Swiss industrial firm Oerlikon has announced that it will hand over ownership of its business in Russia to local management. In a brief statement released on Thursday, the Oerlikon Group said it had entered into an agreement with the local managemen...

Switzerland’s secret service is facing renewed criticism due to its data collection practices concerning political parties and civil organisations. The Green Party and the non-governmental Public Eye organisation said the Federal Intelligence Serv...

Swiss authorities say they have registered at least 54,000 refugees from Ukraine, but only about 1,000 of them have received a work permit. The State Secretariat for Migration said more than 51,000 of the refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine have bee...

The Swiss authorities have vetoed Denmark's request to send Swiss-made armoured personnel carriers to Ukraine. The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) recently rejected Denmark's bid to provide about 20 Piranha III infantry fighting vehic...

China's commerce ministry has denied talks with Switzerland to update a free trade agreement between both countries are "frozen". China's human rights record, in particular the way it treats the mostly Muslim Uyghur minority in its northwest region ...

Parliament has decided to drop minimum prison sentences for excessive speeding on Swiss roads. Under current regulations in force since 2013, convicted offenders have faced at least a 12-month sentence. The Senate on Tuesday followed the House o...

Swiss flavour maker Firmenich and Dutch company Royal DSM have agreed a deal to form a new fragrance giant. The new company is expected to be a leader in nutrition, beauty and wellness products, according to a joint statement published on Tuesday. ...

Compared with nine other European countries, Switzerland remains a high-price island for medicines, according to an annual survey by health insurer body santésuisse and pharma research group Interpharma. The price difference was again most marked f...

Graduates from Switzerland’s two federal institutes of technology are among those from 50 global universities being offered fast-track work visas in Britain. The British government has opened up a “high potential individual” route for the “b...

Swiss police continue their search for the son of an Indonesian island governor, who went missing last week while swimming in the River Aare, near to Bern. Emmeril Mumtadz, 23, was reported missing to canton Bern police on Thursday morning. He is th...

Around 200 Hells Angels and Bandidos motorbike gang members faced off outside a court in the Swiss capital, Bern, on Monday ahead of the start of a month-long trial into a violent clash between the two gangs in 2019. In total, 22 rival gang members ...

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...

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...