Switzerland

The Zurich cantonal police have identified and arrested a person who sent an email threatening to bomb the canton’s highest court on Tuesday.

The man, who is a 44-year-old Swiss national, was arrested on Wednesday morning, according to the cantonal police. In response to a media request, the police said there was no connection with recent incidents or bomb threats in neighboring countries.

It remains unclear why the man sent an email threatening to use an explosive device in the high court building. An investigation has been opened to shed light on the matter. An explosive device was not found during the search of the building on Tuesday afternoon.

Court employees had to leave their workplaces after several media outlets in Zurich received an email, in which the sender threatened that an explosive device would go off in the courthouse in the afternoon. In the subject line he wrote “Allahu Akbar.” The man must now answer to the public prosecutor.

The Swiss government has earmarked a further CHF84 million ($93 million) for 2024 for individual projects by researchers in Switzerland. This is a transitional measure intended to help Switzerland maintain innovative strength as it works through differences with the European Union

Due to Switzerland’s status as a non-associated third country in the European Union’s Horizon research programme, researchers in Switzerland are not eligible for the corresponding European calls for proposals. Therefore, as in previous years, researchers in Switzerland will be offered an adequate national substitute, as the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) announced on Wednesday.

This allows funds that Parliament had allocated at the end of 2020 for Switzerland's participation in the Horizon package to be used to support research in Switzerland. SERI will entrust the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) with the calls for proposals.

The government continues to pursue the goal of Switzerland's association in the Horizon programme “as quickly as possible”. However, the 2024 calls for European grants close as early as October and December 2023, respectively. Therefore, they would not be accessible to researchers in Switzerland even in the event of Switzerland’s inclusion in the Horizon programme in 2024, SERI said ...

The Swiss government has corrected figures on the aggregate strength of political parties from the federal elections held on Sunday. The errors were discovered during quality controls.

The correction has no impact on the distribution of seats and the elected members of the House of Representatives. However, according to the corrected figures, the Radical-Liberals remain the third strongest political force in the country. Their share was corrected downward by 0.13 percentage points to 14.3%.

The strength of the Centre party was overstated by 0.52 percentage points on Sunday, so it therefore falls behind the Radical-Liberals. According to the corrected figures, the Centre comes to a voter share of 14.1%. The Centre, however, still has more seats in the House than the Radical-Liberals.

The difference is greatest for the Swiss People’s Party, which has 27.9% of the vote instead of 28.6% as stated on Sunday. The Social Democratic Party comes to 18.3% - instead of 18.0% as indicated. ...

Switzerland is suspending its financial support for eleven Palestinian and Israeli non-governmental organisations (NGOs). This was announced by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) on Wednesday.

The decision was taken in light of the new situation since the attack by the militant group Hamas on Israel on October 7 and the resumption of hostilities in the Middle East, the FDFA added.

Six Palestinian and five Israeli NGOs were affected. These organisations are mainly active in the field of human rights and are supported within the framework of the Department's cooperation programmes in the Middle East.

The decision makes it possible to conduct an in-depth analysis of the compliance of these organisations' communications with the FDFA's code of conduct and anti-discrimination clause, to which the external partners are subject. ...

The postal service will stop delivering advertising via direct mail in 2024. This puts 3,855 part-time workers on the streets. The move comes because of a decline in advertising and free newspapers, the Post announced on Wednesday.

In total, the reduction includes 422 full-time positions. The 3,855 people who work in the delivery service deliver advertising three to eight hours a week. This corresponds to part-time workloads of 8 to 20 percent. They are employed on an hourly basis. In addition, the positions of 72 people employed full-time or with higher working hours will be eliminated.

According to its information, the postal service is examining “comprehensive cushioning measures” and implementation that is as socially acceptable as possible. The consultation process required by law for mass layoffs began on Wednesday.

