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Swiss Info

Wed, 2 Nov 2022 08:46:00 GMT
Health insurers suspect widespread Covid test fraud
Swiss healthcare insurers estimate that some CHF20 million ($20.02 million) could have been gleaned to date by scams involving fake bills for Covid tests. Swiss public television RTS reported Wednesday on numerous cases of people who noticed that th...

Wed, 2 Nov 2022 07:55:00 GMT
Qatar Investment Authority plans to raise Credit Suisse stake
Deal will see up to a quarter of the Swiss bank being owned by Middle Eastern investors The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) plans to increase its stake in Credit Suisse by investing in a share sale alongside the Saudi National Bank (SNB), according...

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 15:46:00 GMT
Growing number of Swiss go vegetarian, poll finds
Five per cent of the Swiss population aged 14 and over don't eat meat and the trend is continuing, a new survey shows. The latest figures about people living vegetarian or vegan show an increase of 14% over the previous year and for the fifth time i...

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 14:26:00 GMT
Swiss adopts latest EU drone sanctions over Ukraine war
Switzerland says it has adopted the new European Union sanctions against an Iranian firm and three top army members for supporting the Russian war against Ukraine. The measures, against the company Shahed Aviation Industries and three senior milita...

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 13:31:00 GMT
Construction workers stage regional protest over working conditions
Several hundred construction workers have staged a protest in the Swiss city of Basel to call for improvements to their working conditions. The crowd gathered before lunchtime near the city's main railway station on Tuesday, accusing the master buil...

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 11:17:00 GMT
All quiet (nearly) during Halloween night in Swiss cities
Halloween night was generally quiet in Switzerland. However, there was some minor damage to property in various places, according to a survey of police operations centres. Police in Switzerland's largest city, Zurich, had more to do on Halloween nig...

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 10:44:00 GMT
Swiss firms divided about cyber risks for 2023
Just over half of Swiss firms told a survey that they plan to boost their cyber security budgets for 2023, in the expectation that more attacks are heading their way. The 51% of Swiss firms which expect a rise in ransomware and other attacks next ye...

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 10:39:00 GMT
Swiss companies cut production on high energy prices
One in ten companies in Switzerland have scaled back output because of high electricity prices before possible winter energy shortages. Industrial producers are more worried about a deficit of electricity than natural gas, a survey published Tuesday...

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 10:12:00 GMT
Finance minister to represent Swiss government at football World Cup
Finance Minister Ueli Maurer will travel to Qatar at the end of November to watch the World Cup football match between Brazil and Switzerland. Maurer is also planning to hold talks with his Qatari counterpart, Ali bin Ahmed Al Kuwari, during his vis...

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 08:27:00 GMT
Swiss minister defends approach towards transiting migrants
Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter has rejected suggestions that Swiss authorities are simply “waving migrants through” on the asylum route. On Sunday, the deputy leader of Germany’s CDU/CSU parliamentary group told the NZZ am Sonntag paper ...

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 07:47:00 GMT
Lula election ‘victory for Brazilian rainforest and indigenous people’
Swiss politicians and NGOs have been reacting to the presidential election victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil. Switzerland’s foreign minister and current president, Ignazio Cassis, congratulated Lula in a written letter, the foreign m...

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 16:42:00 GMT
New Swiss passport enters into active service
The latest version of the distinctive red Swiss passport has been released, featuring a new page for visas dedicated to Swiss citizens who live abroad. The extra page for the so-called ‘fifth Switzerland’ on the biometric passport comes in addit...

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 15:59:00 GMT
Swiss urged to build on gender discrimination progress
The United Nations has set Switzerland the challenge of implementing 70 measures to combat gender discrimination, including a new definition of sexual consent relating to rape. The UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination again...

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 14:36:00 GMT
Ethics body unimpressed by crop genome editing claims
Switzerland should devote more energies to reducing the carbon footprint of agriculture than genome editing science, said an influential political ethics body. The Federal Ethics Commission for Non-Human Biotechnology said techniques like CRISPR-Cas...

