Russia has threatened Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung with legal action after it published critical reports and a caricature of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a letter to NZZ editor Eric Gujer published on Saturday on the Russian Embassy...

Talks scheduled in Geneva this month on a new constitution for Syria have been cancelled, UN mediator Geir Pedersen announced on Saturday. He did not give a reason for the cancellation. Russia, which supports the Syrian government, had called in Jun...

This year’s Montreux Jazz Festival, which ends on Saturday, has seen a return to the large crowds of the pre-Covid years, with more than 250,000 people attending. Organisers put this down to the quality of the line-up, a reinvented festival site a...

Around a third fewer Swiss expatriates have cast votes in their homeland since the suspension of an e-voting service. The Organisation for the Swiss Abroad (OSA) complains that the absence of digital voting represents a danger to democracy. A pilot ...

Switzerland’s second largest trade union has sacked its President/CEO and two other senior managers following a long-running dispute between executives and the board of directors. Arno Kerst, who held both the positions of president and CEO, was a...

The Swiss company Barry Callebaut, which supplies chocolate products to global confectioners, has declared a factory in Belgium safe to resume operations after salmonella was detected in a batch of ingredients. The chocolate giant closed down its pr...

Wolves have killed livestock in the south and east of the country in a series of separate attacks prompting calls for their extermination. Wolves have attacked a second cow in the eastern Swiss canton of Graubünden, five days after the previous at...

Plant-based dairy products continue to gain in popularity in Switzerland, with sales of plant-based milk more than doubling since 2017. However, dairy substitutes still occupy a niche in the overall market. Last year dairy substitutes generated sale...

A stronger army, closer ties with defence alliance NATO and a more critical view of neutrality: the war in Ukraine is changing the way the Swiss public thinks about security, according to a government survey. “The war in Ukraine has a more special...

Swiss Attorney General Stefan Blättler has warned Swiss commodity trading firms dealing in grain, coal and other commodities stolen from Ukraine that they could face prosecution. “Commercialising looted raw materials could constitute a war crime,...

Scientists have found the remains of a new marine reptile species that lived in an ocean that covered eastern Switzerland 240 million years ago. Skeletons of the 50 cm-long pachypleurosaurus, which vaguely resemble aquatic lizards, were discovered i...

Trade union groups in Geneva have criticised the American ride-hailing firm Uber of dodging a top Swiss court ruling. The SIT and Unia groups said the Californian multinational hadn’t adapted its labour conditions for drivers, despite a decision b...

The dismantling of one of Switzerland’s oldest nuclear power plants is making good progress, officials said on Wednesday. The operators of the Mühleberg plant, BKW/FMB, said 102 of the 418 nuclear fuel rods had been transported to a temporary sto...

Switzerland is no longer among the top ten most gender-equal countries, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) report. Switzerland this year slipped from tenth to 13th place in the latest edition of WEF’s Global Gender Gap report, which measure...

A financial asset manager from Switzerland and another from Argentina have been charged in an alleged $1.2 billion (CHF1.2 billion) Venezuelan money-laundering scheme. A US court indictment alleges that from 2014 to 2018 the 48-year-old Swiss and 51...

The Swiss interior minister, Alain Berset, on a private flight in neighbouring France has been forced to land by the French air force. A ministry spokesman said Berset misinterpreted information from the French air traffic control tower prompting an...

The BAK Economics market research institute has confirmed its forecast for the Swiss economy this year, but it is more pessimistic about 2023. The Basel-based institute said it expected growth of Switzerland’s gross domestic product of 2.5% in 202...

Swiss arms exports rose more than 40% to CHF 516m ($526 million) in the first half of this year. The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said the increase was mainly due to the sale of air defence systems to Qatar worth nearly CHF 160 mill...

The Swiss armed forces have again rejected requests to house Ukrainian refugees in army accommodation. Buildings, including barracks, could not be put at the disposal of refugees because the army needed them for the troops, an army spokesman said on...

Almost every second flight from Zurich Airport has been delayed since the beginning of June, with travellers facing more delays this summer. Between June 1 and July 10 an average of 46% of aircraft took off from Zurich with a delay of more than 15 m...

A study involving ten European countries, including Switzerland, has been launched to better understand monkeypox. It will follow people affected by the disease, record their symptoms and study their response to treatment. The Geneva University Hosp...

Swiss Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter has backed new measures to tighten security at the borders of Europe’s Schengen zone to prevent criminals exploiting the chaos of the Ukraine war. Keller-Sutter, who also heads Switzerland’s migration o...

South Africa has confirmed a third case of monkeypox, in a 42-year-old male tourist from Switzerland, the health department of the Limpopo province said. The tourist, who is holidaying in South Africa, presented with symptoms including a rash, muscl...

Roger Federer has not appeared in the ATP weekly rankings for the first time since September 1997. The Swiss tennis star has not played for 12 months. On September 22, 1997, a boy from Basel who had just turned 16 featured in the ATP rankings for th...

Numerous mountain huts in the Swiss Alps are threatened with early closure due to a lack of water after little snow and a warm spring, a Sunday newspaper reports. The lack of snow at high altitudes this year has become a cause for concern for the m...

Despite record public donations for Ukraine, four months since the start of the invasion by Russia, Swiss aid agencies have only been able to spend a small amount of the funds on humanitarian work. An investigation by the SonntagsZeitung newspaper p...

A report by the McKinsey consulting firm estimates that the small Alpine country, with its highly globalised economy and powerful financial centre, has an estimated indirect influence on 2-3% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Domestic CO2 em...

Last week’s Ukraine Recovery Conference, hosted by Switzerland in the southern city of Lugano, did not have a negative impact on Swiss-Russian ties, according to the Swiss president. “Our position has been clear since we took up European Union s...

An international research team led by scientists from Zurich believe they have found a new theory behind how the Earth was formed. “The prevailing theory in astrophysics and cosmochemistry is that the Earth formed from chondritic asteroids. These ...

The Swiss authorities have so far frozen CHF6.7 billion ($6.8 billion) of assets belonging to sanctioned Russians. This represents a CHF400 million increase since mid-May. The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the government department ...