The Post subsidiary Direct Mail Company (DMC) has recorded a decline in advertising mail by a third over the past ten years. Such mailings include flyers, brochures, free newspapers and other unaddressed advertising.

The post office attributes half of the decline to the “Stop Advertising” stickers on the mailboxes. Added to this were the loss of several large orders, regional minimum wages and inflation.

Financial analysts are again more pessimistic about the prospects for the Swiss economy. According to your assessment, Swiss economic growth is unlikely to improve in the next six months.

The former CS-CFA indicator, which was published under the UBS banner in September for the first time since the merger of the two big banks, fell to -37.8 in October from -27.6 points. This means that the indicator has remained below zero for the 20th month in a row, according to a statement on Wednesday.

The experts are not only cautious about Swiss economic growth, they also only assess the prospects for the Eurozone and the USA as moderate. The experts surveyed did not significantly correct their inflation expectations after the Swiss National Bank (SNB) surprisingly left its key interest rate unchanged in September of this year. ...

The interest rates for Saron mortgages in Switzerland are no longer always cheaper than those for fixed-rate mortgages. At the same time, the difference in interest rates between short-term and longer-term mortgages has increased again.

According to an analysis published on Wednesday by the online comparison service Moneyland.ch, the interest rate on Saron mortgages was on average 2.61% at the end of October. It is therefore at the same level as comparable six-year fixed-rate mortgages. Fixed-rate mortgages with a term of less than six years are slightly cheaper than Saron mortgages and longer-term mortgages are slightly more expensive.

This means that the interest rates for Saron mortgages have risen by more than 1.5% points within just over a year. In July 2022, before the Swiss National Bank raised the key interest rate back into positive territory, the average interest rate was just under one percent.

According to Moneyland, fixed-rate mortgages with a term of two or five years are currently quoted at 2.57%. For ten-year mortgages, the average interest rate is 2.71%. This means that longer-term mortgages have once again become more expensive than shorter-term mortgages. A month ago they cost almost the same. ...

The Kunstmuseum Basel presents works by Carrie Mae Williams. The African-American photo and installation artist deals with the blind spots of American and European history in a way that is as gripping as it is subtle and humorous.

It is a baroque image of luxurious opulence and symbolism: a table with a heavy, folded tablecloth, covered with floral arrangements, with a jeweled cup, with cheese, bread and fruit; behind it sits a woman in fur, underneath she is wearing a trainer's jacket.

This is already an irritating moment. In addition: the main actress in the scenery, staged in the Dutch Baroque style, is black; she is hip hop icon Marie J. Blige. It is as if one of the representatives of the victims of the exploitative "golden age" had taken on the role of the colonialists of that time.

This large format photograph is by artist Carrie Mae Weems. It is part of the exhibition with the sensible title "The Evidence of Things not Seen".

Weems' works and series of works tell gripping stories, partly supported by texts, about the history of violence against black people, exploitation, slavery and racism. Not far from the baroque scene you can see portraits of black people who had to live in poverty and without any social acceptance.

The photographs are garnished with ironic racist sayings, the reproduction of which is prohibited here. ...

Red crossbills, small colourful birds with a parrot-like appearance, were particularly numerous this year as they passed over the Col de Bretolet in the Swiss Alps. The ringing station there intercepted more than 2,500 of them, a record.

“This number suggests that spring nesting was good this year,” Chloé Pang of the Swiss Ornithological Institute told Keystone-ATS. But it also means that the extreme weather conditions in autumn prevented this nomadic species from remaining in Switzerland, and forced them to migrate.

The movements of this brightly coloured bird, which resembles a mountain parrot, are highly dependent on the availability of food, particularly the fruiting of spruce trees. It feeds on the seeds that its hooked beak is capable of extracting. “The crossbill will not be in danger as long as it can rely on coniferous forests,” Pang said. ...

Sweden and Switzerland are too often confused – at least the tourism organisation Visit Sweden thinks so and is launching an advertising campaign to help clear things up.

