Only one in five consumers get addicted to cocaine, thanks to the protective role played by serotonin, scientists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have found. The team has revealed a brain mechanism specific to cocaine which triggers a massive in...

Switzerland has ended its emergency aid to Haiti, which was struck by a deadly earthquake in mid August. It is now focusing on reconstruction work there. The 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit the southwestern part of the Caribbean island on August 14, ki...

A Swiss criminal court has convicted international sports powerbroker Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah of forgery. The court in Geneva handed down a 30-month sentence, half of which is to be served in jail. The 58-year-old Sheikh, a former energy mi...

The Swiss government’s decision to extend the use of Covid certificates from next Monday has led to a rise in the number of people seeking to get the Covid jab across the country. Many cantons are ramping up access to Covid vaccinations. But some ...

A federal investigator has found “serious” technical failures at voluntary vaccination registry mesvaccins.ch, which was closed in May following data security concerns. “The technical failures were indeed very serious, affecting all services o...

The International Committee of the Red Cross is counting on talks with the Taliban to be able to continue its work in Afghanistan, says ICRC President Peter Maurer. “I trust that we can at least negotiate a humanitarian space with the Taliban that...

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and the universities of Lausanne (UNIL), Zurich and Neuchâtel have announced that they will be requiring Covid certificates for on-site lectures when they re-open after the summer break. Fro...

A new Swiss stock exchange has been awarded a license to trade digital assets using distributed ledger technology (DLT). On Friday, the SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) was given the go-ahead by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) to ...

Swiss and British citizens will have continued access to healthcare, pension provisions and social security benefits when working in or visiting each country. A Swiss-British accord replaces previous arrangements that stood in place while Britain wa...

A delegation of Swiss parliamentarians has made little progress in solving political tensions between Switzerland and the European Union during a trip to Brussels. The cross-party group met on Wednesday with Maros Sefcovic, the EU Commissioner who i...

The head of the Federal Vaccination Commission has said that quarantine rules for children over Covid-19 “make little sense at the moment”. In a television interview with Swiss public television SRF on Wednesday evening, Christoph Berger said in...

More than 1,000 people demonstrated against extending the use of the Covid certificate in the Swiss capital, Bern, on Wednesday evening. They accused the government of introducing mandatory vaccination “through the back door”. On Wednesday the ...

Start-ups delivering cutting-edge healthy food, skin tech and engineering solutions dominated the top three places in the 100 Swiss Startup Award ceremony held late Wednesday. Planted Foods – a company making vegan meat alternatives without chemi...

The government has decided to boost Switzerland’s commitment to international peacekeeping missions. It agreed to extend an accord to support the International Peace Support Training Centre in Kenya. As part of the agreement, the agreement aims t...

Switzerland is increasing its aid for Afghanistan which is in the grips of an acute humanitarian emergency and under the control of the Taliban after the withdrawal of US-led forces. The government on Wednesday approved an additional CHF33 million ...

Chinese dissident and artist Ai Weiwei says Credit Suisse told him it was closing his foundation's bank account in Switzerland citing his "criminal record" in China, despite the activist never being convicted of a crime. One of China's most high-pro...

Franco-Swiss cement group Lafarge-Holcim could yet be charged with crimes against humanity over its dealings in Syria, following a ruling by France’s highest appeals court. The company is under investigation in France for efforts to keep its cemen...

Experts say the number of new Covid-19 cases in Switzerland has stagnated at a high level while the situation in hospitals remains tense. Virginie Masserey of the Federal Office for Public Health said there were at total of 287 Covid patients in in...

The Covid-19 pandemic has fuelled racism and hate speech, with racial discrimination in Switzerland affecting more and more young people, says a new report. Forty percent of 15-24 year olds feel they have been discriminated against in the last five ...

The Trade Union Federation has called for a blanket salary rise for all employees as the Swiss economy recovers from the Covid-19 crisis. Switzerland’s main trade union umbrella group said employees should be entitled to a salary increase of at le...

The number of healthcare and support staff in Switzerland has increased by 19% since 2012, but another 70,000 people will be needed by 2029, according to a report by the Swiss Health Observatory (OBSAN). The growing need for staff reflects increasin...

The national financial supervisory body says more than 200 Swiss firms paid dividends despite a ban as they benefited from government-backed credits during the Covid crisis. The Federal Audit Office on Monday said a total of CHF43.1 million ($47 mil...

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis and his counterpart from Kazakhstan, Mukhtar Tileuberdi, have signed accords on diplomatic staff. They also discussed bilateral issues, including long-standing cooperation in their common voting constituencies o...

Swiss children and adolescents have significantly stepped up their physical activities between 2014 and early 2020, according to a government study. The Swiss Sport 2020 study also found the gender gap has narrowed and that the urban-rural divide w...

A group that hacked a Swiss town’s database and posted sensitive information on the Darknet has threatened to target other municipalities, companies or hospitals. The Swiss newspaper Le Temps reported on Monday that it had established contact with...

The Swiss authorities have granted a third canton permission to cull a problematic wolf pack responsible for attacks on sheep. The Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) decided on Monday that three young wolves from the Beverin pack in the sout...

Canton Glarus’s traditional open-air assembly (Landsgemeinde), the oldest form of direct democracy in Switzerland, resumed on Sunday after a long hiatus on account of the coronavirus pandemic. Voters gathered in the ring on Zaunplatz at the canton...

Switzerland is carrying out its largest ever aid operation in the conflict zone of eastern Ukraine, the government announced Sunday. Switzerland is providing 2,300 tonnes of aid including water treatment chemicals, hospital equipment and medical mat...

Swiss climate experts propose the introduction of an individual CO2 budget so Switzerland can reach its goal of “net zero greenhouse gas emissions” by 2050. The radical proposal for Swiss climate policy was presented in the Sunday weekly newspap...

Finance Minister Ueli Maurer has reservations on the use of a mandatory heath certificate for daily life in Switzerland. In an interview with the SonntagsBlick newspaper published on Sunday, he said it would be “difficult” to require the populat...