Consuming some mushrooms can be deadly. The risk of fatality is even higher this mushroom season due to a shortage of antidote, warned tox info this week. According to RTS, around 100 people are poisoned by mushrooms a year. The toxic mushrooms for which there is currently no antidote are known as Death cap (Amanite […]
Swiss university remains top-ranked in continental Europe
ETH Zurich remains the best university in continental Europe, according to the World University Ranking, published by Times Higher Education. ETH Zurich was ranked eleventh worldwide in the 2024 ranking, the same position as in 2023. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), the next Swiss university in the ranking moved up one […]
Swiss farmers protest at subsidy cuts
On Wednesday, farmers came together in Bern to protest against planned cuts to subsidies, reported RTS. Because of the way farming is structured in Switzerland, farmers are heavily reliant on the support of tax payers to make ends meet. The federal government, which is running and projecting fiscal deficits, has come up with ways to […]
New government private jet scheduled for 2025
The jet is used by the Federal Council, Switzerland’s cabinet, and made the news in 2021 after forced landings led to missed diplomatic meetings in Anji in China and Tokyo in Japan. This week, the delivery date for a new jet was announced, reported SRF. The current plane, a 23-year-old Cessna Citation Excel 560XL, will […]
Government recommends Swiss nationals leave Iran
This week, Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) recommended Swiss nationals leave Iran in a post on X. It also advised against travel to the country. According to the FDDA, the situation regarding the conflict in the Middle East is very volatile. The risk of escalation has continued to increase, the evolution of the […]
Switzerland grounds its cloud seeding hail plane
Since 2018, a plane has flown over parts of Switzerland releasing silver iodide in clouds responsible for hail storms. This week, the project was abandoned, reported SRF. The pilots of the Cessna aircraft, which was operated by Baloise Insurance, worked closely with the weather service. Radar was used to locate clouds expected to cause hail […]
Swiss inflation dips below 1 percent for first time in three years
Consumer prices at the end of September 2024 were only 0.8% higher than the were at the end of September 2023, reported Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office (FSO) this week. This is the lowest annual rate of inflation since July 2021. Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) dropped by 0.3% during the month of September 2024. The recent […]
Rising number of Swiss report sleeping problems
In 2022, a third of Switzerland’s population suffered from challenges sleeping, up 5 percentage points from 1997, according to a survey by Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office (FSO). The proportion of people with sleep disorders in Switzerland rose 5 percentage points over the 25 years between 1997 and 2022, with a significant rise starting in 2012. […]
EU rejects Swiss migration safeguard clause
Switzerland and the EU currently have an agreement that grants citizens freedom to live and work across Switzerland and the bloc. As part of a new agreement, Switzerland wanted a safeguard clause that would allow Switzerland to unilaterally impose permit quotas for a limited time. On 2 October 2024, the EU said it rejected the […]
Proposal to make Swiss motorways more expensive for foreigners
This week, two PLR/FDP parliamentarians proposed increasing the price of the motorway vignette required to drive on the Swiss motorway network, reported SRF. The two politicians making the proposal are from the cantons of Schwytz and Ticino, two cantons affected by the heavy traffic passing through the Gotthard tunnel, one of the key north-south connections […]
