A Swiss health official says stricter nationwide rules could be in the cards if epidemiological dynamics do not improve. But mandatory vaccination and restrictions on individuals who have not been vaccinated against Covid-19 are considered, for now, ...

Switzerland’s largest trade union issued a statement on Saturday demanding a “massive reduction” of working hours with full wage compensation for lower and income earners. “Nowhere in Europe do people work as hard as in Switzerland. At prese...

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) announced that it is suspending its flights from Zurich to Hong Kong temporarily. This is due to the tightening of quarantine regulations for crew members" on arrival to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. Four fli...

The United States government confirmed on Friday that Switzerland is no longer considered a currency manipulator, Swiss public broadcaster RTS reported As in April, the US Treasury Department determined there was "insufficient evidence" to designat...

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has flagged up a rise in racist hate speech over social media channels in Switzerland. A country review of Switzerland also highlighted concerns about “the persistence...

Switzerland plans to expand the network of countries with which it automatically exchanges financial information to include another 12 states. The government said on Friday that it proposes to conclude deals with Ecuador, Georgia, Jamaica, Jordan, K...

Zurich airport and Swiss International Air Lines have both criticised the government's decision to impose travel restrictions to combat the spread of the Omicron Covid variant. Last week, the government banned direct flights to southern Africa and i...

The Swiss government has given its approval for domestic violence offenders to be fitted with electronic wrist or ankle devices that monitor their movements. The government said such a measure, along with other uses of electronic devices that have a...

Around 2,000 people, including 1,600 children at the International School of Geneva, will have to quarantine for ten days. Two confirmed cases of the Omicron variant were detected at the La Châtaigneraie campus of the International School of Geneva...

Three Swiss towns have been named as part of a crop of “Best Tourism Villages” announced by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO). “No other country had as much success” in the awards, the Swiss authorities announced, rather ...

A majority in parliament has voted in favour of re-introducing free Covid tests, less than two months after the government decided to make people pay. The government scrapped free testing for asymptomatic people in October, saying the cost to the st...

The European Commission has ended an investigation of five banks, including UBS and Credit Suisse, who colluded in a foreign exchange spot trading cartel. The total fines announced on Thursday came to €344 million (CHF359 million), with British ba...

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has dismantled a social media operation, orchestrated from China, which used an account of a fictitious Swiss biologist named Wilson Edwards to fuel tensions with the United States. On July 24, an account posing...

The 194 member nations of the World Health Organisation (WHO), including Switzerland, have pledged to open talks on a new global convention to better deal with future pandemics. The WHO announced the plans at the end of a special three-day session i...

Over a third of readers of online articles are unable to distinguish between actual journalism and advertising which is made to look like journalism, a Swiss study has found. “Depending on the platform in question and how the article was labelled,...

Politicians have rejected a committee idea to raise Switzerland’s “cohesion payment” to the European Union from CHF1 billion to CHF 2 billion ($1.1 billion to $2.2 billion). The plan was proposed by the foreign affairs committee in the House o...

Soaring inflation, supply chain disruptions and high oil prices have shuffled this year’s ranking of the most expensive cities compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Zurich drops from first to fourth, as Tel Aviv takes the top spot. Geneva, ...

Switzerland has a new platform for reporting racist hate speech on the Internet, the Federal Commission against Racism (FCR) has announced. The new reporting platform “simplifies the reporting of racist hate speech on the Internet”, the FCR said...

Last year 2,766,000 people – 38% of Switzerland’s permanent resident population aged 15 and over – had a migration background, 0.3 percentage points more than in 2019. Whereas 7% of these people were unemployed in 2020, regardless of generatio...

The Swiss parliament has given a final green light to a futuristic underground cargo project that aims to transport freight normally carried by road on a 500-kilometre network of underground tunnels. The House of Representatives on Tuesday voted in ...

Measures to deal with the latest Covid-19 variant are already having a negative impact on hotel bookings in Switzerland, according to umbrella association Hotelleriesuisse. There are also fears that the entire Ski World Cup will have to be cancelled....

Swiss health officials have warned that the new Covid-19 variant, Omicron, could pose a worrying new health risk as the pandemic continues into next year. Although data on the variant, which has a greater number of mutations than normal, is still th...

French-Canadian artist Kapwani Kiwanga has been awarded the 15th Zurich Art Prize for her work that depicts social topics, such as the route to independence for African countries. “The Zurich Art Prize jury was particularly enthusiastic about Kapw...

The new variant Covid-19 virus, called Omicron, has forced the cancellation of a student winter games event, just 12 days before it was due to begin in Switzerland. The Lucerne 2021 Winter Universiade, the largest winter sports event next to the Win...

The first probable case of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 has been detected in Switzerland, the government said late on Sunday, as the country tightened its entry restrictions to check its spread. The case relates to a person who returned to Switze...

Voters have rejected a proposal for the supreme court judges to be elected by lot rather than by the Swiss parliament. The people’s initiative only won about 31.9% of the vote on Sunday according to official results. None of the country's 26 canto...

Zurich has become the latest canton in Switzerland to ban oil and gas heating systems. Official figures show nearly 63% of voters on Sunday endorsing a law approved by parliament to replace fossil fuels in heating systems with alternative energy sou...

Voters in Geneva have won the right to recall elected members of their cantonal government, an option rarely used in Switzerland. The constitutional amendment was approved by 92% of voters on Sunday, according to official results. Under the new reg...

The Swiss health authorities have urged passengers who arrived at Zurich airport on a flight from South Africa to get tested for Covid. The Federal Office of Public Health said it will send text messages to all passengers who landed at Zurich airpor...

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis has been forced to cancel a meeting with his Chinese counterpart in China following a technical fault on his government jet. Cassis was forced to divert to Moscow en route to the eastern Zhejiand province of Chi...