Nine climate activists were handed fines ranging from CHF1,200 to CHF1,800 ($1,260-$1,900) for blocking access to Credit Suisse bank during a protest. Switzerland has seen a string of court cases relating to similar climate demonstrations, with vari...

Car hailing firm Uber will stump up CHF35 million ($37 million) in backdated social security and driver compensation payments to get back its license to operate in Geneva. The legal settlement follows a court decision earlier this year that the comp...

An influential parliamentary committee had decided against Switzerland adopting more sanctions against Iran on human rights grounds. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate voted against a motion for Switzerland to follow European Union measures...

The number of illegal immigrants who have been picked up by police in Switzerland quadrupled in October compared to the same month last year. The Federal Customs and Border Security service said 7,891 people had been found living in Switzerland with...

A large-scale project to build a second road tunnel through the Gotthard mountain has run into problems due to the presence of underground military bunkers, Swiss media has reported. The Tages-Anzeiger wrote on Friday that at least one military bunk...

An arrangement between the central banks of Switzerland and Ukraine to allow refugees to exchange their hryvnia currency into francs has been discontinued. The facility was set up in June after arriving refugees found that Swiss banks were unwilling...

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a decree confirming his country’s selection of Iryna Venediktova as the new ambassador to Switzerland. A document on the president’s website, reported by the Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform...

A Ukrainian cybercriminal who US authorities have been chasing for a decade has been arrested in Switzerland. Vyacheslav Penchukov was arrested in October while he was visiting his wife near Lake Geneva, the Krebs on Security website first reported ...

The St Gallen Cultural Foundation has awarded a special prize to Milo Rau, the Swiss theatre director, writer and filmmaker, for his lifetime’s work. On Thursday, he received the “Great Culture Prize”, which is awarded every three years by the...

Switzerland and the United Kingdom have signed a deal on the mutual recognition of conformity assessments. It means that for certain business sectors, product testing by a British conformity body is no longer required for exports from Switzerland to ...

The virus has been detected in a grey heron and a peacock in canton Zurich, Swiss authorities say. The infected birds were located at Seuzach in canton Zurich. These are the first cases in Switzerland this winter, the authorities said on Thursday i...

The average price of a holiday home in the Swiss and French Alps rose by almost 6% over the past year as hybrid working and a desire to be closer to nature boosted demand, a ski property index reveals. Anyone who bought a chalet in the Swiss or Fren...

As the Friday deadline for the COP27 climate summit in Egypt looms, many contentious issues reportedly remain unresolved. Switzerland’s environment minister says there is still time to take effective climate measures. “It is a very difficult cli...

The pharma firm has decided to give the disputed doses to Switzerland for free, following a spat with regulators about pricing. The nasal spray, used to vaccinate children and youths against flu, was the source of tensions between British-Swedish As...

While a preoccupation with climate change remains, young people in Switzerland are becoming less keen to place their hopes in big street protests, a survey has found. Data from the gfs.bern research institute published on Wednesday show that in 2022...

The government has approved funding of CHF2.59 billion ($2.74 billion) for a large-scale clearing of an old ammunition depot in the Bernese Alps. The money for the clean-up operation will now head to parliament to be debated by the two chambers, the...

According to Switzerland’s highest court, Pierre Maudet acted improperly in accepting an all-expenses-paid trip to Abu Dhabi during his time as cantonal minister in Geneva. It’s the overturning of an overturning: after Maudet was found guilty by...

In case of a shortage, households and businesses which heat with piped gas would be asked to lower temperatures to 20°C, the government has said. The contingency scenario agreed by ministers is a slightly modified version of a four-stage plan annou...

The government has decided to curtail numbers arriving from the Balkan state by invoking a ‘safeguard clause’ for 2023. The decision comes less than a year after Croatians were granted unrestricted access to the Swiss labour market for the first...

A lack of transparency around the pricing of many top-selling Swiss drugs is also a problem, said an umbrella group of health insurers on Wednesday. The Curafutura association said that around a fifth of all medicine costs – some CHF8 million ($8....

The world’s largest goods inspection and testing group SGS will shed 1,500 jobs worldwide in a cost saving drive. The Geneva-based company said on Wednesday that inflation and the Ukraine war are having a negative effect on its business. “The c...

A Swiss mosque, housed in a religious centre that receives state grants, has been accused of playing a role in forcing women into marriages against their will. Swiss public broadcaster SRF uncovered evidence of forced marriages at a mosque in the Ho...

Swiss President Ignazio Cassis says he is “concerned” by the latest Russian bombardment of Ukraine and news that a missile exploded in Poland, killing two people. Russia extended its barrage against towns and energy facilities in Ukraine on Mond...

Two film festivals in Zurich are shining the spotlight on women’s documentary filmmaking and Arab culture: the Women in Film Festival and the Arab Film Festival Zurich. The third edition of the Women in Film Festival (WIFF), which runs from Novemb...

Both Roche and Novartis have slipped in a ranking of the top 20 pharma companies’ efforts to expand access to medicines in poor countries. Novartis dropped from second place (2020 result) to fourth in the 2022 Access to Medicine Index published on...

Some 25,000 Swiss have called on the government to impose sanctions against the Iranian government. The organisation Free Iran Switzerland submitted two petitions to the federal chancellery in Bern on Tuesday as a sign of solidarity with the Iranian ...

Some 1,700 people die each year in a fall in Switzerland and over 15,000 are seriously injured – more than in road traffic and sports combined. This is the result of the first safety barometer on home and leisure accidents, published on Tuesday by...

Greenpeace is once again calling on the big corporations to get rid of plastic. The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo and Nestlé have been the biggest plastic polluters in the world for five years in a row, it said. As in previous years Swiss food multina...

The Council of Europe has expressed concern that Switzerland’s legal system does not adequately protect women from violence and rape. The Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO...

Interior Minister Alain Berset and the Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, have signed a bilateral agreement on the international transfer of cultural property. The agreement is intended to preserve both countries' cultural he...