Switzerland

Switzerland is in the midst of a strong Covid-19 wave, according to the Federal Office of Public Health.

The wave began in August and intensified at the beginning of November. The latest figures indicate a further increase at a high level.

This means that there are also more Covid-19 infections in Switzerland than flu infections.The health office's survey systems currently measure 45 Covid-19 cases against seven flu infections. The epidemiological threshold for influenza was exceeded at the beginning of November, the health office announced on Monday in response to a request from the Keystone-SDA news agency. ...

Over the next ten years, the Swiss government wants CHF750 million ($852 million) in its pocket to guarantee the storage of vital goods.

On Monday, the Senate unanimously approved a credit request from the Federal Council for this purpose.

In order to counter serious shortages, the goverenment recommends the stockpiling of certain goods in the food, energy and pharmaceutical sectors. These reserves do not belong to the government.They are held and financed by the private sector. ...

The Swiss government could make a decision on the negotiating mandate in the European Union dossier next Friday.

Petros Mavromichalis, the EU ambassador to Switzerland, expressed his optimism in an interview with the newspaper Le Temps on Sunday evening.

"The risks of failure are lower this time", said Mavromichalis in the online edition of the French-speaking Swiss daily. ...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that talks on a peace plan will be held in Switzerland in January 2024 – the day before the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The meeting on 14 January will be attended by the security advisors of several countries, the Swiss foreign ministry told the Keystone-SDA news agency on Monday.

According to Swiss experts speaking on Monday at COP28, the loss of biodiversity is just as serious a problem for nature and humanity as climate change.

Climate protection measures should thus not harm biodiversity, said Dirk Karger from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) at the Dubai climate conference. Climate and biodiversity influence each other reciprocally, he and other experts said.

As an example, they cited “mixed forests”, which reflect more sunlight and heat up less than purely coniferous forests. This is because conifers have to close their stomata earlier in hot weather in order not to lose too much water. Stomata are microscopically small pores in leaves and needles that serve to regulate the exchange of gases between the tree and its environment. ...

Singer Remo Forrer, the Credit Suisse bank, and the AI software ChatGPT shot up the list of most-searched items on Google in Switzerland this year.

Google’s Year in Review, published on Monday, includes nine lists and shows which topics have seen the biggest increase in search queries over the last twelve months.

ChatGPT’s software, Credit Suisse shares and the war in Israel and Gaza dominated the headlines and searches in Switzerland, according to the US firm. ...

Some 27.5% of the 74,425 deaths among the resident population last year were due to cardiovascular issues, while cancer was responsible for 23.1%.

As was already the case before the Covid-19 pandemic, dementia was the third-most common cause at 8.8%, the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) said on Monday. Respiratory diseases (6.1%) and Covid itself (5.5%) were next-most lethal.

Last year, the standardised mortality rate was 504 per 100,000 for men – with an average age at death of 77 – and 352 per 100,000 for women, with an average age of 83.

Cardiovascular diseases accounted for 9,512 deaths (26.1%) among men and 10,951 (28.8%) among women. The standardised rate increased by 0.5% for the former (+398 deaths) and by 1% for the latter (+420 deaths). The average age of men who died from such a disease was 81.4, compared to 87.4 for women. ...

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) will lower interest rates for the first time in September 2024 – one of just two just cuts predicted for next year – according to a Bloomberg survey of economists.

The SNB will hold borrowing costs at 1.75% until that initial quarter-point move, to 1.5%, the December 1-7 poll showed. Two further reductions of 25 basis points are seen in December 2024 and March 2025.

Some economists see the SNB acting sooner. UBS analysts said last week that they expect a move to come as early as June. For BlackRock’s Martin Lueck, March is even a possibility. ...

Swiss Environment Minister Albert Rösti signed emissions reduction agreements with Chile and Tunisia in Dubai on Saturday. The resulting CO2 reductions in the two countries will count as progress towards Switzerland’s climate goals.

Both sides would benefit from the agreements, the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) wrote on Sunday. The emissions saved in Chile and Tunisia as a result of the agreements can be counted towards Switzerland’s reduction in fossil fuel use.

It makes no difference to the climate where CO2 is reduced, Rösti told Swiss public radio and television SRF. Emissions could be reduced more quickly with such projects abroad than with additional difficult and expensive measures in Switzerland. ...

US diplomat Sonata Coulter, who is responsible for relations with Russia and Central Europe, urged Switzerland to step up its efforts to combat illegal financial flows.

"Bern's membership of the G7 task force would be very welcome," she told the Swiss Sunday weekly newspaper NZZ am Sonntag

The aim is to ensure that account holders cannot hide behind shell companies. ...

Hundreds of Swiss churchgoers have left the Catholic Church following revelations of sexual abuse.

The wave of departures is particularly strong in central Switzerland and Basel. In French-speaking Switzerland too, the number of departures has increased since mid-September, but at a lower level.

All the indications are that the "losses" in the Roman Catholic Church, which were already very pronounced in the record years of 2021 and 2022, have continued this year, even though the definitive figures drawn up annually by the Swiss Institute for Pastoral Sociology (SPI) have not yet been published. ...

Environmental activist Nicolas Presti will serve two months in prison from Tuesday. He chose time behind bars over paying a fine.

Nicolas Presti, co-founder of the Renovate Switzerland movement, will become the first environmental activist to serve a custodial sentence in Switzerland for taking part in non-violent civil disobedience, reports Le Matin Dimanche.

