One of the big questions surrounding post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is whether or not it is linked to having a good memory.

 

A 10,500 year old oak tree was discovered last year by construction workers in Schlieren, in the canton of Zurich. 

Three tax inspectors who bought a stolen CD in their chase for German tax evaders have been told they must stay out of Switzerland or face arrest, after a cross-border tax spat turned nasty (...)

Researchers at Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) have helped create an infrared device that can detect tiny traces of cocaine in human saliva

 

The Swiss newspaper Le Temps has discovered that during the height of the revolt in Libya agents for Muammar Gaddafi’s regime were in the Geneva  trying to recruit mercenaries to fight for the deposed, now dead, Libyan dictator.

 

According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Muslims in Switzerland need a common umbrella organization to counter increasing discrimination.

 

If you’re thinking of getting a tattoo, you might want to think again or at least ask your tattoo artist a few pointed questions beforehand (...)

 

The Swiss finance ministry has confirmed that encrypted data relating to Swiss banks’ clients in the United States has been transmitted to the US tax authorities.

 

Swiss Christians have taken issue with a new campaign by supermarket giant Migros that encourages children to awaken strange powers by collecting 48 different magical stones.

Switzerland has been thrust into the centre of an highly contentious U.S. presidential battle for the Republican nomination. Mitt Romney has come under scrutiny over his wife’s ownership of a UBS bank account, which was being held in a blind trust.

 

Will legendary salty Swiss delicacies like Gruyere cheese, cervelas sausage and silserli bread ever be the same again?

Such icons of the national diet are coming under closer scrutiny following a government health campaign to reduce salt consumption. (...)

 

Voters are to be asked to decide on a proposal calling for a fundamental reform of the country’s conscript system for the armed forces as well as its civilian service

 

Food scout Amy Eber hikes high up Mount Bummere above Lenk in the Bernese Oberland to meet cheese makers Rosemarie von Kanel, Emil von Kanel, Käthi Buhler and Niklaus Buhler to see how their new cheese, Gletscherbach, is made.

 

A special debate took place on Wednesday in the National Council on immigration.

 

Legendary Swiss marksman William Tell is often portrayed as a heroic freedom fighter. But when he killed the Habsburg bailiff, was it not the act of a murderer?

 

The world's biggest food company Nestle is seeking to conquer the dog food market with special advertising targeted at men's best friend.

Think about this as you drink your morning cup o’ tea: The kettle you boiled the water in could contain a plastic compound and synthetic hormone that’s potentially cancer causing.

 

With crime statistics on the rise in Switzerland, the Swiss criminal code has been an increasingly hot topic—and in particular the system of “day fines.” 

 

An accord to turn over more tax evaders to the United States may have to wait. The Council of States refused to vote on the double tax accord with the U.S. yesterday. 

 

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives followed the Senate in approving SFr600 million ($682 million) more each year for the army than proposed by the cabinet, and agreeing to use some of the additional funds to finance the purchase of new fighter jets.

Plans to build drive-in sex boxes in Zurich to allow prostitutes to conduct their businesses more discreetly are expected to cross another hurdle tonight when the city parliament votes on the proposal. It’s part of a package of measures which the city government announced earlier this summer to regulate street prostitution.

 

A 56-year-old Austrian is recovering after plunging down a 300-metre cliff in the Swiss mountains

Reports, later refuted, that the virus-carrying Asian tiger mosquito had spread north in Switzerland have highlighted the threats posed by the insect.

Food scout Amy Eber goes to a moutarde de Bénichon competition in Estavayer-le-Lac to taste the mustard traditionally made for Bénichon festivals throughout the canton of Fribourg. This centuries-old celebration started as a religious festival but is now a culinary autumn affair that is embodied in the sweet, spicy jam-like mustard:

Video

The Consumer Show team investigates the migration of potentially dangerous mineral oils and chemicals from cardboard packaging into much of the food we eat—from rice, pasta, biscuits and cereals to frozen foods. And researchers have uncovered at least one surprising culprit: recycled paper.

 

Every tenth franc spent by Swiss on meat is being spent abroad, according to the Swiss Meat Association

 

The name of Swiss 19th century painter Charles Gleyre seems to have been forgotten in his native land.

“A Kosovar stabs a Swiss man.” “A Kosovar kills the head of social services.” These are not newspaper headlines but instead the latest set of newspaper ads the Swiss People’s Party is running ahead of the general elections in October. 

 

A landmark deal between Switzerland and Britain on tax evasion has received a mixed response from the European Union.

Read also:

http://worldradio.ch/wrs/news/wrsnews/swiss-uk-tax-deal-may-sink-eu-proposal.shtml?26174

From muggings in the middle of the night to burglar alarm scams— the public’s perception is that crime in Geneva is out of control.

