The Ukrainian and United States ambassadors to Bern have called on Switzerland to redouble its efforts to enforce sanctions against Russian individuals and entities. The Swiss authorities have adopted European Union sanctions, so far seizing CHF7.5 ...

Switzerland has formally protested the bombing of the Kramatorsk railway station in Ukraine to the Russian ambassador to Bern. At least 50 people are reported killed and many more left injured by Friday’s missile strike on the train station in the...

Switzerland has delivered a first consignment of food supplies to the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, as part of a series of aid shipments to the country’s “suffering civilian population”, it said on Friday. “In cooperation with its Ukrainia...

Switzerland needs “quick and unbureaucratic solutions” to cope with the influx of refugees from Ukraine, Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter said on Friday. Speaking to journalists in the north-eastern Swiss city of St. Gallen, she stressed the...

A male animal was culled in the canton of Graubünden last week on suspicion of being a wolf-dog hybrid. Information indicates that the canid had a lighter coloured coat than a wolf, the Graubünden cantonal Hunting and Fishing Office said on Friday...

Swiss President Ignazio Cassis has said that the Alpine nation will not expel Russian diplomats to sanction Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. "The Federal Council has decided that the expulsion of diplomats is a measure that must be taken in the ...

The United Nations General Assembly has suspended Russia from the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (HRC) over reports of “gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights” by invading Russian troops in Ukraine. The US-led push on T...

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic sees a role for Switzerland’s good offices in the Ukraine war. Speaking in Geneva on Thursday, he also praised the Swiss government’s “intelligent” stance in adopting European Union sanctions. Milanovic str...

Switzerland has so far frozen some CHF7.5 billion ($8 billion) in funds and assets under sanctions against Russians to punish Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. These are funds in frozen accounts and properties in four cantons, said Erwin Bollinger, he...

Artists Caroline Bachmann and Klodin Erb and civil engineers Jürg Conzett and Gianfranco Bronzini have won the Swiss Grand Award for Art/Prix Meret Oppenheim 2022. The award, which is worth CHF40,000 ($43,000), has been given since 2001 to artists,...

Every year around 14,000 cases of tick bites are recorded in Switzerland, an increase of 40% compared with a decade ago. "The area of habitat suitable for ticks has increased by almost two-thirds between 2009 and 2018," Felix Ineichen, a tick expert...

A 38-year-old German man was fatally shot in an armed encounter with the police on Wednesday evening near Zurich. The suspect’s companion also died in the shooting. The incident occurred on Wednesday evening in Wallisellen, a small town located 5k...

A court in Italy has sentenced Swiss businessman Stephan Schmidheiny to 42 months in prison over the death of a former worker at an asbestos company. The jury found Schmidheiny, a former majority shareholder in the company, guilty of involuntary man...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommends Switzerland to continue its current fiscal policy to tackle new challenges for the country’s economy. In its annual review published on Wednesday, the IMF said Switzerland recovered strongly from th...

The Swiss government has given the green light for the civil protection organisation to support refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine. It allows the immigration authorities to ask for up to 24,000 days of service from members of the civil defence orga...

The government has launched a plan to halve food waste in Switzerland by 2030 compared with 2017. The restaurant sector, the food processing industry and farmers organisations have been asked to agree on a series of voluntary measures to reduce the ...

The organic food market in Switzerland experienced slower growth in 2021 than the previous year. However, consumers are spending more than ever on organic products. According to annual figures released by the organic food association Bio Suisse on W...

The Swiss justice minister, Karin Keller-Sutter has signed an accord beefing up police cooperation with Germany. The deal aims at boosting the exchange of information between the two neighbouring countries and defining joint operations in the fight ...

Voters are likely to have the final say on abolishing withholding tax on bonds issued in Switzerland. Left-wing parties and trade unions said they handed in the necessary number of signatures to the federal chancellery to challenge a decision by par...

Switzerland’s financial market supervisor FINMA says the Russian invasion of Ukraine isn’t a wide-scale threat to Swiss financial firms’ business ties to Russia. FINMA’s chief executive Urban Angehrn said that, overall, the immediate effects...

More children were born in Switzerland last year than at any time in the past 50 years. Life expectancy increased, and fewer people died than during the first pandemic year of 2020. According to provisional statistics for 2021, the permanent residen...

Swiss companies filed almost seven times as many patent applications per million inhabitants last year as companies in the United States. The medical technology sector led the field. After a slight decline due to Covid in 2020, patent applications i...

Reports of alleged violations of international humanitarian law in Ukraine must be urgently investigated, say the Swiss authorities. Ukraine has accused Russia of committing war crimes in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv. Moscow denies the accusations. ...

The number of companies and individuals declaring bankruptcy rose 9.1% last year, which coincided with a gradual withdrawal of state-backed financial support during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some 14,081 businesses and individuals filed for bankruptcy i...

People in Switzerland will now be able to anonymously report child abuse content found on the Internet, the initiators said on Sunday. The online reporting service clickandstop.ch will be operational from Monday, according to a press release from th...

Switzerland can cope with a large number of Ukrainian refugees, and their skills can benefit the economy, says migration expert Thomas Kessler. “The Ukrainian women will provide new impetus in this country,” he told the SonntagsBlick newspaper. ...

Swiss cantons have so far reported ten properties belonging to Russian oligarchs which are now ”frozen” in line with sanctions measures, a government spokesman said on Sunday. Fabian Maienfisch, spokesman for the State Secretariat for Economic A...

Some 10,000 people demonstrated on Saturday in the Swiss federal capital Bern for peace in Ukraine, according to the organisers. Demonstrators called for a ceasefire, withdrawal of Russian troops and tough sanctions against the regime of Russian Pre...

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has chosen Lausanne as the Swiss city with the best climate strategy, it said on Saturday. Choosing the western city from among six others in Switzerland, the WWF cited Lausanne’s "remarkable" tree-planting initiative...

Given the scale of the challenge, Switzerland is coping well with the influx of Ukrainian refugees, but we do not know how many more will come, says Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter. At an early stage, Switzerland introduced a special “S” st...