Category Archives: Switzerland

Gotthard rail tunnel, world’s longest, closes for months after Swiss derailment

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Sixteen freight carriages run off rails, tearing up eight kilometres of train track and leaving engineering marvel inaugurated in 2016 unable to take passengers

Train passengers between north and southernmost Switzerland will have to skip the world’s longest train tunnel and go back to the longer scenic route for months, rail authorities have said, after a freight service derailed and tore up the track.

Sixteen cars that jumped the tracks in last Thursday’s derailment remained stuck inside the 57km (35-mile) long Gotthard base tunnel in the southern Ticino region, national railway operator SBB said on Wednesday.

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Nile Rodgers asks populist Swiss party to stop using We Are Family ‘soundalike’

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Co-author of Sister Sledge song ‘about inclusion and diversity’ condemns move by rightwing SVP

The songwriter and musician Nile Rodgers has asked Switzerland’s rightwing populist Swiss People’s party (SVP) to cease and desist from using a “soundalike” version of Sister Sledge’s hit We Are Family in its election campaigns.

Ahead of Swiss parliamentary elections in October, the Eurosceptic and anti-immigration SVP on Monday released Das Isch d’SVP (That’s the SVP), a song whose chorus directly echoes that of the 1979 Sister Sledge hit composed by Rodgers and Bernard Edwards.

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Border terrier makes incredible journey 100 miles across Switzerland

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Lucky was left in kennels in Bern but escaped and made her way to Lake Geneva before being found and traced to owners

An escaped border terrier named Lucky made an epic 100-mile journey across Switzerland on the eve of the country’s national holiday, according to local media reports.

Her owners had left her in kennels in the region of Bern, but the 14-year-old dog broke out on Monday evening. The following morning she turned up in Geneva 160 kilometres (100 miles) away, the RTS public broadcaster reported.

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Body of hiker missing since 1986 found near Matterhorn

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Police confirm remains discovered on melting glacier in Swiss mountains are those of German climber

The remains of a German mountain climber who disappeared while crossing a glacier near the Matterhorn mountain nearly 40 years ago have been discovered in melting ice.

Two climbers found the remains on 12 July while hiking along the Theodul Glacier in Zermatt, Valais, southern Switzerland, police said on Thursday.

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Lightning strikes twice as rescuers of Swiss victims are also hit

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Police officer and helicopter pilot struck on the way to help victims of earlier blast in Fribourg canton of Switzerland

Lightning never strikes twice, until it does: a police officer and helicopter pilot rushing to help two people injured in a lightning strike on Friday were themselves also hit, Swiss authorities said.

A 51-year-old man and 16-year-old boy were struck by lightning around 8.30am while working in a field in Ménières, in the western canton of Fribourg, regional police said in a statement.

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Tourists helicoptered out of Swiss ski resort after cable car breaks down

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Chairlift was also part of rescue operation to evacuate almost 300 people from ski station at 3,000 metres

Helicopters have been used to evacuate nearly 300 people from a high-mountain station in the Swiss Alps after a cable car to the top broke down.

A technical problem was detected on Thursday morning involving a cable car up to the popular Glacier 3000 ski resort in Les Diablerets mountain massif in south-western Switzerland, the station chief said.

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Huge landslide misses Swiss mountain village of Brienz ‘by a hair’

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Rockfall buries access road but stops just in front of hamlet, which had been evacuated in anticipation

A large rockfall has narrowly missed a Swiss mountain village whose inhabitants were evacuated last month over fears of a landslide.

The bulk of the rock, which geologists had warned was in danger of falling directly onto the village of Brienz, crashed to the ground on Thursday night, authorities in the Albula community in the canton of Graubünden said on Twitter.

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Three Dutch mountaineers found dead in Swiss Alps

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Swiss authorities have launched an investigation into the deaths and said they cannot rule out that the three died in an avalanche

Three Dutch mountaineers who had been missing for days have been found dead in the Swiss Alps, and police suggested they may have been victims of an avalanche.

Two men aged 32 and 40 and a 30-year-old woman had been hiking in the southern Swiss canton of Valais when they disappeared, regional police said on Monday.

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Three dead in tourist plane crash in Switzerland

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Pilot and two passengers died at scene of accident in steep and forested area in west of country

A tourist plane crashed in a wooded, mountainous area of western Switzerland on Saturday, killing the three people onboard, police said.

The small tourist plane crashed in a steep and forested area near Ponts-De-Martel in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel at about 10.20am (0820 GMT), regional police said.

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Kemi Badenoch flying to Switzerland to discuss post-Brexit trade deal

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Business and trade secretary to meet Swiss counterpart on Monday to boost trade between two ‘services superpowers’

Kemi Badenoch will fly to Switzerland on Monday for talks with her Swiss counterpart on a new post-Brexit trade deal, describing the two countries as “natural trading partners”.

The business and trade secretary is meeting Guy Parmelin in Berne to discuss a “modern” UK-Switzerland free trade agreement (FTA) that would boost trade between two “services superpowers”, she said.

