

Swiss helicopters and crews have successfully completed their emergency firefighting mission in Greece. The three Super Puma helicopters together with the Swiss Humanitarian Aid rapid repsonse team answered a call for help from the Greek authorities...

Laboratories that process Covid-19 tests in Switzerland have criticised a proposal to have them weed out cheats. On Wednesday, the government said that intensive testing will continue to be a crucial pillar of future pandemic strategy. This include...

Health Minister Alain Berset has urged companies to back the government’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign, arguing it is in the economy's interest to get as many people vaccinated as possible. Speaking to the SonntagsBlick newspaper on Sunday, Berse...

Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash has been named the best movie at the 74th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. The film by Indonesian director Edwin, based on the novel of the same title by Eka Kurniawan, was awarded the Golden Leopard prize...

Switzerland says it will withdraw its remaining Swiss staff in Afghanistan, given the worsening security situation there. At a press conference arranged in the Swiss capital Bern on Friday evening, State Secretary Livia Leu said that all Swiss Feder...

Switzerland has imposed sanctions on eight more top Nicaraguan officials, including vice-president Rosario Maria Murillo Zambrana – in line with a decision by the European Union. The move comes at a time of international isolation of President Dan...

Work has started on dismantling the Tamoil refinery in southwestern Switzerland after efforts to find a new buyer came to nothing. The Collombey site, which once employed 238 people in the region processing 55,000 barrels of oil a day, announced it ...

Italian director and screenwriter Paolo Sorrentino (La Grande Bellezza) will receive an honorary award for his work at the 17th Zurich Film Festival (ZFF). The “A Tribute to... Award” will be presented to the auteur filmmaker at the premiere of ...

Natural catastrophes cost the insurance industry $40 billion (CHF37 billion) in the first half of 2021, according to preliminary figures published by reinsurer Swiss Re on Thursday. Economic losses caused by natural and human-caused disasters have...

Swiss trade unions are demanding an increase of wages in 2022 across sectors, with bigger boosts for workers in sectors that helped weather the pandemic and are driving economic recovery. The trade union umbrella organisation Travail Suisse and the...

The Swiss government has announced further economic sanctions against Belarus, including trade prohibitions as well as restrictions in the financial sector. Western governments have been ramping up the pressure on the country’s authoritarian regim...

Switzerland has suspended repatriations to Afghanistan “until further notice owing to the changed situation in the country”, according to the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM). No new deportations of rejected asylum-seekers will be ordered, ...

The Swiss government says it is too soon to lift remaining pandemic restrictions, such as the compulsory wearing of masks in public spaces. At the same time, the government cranked up pressure on people who refuse to get vaccinated. It wants to stop...

Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga has presented government plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. She said the proposal was a counter-project to a people’s initiative handed in by a broad alliance of climate organisations...

Open Doors, a project of the Locarno Film Festival that “shines a light on emerging filmmaking countries and helps them grow”, is moving its three-year focus from Southeast Asia and Mongolia to Latin America and the Caribbean. The 2022-2024 peri...

Switzerland’s budget will face a record shortfall of CHF17.4 billion ($18.9 billion) this year, according to early estimates. This follows a CHF14.2 billion deficit in 2020. Parliament has approved CHF21 billion in extraordinary expenditure to tac...

The Swiss government, keen to improve its strained relationship with the European Union, has adopted a dispatch to be brought before parliament “at the earliest opportunity” to release an EU cohesion payment. The cohesion contribution, a CHF1.2 ...

Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity involving Swiss companies leapt 70% in the first half of the year, demonstrating that business is returning to normal after the Covid-19 pandemic. Consultancy firm KPMG reports that 256 deals were struck in the ...

Wolf attacks on farm animals on Alpine pastures have taken on a “new dimension”, according to the Swiss Farmers’ Union, which is calling for “new solutions to contain the growing wolf population”. The union said in a statement on Tuesday i...

A report by the leading Swiss bank UBS has found an increased risk of a real estate bubble forming in Switzerland’s housing market. The UBS Swiss real estate bubble index has risen from 1.78 to 1.90 points, in the second quarter of 2021, remaining...

Opponents of a proposal to introduce a capital gains tax in Switzerland have launched their campaigns ahead of a nationwide vote on September 26. Finance Minister Ueli Maurer said the initiative by the left-wing Young Socialists was creating uncerta...

There was a big jump in the number of coronavirus infections and hospitalisations in Switzerland on Tuesday. There were 1,910 new cases, up 80% on last Tuesday, according to Federal Office of Public Health statistics. Hospitalisations totalled 287, ...

The summer tourism season in Switzerland is “just as bad” this year as in 2020, the national marketing body Switzerland Tourism says. The reasons: Covid-19 and the weather. A season-end survey of sector members showed that summer 2021 had been c...

A Swiss man has been kidnapped in southwestern Nigeria. Gunmen opened fire on his police escort. The Swiss foreign ministry on Monday confirmed reports about the abduction last week, also involving a Nigerian driver, on a road linking the towns of I...

A Swiss fraudster and his French accomplice, who together cheated Swiss pharma giant Roche out of €8.35 million (CHF11.7 million), have been sentenced to prison. The Basel City criminal court on Monday handed down prison terms of 39 months and 51 ...

The Swiss medical regulator has extended an authorisation of Moderna’s anti-Covid-19 vaccine for adolescents aged 12-17. Swissmedic said it reviewed an application for the Moderna vaccine, Spikevax, based on an ongoing study with 3,732 children. ...

Extreme weather events are set to become more frequent in Switzerland as well as globally, say the Swiss scientists who contributed to the United Nation’s latest climate report, published on Monday. Switzerland runs the risk of experiencing more h...

Murat Yakin has been named the new manager of Switzerland, replacing Vladimir Petkovic, who left after taking the team to the European Championship quarterfinals in July. The 46-year-old Yakin signed a contract until the end of World Cup qualificati...

Special prosecutor Stefan Keller, who was removed from an investigation into FIFA president Gianni Infantino, has said various aspects of the Swiss justice system had an interest in seeing him “sidelined”. In May, Keller stepped aside from the i...