Switzerland

Defence Minister Viola Amherd slipped while hiking last week and broke a bone in her elbow, her department said on Tuesday.

While Amherd can continue working, doctor’s orders are to rest until August 10, the Defence Ministry said.

This means the minister will be able to celebrate Swiss National Day on August 1 in Lucerne as planned, but will not travel to Seoul soon after.

Amherd was hiking in the southern canton of Valais – her home region – last Wednesday when she slipped on loose stones and fell, fracturing the radial head in her elbow.

The radial head is located at the upper end of the radius, one of the two bones of the forearm.

The discovery marks the first time that the pest has been found north of the Alps.

The beetles were found a few days ago in the municipality of Kloten, the site of Zurich airport, local authorities said on Tuesday.

Eradication measures have already been taken, but experts say it’s a race against time to prevent the beetle spreading through northern Switzerland and into neighbouring countries.

Private gardens in Kloten are also affected: a ban on watering lawns and green spaces is to last until the end of September. This is to prevent female beetles from laying their eggs in wet soil.

An international gathering of Citroën 2CV cars has begun in the village of Courroux in western Switzerland. Organisers expect up to 6,000 of the iconic vehicles to arrive over the next six days.

The World Meeting of 2CV Friends is the biggest event ever organised in canton Jura, the canton’s tourism director Guillaume Lachat said on Tuesday.

An area of some 53 hectares – the equivalent of around 75 football pitches – has been made available for the cult cars and their fans.

The Keystone-SDA news agency reported that long queues had already formed at the event campsite on Tuesday morning. Some 2CVs travelled from Australia or the French Antilles island of Martinique, the agency said.

Swiss private bank Julius Bär will end all business with clients based in Russia, it told them in a letter seen by Reuters on Tuesday.

The bank will cease business with clients domiciled in Russia by no later than December 31, the letter said, while wealth management activities such as mandates managing clients’ investments, credit agreements and credit card contracts, would be terminated by the end of September.

Julius Bär declined to comment.

The move comes as Swiss banks, hubs for offshore wealth, have entered the crosshairs of authorities, who have been using sanctions, asset freezes and criminal probes to pressure Russia’s wealthy elite and reduce support for President Vladimir Putin.

Police in Switzerland do not have the unconditional right to confiscate and destroy cannabis quantities less than 10 grams, the country’s Federal Court has ruled.

The possession of such small quantities of weed, if for personal use rather than re-sale, is already not treated as a criminal offense in Switzerland.

However, on Monday the highest court in Switzerland clarified that such mini-amounts are also not liable for seizure – that is, if there is no proof of any crime having taken place, and if the user is not nabbed while actually consuming the drug.

Homosexual men in Switzerland will be treated on par with heterosexuals when it comes to the mandatory waiting period prior to donating blood.

The Swiss medicines regulator Swissmedic has approved the request to amend the criteria for men who have sex with men.

Until 2017, gay men were completely excluded from donating blood. Since then, they have only been eligible to donate blood if they have not had sex with men in the last 12 months.

Soon however, the same rules will apply to heterosexual as well as homosexual sexual contacts.

The discussions on sanctions against Russia touched on technical aspects, as part of the multi-stage exchanges that the US Treasury Department is conducting with its trading partners in several European countries.

The meeting described as "useful for all parties" took place in Geneva on Monday between the Swiss commodities trading sector, representatives of the US Treasury and the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

It was a working meeting which focused on commodities trading and energy supplies for Europe over the next 18 months. The US embassy in Bern was also represented. The meeting took place against a backdrop of US criticism of Swiss implementation of sanctions against Russia.

The aim is to assess the situation on the commodities market in relation to energy supply and overall security of supply. The impact of sanctions against Russia on the commodities trading sector was also discussed.

The future of trading, oil price caps and food security were also discussed. The Swiss commodities sector was represented by Suissenégoce that represents the interests of trading companies, as well as transporters, banks, insurance companies and specialist service providers.

Switzerland is a key global platform for commodities trading. The sector contributes 4% of Switzerland's GDP and employs 35,000 people, according to Suissenégoce.

In May the government stated that the war in Ukraine had profoundly disrupted commodities trading in the energy and food sectors. Swiss traders have been affected by the international sanctions imposed as a result of the war.

