CATHOLIC CHURCH Swiss Bishops Conference rejects gay blessing By swissinfo.ch and agencies MAR 6, 2015 – 14:33 The priest of Buerglen, Wendelin Bucheli, failed to receive support from the Swiss Bishops Conference after he blessed a lesbian couple (Keystone) The blessing of a same-sex partnership is contrary to church doctrine […]
REFUGEE CRISIS Switzerland to welcome 3,000 Syrian refugees By swissinfo.ch MAR 6, 2015 – 16:18 Over 3.8 million Syrians have fled to neighbouring countries since the conflict began (Keystone) The Swiss cabinet agreed in principle on Friday to welcome an additional 3,000 Syrian refugees to Switzerland over the course of […]
TERRORISM Human rights under threat, says foreign minister By swissinfo.ch and agencies MAR 2, 2015 – 12:01 Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter urged the international community to root out terrorism (Keystone) The fight against terrorism was the focus of the opening speech by Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter at the […]
CORPORATE RETREATS Religious houses open doors to the working world By Terence MacNamee MAR 1, 2015 – 11:00 The Disentis monastery, an oasis of calm and tranquility (swiss-image) Swiss monasteries […]
By Jo Fahy Whether it’s a turban or a headscarf, showing your religion in Switzerland can make others treat you extremely differently. From stares in the street to difficulty in […]
Kamprad, 88, moved back to his home country of Sweden last year after living in Switzerland for almost four decades. The house in Epalinges, a bedroom suburb north of […]
By Keerthana Balajee Nagarajan, Zurich swissinfo.ch FEB 22, 2015 – 11:00 Choosing where to educate children – local or international schools – can depend on money and cultural factors. That’s especially the case with families from India, in Switzerland for work. It’s a Monday morning at Happy Nest, one of […]
The Swiss People’s Party has launched a popular initiative calling for a ban on religious headgear in schools in canton Valais. It follows a successful initiative in 2013 that banned […]
Burkhalter and John Kerry at a meeting last year. Photo: Sebastien Bozon/AFP Burkhalter: anti-terror measures a ‘priority’ Published: 20 Feb 2015 12:24 GMT+01:00 Combating violent extremism is a “priority” in Switzerland, Swiss foreign minister and former president Didier Burkhalter has said, telling a counter-terrorism summit in Washington this week that […]
OSCAR-NOMINATED FILM Swiss ‘secondo cinema’ shines in Hollywood By Ariane Gigon FEB 20, 2015 – 08:00 Talkhon Hamzavi was born in Tehran in 1979 and arrived in Switzerland aged seven (Keystone) Swiss-Iranian film director Talkhon Hamzavi has been nominated for an Oscar for her coming-of-age social drama about a young […]
Saudi Artist Ahmed Mater Sues Swiss Watchmaker Swatch For Plagiarism Coline Milliard, Wednesday, February 18, 2015 Ahmed Mater’s Magnetism (2012) is emblematic of the vibrant new art scene emerging from the Gulf. The etching print, which exists in several versions, pictures a black cubic magnet neatly encircled by steel dust—a poetic evocation of […]
ANTI-EXTREMISM Breaking the radicalisation cycle By Simon Bradley FEB 18, 2015 – 10:20 Global efforts to counter violent extremism continue to intensify with a high-level summit in Washington this week. Outside of international talks, are grassroots approaches the answer? A new Geneva-based agency thinks so. On Wednesday, civil society and […]
After ten months of testing, a federal pilot project in Zurich is significantly reducing the length of time it takes to process asylum applications without harming the quality of decision-making, Swiss migration officials say. But there’s still room for improvement with the fast-tracking, the State Secretariat for Migration said on […]
The proportion of refugees with a B or F permit dependent on social welfare decreased in 2013 compared to the year before. However, the overall number receiving welfare payments increased […]
The first in-depth study of racist and xenophobic attitudes in Switzerland has revealed that one in four people has negative opinions of foreigners in general, one in five is hostile to Muslims and one in ten is anti-Semitic. In a series of face-to-face interviews conducted between 2010 and 2014, gfs.bern […]
FEB 11, 2015 – 01:01 Every year around 45,000 people around the world take their life because they are unemployed. A study by scientists in Zurich also found that the […]
At a security conference in Munich to discuss the Ukraine crisis, Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter called for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to have a […]
For the Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), dialogue with Islamic State (IS) fighters is key to keeping aid workers safe, and the NGO is working to establish direct contact with decision-makers in the IS organisation. ICRC Director General Yves Daccord told the Ostschweiz am Sonntag newspaper that […]
Protesters and supporters gathered in Basel as the Dalai Lama held a Buddhist ceremony there on Saturday, in which some 7500 people took part. Some 500 protesters from the Shugden […]
Saudi women can no longer drive in Switzerland because changes to local laws require all drivers to have licenses issued in their home countries, according to the Kingdom’s embassy in […]