Read also:

http://worldradio.ch/wrs/news/switzerland/tourism-head-says-proper-reaction-to-geneva-crime-.shtml?26086

NASA is planning another rover mission to the planet Mars later this year to hunt for water, among other things. 

Three Swiss soldiers remain in the hospital, while another was discharged, after an explosives accident during training in the canton of St. Gallen yesterday.

Half of European men are directly descended from the famous Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, according to a Swiss study. Specifically, 70 percent of British and Spanish men, and 60 percent of Frenchmen are related to King Tut, according to the findings

A Jewish author cited in the Norway massacre suspect's rambling, 1,500-word manifesto expressed regret Monday that her writing might have served to inspire his rampage.

Sir Richard Branson is moving a core part of his Virgin empire from the United Kingdom to Geneva in a bid to cut taxes.

Media reports have emerged about a British company that provides access for tourists to use Swiss shooting ranges to fire machine guns in a secret military facility.

(with audio link) 

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou believes many of the billions that have been withheld from the Greek taxman are lying in Switzerland.

The Basel Tattoo is showcasing military bands from all over the world. Tattoos originate from the 17th century tradition of drumming to call soldiers back to barracks at night. 

Credit Suisse now finds itself under the scrutiny of United States tax evasion investigators after four bankers were charged with helping clients avoid taxes.

People who lived in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s are not allowed to donate blood in Switzerland because of fears they may be carrying Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease — connected to “mad cow disease.”

Experts have found no evidence of an increased risk of cancer in children born near nuclear power and research reactors in Switzerland but questions remain.

A brown bear from Italy killed 21 sheep in the canton of Graubünden, according to reports.

Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters trying to reach Israel were prevented from embarking on flights from Geneva and Zurich airports on Friday.

College teacher Jens Anfindsen has a taste for beer, in a professional sense. In his spare time he founded and still directs a micro-brewery in the heart of Fribourg, in the cellars of a Franciscan monastery. Anfindsen and his two employees now brew over 400 liters of ale every week. WRS’s Marc Menichini meets him at the brewery as he adds the finishing touches to his special summer edition beer

Amy Eber visits Flaach, known as the “asparagus capital” of Switzerland, north of Winterthur. She gets a personal tour of the famous Spaltenstein family asparagus farm, the only farm in the country to solely raise asparagus, where she learns just how difficult it is to grow this tasty vegetable. The Spaltensteins reveal to her how white asparagus is grown, harvested and prepared for market.

This week Amy Eber visits a longtime WRS listener, Virgina Ward, who turned a hobby for cooking up delectable food into a small business. Ward lives in a rural agricultural village about 30 minutes outside Geneva. She produces mainly seasonal soups, jams and chutneys, using local ingredients as much as possible. Her new website, The Adaptable Friend, promotes terroir cuisine (food from the land) and eating locally. 

Pro-Palestinian activists who tried to force their way through security after being prevented from boarding an easyJet flight to Tel Aviv delayed flights at Geneva airport on Friday morning.

Swiss migration officials say deportation flights of rejected asylum seekers will continue despite video evidence showing clashes with police on a Lagos-bound plane.

Europe's rights court on Friday rejected two cases brought by Muslims against Switzerland's constitutional ban on the construction of new minarets.

About 70 percent of Swiss consumers have shopped across the country's borders in the last year to save money, according to a new study

BERN, SWITZERLAND – Wealthy foreigners who benefit from Switzerland’s lump sum taxation rules are likely to find they are paying slightly more in taxes – soon for new arrivals but those already in the country have a five-year grace period before the new rules will apply. The actual dates depend on the speed with which parliament reacts to the message sent to it 30 June by the Swiss Federal Council, or cabinet, setting out tighter rules and raising the minimum payment, to ensure that all cantons have the same baseline.

GENEVALUNCH – The race is on at Cern, the European Nuclear Research Centre in Geneva, to complete results on a number of experiments in time for the physics world’s major summer conferences, and Friday 17 June a landmark was reached that is encouraging researchers.

SION, SWITZERLAND – Drivers who had started sampling the goods at the Valais wineries Open day Friday 3 June might have wondered about the strength of the wine if they were on the A9 autoroute, where a camel and two horses were hitched to the safety bar on the median strip... 

The Swiss parliament is considering forcing violent husbands to wear an electronic tag, allowing authorities to check they don’t go too close to their wives.

Manufacturers are shifting a greater share of investments out of Switzerland with the dollar in the doldrums and the euro plunging to record lows against the franc.

BERN, SWITZERLAND – A 39-year-old police officer was killed on duty when a tenant who was being evicted shot and killed him at 08:00 Tuesday morning 24 May in Schafhausen im Emmental. Police said late Tuesday that a private letter had been sent to an employee of the bankruptcy and receivership office warning of a “possible reaction” by the gunman should he be evicted...