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 12:33:00 GMT
Geothermal tests postponed by red tape delays
Tests to determine the viability of geothermal energy projects in Switzerland have been hit by delays in getting the necessary planning permits. A large-scale operation in cantons Bern and Jura in northwest Switzerland was supposed to have taken pla...

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 10:48:20 GMT
Switzerland has plastic problem, say most Swiss
Three-quarters of Swiss believe their country has a plastic problem, with a quarter seeing the problem as “massive”. They are particularly concerned about plastic pollution in the oceans and on beaches. This is the result of a survey published ...

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 08:26:47 GMT
Latest summer day recorded since measurements began
The mercury hit 25.4°C in Chur, in eastern Switzerland, on Sunday – the latest day ever recorded in the country with a summer temperature of more than 25°C. The MeteoNews weather service said this was due to warm air brought to the Alpine region...

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 07:41:20 GMT
SNB reports CHF142 billion nine-month loss
The Swiss National Bank (SNB) has reported a loss of CHF142.4 billion ($142.6 billion) for the first nine months of 2022 as turmoil in global currency markets took a toll on the value of its foreign-exchange portfolio. The central bank’s foreign-c...

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 14:21:00 GMT
The energy crisis is about to make your Swiss ski holiday more expensive
Swiss hotels and holiday apartments are raising their prices by around 5% this winter, largely due to higher energy prices. Ski passes are also likely to go up by a similar amount, a newspaper reports. According to a survey by the Hotelleriesuisse a...

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 13:28:00 GMT
Switzerland criticised for ‘waving through’ migrants
German authorities have criticised Switzerland for allowing migrants to transit to neighbouring countries instead of sending them back as demanded by European accords. Every week, about a thousand migrants reach Switzerland’s eastern border at Buc...

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 10:54:00 GMT
Moscow protests to Bern over vandalised church in Geneva
Russia’s embassy in Switzerland has officially protested to the Swiss foreign ministry over the vandalism of a Russian Orthodox church in Geneva last week. “In the early hours of October 28, 2022, unidentified offenders committed an act of vanda...

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 10:51:00 GMT
Credit Suisse to cut 540 jobs in Switzerland by 2023
The embattled Swiss bank Credit Suisse plans to shed 540 jobs in Switzerland by the end of the year, Chief Executive Officer Ulrich Körner told the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper. In the interview he gave more details on last week’s restructuring announ...

Sat, 29 Oct 2022 15:00:00 GMT
Swiss claim record for the world's longest passenger train
Switzerland’s largest private railway operator has set a new world record for the longest passenger train on a spectacular narrow gauge track through the Swiss Alps. The Rhaetian Railway train – comprising 100 carriages for a total length of 1,9...

Sat, 29 Oct 2022 14:24:00 GMT
Report: Switzerland should get through winter without power restrictions
While Switzerland still faces an acute energy crunch, it should be able to get through winter with enough power, a new study reportedly shows. The Schweiz am Wochenende newspaper reported on Saturday that a study by the Federal Office of Energy, the...

Sat, 29 Oct 2022 10:09:00 GMT
Report: German politicians criticise Switzerland over Ukraine ammo veto
Politicians in Germany have warned of consequences if the Swiss government does not allow the re-export of Swiss-made tank ammunition that Berlin wants to send to Ukraine, it has been reported. “It is completely incomprehensible that Switzerland i...

Sat, 29 Oct 2022 09:27:00 GMT
Switzerland records rise in drownings in 2022
Sixty people have drowned in Switzerland’s lakes and rivers so far this year, surpassing the annual average of 46. Between January and September 15, 60 people died in fatal water accidents, the Swiss Lifesaving Society (SSS) said on October 28. Th...

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 17:07:00 GMT
Meteorologists flag warmest October in Swiss history
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 ...

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 13:59:00 GMT
Swiss Catholics dwindled by record amount in 2021
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...

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 13:27:00 GMT
Report: solar power can reduce Swiss reliance on hydro
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...

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 09:51:00 GMT
Swiss-Italian author wins top French literary prize
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,...



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