Flor Bressers, on Belgian and Europol most-wanted lists, has been on the run since 2020
One of Europe’s most-wanted drug lords, a Belgian with a master’s degree in criminology, has been arrested in Switzerland after two years on the run.
Flor Bressers, 35, nicknamed “the finger cutter”, has been sought since 2020 when he was given a four-year jail sentence for kidnapping, slashing with a razor and beating a Dutch florist who failed to smuggle drugs past UK customs.
Continue reading...Move comes amid ‘frank and substantive’ talks in Geneva and announcement by Russia of new military exercises
The US has offered to hold a summit between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin as a last-ditch effort to stop the slide to a new war in Europe, as Russia continued to build up its forces along the Ukraine border and announced new naval exercises in the Black Sea.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said Washington and its allies were also ready to respond in writing next week to Russian demands on the future of Nato and European security, which Moscow has said must be addressed to avoid it taking “military measures”. But, speaking in Geneva where he held talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Blinken repeated the US and Nato position there could still be no compromise on the central issue of the right of Ukraine and other countries to join Nato in the future.
Continue reading...Swiss skiing holidays in doubt as country joins Spain in tightening travel rules to contain Omicron variant
Tour operators are scrambling to rearrange Swiss skiing holidays after the country joined Spain in tightening travel restrictions amid rising concerns about the spread of the new Omicron Covid variant.
From Saturday night, Switzerland mandated 10 days of quarantine for all new arrivals, in effect wrecking skiing holidays in the Swiss Alps until further notice. Travel firms are also wrestling with Spain’s ban on non-vaccinated arrivals that will affect British holidaymakers from Wednesday 1 December.
Continue reading...After tense campaign, early results show about two-thirds in favour of law giving legal basis for Covid pass
Swiss voters have firmly backed the law behind the country’s Covid pass in a referendum, following a tense campaign that saw unprecedented levels of hostility.
Early results on Sunday showed about two-thirds of voters supported the law, with market researchers GFS Bern projecting 63% backing.
Continue reading...Urgent measures needed to avoid ‘chaos’, warns expert, as Spain, Portugal and Netherlands tighten rules
Germany’s top health officials have raised the prospect of a national lockdown, warning that a rapidly rising number of coronavirus cases and a dramatic increase in the number of patients in intensive care meant contact reduction was the only way of tackling the crisis and avoiding “the road to chaos”.
“We need a massive contact reduction immediately,” said Prof Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s federal disease control agency.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Oxfordshire-based Emergex gets go-ahead for trials in Switzerland for skin patch vaccine
An Oxfordshire-based company will soon start clinical trials of a second-generation vaccine against Covid-19, an easy-to-administer skin patch that uses T-cells to kill infected cells and could offer longer-lasting immunity than current vaccines.
Emergex was set up in Abingdon in 2016 to develop T-cell vaccines, the brainchild of Prof Thomas Rademacher, the firm’s chief executive and professor emeritus of molecular medicine at the University College London medical school.
Continue reading...Andreas Fontana’s debut feature is an unnervingly subtle drama about a Swiss private banker visiting clients in Argentina during the period of the military junta and ‘disappearances’
Pure evil is all around in this unnervingly subtle, sophisticated movie; an eerie oppression in the air. Andreas Fontana is a Swiss director making his feature debut with this conspiracy drama-thriller, shot with a kind of desiccated blankness, about the occult world of super-wealth and things not to be talked about. The title is a Swiss banker’s code-word in conversation for “Be silent”.
It is set in 1980 in Argentina, at the time of the junta’s dirty war against leftists and dissidents, and you could set it alongside recent movies including Benjamín Naishtat’s Rojo (2018) and Francisco Márquez’s A Common Crime (2020), which intuited the almost supernatural fear among those left behind when people they knew had vanished and joined los desaparecidos, the disappeared ones. But Azor gives a queasy new perspective on the horror of those times, and there is even a nauseous echo of the Swiss banks’ attitude to their German neighbours in the second world war.
Continue reading...After positive clinical trials for antiviral drug Molnupiravir, it joins other medicines that have shown promise
The first clinical trial results showing a positive effect for a pill that can be taken at home has been hailed as a potential gamechanger that could provide a new way to protect the most vulnerable people from the worst effects of Covid-19. Molnupiravir joins a growing list of medicines that have shown promise. Here are some of the main developments in treatments so far.
Continue reading...‘Marriage for All’ proposal backed by 64.1% of voters in nationwide referendum
Swiss voters have decided by a clear margin to allow same-sex couples to marry, in a referendum that brings the Alpine nation into line with many others in western Europe.
Official results showed the measure passed with 64.1% of voters in favour and won a majority in all of Switzerland’s 26 cantons.
Continue reading...Lee “Scratch” Perry, who has died aged 85, was one of Jamaica’s finest and most unpredictable record producers, as well as a much recorded singer. But perhaps his greatest global legacy was the profound effect he had on the king of reggae, Bob Marley.
