This week, meteorological bigwigs from around the world meet in Geneva, the home of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), to discuss meteorology and climate change. Among many things, the WMO is involved in measuring compliance with greenhouse gas emissions using measuring stations around the world. A report by WMO says that the four years from […]
Archives for 2019
Radioactivity detected above Mühleberg nuclear plant
Recent aerial air tests detected a higher than average level of radioactivity near the Mühleberg nuclear plant in the canton of Bern, as shown in red in the image below. The source of the radioactivity was identified as vapour containing the radioactive isotope N-16. N-16 has a half life of around 7 seconds, so it loses […]
Violence and harassment against women remains high in Switzerland
In developed nations like Switzerland much progress has been made on women’s rights. However, violence and harassment against women remains high and is one of the reasons why women are striking on 14 June 2019. According to a survey by Amnesty International, 22% of women 16 or over in Switzerland have been subjected to non-consensual […]
Question of the week: why is male disadvantage rarely discussed?
Research on gender inequality tends to focus on issues disadvantaging women. A study published earlier this year suggests issues disadvantaging men have been understudied. Areas where men fair badly compared to women are life (and healthy life) expectancy, health spending, suicide, pension age, compulsory military service, harsher punishments for the same crimes, prison numbers, homelessness, […]
Switzerland has best winter for 11 years
The Swiss Hotel Association recorded a 0.7% increase in overnight stays during the 2018/2019 winter season. From November to April, 16.7 million overnight stays were recorded in Switzerland, 8.8 million by foreign visitors and 7.9 million by Swiss travelers. The increase was highest among foreign visitors. Nights spent by foreign visitors rose 1% to 8.8 […]
FILM: ROCKETMAN – even better than Bohemian Rhapsody
7 June 2019. By Neptune ROCKETMAN ***1/2 A bit late in the day, for I missed it in Cannes where it made a huge splash, and just saw it a few days ago, so here goes… If I compare this to the recent Oscar-anointed Queen/Freddy Mercury biopic, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, I would say this one is […]
Plastic bag use declines steeply in Switzerland
In 2016, nearly 418 million disposable plastic bags were distributed at retail checkouts across Switzerland. By 2018, the number was less than 57 million, a drop of 86%, according the Swiss Retail Federation. Most of the decline occurred after a group of retailers in Switzerland signed an agreement with the Swiss Retail Federation to charge […]
Swiss government decides not to act on roaming charges
The National Council, Switzerland’s parliament, rejected a motion to force Swiss mobile phone operators to remove EU roaming charges. 99 voted against, 78 for and 14 abstained, according to the newspaper 20 Minutes. In 2017, the European Union (EU) forced EU operators to stop charging their customers extra for calls made outside their home country […]
Some Swiss train platforms might not be smoke-free until 2020
Many looking forward to smoke-free train platforms in Switzerland might be disappointed. The public transport union (UTP) announced in November 2018 that Swiss train platforms would be free of smoking from 1 June 2019 after testing the concept earlier in 2018. However, according to a recent press release 1 June 2019 is the rollout start […]
Geneva’s traffic as bad as Shanghai’s
The satellite navigation company TomTom has published its annual traffic ranking of 403 cities across 56 countries on 6 continents, based on data from its GPS devices in cars across the world. Congestion is expressed as the amount of extra travel time caused by traffic congestion. An overall congestion level of 50% means that the […]