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Credit Suisse says £55bn left bank in lead-up to rescue by UBS

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Results reported for what is likely to be the last time as lender’s takeover by Swiss rival nears completion

Credit Suisse said customers pulled more than 61bn Swiss francs (£55bn) worth of assets from the bank at the start of the year, laying bare the scale of the panic that contributed to its failure and emergency takeover by its rival UBS last month.

The Swiss lender said the “significant withdrawals” were partly to blame for its poor financial performance in the first quarter, with its adjusted pre-tax loss ballooning to 1.3bn Swiss francs for the first three months of the year. That compares with a profit of 300m Swiss francs during the same period in 2022.

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Credit Suisse investors suing Swiss regulator after £4bn bond wipeout

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Finma accused of acting unlawfully and undermining confidence in Switzerland as a financial centre

A group of Credit Suisse investors who lost bonds worth more than CHF 4.5bn (£4bn) are suing Switzerland’s financial regulator over a decision to wipe out risky bank debt after an emergency merger with UBS last month.

The investors filed their claim at a court in St Gallen, in the north-east of Switzerland, weeks after Swiss authorities orchestrated the takeover of Credit Suisse by its larger rival UBS, to try to stem a crisis of confidence in the global banking sector.

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Furious Credit Suisse investors say bank’s board should be ‘put behind bars’

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Shareholders lash out during final AGM as boss apologises for crisis that led to takeover of lender by UBS

Furious Credit Suisse investors at its final ever annual meeting blocked executive pay plans and called for board members to be “put behind bars”, as the Swiss lender’s chair said he was “truly sorry” over the bank’s demise.

Shareholders used most of the nearly five-hour annual general meeting in Zurich – the last in the 167-year-old bank’s history – to voice fury over poor management, hitting out at excessive pay for “incompetent and greedy” bankers who they said took too many risks and endangered Switzerland’s economic prosperity.

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Switzerland’s attorney general to investigate Credit Suisse takeover

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Inquiry to focus on whether emergency state-backed UBS takeover breached criminal law

Switzerland’s federal prosecutor has launched an investigation into whether last month’s state-backed takeover of the stricken bank Credit Suisse by its bigger rival UBS broke Swiss criminal law.

The office of the attorney general said it was looking into potential breaches by government officials, regulators and executives at the two banks who thrashed out an emergency merger over a frantic weekend in mid-March to prevent a wider financial meltdown.

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Switzerland and France accused of lack of climate action in ECHR hearing

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Group of Swiss women and French ex-mayor suing their governments in first such cases heard by rights court

The governments of Switzerland and France have been accused of breaching the human rights of their citizens by not acting decisively enough on climate change, at a landmark legal hearing in Strasbourg.

A panel of judges at the European court of human rights heard petitions from a group of Swiss women and a French former mayor seeking to bolster climate action in their countries. Although climate litigation has spread quickly around the world, these are the first such cases to be heard by the ECHR.

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Credit Suisse shares continue to fall despite efforts to calm nerves

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Lifelines handed to Swiss bank and US regional bank First Republic fail to ease investor concerns

Credit Suisse shares came under renewed pressure on Friday, despite fresh attempts by central banks and politicians to calm fears about a crisis in the global banking industry sparked by the collapse of two US banks this week.

Shares in Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second largest bank, fell 8% on Friday despite securing a £45bn emergency loan from the Swiss National Bank just days earlier to shore up its liquidity after a week of panic.

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Credit Suisse takes $54bn loan from Swiss central bank after share price plunge

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After largest shareholder was unable to provide backing, Europe’s 17th largest lender says it will use government help to become ‘simpler and more focused’

Credit Suisse has announced that it will take a CHF50bn ($53.7bn) loan from the Swiss central bank, in an action it says will “pre-emptively strengthen its liquidity” as it moves to stem a crisis of confidence a day after its share price plummeted.

This additional liquidity would support the bank in taking the “necessary steps to create a simpler and more focused bank built around client needs”, its statement said. The bank said it was also making buyback offers on about $3bn worth of debt.

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‘Gruyere’ can be used to describe US cheeses, court rules

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Decision means word cannot be restricted in US only for kind made originally in France or Switzerland

A US appeals court has ruled that the word “gruyere” is a common label for cheese and cannot be reserved just for the kind made originally in France or Switzerland.

The US does not have the same strict rules as Europe on the designation of origin for foods, said judges in the Richmond, Virginia-based US court of appeals for the fourth circuit.

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Glencore shareholders to receive almost £6bn after record profits

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Mining and commodities firm’s pre-tax profit climbed 60% to £28.2bn last year, up £10.6bn on 2021

Glencore will give almost £6bn to shareholders after the mining and commodities company reported record pre-tax profits of more than £28bn in 2022, boosted by rocketing oil and coal prices.

The Switzerland-based group, whose market capitalisation makes it one of the largest FTSE 100 companies, announced a payout of £5.9bn ($7.1bn) to shareholders, including dividends and a new £1.2bn share buyback programme.

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