Switzerland Tourism is relaxed about the news and says Switzerland is “unmistakable” anyway.

“Welcome to Sweden (not Switzerland)” is the title of the video circulated on social media by Visit Sweden. As the Swedish tourism office announced on Tuesday, both countries are beautiful and have the same initial letters in German and English.

But that’s where the similarities should stop, if the Swedes have their way. Every year, 120,000 people even google the question of whether Sweden and Switzerland are the same. In the US, a study by Visit Sweden found that half of the respondents were not sure if there was a difference.

In the Visit Sweden video, a woman dressed in what appears to be official attire addresses the Swiss directly in front of two Swedish flags. She proposes a treaty whereby each country concentrates on its core competencies.

According to this, the Swiss yodel to their hearts’ content in their mountains, while deep silence reigns in Sweden’s majestic nature. And while time is forgotten in Sweden, Switzerland builds luxury watches. ...

Video of Sweden Toursim: https://piped.video/watch?v=0oNX_BHgi3c

There are no cases of the epizootic haemorrhagic disease (EHD) in Switzerland after all. FIndings in a calf in canton Bern and a cow in canton Jura turned out to be false positives. Precautionary measures against EHD have therefore been lifted.

Switzerland is once again considered EHD-free, the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO) wrote on Tuesday. Blood samples from the two sick animals found in October were examined by the reference laboratory of the World Organisation for Animal Health and found to be negative.

The ordinance issued last week imposing restrictions on international trade in animals, semen, ova and embryos to prevent the spread of the disease is no longer in force. However, the FSVO advised people to remain vigilant. ...

Swiss retailer Migros has excluded Turkish pianist Fazil Say from a series of concerts after he tweeted about the conflict in the Middle East. The musician shared on the X network (formerly Twitter) a statement by Turkish President Erdogan attributing the strike on the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza to Israel.

At issue are “Fazil Say's public statements following the terrorist attack on Israel, which are not defensible for Migros,” a spokeswoman for the Federation of Migros Cooperatives told Keystone-ATS over the weekend, confirming a report in the Swiss daily Blick.

In his message published on X, Fazil Say shared a post by Erdogan in which he attributed the fatal rocket strike on the Al Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip to Israel. Say thanked Erdogen for his sensible explanation and called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be brought to justice. He also said that all people must do something to stop this war.

Instead of Fazil Say, Swiss pianist Louis Schwizgebel will perform with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The concerts are scheduled for October 23-26 in Zurich, Bern, Geneva and Lucerne. ...

Fewer people received social assistance in Swiss cities in 2022 than in the previous year. In ten of the 14 cities surveyed, the social assistance rate declined. The number of people receiving assistance fell by an average of 2.4%

Among other things, the favorable labour market situation contributed to the development, the Swiss Association of Cities announced on Tuesday. The number of new welfare cases also declined.

More refugees on welfare are in employment than the rest of the population. Some 36% of adult refugees on social assistance are working, compared with 23% of all recipients.

Access to training and diploma recognition are among the key measures to combat the phenomenon of the “working poor” among refugees, according to the report. Some 60% of refugees on social assistance have no recognised vocational training.

At 9.9%, the social assistance rate was highest in Biel. Lausanne followed in second place with a social assistance rate of 6.8%. Zug had the lowest social assistance rate at 1.5%. In Basel, the rate was 5.3%, in Bern 4.9%and in Zurich 4.1%.

In September, 3,966 asylum applications were submitted in Switzerland, up 32.2% on the previous month. The increase was mainly due to a change in procedure allowing Afghan women to apply for asylum. Many of those who did already live in Switzerland.

September's asylum statistics were marked by the new practice, in place since July 2023, of processing asylum applications from women and girls from Afghanistan, the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) said in a press release issued on Tuesday.

This is in light of the deteriorating situation of women and girls in many areas of life in Afghanistan since the Taliban came to power, indicated the migration office.

