Switzerland is considering emergency stockpiling of plastic packaging as the Ukraine war brings a world shortage of packaging material, reports the NZZ am Sonntag. Up to now the government has only stockpiled plastic to be able to produce disinfecta...

The overwhelming majority of products with packaging designed to appeal to children contain too much sugar, salt or fat, report Le Matin Dimanche and SonntagsZeitung newspapers. This is according to a survey conducted around Easter by the consumer o...

Switzerland wants to update its 2014 free trade agreement with China, but Beijing refuses to talk, owing to criticism of its human rights record, report the NZZ am Sonntag and SonntagsBlick newspapers. Bern wants to reduce customs duties for more Sw...

Spring 2022 in Switzerland was one of the warmest on record, with temperatures from March to May around 2.5 degrees above normal, public television weather service SRF Meteo said on Saturday. Only 2007 and 2011 were warmer, since records began in 18...

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet ended a controversial six-day visit to China on Saturday, saying she had held frank talks with Beijing and that it was “not an investigation”. Bachelet, the top official of the UN’s Genev...

The Swiss government is to send two more experts to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, after it opened an investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine, reports Swiss public broadcaster RTS. ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan opened an ...

Two people have been killed, and nine injured, after a mountaineering group was struck by chunks of ice cascading from a summit in western Switzerland. Police said that a French citizen, aged 40, and a Spaniard, 65, were killed on the Grand Combin m...

Member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday adopted a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its military attacks on healthcare facilities. Out of the 183 members with a right to vote, 88 supported the resolut...

Opponents of Switzerland’s purchase of F-35A fighter jets from the United States say they have enough signatures to force a vote on whether the right type of aircraft is being bought. Left-wing political groups behind the “Stop F-35” initiativ...

The Indonesian embassy to Bern is appealing for help to find an official's missing son, last seen swimming in the River Aare. Emmeril Mumtadz, 23, was reporting missing to canton Bern police on Thursday, sparking a search that is ongoing. He is the ...

Around 620,000 doses of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine stored in Switzerland have expired. Of these, 200,000 are in cantonal refrigerators and 420,500 are being held by the army. The Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) confirmed a report by Swiss p...

The first meeting of the World Economic Forum to take place in springtime ended on Thursday in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos the way it began – with talk about the war in Ukraine. In a speech, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Russia had alrea...

About 40% of all the food produced in the world is never consumed, says the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). In Switzerland, 330kg of food per person goes in the bin every year, according to the Swiss arm of the environmental charity. The 40% of uneaten f...

The Swiss government is looking to seize over CHF100 million ($104 million) in assets from an associate of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich. The “administrative confiscation proceedings” concern assets of Yuriy Ivanyushchenko and his...

If Switzerland is successfully voted onto the United Nations Security Council for a two-year term, the government wants to focus its diplomatic efforts on peace and climate change. On Wednesday the executive published a list of four priorities if Sw...

Over a fifth of bee colonies in Switzerland did not survive the winter of 2021-2022, the national umbrella organisation for beekeepers reported on Wednesday. The 1,384 beekeepers surveyed by apisuisse reported total colony losses of 21.4% over the w...

The number of confirmed cases of the monkeypox virus in Switzerland has risen to two. The second case was detected in a person in Geneva, who was contaminated during a trip abroad. The infected person is currently in isolation and “his general con...

Swiss Finance Minister Ueli Maurer has spoken out against government support for consumers affected by higher energy prices. “Petrol prices are affordable in wealthy Switzerland,” he told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper on Wednesday. The governmen...

The Swiss government’s reaction to the arrival of Covid-19 in spring 2020 was too passive, a parliamentary audit committee has said. But it concluded that the handling of the first pandemic wave was generally “satisfactory”. “The government ...

A Russian diplomat at the country’s permanent mission at the United Nations in Geneva has said he is leaving his post because of his disagreement with Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. He hopes the Swiss government will help him. “I went to the mi...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for “maximum” sanctions against Russia in a speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. He also urged “all countries” to come forward with offers for reconstruction in Ukraine. In a vi...

Swiss and German ministers have agreed to negotiate a solidarity agreement to help each other with gas supply issues in an emergency. The announcement was made on the side lines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting taking place in Davos. “We ...

Switzerland’s Health Minister Alain Berset has opened the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva with a call for healthcare access to be guaranteed in conflicts, as the war in Ukraine unfolds. The WHA is the top decision-making body of the wor...

The antiviral drug tecovirimat and the latest generation smallpox vaccine – which both help against monkeypox and are authorised in the European Union – are not available in Switzerland, the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper has reported. The news comes ...

A top meteorologist has told the SonntagsZeitung that new summer heat records are “very likely” in Switzerland. This might cost the country hundreds of millions of Swiss francs in productivity in the long-run, the newspapers warns. “The chance...

Switzerland has detected its first case of monkeypox in canton Bern, health officials said on Saturday evening. The case has been confirmed by the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) in a tweet. "Currently, an accumulation of monkeypox infection...

University of Geneva Rector Yves Flückiger has been elected chair of the League of European Research Universities (LERU). The move comes at a time of uncertainty over Switzerland's future in the European research funding programme Horizon Europe. "...

Dolphins are rubbing up against certain types of coral to help alleviate skin conditions, research by a Swiss and German team suggests. The findings, published in the iScience journal this week, have shown that these corals have medicinal properties...

Electricity prices are expected to leap by as much as 20% for many Swiss households and businesses this year, according to a survey of power providers. The ongoing war in Ukraine is expected to heap further pressure on costs, said the Swiss Associat...

Swiss prosecutors have launched a money laundering investigation against a refugee who claims to have made millions from cryptocurrency trading. Dadvan Yousuf, 22, generated media headlines last year with his rags-to-riches story since fleeing to Sw...