More than 1,000 people have taken to the streets in Switzerland to protest the death of a young woman in Iranian police custody last month. Some 200 people gathered outside the Iranian embassy in Bern calling for the removal of the Islamic governmen...

Swiss food manufacturer Nestlé will cut out palm oil from controversial Indonesian company Astra Agro Lestari (AAL) by the end of this year. Nestlé did not explain in detail the reasons behind its decision, but AAL has been criticised by environme...

Electricity consumption in Switzerland remained at normal levels last month despite a government appeal for households and industry to make savings. On August 31, ministers urged the population to voluntarily reduce consumption ahead of anticipated ...

Outgoing Swiss Finance Minister Ueli Maurer managed to push the boundaries of government collegiality without fully breaching the time-honoured code of conduct, according to the media. After serving 14 years in Switzerland’s executive cabinet, Mau...

Infertility is more likely caused by coronavirus infection than mRNA Covid-19 vaccinations, said the Swiss federal drugs regulator, Swissmedic. Swissmedic compared data with counterparts in 10 other countries, covering a population of 800 million pe...

The Swiss government has condemned Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, saying it is a serious violation of international law. “It violates the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of Ukraine,” said the government in a pres...

The Swiss government on Friday laid out responsibilities in case of a nuclear attack or nuclear disaster linked to the war in Ukraine. While the defence ministry currently considers this unlikely, the government says it is necessary to be prepared a...

The Swiss government plans to temporarily ease water use rules to allow a number of hydropower plants to boost capacity ahead of possible power shortages this winter. A certain number of hydroelectric power plants will benefit from access to increas...

In a final vote on Friday, the Swiss parliament rejected a proposal that would have allowed Switzerland to unilaterally sanction countries and individuals. The House of Representatives rejected it by 118 votes to 70 on the last day of parliament’s...

Several professional football clubs in Switzerland that received extra funds for Covid-related losses during the pandemic must reimburse CHF4 million to the federal authorities. The Federal Office of Sport said this summer that top clubs had receive...

The University of Geneva has decided to remove the name of “Carl Vogt”, a 19th-century naturalist accused of holding racist and sexist views, from a university building. The name will be erased from the university building located on Carl-Vogt b...

Bern Minster, the Swiss capital’s 101-metre high cathedral, will be illuminated again with immediate effect so planes don’t crash into it. This reverses a measure taken last week to save energy. The city of Bern announced the decision on Thursda...

Pilots at Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) have marched through Kloten, home of Zurich Airport, in the fight for a better collective labour agreement. “Quality needs good working conditions,” read one protest sign on Thursday. “Saving on ...

The Swiss are more open than expected to aligning themselves closer with the European Union via measures that go beyond the current bilateral agreements – provided they are accompanied by safeguards, according to a study. Even an updated agreement...

Swiss chocolate maker Lindt & Sprüngli’s foil-wrapped chocolate bunnies deserve protection from copycat products, Switzerland’s highest court has ruled. It ordered German discounter Lidl to stop selling a similar product in Switzerland and to de...

Switzerland’s greenhouse gas footprint decreased by 10% between 2019 and 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Between 2000 and 2019 it fell by only 2%. In 2020, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere totalled 103 million ...

While the number of birds is declining rapidly worldwide, the situation for endangered or threatened species in Switzerland is even more striking, a report finds. Some 1,409 bird species, or 13% of the total around the world, are endangered or threa...

Switzerland is the most innovative country in the world, ahead of the US and Sweden, said the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on Thursday. It’s the 12th year in a row that Switzerland has topped WIPO’s Global Innovation Index, wh...

In April last year 1,000 volunteers across Switzerland buried 2,000 pairs of cotton pants in gardens, meadows, croplands and fields to measure the quality of Swiss soil. The undies have now been dug up and examined. The aim of the “Proof by Underp...

The Council of Europe says the Swiss authorities should adopt, as a priority, cantonal and/or local legislation on the use of French and German in public life in the municipalities where they are non-official minority or majority languages. In a rep...

Switzerland has made up ground internationally in terms of digital competitiveness, climbing one place – to fifth – in the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking. Denmark took the top spot, while the US had to settle for second place for the...

Switzerland’s glaciers are melting like never before, an academic study released on Wednesday shows, with their ice volume declining by 6% in a “disastrous” 2022 amid rising concerns about global warming and a summer heatwave that swept across ...

A survey by the Tamedia media group shows which things Swiss people would be most willing to sacrifice in the case of a serious energy shortage. If reductions in household energy-usage were to be enforced rather than recommended (as they are current...

The Swiss government has approved the 2022 International Coffee and Cocoa Agreements but decided to withdraw from the International Cotton Advisory Committee. It said it is focusing on sectors that are “particularly important” for Switzerland. D...

Not one hacker managed to penetrate the Swiss Post’s e-voting system during a security test, according to Swiss Post. The system withstood 60,000 attacks. Some 3,400 hackers probed the system to find security gaps, Swiss Post said on Wednesday. No...

The governor of the Bank of France, François Villeroy de Galhau, was attacked with a hammer at the end of June in Basel, Swiss media reported on Wednesday. Contacted by the AFP news agency, the Bank of France confirmed an “isolated incident” bu...

The biggest two Swiss Banks have each been fined $200 million (CHF199 million) as part of a large-scale US investigation into the failure to preserve electronic communications. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures T...

Authorities have penned contracts to outsource the storage of certain data to cloud servers managed by Alibaba, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. The deals are worth CHF110 million ($111) and limited to five years, the government wrote on Tuesday....

The cost of compulsory health insurance in Switzerland is to increase by an average of 6.6% in 2023 – the biggest annual rise since 2010. Health authorities said on Tuesday that the “considerable” increase would raise average monthly premiums ...

A popular tourist ski area on a 3,000 metre high Swiss glacier is set to reopen in November following a fire that devastated a mountain top restaurant. On September 19, a fire broke out at the high-altitude Botta restaurant situated above Glacier 30...