The country most represented among asylum seekers last month was Afghanistan (1,486 applications, 749 more than in August). Next came Turkey (846 applications, +69), Algeria (179 applications, +27), Eritrea (170 applications, -63) and Morocco (157 applications, +44). ...

Swiss supermarket Coop is getting back into banking with the launch of bank account and pension services. These will be accessible via an app and will make it possible to withdraw cash from the retail giant’s tills.

The Coop Finance service has been developed in cooperation with Aargau-based bank Hypothekarbank Lenzburg and offers savings and current accounts, as well as a debit card that can be used to withdraw cash from Coop’s 1,000 supermarkets, the bank said in a statement on Tuesday.

The app also provides access to third-pillar pension products, in collaboration with the Liberty 3a pension foundation, Glarus Kantonalbank as custodian bank and asset manager, and Vanguard and OLZ as fund partners. ...

In the event of a proven hereditary predisposition, women suffering from breast or ovarian cancer should be entitled to reimbursement of the costs of preventive operations, says the Swiss Cancer League.

It recently submitted a request to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) for the law to be revised accordingly.

At present, basic insurance covers the costs of surgical removal of the breast or ovary only in cases of BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations, the Swiss Cancer League said in a press release on Tuesday. However, reimbursement is not provided for other mutations that entail a comparable risk.

Breast cancer is due to a genetic predisposition in 5-10% of cases. The rate rises to 10-20% for ovarian cancer. By surgically removing the affected organ, the risk of cancer is almost completely eliminated, the umbrella organisation said. ...

Unia is concerned about human trafficking in Switzerland and has published a list of best practices to prevent the exploitation of workers.

The union believes that concrete measures are needed to raise awareness and combat this scourge.

Experts, trade union representatives, authorities and employers met in Bern on Monday at the invitation of Unia for a symposium on "Human trafficking for the purpose of labour exploitation".

As part of the national action plan against this phenomenon, Unia is calling on employers to take responsibility. In Switzerland, networks of human traffickers exert physical and psychological pressure on a workforce that can be exploited at will. These intimidations are compounded by swindling, deception, isolation, inadequate wages and exploitation of a situation of distress, says Unia in a press release. ...

Around 911,000 occupational and leisure accidents and work-related illnesses were reported to the Swiss Accident Insurance Fund (Suva) last year. This is an increase of 9.5% compared to the previous year.

There was a particularly sharp increase in leisure accidents. They rose by 12% to around 601,000, mainly due to the end of Covid-19 measures and the sunny and dry weather, Suva and the Swiss Insurance Association (SIA) announced on Tuesday.

However, occupational accidents and illnesses also reached an all-time high of around 293,000. The amounted to a 5.9% increase over the last year. The main reason cited for this is the higher number of employees.

In contrast to leisure accidents, the weather had less of an effect on the number of occupational accidents. However, on hot days with temperatures over 30 degrees, there are 7% more accidents than usual in the construction and transportation industries, the statement said. ...

After a steady increase since 1971, the proportion of women elected to the House of Representatives fell in Sunday’s Swiss federal elections. Of the 200 new parliamentarians elected, 38.5% are women, down from 42% in 2019.

The Federal Statistical Office said 77 women were elected to the House of Representatives, compared to 84 in 2019.

This year’s decline follows a steady upward trend over the past 52 years. In 1971, the share of female parliamentarians did not surpass 5%. This figure gradually increased, rising to 17.5% in 1991, 26% in 2003 until the recent peak in 2019.

The new parliament is also younger than the previous one: the average age is 49.5 years, compared to 51.7 in 2019. The youngest new parliamentarian is 26-year-old Katja Riem of the right-wing People’s Party.

The oldest is 76-year-old Charles Poncet, a Geneva lawyer, who is returning to Bern as a People’s Party parliamentarian 30 years after he last worked there. ...

