The month just ending was the warmest ever October in Switzerland, weather forecasters said on Friday. The feeling of an Indian summer was confirmed by the weather watchers from MeteoSwiss, who said the month had surpassed everything recorded since ...

Over 34,000 people left the Catholic Church in Switzerland last year, the highest ever annual figure. Protestants also dwindled. Across the country, the proportion of members who left the Catholic Church in 2021 was 1.1%, the Swiss Institute for Pas...

A study has estimated the extent to which new solar infrastructure, combined with existing Alpine dams, can help Switzerland avoid a winter energy shortage. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) reported on Friday on a quantitative model by two energy exp...

Giuliano da Empoli has won the French Academy’s prestigious Grand Prix du Roman for “Le Mage du Kremlin” (“The Wizard of the Kremlin”), a novel about the inner workings of Vladimir Putin’s regime. The novel, published in April this year,...

A Munich court has banned a confectionary maker from producing a range of chocolate bunnies that infringe on the patent rights of Swiss company Lindt & Sprüngli. Germany’s Allgäuer Confiserie Heilemann drew protests from Lindt with its chocolate...

Mars is not the geologically dead planet that has been previously assumed, according to studies of seismic activity on the Red Planet. Researchers at Switzerland’s federal technology institute ETH Zurich have found evidence that vulcanism still pl...

British American Tobacco (BAT) says it will shut down a factory in Switzerland and move production to other sites in Europe. The factory in Boncourt, canton Jura in northwestern Switzerland, employs more than 200 people, around half of them cross bo...

An anti-torture commission has criticised the fact that most “indefinitely incarcerated” people in Switzerland – i.e. those who have served their prison sentence but are not yet fit for full release – continue to be held in jail rather than i...

The head of Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) says federal asylum centres around the country are full and that that the current refugee situation is unprecedented since World War II. Christine Schraner Burgener was reacting on Th...

Eight European countries have met in Switzerland to forge a plan of action towards net-zero emissions in passenger and freight transport in the Alps. Meeting in Brig, canton Valais as the “Simplon Alliance” (in reference to an Alpine pass linkin...

Some 40 Afghan writers and their family members have managed to flee to Switzerland since the Taliban takeover, helped by a campaign by Swiss authors. The campaign to help the intellectuals escape was driven by literature professor Sabine Haupt and ...

Switzerland is facing pressure from Germany to review its veto over the re-export of Swiss-made tank ammunition that Berlin wants to send to Ukraine to help protect grain exports, it has been reported. Germany’s defence minister, Christine Lambrec...

Switzerland will not change its policy of political neutrality despite Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the government has confirmed. The seven-member Federal Council agreed that Switzerland’s current approach as defined in 1993 remains valid and sho...

Swiss bank Credit Suisse is shedding thousands of jobs, selling off parts of its business and raising billions in extra capital in a bid to reverse a downward spiral in fortunes. The bank announced on Thursday that it will slim down from a current h...

A theatre in the Swiss capital, Bern, has been forced to apologise for failing to protect members of its ballet group from sexual harassment. The Bern Theatre, which receives millions in public funding, sacked its ballet rehearsals director after tw...

One year to go before federal elections, the Swiss political landscape appears to have changed very little despite upheavals like the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a poll showing voter support for the main ...

The Swiss government has proposed amending the Tobacco Act to introduce a new tax for electronic cigarettes. Parliament has been asked to back the proposal, which is forecast to bring in around CHF13.8 million ($13.8 million) in extra tax revenues p...

The Swiss government has pledged to install solar panels on as many federal buildings as possible to help boost the production of energy from renewable sources. On Wednesday, the government said it wants solar energy generation to rise from 13 gigaw...

The coronavirus pandemic will have a lighter impact on Swiss state finances than previously feared but will still put the country’s budget in the red, the finance ministry forecasts. Measures to support companies and workers during the pandemic we...

Swiss Formula One team Sauber Motorsport has agreed a new partnership with German car manufacturer Audi to ensure it will continue racing from 2026. Sauber is Switzerland’s sole F1 brand and has been racing since 1993. It has formed partnerships w...

The conclusions of European Union countries regarding Switzerland, normally published every two years, have fallen off the radar in 2022 – reflecting the stasis in Bern-Brussels relations. At a meeting of a working group of EU states this week, co...

Rudolf Hauri, president of the cantonal doctor’s association, has said that while the current autumn wave may not yet have peaked, he is not expecting the same problems as in the past years. In an interview published by Swiss newspaper Blick on We...

Three out of five serious accidents last year occurred on two wheels. Accidents involving young people on motorbikes and e-bikes have increased in particular, according to the Swiss Council for Accident Prevention (BFU). Since last year 16- and 17-y...

The large influx of refugees has filled accommodation centres to bursting point, obliging the Swiss authorities to distribute a greater number of asylum seekers to cantons to house. Switzerland expects to see 22,000 asylum applications by the end of...

Online speech and face recognition digital systems should be better regulated to protect consumers, a Swiss technology think tank has recommended. Virtual assistants that react to voice commands, such as Alexa, can bring both benefits and hidden dan...

Switzerland will begin its two-year term at the United Nations Security Council table on January 1 sitting between Russia and the United Arab Emirates. According to a plan unveiled on Monday evening by a website specialising in Security Council proc...

The global community should formulate concrete steps to help Ukraine recover from its invasion by Russia, said Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis. Cassis, who holds the rotating Swiss presidency this year, advocates action similar to the US Marsh...

One year after the Women’s Session 2021, an alliance of women’s organisations has drawn a positive assessment of the exercise: half of the 23 petitions submitted on that occasion have been processed or are well on the way to being processed. In ...

Two projects in the running for a future national exhibition, Nexpo and X27, have signed a declaration of cooperation, they announced on Tuesday. This opens the door to a joint bid. For the seventh national exhibition in Swiss history, “the spirit...

The Federal Audit Office has reviewed what the financial aid during the Covid pandemic has brought to the Swiss industry. It is satisfied with how the money was spent. Self-employed people received more than CHF2.5 billion ($2.5 billion) from the au...