A recent study by Switzerland’s Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO) found that 43% of Switzerland’s population was overweight or obese. Of these 30% were overweight and 13% obese. This rate of obesity was the same as the global average in a 2014 study. The research, which used the Body Mass Index (BMI) to measure levels of obesity […]
Archives for November 2016
China fines Swiss-based packager Tetra Pak for breaking monopoly rules
Brought to you by Investec Switzerland. According to Reuters, following an investigation, China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) said, it found out that Tetra Pak violated some provisions in China’s anti-trust law and will impose a fine of 668 million yuan ($97 million) on Tetra Pak for “abuse of dominant market position”. The […]
Swiss National Bank won’t cut record low interest rate again, survey shows
Brought to you by Investec Switzerland. The Swiss National Bank, which has the lowest interest rate among the world’s major central banks, may be done cutting. SNB President Thomas Jordan and his fellow policy makers will keep the deposit rate unchanged at minus 0.75 percent until at least the end of the first quarter of […]
A pilgrimage to Geneva’s cemetery of Kings, with artist and writer John Berger
British writer and artist John Berger – 90 years-old on 5 November, 2016 – has lived in the nearby French Haute-Savoie since the 1970s and has made a name celebrating the vanishing culture and life of European peasants. But as Peter Hulm points out, Berger is also a surpising fan of bourgeois Geneva, and of […]
Swisscom promises to put an end to unwanted sales calls
Swisscom’s fixed line (remember those) customers will be given the option of blocking unwanted calls from 28 November. The service will be free and can be activated by checking a box online or by calling the Swisscom hotline (0800 800 800). Sunrise and UPC are expected to follow Swisscom by mid 2017, according to 24 […]
FILMAR, Geneva’s Latin American film festival starts on 18 November
FILMAR Festival stands out from other film festivals held in Switzerland. It specializes in Latin American films – the global importance of films from this region cannot be overestimated. The festival will, to be held from 18 November to 4 December in both Geneva, as well as Ferney-Voltaire, St Julien en Genevois, Divonne and Versoix. […]
Comedy: well-known Canadian comic Mike Wilmot to bring mirth to Switzerland
Brought to you by International Comedy Club. Already an established comedian in his home country Canada, Mike Wilmot started working in the UK as a stand-up comedian in 1995. For over a decade Mike has built up a reputation as one of the unsung heroes of the UK comedy scene achieving rave reviews throughout the […]
A high fat diet can stunt the development of young brains, says Swiss research
A study, published in the medical journal “Molecular Psychiatry”, and released today by researchers at ETH Zurich, seems to suggest yet again that we are what we eat. This study is focussed not on waistlines but brainwaves. The results suggest an excessively fatty diet can prevent adolescent brains from fully maturing. The pre-frontal cortex, a late-to-develop […]
Anger rises in Bern over Clinton donation
24 Heures. Over the weekend the newspaper Schweiz am Sonntag revealed that the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), a government agency, made a large payment to the Clinton Foundation, at a politically delicate time when Switzerland was in the middle of difficult discussions over Swiss banking activities related to US citizens. In February 2011, […]
Birds confined as avian flu arrives in Switzerland
The Swiss federal office of food security and veterinary affairs (OSAV) announced that from tomorrow, all of Switzerland will become a controlled zone. The agency aims to avoid all contact between wild birds and domestic ones. Adding that nothing so far indicates Swiss bird farms have been affected or that the virus has been transmitted […]