He was convicted of property damage after filming two other activists pasting the IPCC report on a government building in Lausanne in 2021. ...

Live betting is taking place at amateur league football matches that can involve players under the age of 18, according to Swiss media reports published on Sunday. This is prohibited in Switzerland.

So-called "scouts" are scouring stadiums to make these bets possible from anywhere in the world, according to Swiss newspapers Le Matin Dimanche and the SonntagsZeitung.

Football circles are concerned about the potential wheeling and dealing that these bets allow.

The Swiss Football Association has called for matches in the 2nd interregional league, the U19 championship and the women's LNB to be monitored. ...

The Swiss Re insurance group has concluded 19 contracts with Brazilian grain companies known for their illegal deforestation.

These contracts were concluded between 2016 and 2022, reports the Swiss German newspaper SonntagsZeitung, based on data gathered by the Report Brazil collective.

The companies concerned are all on the Brazilian government's red list. ...

Switzerland must "close the remaining gaps" in its human rights protection system, say around a hundred NGOs on the occasion of World Human Rights Day. Despite persistent criticism, there has been no improvement to date.

Overall, "there is a lack of coherence and resources for the implementation of human rights by state officials at all levels of the federal system", stresses the Swiss NGO Platform for Human Rights. ...

Canton Neuchâtel's public prosecutor's office has opened a criminal investigation into the "threatening" young man who broke into a primary school in Cortaillod on Friday.

The suspect is a young man of Algerian origin, aged around 25.

The man was known by several different identities and to several police forces in other European countries, mainly for acts of violence, the public prosecutor's office and the cantonal police said on Saturday. ...

With its "One million stars" campaign, NGO Caritas expressed solidarity on Saturday to the more than one million people in Switzerland who do not have enough to live on.

Oceans of light with up to 2,000 candles were lit in around a hundred locations, Keystone-SDA reported.

The events, which were open to all, began at dusk. The action took place in big cities and small towns alike, and also offered a programme for families and for reflection.

Poverty is often invisible, says the NGO, which is why Caritas invited everyone to come along and light their own candle as a sign of support.

According to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), 745,000 people are affected by poverty in Switzerland. Almost as many live on the minimum subsistence level. In total, around 1,240,000 people - one person in seven - do not have enough money to live on. Their income is well below that of the population as a whole. ...

In Switzerland, around one in four apprenticeship contracts is terminated prematurely.

Almost two thirds (62%) of these are terminated in the first year of the apprenticeship. The longer the apprenticeship lasts, the less likely it is that apprentices and master trainers will part ways.

According to the survey, around a quarter of all apprenticeship contracts are terminated in the second year of training. For apprentices who are already in their third or fourth year, the rate drops to 12%, as a survey by the Federal Statistical Office shows. ...

The Swiss Federal Railways timetable comes into force on Sunday. It provides for better connections to popular tourist destinations such as Valais and Graubünden.

According to the Federal Railways, the new timetable is intended to provide additional connections where demand is growing the most. From Sunday, there will be four new direct connections between Geneva and Chur throughout the day at weekends.

An earlier Regionalps connection will be introduced in Valais. Commuters will be able to travel earlier from Brig to Bern and Basel from Tuesday to Sunday. The first train will now depart from Upper Valais at 05.16. At the same time, the last train in the opposite direction in the evening will run one hour later than before. It will now arrive in Brig at 00.41. ...

The Basel Land cantonal police discovered more than 13,000 marijuana plants in two illegal plantations. A 42-year-old Turkish man was arrested.

The two plantations were discovered during a check at the end of November, the Basel Land police said on Friday. The police first found 2,000 plants in Zwingen, canton Basel Land, and then more than 11,000 plants in Breitenbach in canton Solothurn.

Graubünden has halted wolf hunting following an appeal to the Federal Administrative Court, the canton wrote on its website on Friday evening.

The government has not yet received any notification of this decision.

It is not yet clear whether other cantons are also affected. The environment ministry was unable to provide any information on this subject on Friday evening, according to Keystone-SDA news agency. ...

Switzerland must put up a united front with the NATO countries so that Vladimir Putin does not win the war in Ukraine, because a neutral state must rely on a functioning international order, which the Russian president has violated.

This, in a nutshell, is the argument put forward by Rob Bauer, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, the body of the Atlantic alliance that comprises the defence chiefs of the member states and which has Jens Stoltenberg as secretary general.

"It must be made clear that Switzerland plays an important role as a NATO cooperation partner," Bauer says in an interview published today by the Swiss-German newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). 'It has been participating in the Partnership for Peace since 1996, so we have been partners for 27 years. We have just renewed our tailor-made cooperation programme." ...

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) plans to build a teaching and research centre for "responsible" digital transformation in Germany.

A declaration of intent was signed on Friday with the Dieter Schwarz Foundation to establish the teaching and research centre on the campus in Heilbronn. A total of 20 new professorships will be created over the next 30 years with half located in the German campus.

ETHZ plans to open a new teaching and research centre there, its second branch abroad after Singapore.

“This partnership with the Dieter Schwarz Foundation allows ETH Zurich to further develop its research and teaching, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence, to an extent that would not be possible with regular ETH funding and structures,” said ETHZ president Joël Mesot in a press release. ...

n the event of a major earthquake, property owners will have to contribute a small share towards covering the damage.

On Friday, the Federal Council put a joint financing system out to consultation. Even though protection against earthquakes is in principle the responsibility of the cantons, the federal government has the power to legislate at national level and to levy a contribution from property owners. ...