As a singer in the Wailers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston, Marley had experienced a modest degree of success in Jamaica before he came into Perry’s charismatic orbit in 1970. Hooking up with Perry changed the way Marley saw things, pulling him away from the measured harmonies of a trio towards something more heartfelt.
Continue reading...Supercomputer calculation took 108 days and nine hours – 3.5 times as fast as previous record
Swiss researchers have calculated the mathematical constant pi to a new world-record level of exactitude, hitting 62.8tn figures using a supercomputer.
“The calculation took 108 days and nine hours,” the Graubuenden University of Applied Sciences said in a statement.
Continue reading...Swiss court ruling is not the first time plunder of DRC’s mineral wealth has been linked to the killing of Congolese people. Without accountability, it won’t be the last
According to the Swiss federal criminal court last week, the corruption destroying the Democratic Republic of the Congo – where devastating conflicts over minerals used in our electronics have killed more than six million people – is inextricably linked to the UK, Gibraltar and Switzerland.
It was a significant moment exposing corruption that has fuelled not only grinding poverty, famine and unemployment in DRC but also the impunity and violence required to sustain it. Yet, unless there is accountability, it won’t change.
Continue reading...CDU leader Armin Laschet caught laughing on camera as president delivered solemn address
More flash-floods have devastated towns in Austria, Bavaria and eastern Germany, as the frontrunner to replace the chancellor, Angela Merkel, was forced to apologise after seeming to make light of a catastrophic situation that has claimed the lives of more than 150 people.
The Alpine district of Berchtesgadener Land declared a state of emergency on Saturday evening after heavy rainfall led to flooded streets and landslides, leaving at least one person dead.
Continue reading...Kylian Mbappé was France’s sure thing. That is why he was fifth in their list of penalty takers and is why, when he stepped up to keep them in Euro 2020, the thought he might miss felt like too heady a twist in the narrative. Things like that have simply not happened to Mbappé during a young career of rare accomplishment, but here came the kind of horror that exposes even the preternaturally gifted as flesh-and-blood mortals: Yann Sommer, Switzerland’s exceptional goalkeeper, smelled weakness and read his intentions correctly, diving right and clawing the spot-kick away. France were out; their delirious opponents had made their own slice of history and a tournament of unstinting drama took its least plausible turn yet.
Related: ‘He is very affected by it’: Deschamps defends Mbappé as France crash out
Continue reading...Moscow has reported the highest death toll of any Russian city, while the Delta variant is forcing tighter restrictions in the Asia-Pacific region
Moscow has recorded the highest Covid-19 daily death toll of any Russian city so far, as the highly contagious Delta variant forced tougher restrictions on countries across the Asia-Pacific region and fuelled mounting concern over holiday travel in Europe.
Vaccinations have brought infection numbers down in many wealthy countries, and curbs on daily life continue to ease in much of the EU and US, but experts warn the fast-spreading strain means the pandemic – while slowing globally – is far from over.
Continue reading...Alieu Kosiah gets maximum 20-year sentence in Switzerland’s first war crimes trial in a civilian court
A Liberian rebel commander has been sentenced in Switzerland to 20 years in jail for rape, killings and an act of cannibalism, in one of the first convictions over the west African country’s civil war.
The case was also Switzerland’s first war crimes trial in a civilian court. It involved 46-year-old Alieu Kosiah, who went by the nom de guerre “bluff boy” in the rebel faction Ulimo that fought former President Charles Taylor’s army in the 1990s.
Continue reading...US president hails ‘good and positive’ talks but added ‘proof of the pudding is in the eating’
The US will retaliate if Russia continues to carry out malicious cyber-attacks against American targets, Joe Biden said on Wednesday, after holding “good and positive” talks in Geneva with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
Speaking after their first face-to-face summit, Biden said he had made clear the Kremlin had to “abide by the rules of the road” or face unspecified consequences. Putin was aware the US possessed “unrivalled” cyber capacities, Biden stressed.
Continue reading...After shaking hands for the cameras, the US president, Joe Biden, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, plunged into hours of face-to-face talks on Wednesday at a lush lakeside Swiss mansion. It was a highly anticipated summit at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries
Continue reading...Swiss say terms unacceptable despite Brussels’ claims they are better than those offered to UK
Switzerland has walked out of talks on a closer trading relationship with the European Union despite being offered better terms than the UK in key areas, EU officials have claimed.
On Wednesday the country’s foreign minister, Ignazio Cassis, pulled the plug on long-running discussions with the EU, saying that Berne’s conditions were “not met”.
Continue reading...Critics of 2020 law allowing gay couples to marry gather 61,027 signatures to force national vote
Switzerland will hold a referendum on whether to push ahead with same-sex marriage after opponents forced the government to hold a binding vote on a 2020 law allowing gay couples to marry.
The Swiss parliament passed a bill recognising same-sex marriage last December, several years after most other western European states.
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