Renu Chahil-Graf takes a Walk in the Park with Boris Wastiau, Director of the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève (MEG) Only someone courageous and tough enough would agree to take a walk in a park in the coldest winter Geneva has had for years. Mid-January, minus 3 to minus 7 degrees celsius for most of the […]
Archives for March 2017
Swiss road victims down overall but higher for cyclists
20 Minutes. In 2016, the number dying on Swiss roads dropped 15% compared with 2015. 216 people died, 37 less than the year before (-15%). While there were fewer car, motorcycle and pedestrian accident victims, the number of seriously injured cyclists climbed. Since records began in 1940, only 1945, when 211 died, has seen fewer […]
Vaud discusses extending winter school holiday to 2 weeks
Le Matin. In Switzerland, this ski season has been disappointing, particularly if you have school aged children. During the Vaud school holiday this season, the fourth week of February, there was limited snow. Even at high resorts like Verbier, snow conditions were fairly average across the week. The week before there was good snow. But then […]
Swiss women third latest to have first child
Le Matin. In 2015, the average age Swiss mothers had their first child was unchanged from 2014, according to recent Eurostat data. At a european level, only Italians and Spaniards left motherhood later than Swiss. In 2015, the average age of Swiss first-time mums was 30.6 years, slightly younger than Spanish first-time mothers (30.7). In Italy […]
Start-up ski airline announces bigger plane for flights to Sion
The new airline PowdAir, which plans to base itself at Sion airport in the canton of Valais in Switzerland and start flying in December 2017, recently announced plans to fly an Airbus A 319 instead of the smaller Fokker 100. According to Swiss broadcaster RTS, the new airline plans to use a single aircraft to […]
Film: true story of three black women vital to the U.S. space program in the 1960s
10 March 2017. HIDDEN FIGURES **** Before the summer drought of mediocre films (already started after the long award-season culminating with the Oscars), check out this excellent film about a trio of black women who were vital (one of them – Katherine Johnson – was pivotal) to the U.S. space program in the 1960s. The beauty […]
Low strength cannabis sales explode across Switzerland
According to an article in Tribune de Genève, some cigarette vendors are desperately searching for supplies of the drug to meet demand. Recently kiosques in Geneva started selling low strength cannabis like they sell cigarettes. Some kiosque owners are over the moon, while others desperately search for a supplier. One vendor told Tribune de Genève: […]
Tax cheat loses right to Swiss citizenship
Tribune de Genève. A German national who married a Swiss citizen lost his right to Swiss citizenship after Swiss authorities learned he had evaded tax in Germany. Four years after marrying, the man applied to become Swiss. In March 2014, he was granted the right to be naturalised under the facilitated process, a process requiring […]
Vaud rejects plan to follow Geneva and give permits to illegal workers
Le Matin. Jean-Michel Dolivo put forward a motion for Vaud to follow Geneva and grant permits to illegal workers. Vaud’s cantonal parliament rejected the plan by 71 votes to 60. The proposal would have worked in a similar way to Papyrus, a plan unveiled in Geneva recently, which grants visas to illegal workers that meet […]
Nationwide burka ban rejected by Swiss government
20 Minutes. After the National Assembly narrowly accepted a proposal for a nationwide ban on the burka, the Council of States (upper house), rejected the plan on Thursday by 26 votes to 9, with 4 abstentions. The proposal put forward by Walter Wobmann (UDC/SVP) has now been definitively rejected. At the same time Walter Wobmann […]