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“A gust of 217 kilometres per hour was recorded by our station at La Chaux-de-Fonds aerodrome this Monday morning, under a storm cell which suddenly strengthened when arriving in the region,” MeteoSwiss said on Twitter.

As far as I know, that's a record wind strength for Switzerland.

UBS has been ordered to pay $388 million (CHF336 million) to British and US regulators over Credit Suisse’s dealings with private investment firm Archegos Capital Management, the Swiss bank said on Monday.

The settlement is the first of several that UBS could have to pay after it last month closed its takeover of rival Credit Suisse, which was involved in a number of legal battles.

Under the agreement, UBS is to pay the US Federal Reserve $268.5 million and the UK’s Prudential Regulation Authority £87 million (CHF97 million).

Reports ahead of time had suggested the US regulator would impose a penalty of up to $300 million and the UK regulator would fine UBS up to £100 million over the bank’s dealings with bankrupt US hedge fund Archegos.

Billionaire art collector and patron Maja Hoffmann will be the next president of the Locarno Film Festival. She has been appointed to replace Marco Solari, who has held the position for 23 years.

A well-known figure in the visual arts world, Hoffmann, founder of the LUMA Foundation in Arles, France, will be the first woman to take on the role, the festival in a statementExternal link on Monday.

“Maja Hoffmann is a great personality” in the world of the visual arts, internationally recognised and with an extensive cultural network, Solari said at a press conference in Locarno on Monday. The festival’s board of directors unanimously approved the selection committee’s choice.

Swiss tour operators and the government are helping Swiss holidaymakers in need on the Greek island of Rhodes, which has been hit by forest fires.

Tour operators are organising return flights to Switzerland and the government has opened a counter at Rhodes airport.

Tour operator Kuoni said on Monday it was running an extra Rhodes-Switzerland flight on Tuesday night in conjunction with Helvetic Tours and ITS Coop Travel. A Kuoni media spokesman said about 100 seats on the Edelweiss airline plane could be offered by the three tour operators.

The seats were intended for people who had been evacuated from hotels that were no longer habitable and were now staying in public accommodation, for example. These are holidaymakers who can no longer enjoy a relaxing holiday, he said. Priority would be given to the most affected guests. He assumed the plane would be well occupied.

Defence Minister Viola Amherd and Interior Minister Alain Berset are the most highly-regarded members of the seven-member Federal Council, according to a survey.

Amherd tops the public’s esteem ranking with a score of 4.17/6, while Berset follows closely with 4.15/6, the Tamedia group and 20 Minuten newspaper wrote on Monday.

Albert Rösti, who took over the environment, energy and transport portfolio at the beginning of the year, is third with 4.02.

The other four members are Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter (3.89), Economics Minister Guy Parmelin (3.77), Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis (3.57) and Justice Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider (3.42).

The survey of over 25,000 people also found that public satisfaction with Swiss politicians has fallen slightly compared to February this year.

Satisfaction with the work of parliament dropped two percentage points to 48%, while the figure for the government fell one percentage point to 54%.

The seven-member Swiss executive is a consensus-based institution which allocates seats according to the traditional strengths of the country’s four biggest political parties.

Its members are not elected by the public but are endorsed by parliamentarians following general elections every four years.

The next such renewal of ministers will take place in December this year, following elections in October.

The Zurich-based private bank has posted positive results for the first half of 2023. It maintains it has benefited from the emergency merger between UBS and Credit Suisse.

The bank said on Monday it had boosted net profits by 18% over the past year, to CHF531.4 million ($613.5 million). This was largely thanks to a rise in interest rates, it said.

However, the bank also exceeded expectations when it came to net fund inflows, which came to CHF7.1 billion over the year. Total assets under management at the end of June 2023 came to CHF441 billion, up 4% compared to December 2022.

The figures mark a shift compared to the meager 1% rise in assets announced in May, which led to the bank’s stock price slumping.

Swiss drug policy is shifting. Some pharmacies and social clubs in major cities are making cannabis available for recreational purposes under scientific pilot projects. There is even talk of extending such trials to cocaine.

That is welcome news for those who use cannabis for fun or to self-medicate. "As a conscious consumer, I want to be able to decide what kind of cannabis to use,” says E.S, a 40-year-old woman who has been using the substance since her teens, primarily to numb menstrual pain or to relax after a day of work. “Like a wine enthusiast, I want to discover the many varieties without depending on the black market.”