Nearly 70 fake bomb alerts have targeted French airports since October 18. The vast majority of the hoaxes have originated from the same email address located in Switzerland, French Transport Minister Clément Beaune said on Sunday.

"There have unfortunately been nearly 70 alerts of this type that have affected our airports since Wednesday, fortunately much fewer than yesterday [October 21], the first day of departure on vacation for many French people,” Clément Beaune told French media on Sunday.

They are not the work of "little jokers", but of "big idiots or even big delinquents", said the minister.

“They are a mixture of people who make bad jokes, who want to scare for real and sometimes also a kind of competition in stupidity between hackers,” he said.

“Since Wednesday, it is almost always the same email address that is used, located outside the European Union, in Switzerland,” he added.

Zurich students set off on the World Solar Challenge in Darwin, northern Australia, on Sunday. Driving a solar car they built themselves, they are taking part in a 3,000-kilometer race across the Australian outback.

“It's a huge distance and you have to cover it in extreme conditions,” team member Suno Diekmann told Keystone-ATS news agency ahead of the race. It's extremely hot, with temperatures reaching 50 degrees in the driver's seat. The roads are very rough and the strong crosswinds can be dangerous, adds the student.

The Swiss team, called alpha-Centauri, consists of 40 students from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich, most of them aged between 21 and 23. A total of 25 of them are in Australia to take part in the race.

The Zurich students plan to complete the race, from Darwin to Adelaide, in five days. To withstand the extreme conditions, they change drivers every three hours during the race. ...

Roche Holding AG’s lung cancer drug scored a big win against a standard therapy in a study this week. Now, the Swiss drugmaker is turning to artificial intelligence to find patients who can benefit.

When given after surgery to remove lung tumours, Roche’s Alecensa cut the risk of either cancer recurrence or death by 76% compared with standard chemotherapy, according to results from a primary analysis of the trial released Wednesday. The drug could “potentially alter the course of this disease,” Roche Chief Medical Officer Levi Garraway said in a statement.

But finding patients to treat may be difficult: the study examined the effects on people with an error in a gene called ALK that’s found in only about 4% to 5% of lung cancer patients. Most of them are younger and less likely to have smoked than typical lung tumour patients, and often go undiagnosed early on. ...

The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has opened an investigation into suspected Swiss financing of Palestinian militant group Hamas.

“The criminal investigation was opened a few weeks ago, shortly before the Hamas attack in Israel,” Attorney General Stefan Blättler told SRF public radio on Saturday.

The investigation is being conducted with the Federal Office of Police (Fedpol) and is based on suspicions of financing a terrorist organisation. Blättler said he could not give more details about the case in order not to jeopardise it.

In the case of the Swiss-Israeli dual citizen killed in the October 7 Hamas attack, as well as in the case of the Swede recently killed in Belgium and who resided in Switzerland, the OAG is also examining whether to open proceedings. ...

The bodies were discovered on Friday under a tree in the west of the island, which is currently experiencing thunderstorms and heavy rain.

According to initial investigations, the cause of death was “electrocution”, Ajaccio public prosecutor Nicolas Septe told the AFP news agency.

An enquiry has been opened to clarify what happened. On Saturday, the remains of the victims – found by coastguards in Vico, some twenty kilometres north of Corsican capital Ajaccio – will be examined to confirm this hypothesis and the exact date of death; the public prosecutor estimated it was about 24 hours before the bodies were recovered. ...

Around 500 people gathered for the event on Friday evening. Police said they questioned some 25 demonstrators, but that the event went off peacefully.

The crowd marched through Zurich’s central District 4, chanting “Free Palestine”, accompanied by a large contingent of police.

The event was called by the “Palestine Committee Zurich”. Authorities initially asked the 500 participants to disperse, before eventually allowing them to march, a decision based on considerations of “proportionality”, the Keystone-SDA news agency reported on Saturday.

The unauthorised procession, which lasted about an hour, remained peaceful according to initial reports, without damage to property or altercations. ...