The 103rd Tour de France will started on 2 July 2016 in Mont Saint Michel, a small island accessible on foot at low tide, on the Atlantic coast of France. From there the route will take riders south to the Pyrenees, into Spain and Andorra, before heading north via France to Switzerland. On 18 July […]
Swiss 2015 election turnout: large cantonal differences
20 Minutes. Overall voting participation in the 2015 Swiss federal elections was 48.41% according to the daily 20 Minutes, slightly lower than the 48.5% turnout for the 2011 Federal elections. The 50% mark has not been passed since 1979. The citizens of some cantons were more enthusiastic than others. This time the winner was Schaffhausen […]
Swiss 2015 federal elections: UDC gains big ground
Once every four years Swiss get a chance to elect their Federal Government. 18 October 2015 was voting day. At federal elections voters decide who their canton will send to Bern. Switzerland’s federal assembly is bicameral, made up of the 200-seat National Council (lower house), and the 46-seat Council of States (upper house). Seats in […]
SMI underperforms, Geneva bank jobs slump, Nestlé forecast cut, Syngenta steady
16 October 2015 – Weekly Swiss and global market roundup. Brought to you by Investec Switzerland. Swiss financial market news The Swiss Market Index suffered minor losses towards the end of this week, modestly underperforming global stocks as investors moved into more cyclical, US and emerging markets equities. A Federal Reserve report released this week […]
How Switzerland leads Europe on youth employment
In the second quarter of 2015 Swiss youth unemployment (based on the ILO definition) dropped from 7.7% (Q2 2014) to 6.4%. The measure includes those between the ages of 15 and 24 years old and while higher than Switzerland’s overall unemployment rate, Swiss youth fare much better than elsewhere in Europe. The overall EU rate […]
Concerns raised about Switzerland’s oldest nuclear reactor
The Beznau I reactor at the Swiss Bezenau nuclear power plant in Döttingen in the Canton of Aargau appears to be in worse shape than some had imagined. The reactor which sits on a man made island on the Aar river is currently on a rest period. It went into operation in 1969 and is […]
Geneva’s fines for excessive noise and driving in bus lanes more than triple
Tribune de Genève. On 1 October 2015, fines in Geneva went up massively. According to Tribune Genéve, the increases are expected to put an extra CHF 3 to 4 million per year into Geneva’s public purse. The increases impact a myriad of things including driving and parking infringements and excessive noise. For example the fine […]
From bare-foot football to leading AIDS fight. Sidibé knows how to convince.
A walk in the park. This week Renu Chahil-Graf interviewed Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS, the UN agency combating HIV and AIDS. Michel knows about discrimination. The son of a mixed-race marriage in Mali in the 1950s, he is well qualified to fight the discrimination faced by those with HIV. He also knows how […]
Bern hyperlapsed – visit Bern in 2 minutes
Bern-based Studium-Punctum.ch created this stunning two minute time lapsed montage of Switzerland’s capital city, Bern. Watching this it is easy to imagine how the city inspired Einstein to picture himself riding a beam of light. One day in 1905, while working at the Swiss patent office in Bern, Einstein caught a tram. Looking back at […]
Geneva – “give us access to our lake front!”
GHI. This week Giancarlo Mariani, the managing editor of the newspaper of GHI, looks at why two thirds of Geneva’s lake shores are inaccessible to the public when they have a legal right to access them. At the beginning of October 2015, a project to list all private construction preventing shore access, was requested. The […]
