The world’s happiest country, according the latest World Happiness Report, is Norway, with Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland almost on par. The report’s authors say that these four countries are clustered so tightly that the differences among them are not statistically significant. Norway (7.537), Denmark (7.522), Iceland (7.504), and Switzerland (7.494) are almost equal, with Switzerland’s […]
Archives for March 2017
Speeder gets 20 month Swiss prison sentence
20 Minutes. A 20 year old Italian was sentenced last week for a speeding offense committed in December 2015. Caught driving at 107 km/h in a 50 km/h zone, in the centre of the town of Rothrist in Switzerland, he was handed a 20 month prison term. The man who had lost both his car and license, […]
Albanian muslims agree religious rules cannot replace Swiss laws
20 Minutes. The two main Albanian muslim associations will sign a declaration in Bern today stipulating that no religious rules can replace Swiss laws. The Swiss Albanian muslim community and the Swiss union of Albanian imams will both sign the declaration in the presence of the Swiss authorities and representatives of Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia. […]
Girl of 6 dies in a ski accident in Switzerland
20 Minutes. On Sunday, at the resort Les Mosses, a 6 year old girl collided with an adolescent of 16. According to Vaud Police, the two young skiers crashed into each other on a piste at Les Parchets. The accident, which happened at 9:40 am, left the girl seriously injured. A helicopter flew the girl […]
Places to go late season skiing in Switzerland
Mention skiing in late March and April and it is likely to draw blank expressions, or comments like: “It’s too late, there will be no snow”. While this is true for some resorts not all ski domains were created equal. A recent study shows that in 2015, snow came to the Swiss Alps 12 days […]
The Swiss franc hits its lowest since December
24 Heures. On Monday the franc went as low as 1.0825 to the euro, the lowest since early December last year. According to some experts, the weaker franc can be partly explained by the market activities of the Swiss National Bank (SNB). The cantonal bank of Thurgau said that the SNB appeared to be targeting […]
Swiss Post to start delivering with drones this summer
20 Minutes. Swiss post has said it will deliver the first packages by air this summer. The first deliveries will be made between two medical laboratories on the southern side of the Alps. Test flights were conducted in the canton of Bern last year. Now Swiss Post is ready to make commercial deliveries starting in […]
FILM: Moonlight – story of the life of a black man in three stages of his existence – boy, adolescent and man
17 March 2017. MOONLIGHT **** There is a captivating alchemy in Moonlight that is quite intangible. It is as delicate as a flower and as powerful as a fist in the stomach. This story of the life of a black man in three stages of his existence – boy, adolescent and man – is a full […]
German plan to charge only foreigners for their roads judged discriminatory
20 Minutes. The German plan to charge foreign residents to use their motorways was judged discriminatory by EU officials because the charges would only be imposed on foreigners. This project “still contains elements that are contrary to european rights and violate fundamental principals of treaties, in particular discrimination based on nationality” voiced the European Parliament, which […]
Report shows risks of “low cost” terrorism in Switzerland
Tribune de Genève. The Swiss government recently published its third report on how to combat attacks by jihadists. The report, named TETRA, opens with a description of the terrorist attack in Berlin where a truck was driven into a crowded Christmas market killing 12 people. It then set outs the concerns experts have about the emergence […]