She is among 1,091 people in Switzerland who have signed up to participated in in the scientific pilot SCRIPT. The programme will make cannabis available for sale in pharmacies in the Swiss capital Bern, along with the cities of Lucerne and Biel/Bienne. The goal is to evaluate what impact a regulated, not-for-profit sale of cannabis coupled with advisory services may have on cannabis consumption. It is one of several pilot trials planned across Switzerland.

Nearly a quarter of the Swiss workforce juggles more than one job at a time, according to a survey of working life.

The survey’s lead author believes the rise in work moonlighting is being driven by inflation forcing up the cost of living, reports the NZZ am Sonntag.

"The trend towards seeking additional income has probably picked up since the end of the Covid pandemic," PwC’s Tobias Sattler told the newspaper on Sunday. "Financial uncertainty has generally increased."

The PwC survey found that 58% of respondents have trouble paying their bills at the end of the month.

Tourists have had no access to the popular Swiss alpine Glacier 3000 resort since a cable car broke down on Thursday, temporarily stranding 270 people on the mountain top.

The visitors were rescued by two Air Glacier helicopters that made 54 trips to ferry people to safety.

On Sunday, the resort operators told Keystone-SDA that engineers have so far been unable to identify the exact cause of the problem, despite working until 2am.

The cable car got stuck due to an electrical fault and had to be winched to the top using an emergency back-up engine.

People evacuated from a Swiss region hit by a forest fire were allowed to return to their homes despite flames returning to a spot that had previously been extinguished.

Firefighters declared the village of Oberried, in the southwest canton of Valais, safe on Saturday evening after the blaze was doused near to an access road.

The authorities hinted that people with holiday homes in the area might be free to use their properties on Sunday with the situation deemed stable but not yet fully under control.

Police say they are being misrepresented by filming of arrests by members of the public, with some voices calling for restrictions on video content being made public.

“If police actions are so blatantly distorted every time, a ban on videos during police operations can no longer be taboo,” Harald Zsedényi, vice-president of the Basel city police force told the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.

In 2012, the Federal Council decided to implement the biodiversity strategy. This also affects the green spaces around the highways. Teams of botanists and zoologists are currently working to study the flora and fauna along national highways. The goal is to increase the number of plants and animals living along freeways to 20 percent of the green spaces in the future.

Top US Senators accused Credit Suisse Group of failing to follow through on pledges to cooperate with a probe into allegations the bank concealed information about accounts held by Nazis in the decades after World War II.

Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Charles Grassley, the panel’s ranking Republican, said in a letter dated July 20 that the Swiss bank’s public assertion that it is fully cooperating “strains credulity.”

A large-scale meeting of international anarchists in Switzerland has disrupted the smooth running of the rail schedule by forcing the cancellation of several trains.

The sprawling five-day event involving thousands of anarchists has centered on the Swiss town of St Imier, but some participants have decided to camp too close for comfort to the railway tracks.

At first, trains were ordered to cut their speed on Saturday morning. But the service between La-Chaux-de-Fonds and St Imier was later completely cut.

A replacement bus service has been laid on, but the Watson news portal reports calls from some anarchists for up to CHF60,000 ($70,000) in compensation for the inconvenience.

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in the Swiss city that saw the signing of an international treaty, ending hopes of an independent Kurdish state a hundred years ago.

The Treaty of Lausanne was signed by the major world powers of the day, including Turkey, on July 24, 1923. It broke up the Ottoman empire and set the stage for European influence over the Middle East.

In the years between the end of the First World War and the treaty’s signing, negotiations had included plans to create a Kurdish state in eastern Turkey.

Carine Bachmann, director of the Federal Office of Culture, is paving a new course for the government’s cultural policy. In an interview with SWI swissinfo.ch she explains how, for Switzerland, this includes a stronger international commitment.

Russian billionaire Oleg Tinkov has called on Russian oligarchs to have the courage to oppose Vladimir Putin and to condemn the war in Ukraine.

Tinkov is one of the few prominent Russians to openly criticise Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has renounced his Russian citizenship.

Diagnosed with leukemia, Tinkov now lives in Switzerland, according to the Financial Times. It is unclear whether he has Swiss citizenship.

Tinkov gave an interview to the newspaper after Britain over-turned sanctions against him this week, urging members of the Russian business elite to follow his lead.