Новости за 14.05.2024

A social media post by the president of Bern’s cantonal government critical of the Eurovision Song Contest has created waves and will be discussed in the cantonal parliament. On Saturday Switzerland won the 2024 competition, held in Malmö, Sweden, and as a result will host the event next year. + Switzerland wins Eurovision Song Contest 2024 However, on Monday Philippe Müller, president of the cantonal government, tweeted that the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) “has been corrupt through and through... Читать дальше...

Last year 317 people took part in a protection programme run by the Specialist Unit for Trafficking in Women and Women’s Migration (FIZ) in German-speaking Switzerland. Three-quarters of the cases involved victims of human trafficking. Almost three-quarters of trafficked persons were exploited in the sex trade, FIZ said on Monday. Just over 10% were exploited in the domestic and care work sector. Compared to the previous year, the number of cases of human trafficking fell from 259 to 238. + A series... Читать дальше...

Last year there were 47,719 farms in Switzerland, 625 fewer than a year earlier. More and more farms are producing organically: their share now stands at 16.5%, and they cover a fifth of the utilised agricultural area. In 2023, 7,896 farms were cultivating their land according to organic farming guidelines, 77 more than the previous year (1%), the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) reported on Tuesday. However, there has been a slowdown compared with the years 2019 to 2022. The cantons of Schaffhausen... Читать дальше...

Climate change has led to a sharp rise in the number of people suffering from hay fever in Switzerland. A hundred years ago hay fever was largely unknown in Switzerland, but today it affects around one in five people in Switzerland. Climate change has led to many allergy-causing plants releasing their pollen earlier and with greater intensity, according to a factsheet published by the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT) on Tuesday. Climate change also favours the spread of invasive, highly allergenic plants such as ragweed. Читать дальше...

Four years ago, our lives were upended by the Covid-19 pandemic. Countries locked down, millions became ill, millions died. And when the vaccine finally arrived, it was not fairly distributed. Rich countries bought too many, poor countries waited, with nothing. “What we saw during the Covid-19 pandemic was collapse. Basically, a complete failure of international cooperation,” says Suerie Moon, from the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Surely we can do better? Countries are gathering... Читать дальше...

Almost half of all Swiss citizens hang on to their old smartphones, tablets and laptops, according to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). Sustainability in the digital sector is thus still in its infancy. Between 66% and 80% of the digital sector’s carbon footprint comes from consumer devices, the FSO wrote on Monday in a report on ICT (information and communication technology) equipment and sustainability. In Switzerland, 8.2% of electricity consumption is attributed to the entertainment, information and communication media sector. Читать дальше...

The police intervened early on Tuesday morning to dislodge the pro-Palestinian students who had been occupying the University of Geneva for almost a week. They evacuated the 50 or so protesters who had refused to leave, according to the Swiss News Agency Keystone-ATS. Around 20 police officers in uniform and plainclothes entered the UniMail building at around 5am, said the news agency’s journalist on the scene. The officers carried out identity checks and evacuated the students. The University of... Читать дальше...

Switzerland was a key development actor in Rwanda at the time of the 1994 genocide. Historian Thanushiyah Korn explains the nature of that relationship – and whether Switzerland could have done more to prevent the violence that claimed over 800,000 lives. In 1963, just a year after gaining independence, Rwanda became Switzerland’s first-ever priority country for development aid. Over 30 years, the Swiss spent CHF353 million ($387 million) on bilateral and multilateral projects in the small African nation. Читать дальше...

In 1994 Switzerland failed to arrest the man known as the “financier” of the genocide in Rwanda while he was on Swiss soil. As Bern begins work on a report revisiting this episode, SWI swissinfo.ch looks at the case of Félicien Kabuga and its reverberating consequences 30 years later. Félicien Kabuga spent 25 years on the run. For much of that time, he had a $5 million (CHF4.5 million) bounty on his head, put up by the United States after international prosecutors accused him of helping to instigate... Читать дальше...