Switzerland has put forward its case to be re-admitted as a full member of the European Union’s Horizon Europe research programme. The EU has downgraded Switzerland to non-associate status in the programme which hands out grants and access to pres...

Swissport, the world’s largest airport ground services and cargo handling company, has been targeted by ransomware hackers. The canton Zurich-based firm said it spotted the hack early enough on Thursday to contain potential damage to its IT system...

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture, Swiss citizen Nils Melzer, will step down from the role in March to start a new job at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Melzer, who took up the United Nations (UN) position in 2016, said ...

Switzerland is set to participate in a new “Schengen Council” proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron, whose goal is to better coordinate migration policy in Europe. Macron presented the idea at a meeting of European Union (EU) interior min...

Federal prosecutors have now cleared both Swiss nationals suspected of supporting the November 2020 terror attack which killed four people in Vienna. The pair were arrested in November 2020 on suspicion of having made a “causal contribution to sup...

Patients in Switzerland pay on average 2.3 times more for tests done by specialised laboratories and 4.5 times more for analyses in a doctor’s office than patients in France, Germany and the Netherlands. The Swiss price watchdog examined the costs...

Last year the humanitarian group Swiss Solidarity focused mainly on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. It also sent aid to earthquake-struck Haiti and to Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. Overall, the CHF34 million ($36.9 million) financed ...

The Swiss government wants to speed up legal procedures to boost the construction of large-scale hydroelectric and wind energy installations. Energy Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said the plans were part of efforts underway in parliament to improve e...

The number of welfare cases in Switzerland dropped slightly last year despite the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a leading organisation for social aid. The decline is due to the recovery of the domestic economy and a shortage of staff in many secto...

Residues of chlorothalonil, an agricultural fungicide banned in Switzerland because of its carcinogenic risks, are still too high in the groundwater from which most drinking water is obtained. The agricultural regions of the Central Plateau, which i...

Switzerland and Austria want to strengthen cooperation on migration and security, they said on Tuesday. This came at a meeting in Vienna between Swiss Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter and her new Austrian counterpart Gerhard Karner. Their talks ...

Several teams of Italian volunteers with two-fire-fighting aircraft have joined efforts to put out a forest fire raging in southern Switzerland. In a short Twitter message on Tuesday, the Swiss embassy in Rome expressed thanks for the Italian contri...

In Switzerland, the vast majority of products sold containing the cannabis extract cannabidiol (CBD) do not meet legal requirements, according to the Swiss Association of Cantonal Chemists. Sellers of foodstuffs carrying the CBD label do not fulfil ...

Swiss Air-Rescue (Rega) rescued a record number of people in 2021, coming to the assistance of more than 12,000 for the first time since it was founded in 1952. Rega, best known for rescuing skiers and hikers in distress, had the “busiest year in ...

The president of the Swiss National Bank (SNB), Thomas Jordan, says he takes the significant rise in inflation seriously and that one must “keep a very close eye on how it continues”. Some of this inflation is “certainly temporary” and will ...

Switzerland’s new ambassador to Belarus, Christine Honegger Zolotukhin, will present herself to the country’s controversial President next month, in the face of criticism from opposition groups. It is customary for new ambassadors to be received...

The volume of Swiss cheese exports rose by 7% last year and producers were able to extract a 10% growth in revenues with price rises. The Swiss cheese marketing board announced record export figures on Monday as consumers in other countries bought 8...

A recovery in the number of newly registered cars in Switzerland has been constrained by global bottlenecks in the supply of computer chips. More than 350,000 new vehicles entered service on Swiss roads in 2021, marking a significant increase from t...

Zurich and Geneva are the two most expensive cities in Switzerland for home rentals, with prices continuing to rise as people move from the smaller towns to big cities. While Geneva is the most expensive place to rent big family apartments – a 4.5...

The share of women in management positions at corporations listed on the Swiss Market Index (SMI) reached 19%, or nearly one in five, in 2021. The modest increase, from 13% in 2020, is largely thanks to an average of close to four of every ten new m...

The Swiss interior minister responsible for health, Alain Berset, has hinted that the worst may soon be over and some measures to fight Covid-19 could be scrapped in the coming days. Berset told Swiss public radio SRF that the record number of Covid...

Immunologists at the University Hospital Zurich found lower levels of two types of immunoglobulins among patients who developed post-acute Covid-19 syndrome, also known as Long Covid. Normally levels of immunoglobulins IgM and IgG3 – antibodies pr...

Switzerland has urged Russia to work towards a peaceful resolution to the ongoing tensions in Ukraine. Russia has been locked into a diplomatic stand-off with western nations, led by the United States, for several weeks over its neighbouring country...

A Swiss man has been sentenced to a two-year suspended prison term for the unlicensed trading of weapons, including illegal sales to members of the Saudi royal family. The Federal Criminal Court heard that the accused sold 476 pistols, revolvers, hu...

The Swiss Federal Court has dashed hopes that small companies could be entitled to insurance payouts for lost business during the Covid-19 pandemic. The test case was brought by a restaurant owner from the town of Baden in northern Switzerland who a...

Total investment in Swiss startups climbed to over CHF3 billion in 2021, continuing a decade-long rise, only barely dented in 2020 by the pandemic. The CHF3.06 billion ($3.29 billion) invested last year marked a 44% increase on 2020, according to th...

Researchers from Switzerland and Germany say the Omicron variant of Covid is unlikely to push the healthcare systems to breaking point. Omicron is significantly more infectious but seemingly less severe than the Delta variant, the Federal Laboratori...

The Swiss defence ministry has ordered a probe into suspected illegal practices of information gathering by the country's intelligence service. Its cyber unit allegedly collected information on hacker attacks between 2015 and 2020 without requesting...

Swiss exports climbed to record levels in 2021, with chemicals and pharma driving much of the growth. Watches, especially luxury ones, also had a good year. Exports came to a total value of CHF259.5 billion ($284.5 billion) in 2021, marking a 15.2% ...

The Swiss government has been criticised for its incoherent practice of returning the frozen assets of politically exposed persons (PEPs). The Federal Audit Office, a financial supervisory body of the government and parliament, said inconsistent rul...