Imagine a scratched watch face or car door that can magically repair itself using ultraviolet light. This is not science fiction but the work of US-Swiss researchers ...

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Police in Zurich arrested an unusual-looking drug runner Wednesday at Kloten Airport, a man disguised as a missionary, complete with flowing robes.

From toads to magic potions and crutches: in times gone by people in need resorted to a number of different remedies and supports, as an exhibition in Einsiedeln shows.

Sex is no laughing matter for female seed beetles who are being injured by increasingly aggressive barbed-penised males...

Swiss and US researchers have identified a strain of leprosy found in armadillos in dozens of people in the southern United States, indicating the skin disease can be transmitted directly from animals to humans.

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch)– The Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO), has developed a new standard to certify “the purity and quality of soluble coffee powder” and a tool to “detect possible adulterations” in soluble/instant coffee.

Passengers arriving at Swiss airports will in future be able to make purchases at duty-free shops, the government has decided.

Thieves have raided barn near Zurich and stolen birds worth 25,000 Swiss francs, according to reports.

(25k sfr = 27.9k US-$)

Holenweger case tests tougher anti-corruption laws in country already considered one of world's best at fighting bribery.

The Swiss have outdone themselves as cheese-eaters, climbing from their world leader position in 2009, when consumption was a record-breaking 21.4 kilos per inhabitant, to 21.55 in 2010.
Remarks:
21.40 kg = 47.18 lbs
21.55 kg = 47.51 lbs

Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland recorded 80 incidents in 2010 where aircraft pilots were injured by lasers pointed at them. The figure was double that of the previous year, with 40 in 2009. Rega, the helicopter emergency service, filed 11 complaints, two of which resulted in charges being pressed, although they were dropped in one case.

Driving while tired is as dangerous as drink-driving, campaign organisers said on Thursday, ahead of the first "turbo siesta" day in Switzerland on March 14. (...)
The campaign is urging drivers only to take 15 minute naps; any more and people risk falling into a deep sleep. Dubois said 15 minutes had been medically proven to be long enough to allow the body to rest and come up with the energy needed to continue on a drive. (...)

Zurich's Official Food Control office for canton Zurich made headlines in Canada, India and Britain this week when it showed that recycled cardboard boxes used for breakfast cereals contain far higher levels of mineral oils than levels recommended by UN food and health organizations. (...)
Kellogg's, meanwhile, one of the largest cereal producers in the US, announced Wednesday 8 March that it will stop using recycled cardboard for the boxes, according to foodanddrinkdigital. (...)

Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss voters are turning in their ballots to decide on tightening regulations covering firearms. Many of them are doing so Friday using local commune's special ballot boxes before they head for the mountains, rather than turning up in person to vote Sunday 13 February.

The most influential Swiss in Nazi Germany is the subject of a new biography by historian Marco Wyss.

Prime Minster Jean Claude Juncker will be in Switzerland today (Wednesday) for the first time since a controversial row with a Swiss politician.

Third graders in the village of Oberdorf, canton Nidwalden, are busily working on their English flashcards when there's a knock at the door.

A proposal to restrict access to firearms appears to have support particularly among women, according to an opinion poll six weeks before a nationwide vote.

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Times of India reports that police in Mumbai have recovered 20 diamond-studded Franck Muller watches worth several million dollars and six less expensive timepieces as well as "chemicals", stuffed into the cavity of a toilet on an Air India flight that landed in Mumbai Monday night 10 January.

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The United Nations in Geneva has two administrative working languages, English and French, but French, the language of the host city, is increasingly overlooked, says a group of French-speaking journalists, one of whom was named 10 January as observer to the UN and international organizations.

Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Some of the world's most popular painkillers have been linked to a higher incidence of heart attacks in particular, but also strokes and death from cardiovascular disease, in one of the largest studies done to date.

Herbert Hoover, descended from Swiss migrants, led a life of action and innovation well before becoming a United States president linked to the Great Depression

Germany's six eastern, formerly communist states are expecting to be the recipients this year of 230 million euros being held in Swiss and Austrian banks after the cash was embezzled out of the former East Germany.

Does Switzerland still need an army to defend itself given that Europe is now a continent at peace, wonders Bertil Galland.

Online shopping CO2 savings could light a city the size of Sion.

Amid hundreds of new laws coming into force on January 1 will be a mechanism for cracking down on sham marriages and sweeping reforms to simplify legal processes.

Obligation to show up for military shooting practice in 2009 put CHF3.3 million in cantonal coffers.

An investigating magistrate has recommended three Swiss engineers face trial for allegedly supplying a Pakistan-based network with nuclear weapons technology.

The financial and cosmopolitan hub of Switzerland is undergoing a major transformation, as exemplified by the sizeable construction sites that punctuate the city, promising to remake its landscape. Brand new districts are being planned all around the centre of Zurich, luxury hotels are about to open and a novel new rooftop thermal spa is among the new attractions for this vibrant and economically healthy metropolis.

