The humanitarian charity Swiss Solidarity has raised over CHF82.6 million ($89.1 million) as part of a public fundraising effort for victims of the war in Ukraine. The Swiss public donated over CHF51.5 million on Wednesday and over CHF30 million on...

Switzerland’s state-owned Ruag International company has sold its small-caliber ammunition division to the Italian firearm manufacturer, Beretta. All the 2,700 employees of Ammotech in Switzerland and ten other countries, including Germany and Swe...

The Swiss authorities have recorded a steep increase in new confirmed Covid infections but the situation in hospitals is under control. More than 33,750 tested positive for Covid-19 over the past 24 hours, the Federal Office of Public Health said on...

Switzerland’s main churches have organised a protest against the war in Ukraine. The bells of the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Christian Catholic churches across the country rang out for a few minutes on Wednesday morning, inviting people for a ...

A district court in Switzerland has acquitted four defendants accused of inciting violence against the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The judge ruled that a controversial banner shown by protesters at a 2017 demonstration in the Swiss capit...

A group of 11 investors with more than CHF2.2 trillion ($2.4 trillion) in assets has filed a shareholder resolution calling on Credit Suisse to cut its lending to fossil fuel assets. Among the investors is Europe’s largest asset manager, Amundi, a...

A series of events and rallies are being held across Switzerland to demand an end to violence against women and for enhanced rights on International Women’s Day. More than 1,000 people demonstrated in the Swiss capital, Bern, on Tuesday. They dema...

The Swiss foreign ministry has berated Russia for targeting the media during its invasion of Ukraine. Several reporters have complained of being attacked by Russian forces, including a Swiss journalist who was injured and robbed this week. Russia ha...

In January 1937, the University of Lausanne (UNIL) awarded Benito Mussolini an honorary doctorate. A group of Vaud politicians on Tuesday called for the academic title to be revoked. Mussolini was awarded the university honorary doctorate “for hav...

The Swiss parliament has decided to ease restrictions on genetic engineering in agriculture, while extending in principle a moratorium for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) until 2025. The Senate on Tuesday asked the government to propose detail...

Russia has drawn up a list of around 50 countries, including Switzerland, that have committed “unfriendly actions” against Russia, its companies and citizens, in the wake of severe economic sanctions over the war in Ukraine, the Russian state med...

The government has allocated 5,000 places in Swiss federal asylum centres for people fleeing the war in Ukraine. The decision was announced by the State Secretary for Migration Christine Schraner Burgener at a press conference in Zurich on Monday. ...

A Swiss freelance journalist has been injured and robbed in the Mykolaiv region of southern Ukraine. According to the online media outlet Ukrayinska Pravda, the journalist was in a car travelling towards the city of Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea, whe...

Switzerland’s central bank has renewed its pledge to intervene in the currency markets to halt a rise in the franc after safe-haven inflows caused by the war in Ukraine briefly pushed the currency above parity with the euro. The euro/franc exchang...

The Fasnacht – Switzerland’s largest carnival – began in the northwest city on Monday after a two-year break due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The long-standing tradition began as always on the first Monday after Ash Wednesday. Festivities started...

Around 35 tonnes of emergency aid, including medical equipment and tents, sent from Switzerland to help victims of the war in Ukraine have arrived in the capital, Kyiv. “The aid is urgently needed for hospitals serving the Ukrainian population,”...

Millions of chickens on Swiss farms are treated with the types of antibiotics which, in human cases, are only used in exceptional cases. Some 5.2 million chickens were treated with ‘last-resort’ antibiotics in 2020 alone, write the SonntagsZeitu...

The Swiss armed forces need to be boosted and better prepared, and not just in the short term, argues Defence Minister Viola Amherd. Nato membership however is “not an option”. The promotion of peace internationally is “an important task for t...

Switzerland is activating emergency planning among national and cantonal authorities, as well as counting on the help of private citizens, to prepare for the arrival of Ukrainians fleeing the war, Karin Keller-Sutter has said. The justice minister t...

Following the introduction of strict new information laws in Russia, the Swiss public broadcaster no longer has journalists reporting directly from Moscow. “Due to the restrictive conditions for correspondents and the threatening consequences for ...

Huge numbers have marched for the second weekend in a row in Swiss cities to protest against the ongoing war in Ukraine. The biggest demonstration on Saturday was in the morning in Zurich, Switzerland’s biggest city, where organisers estimated tha...

The Swiss financial regulator has ordered protective measures to mitigate a risk of “liquidity problems” at the Zurich-based subsidiary of Russian bank Sberbank. The measures, which include a 60-day deferral of the bank’s obligations from depo...

Moves to cut red tape for non-EU foreign workers in Switzerland will not necessarily lead to more work visas being issued. On Friday, the government announced measures to make it easier to hire skilled workers from such countries as India, Britain, ...

The UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva has passed a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, calling for the “swift and verifiable” withdrawal of Russian troops and setting up a commission of inquiry on violations of human ri...

The Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA), a project that aims to pre-empt the societal impacts of technological change, has won the financial support of the Swiss government for the next 10 years. After a three-year pilot phase, the foun...

Swiss bank Credit Suisse says a request for investors to destroy certain documents is “in no way linked to the recent implementation of additional sanctions” on Russia. The statement by Credit Suisse comes after a report by the Financial Times e...

Claude Wild, who was evacuated from Kyiv earlier this week, has also given more details about the diplomatic pull out. “I’m sad for the Ukrainians, for my colleagues and for the country,” Claude Wild said in an interview given to the Blick-TV ...

Various cases of mistreatment at a Geneva school for young people with autism were the result of systemic failures in how the institution was set up, an external audit has found. The school at Mancy just outside Geneva, which opened in 2018, has bee...

Before a meeting of European Union ministers in Brussels on Thursday, Swiss Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter repeated her plan to activate a special permit for Ukrainians fleeing their country due to war. The Swiss S permit, for “people in nee...

Russian bank Sberbank will function as normal in Switzerland despite other parts of the group pulling out of the rest of Europe. The Zurich-based subsidiary is not part of Sberbank Europe Group that has been hit with sanctions from the European Unio...