Police used a water cannon, rubber bullets and irritant spray to break up an illegal demonstration against coronavirus measures that turned violent in the Swiss capital Bern on Thursday night. “After several warnings from police, participants push...

The Swiss medicines regulator is reviewing requests from vaccine producers Pfizer/Biontech and Moderna to use their product for third booster jabs. Swissmedic said on Thursday that both vaccine makers had submitted their proposals and supporting dat...

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has announced it will resume its flagship annual meeting in its traditional Davos venue in 2022. The meeting of the world’s most powerful politicians, business figures and representatives of civil society, culture an...

Video streaming platforms, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+, may in future be obliged to donate 4% of their profits towards supporting the Swiss film industry. On Thursday, both chambers of the Swiss parliament agreed on the amount to be su...

Two of the most successful Swiss company listings of recent times have taken place in the space of a week, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from stock market investors in New York. Sports shoe manufacturer On Group, which is backed by Swiss t...

Campaigners seeking a ban on Swiss arms exports have withdrawn their initiative that aimed to stop weapons exports to countries in conflict. The broad alliance of political parties and non-governmental groups behind the proposal says it is pleased t...

Various disabled organisations in Switzerland have come together to launch a people’s initiative demanding greater political participation and inclusion of people with disabilities. The groups, which included the Swiss Federation of Deaf People an...

Parliament has agreed to allow the authorities to use electronic data from mobile phones, tablets, computers and USB sticks to establish the identity of asylum seekers in Switzerland. On Wednesday, the Senate followed the House of Representatives, d...

The price of a new car or electrical appliance imported into Switzerland looks set to drop following parliament’s decision to remove import duties on certain industrial goods. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives followed an earlier Senate d...

Women may have to wait more than 50 years to get equal access to top management posts, according to a Swiss university report. The Gender Intelligence Report from the University of St Gallen found that 17% of top management posts are held by women a...

The assisted suicide organisation EXIT has dropped a proposal to restrict its services to people living in Switzerland. Members were told of the u-turn at the organisation’s general annual assembly on Tuesday, reports Swiss public broadcaster SRF....

The Swiss parliament has voted for the creation of a national human rights institution to monitor the application of human rights domestically. The Swiss Centre of Expertise in Human Rights will now be upgraded from a temporary pilot project, set up...

Swiss government experts are recommending that pregnant women get the Covid jab from the second trimester onwards. This is in line with advice issued in other countries. Previously, pregnant women were allowed to receive the vaccination, but were re...

Switzerland’s largest city, Zurich, will next year allow people to buy cannabis products from pharmacies and social clubs under controlled conditions. The three-and-a-half year pilot scheme, announced on Tuesday, takes advantage of a change in the...

Switzerland has launched a video campaign on social media aimed at encouraging children, youths and young adults to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Nearly 53% of the entire Swiss population is fully vaccinated at present with another 7% having rece...

There have been no measles cases in Switzerland so far this year – thanks in part to the hygiene and distancing measures in place to fight the Covid pandemic, health officials say. According to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), there wer...

Switzerland is supporting the creation of a new research centre in south-east Europe to advance tumour therapy and biomedical research. On Monday Switzerland hosted a high-level conference in the Swiss capital Bern for ten countries from south-easte...

The global community is slipping in its efforts to tackle money laundering and terrorist finance, a Swiss corruption watchdog warned on Monday. The Basel Institute on Governance said the global risk score increased from 5.22 to 5.3 out of 10 (highes...

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis has called on the international community to deliver rapid, decisive, and well-coordinated humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. Cassis gave the opening remarks at Monday’s United Nations donor conference for the...

An online petition demanding that Covid tests remain free in Switzerland has amassed significant support in four days. By Monday, it had collected over 200,000 signatures. Assuming no duplicate or fake entries, that represents 2.3% in a population of...

The 2021 top science prizes are going to a psychologist for his contribution to Internet-based therapy and to a cancer researcher for his discoveries about tumor cells. Psychologist Thomas Berger of the University of Bern will receive this year’s ...

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

The risk of a housing bubble has increased in the last three months, but the Swiss National Bank (SNB) is unconcerned about a general inflationary threat. In an interview with the SonntagsZeitung newspaper on Sunday, SNB vice-chairman Fritz Zurbrüg...

A former European Union chief negotiator says Switzerland must change strategy if it wants to retain favourable access to the EU. Christian Leffler spent five years, between 2015 and 2020, thrashing out the terms of bilateral deals with Switzerland....

Taliban leaders have assured the International Committee of the Red Cross that it can continue its humanitarian operations in Afghanistan, according to ICRC president Peter Maurer. On Sunday, Maurer told the Le Matin Dimanche newspaper that he has b...

A top Swiss health official believes ski resorts should only be open for people who can demonstrate a clean bill of health with a Covid-19 certificate. Lukas Engelberger, president of the cantonal health directors, told the SonntagsZeitung newspaper...

Thousands of people took part in the Pride March in Geneva on Saturday to both protest gender and sexual orientation discrimination and to signal their support for the “marriage for all” people’s initiative next month. The procession, accompan...

Some 1,500 demonstrators took to the streets of Lucerne in central Switzerland to protest Covid-19 measures imposed by the government. The demonstration on Saturday followed a mid-week protest by some 1,000 people in the Swiss capital Bern. The lat...

The diversity of insects in Switzerland is shrinking due to agriculture, destruction of habitat and global warming, a study has warned. Earlier this week, the Biodiversity Forum of the Swiss Academy of Sciences put 1,153 insect species on its endang...

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...