German tax authorities recovered 1.6 billion euros this year from citizens who had stashed their cash in secret accounts in Liechtenstein and Switzerland, according to the weekly Der Spiegel.

Swiss voters approval of an initiative to expel criminal foreigners has provoked a flood of comment, mostly supporting the plan.

Bern and a national committee to beef up gun control exchange warning shots ahead of next year's vote. If the initiative is successful, purchase requirements will be tightened, army rifles kept in arsenals and not at home, and a national registry established. The government however, is not convinced and urges the population to reject the proposals.

European Union finance ministers have agreed on reinforcing their cooperation on tax matters but for Swiss bankers any automatic exchange of information remains taboo

If they commit a crime, second generation Swiss residents could be expelled to countries they have never seen after the recent vote to expel "criminal foreigners".

Churches in canton Neuchâtel are still in disbelief after cigarette giant Philip Morris International decided to quit paying local voluntary church tax.

A day after the victory of their popular initiative to ban foreign criminals from Switzerland, the Swiss People's Party (SVP) announces that it will lobby parliament to restrict access to the country's universities by foreign students. With the number of non-Swiss students doubling in 10 years, a member of the party tells Swisster it wants quotas and entrance exams to limit the influx and preserve academic quality.

A year after Swiss voters approved a ban on the building of minarets, both pro and contra groups are launching new campaigns to put the issue back on the political agenda.

Health and safety experts in Bern are homing in on spiked drinks and date rape as part of this year's nationwide "16 days against violence against women campaign".

Zurich's exclusive Bahnhofstrasse has had a Christmas lighting makeover after the previous modern design - a row of tubes along the street - flopped with the public

Yesterday (Sunday) the proponents of the so-called expulsion-initiative of the Swiss People's Party (SVP) gave a stunning blow again (53 pc approval) to left-green day-dreamers who have been thinking that 'multi-culti' is an ideal condition where national interests have to step back, where criminal offenses of foreign residents (migrants) are condoned, where defrauding and cheating the welfare system have to be tolerated by the host guiding (leading) society.

Perhaps these 'thug-huggers' still believe in Marx' theories and Lenin's Soviet system but then they should be reminded of Stalin and gulags as well.

This kind of playing against the rules and anarchy have been penetrating the hearts and minds of allegedly responsible politicians and even judges that foreign criminals have to be nurtured endlessly on the host's society expense. The residentship is by no means a "carte blanche" or even a human right - the self-determination of states to set their rules to citizens and residents cannot be denied either.

When a state with its souvereign right chooses the form of direct democracy - like Switzerland - the souvereign, the (Swiss) citizens have the over-ruling right to approve or disapprove law-initiatives (period).

Those anti-Swiss campaigners in Germany should cool down a bit, wait and see how successful this measure of getting tough on crime à la U.S. and Switzerland will be in the long run.

And probably the other (big) European states will follow suit - some "small" countries like the Netherlands, Austria and Denmark have already considering similar measures on foreign criminals.

The leading German Social-Dems ought to be very careful in demanding constitutional changes toward elements of direct democracy in the German 'Basis Law'. 'Arch-angel' Sigmar Gabriel would be quite surprised if the Germans started an expulsion-initiative on their own founded on the theses of SPD renegade and bestseller author, Thilo Sarrazin.

In a referendum of Swiss direct democracy, the right-conservative SVP law-initiative will probably get 53 per cent 'aye' to 47 to 'nay' (according to the latest estimates) and the majority of cantons behind it. The counter-proposal will be rejected by 47 to 53 per cent respectively.

The adoption of 'stiff measures' against foreign criminals, sanctioned with mandatory expulsion without any descretion of a court's case-to-case review, will usher in a new phase in getting tough on crime in Switzerland.

Prison populations of up to 80 per cent foreigners and 20 per cent Swiss have supported the SVP (Swiss People's Party) notion of pushing through a referendum with an initiative / a bill that has now to be enacted as law and enforced by the Swiss parliament whose majority has not liked the probable outcome of this vote of their Swiss compatriots.

The implementation of this SVP-won initiative in becoming Swiss law will probably take a couple of years.

Further info:

Charts (latest estimates, final results) by

http://www.derbund.ch/schweiz/standard/Zuerich-sagt-haarscharf-Ja-zur-SVPInitiative/story/29080283

Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Emmenthal, Graubuenden, Thurgau: conservative Swiss cantons suddenly found themselves in the news Thursday evening 25 November as the accidental recipients of 100 kg of cocaine, with a street value of CHF1.5 million.

Seventy-five per cent of Swiss students have to work to finance their studies, and the work-study combination could be affecting their health, a study shows.