Новости за 13.01.2018

Bern cantonal police have confirmed that they are investigating a provocative banner that read “Kill Trump With His Own Weapon!” used in an anti-World Economic Forum (WEF) rally in the Swiss capital last weekend.  The banner, which featured at the head of a procession of 1,000 people who demonstrated against the forthcoming WEF in Davos, mimicked a poster unfurled in a May 2017 Bern rally protesting against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. That banner read “Kill Erdogan With His Own Weapons!”... Читать дальше...

More than 1,000 people took to the streets of the Swiss capital, Bern, to protest against the forthcoming World Economic Forum. Organisers say numbers were boosted by the announced participation of United States President Donald Trump in Davos. The procession passed peacefully, but was noticeable by some provocative banners, notably one that read “Kill Trump With His Own Weapon!” This mimicked a controversial poster unfurled in a May 2017 Bern rally protesting against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan... Читать дальше...

More than 1,000 people took to the streets of the Swiss capital, Bern, to protest against the forthcoming World Economic Forum. Organisers say numbers were boosted by the announced participation of United States President Donald Trump in Davos. The procession passed peacefully, but was noticeable by some provocative banners, notably one that read “Kill Trump With His Own Weapon!” This mimicked a controversial poster unfurled in a May 2017 Bern rally protesting against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan... Читать дальше...

A Swiss art dealer has revealed how he was conned out of half a million francs by a Romanian criminal gang operating a classic ‘rip-deal’. One of the gang was caught and is due to soon appear before a Basel court. The dealer, who does not want to be named, told the Schweiz am Wochenende newspaper how the gang, posing as agents for a wealthy art buyer, agreed a CHF3.5 million ($3.6 million) sale in exchange for a CHF500,000 commission. One of the gang members insisted on seeing the commission in... Читать дальше...

Behind almost every story about Switzerland is a number of some kind. Here’s a round-up of the most interesting statistics to appear in the week that was. Monday 2 That’s by how many degrees the average temperature in Zurich-area train carriages will drop as part of a Swiss Federal Railways experiment to lower the heat and save energy.  5 The maximum avalanche warning level of 5 was issued for large parts of southern Switzerland, and later in the week access to the resort town of Zermatt was... Читать дальше...

The Col de la Forclaz alpine road pass, linking the popular ski regions around Martigny in Switzerland and Chamonix in France, has been closed due to a rockfall that threatens houses on the Swiss side. Around 3,500 cubic metres of rubble fell onto the road on Saturday morning. No-one was injured, but several houses were evacuated and rocks fell perilously close to the village of Trient in canton Valais, making the water supply unsafe. + Read more on the landslide threat in Switzerland The road... Читать дальше...

You might expect that a dark road ahead would prompt motorists to slow down, but a collaborative study led by researchers at the University of St Gallen has reached the opposite conclusion. The researchers found that motorists were significantly more likely to break the speed limit when the surroundings were dark, and to react to conditions of lower light by increasing their driving speed. They observed this correlation even when other factors like traffic and the time of day were taken into account. Читать дальше...

A Swiss archaeologist has unearthed the earliest known Scythian royal tomb in Siberia’s “Valley of Kings” after finding the site using high-resolution satellite images. Gino Caspari, from the University of Bern, confirmed her suspicions during a dig last summer in the remote Siberian wilderness. The discovery of the Kurgan, a burial site of Scythian princes, was revealed by the university this week.  Analysis of wooden beams found at the site, known as Tunnug 1 or Arzhan 0, dated them to the 8th century BC... Читать дальше...

Three hospitals have been fined for buying defective medical equipment from Pakistan and failing to report the matter to the national supervisor.  The Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products (Swissmedic) confirmed to the Swiss news agency that it had issued CHF5,000 ($5,150) fines to the university hospitals at Zurich and Basel and the cantonal hospital of St Gallen. The products included cannulas for heart surgery on babies and other equipment that was partly rusty, bent, broken or contained metal splinters. Читать дальше...

Train and road routes to Zermatt have been restored, allowing trapped tourists to leave the Swiss ski resort. The risk of avalanches in the region has also been considerably reduced since the beginning of the week. Some 13,000 guests were affected by avalanches that had severely disrupted the area since Monday. The Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn railway company resumed its service between Visp and Zermatt at midday on Friday, after the track was successfully cleared of snow.  Road and rail access to... Читать дальше...

Switzerland’s Mühleberg nuclear plant plans to build a facility to deal with 1,000 tonnes of light radioactive waste after it goes offline next year. Such treatment centres have been given the green light by a government proposal to update laws. The agency running the canton Bern plant told Swiss public television that it wants to have the treatment facility up and running by 2025, and treating the radioactive waste for the following 30 years. But a spokesperson would not reveal how much it would cost... Читать дальше...

The 88th instalment of the Lauberhorn ski race kicks off this weekend in the Swiss resort of Wengen. What are some of the facts and figures driving the ski event that captures the world's attention? There are a lot of superlatives to describe the Lauberhorn ski race. It's the oldest and longest race of the International Ski Federation's Ski World Cup, and the most important sporting event in the Jungfrau ski region. It draws one of the largest audiences on Swiss television – more than one million viewers. Читать дальше...

Between 1936 and 1938, Swiss photographer Annemarie Schwarzenbach travelled several times to the United States. swissinfo.ch looks at a selection of her work that documents the Great Depression. In the 1930s, Annemarie Schwarzenbach crossed America to get closer to the people and their stories. What emerged was a body of socially critical writings and images. In 1936, she followed the re-election of Franklin Roosevelt in New York, and the following year she traveled with American journalist and... Читать дальше...

What if street lights varied in intensity depending on the traffic? It could save a lot of energy, and a Swiss company’s already on the case.

​​​​​​​ Sophie Taeuber-Arp, the long-neglected pioneer of modernism, died on this day from carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty stove 75 years ago. In this 2014 article, swissinfo.ch reported on how the artist – who had been somewhat overshadowed during her lifetime by her husband Jean Arp, the Dada co-founder – had become the subject of a major retrospective in Switzerland.