Swiss National Bank (SNB) vice-chairman Fritz Zurbrügg is due to undergo planned heart surgery this week, the central bank has announced. This follows a cardiac procedure performed on chairman Thomas Jordan in August. The SNB said on Tuesday that Z...

Climate activists from Extinction Rebellion blocked three junctions in the centre of Zurich on Monday, demanding the government declare a state of climate emergency. Police moved in to break up the unauthorised demonstration. The Swiss News Agency K...

A German man has been caught trying to smuggle 240 kilos of cheese out of Switzerland. The man has form when it comes to cheese-smuggling and now faces criminal proceedings. German customs officers apprehended the 51-year-old at the border in northe...

The 17th Zurich Film Festival (ZFF), which ended on Sunday evening, attracted 102,000 visitors, up from 68,000 last year, when attendance was limited by Covid-19 restrictions. “Our expectations were far exceeded,” said festival director Christia...

A new set of leaked documents, dubbed the Pandora Papers, has again exposed the role of Swiss lawyers, accountants and consultants in managing the wealth of powerful clients. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has revea...

Former Gambian Interior Minister Ousman Sonko, suspected of crimes against humanity, is to stay in a Swiss jail until at least the end of October, after his appeal was rejected by the Federal Criminal Court, media reports said on Sunday. The court d...

Swiss Guards, the colourfully dressed corps that protects the Pope, are now required to be vaccinated against Covid-19, reports Le Matin Dimanche. Three of them resigned because they did not want to comply. A Swiss Guard spokesman confirmed this inf...

A letter from the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) to the Swiss cantons gives details for the national vaccination week, which will start in early November, reports the Sonntagsblick newspaper. “Berset’s troops will go door to door” with...

Weather conditions this summer meant Swiss bees were almost unable to produce any honey and even had to be fed artificially, reports Swiss national broadcaster SRF on Saturday. If the bees had not received sugar water, many would probably have died,...

Health minister Alain Berset says the reason for Switzerland’s relatively low vaccination rate against Covid-19 is still unclear, but that if more people don’t get jabbed “we won’t be able to end this crisis”. Speaking to Swiss public broa...

Scientific and economic cooperation and Switzerland’s good offices were at the centre of the first strategic partnership dialogue between Switzerland and the United States. Current events, particularly in Afghanistan, were also discussed. The talk...

The government is sticking to its decision to end free Covid testing for asymptomatic people as of October 11. The money “saved” will go into a new push to boost vaccination rates, it said on Friday. The decision comes after weeks of pressure fr...

Giulia Steingruber, the most decorated Swiss gymnast in history, has announced her retirement. “My head and my body are tired,” she said at a press conference on Friday in her hometown of Gossau, northeastern Switzerland. The decision was not a ...

Ties with the Holy See, currently overseen by the Swiss embassy in Slovenia, are to be shifted to a permanent presence in Rome, the government said on Friday. The new embassy comes in response to an “increase – noted for several years – in dip...

The European Union has welcomed the Swiss parliament’s decision to unconditionally release the second cohesion contribution. At the same time, the European Commission has insisted on a binding payment mechanism for the future. On Thursday Switzerl...

After eight years of planning and billions of dollars in spending, the Middle East’s first World Fair has opened in Dubai. Switzerland is participating at Expo 2020 with its own pavilion. This offers visitors “a memorable experience and showcase...

One year after a nationwide vote, most new fathers in Switzerland have the right to two weeks of paternity leave – the legal minimum – to help look after a new-born child. Large disparities exist between employment sectors, unions complain. Acco...

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has sent a letter to Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis asking Switzerland to accept more people fleeing Afghanistan. In the letter, sent on Wednesday, Filippo Grandi asked the government to accept ad...

Swiss Post says it will “bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds in philately” on November 25, when it launches the “Swiss Crypto Stamp”, the first stamp of its kind in Switzerland. The crypto stamp consists of two parts. Whil...

The United States and Russia are holding a second round of strategic talks in Geneva in an attempt to resolve numerous differences ranging from nuclear weapons to cyberspace. A behind-closed-doors meeting reportedly started in Geneva at 10am on Thur...

A climate activist from Extinction Rebellion (XR) has been given a three-year suspended prison sentence and fined CHF1,000 ($1,070) for taking part in protest events in Lausanne. The judge rejected the man's freedom to demonstrate peacefully but wit...

Switzerland has agreed to help prevent disputes between four African countries over access to the important Senegal-Mauritanian Aquifer Basin water supply. The basin supplies water to some 15 million people in the west African countries of Senegal, ...

Dual-national parliamentarians and government ministers in Switzerland will in future be compelled to declare their citizenships of other countries. Both chambers of parliament have now agreed to the new rule, although the bill must still be fine-tu...

Work on a second Gotthard road tunnel officially got underway on Wednesday with a groundbreaking ceremony held at both ends of the structure. Dignitaries gathered to watch a symbolic first explosion to expand one of the major transit routes through ...

The Swiss government has signed a contract with the American firm Janssen, part of the Johnson & Johnson group of companies, to purchase 150,000 doses of its Covid-19 vaccine, a viral vector model delivered in only one shot. Cantons, which are respo...

Six people and a Swiss financial services firm have been charged in the United States with helping clients evade taxes on $60 million (CHF56 million) of assets. They are accused of setting up an elaborate scheme, known as the “Singapore Solution�...

Natallia Hersche, who holds dual Swiss-Belarusian nationalities, has been moved to Prison No. 4 in Mogilev, the Swiss foreign ministry has confirmed. Hersche has left a penal colony in Gomel where she was serving a 30-month jail term, the Department...

Little Amal, a huge puppet representing an unaccompanied Syrian refugee, arrived in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday as part of a journey across Europe to focus attention on the plight of refugees and young unaccompanied children. The 3.5-metre-h...

Compulsory health insurance premiums are set to fall by 0.2% next year in Switzerland – the first decrease in 14 years. The Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) announced on Tuesday that the average monthly health insurance premium for 2022 woul...

Parliamentarians have agreed that a Covid certificate will be needed to access the parliament building in Bern from October 2. However, an exception has been made for politicians without the document. On Tuesday the House of Representatives followed...