Новости за 13.03.2018

A total of 230 people lost their lives on Swiss roads last year, 14 more than in 2016, but the trend since 2013 is down.  Despite the rise in deaths on the roads in 2017, the figures have come down significantly since 2013, according to the Federal Office of Transport. In 2013 there were 269 fatal accidents on the roads, or 39 more than last year.  The trend is also improving with regard to the number of seriously injured, which fell from 4,129 in 2013 to 3,654 in 2017.  The Federal Office of... Читать дальше...

There’s a surprising number of Swiss cities on the list.

International treaties or national law – what takes precedence? In Switzerland, a people’s initiative wants to decide this once and for all, but is coming up against strong resistance in parliament and civil society. Switzerland has signed over 5,000 international treaties with other states. But those behind the people’s initiative “Swiss law instead of foreign judges” want to ensure that in the future Swiss law takes precedence over the international. Launched by the conservative-right Swiss People’s Party... Читать дальше...

International treaties or national law – what takes precedence? In Switzerland, a people’s initiative wants to decide this once and for all, but is coming up against strong resistance in parliament and civil society. Switzerland has signed over 5,000 international treaties with other states. But those behind the people’s initiative “Swiss law instead of foreign judges” want to ensure that in the future Swiss law takes precedence over the international. Launched by the conservative-right Swiss People’s Party... Читать дальше...

Global warming is making life difficult for the mountain hare in the Swiss Alps. As a result, they are becoming increasingly rare, an international study headed by Swiss scientists has revealed.  Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the University of Bern predict that the mountain hare’s alpine habitat will shrink by a third every year until 2100. The team’s study, co-conducted with the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna... Читать дальше...

The Swiss-based Bruno Manser Fund and two Malaysian NGOs have handed over a petition to the Swiss government urging it to return CHF104 million ($110 million) of illicit profits to Malaysia which is linked to the 1MDB state-run investment fund corruption scandal.  The NGOs criticise the fact that Switzerland currently has no legal basis to return the looted money to the Malaysian people. They condemn statements made by Finance Minister Ueli Maurer that the money confiscated by Switzerland from the... Читать дальше...

Tracking devices can be used to investigate cases of suspected welfare abuse in the future, parliament decided on Monday.  A judge’s approval will still be needed, however. Cases of benefit fraud regularly spark heated debate in Swiss politics and public life. In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decided that there was no legal basis in Swiss law for monitoring suspects using GPS tracking devices. The Swiss parliament – both the House of Representatives and the Senate - has agreed... Читать дальше...

The number of multimillionaires in Switzerland – people earning over $5 million (CHF4.7 million) a year – rose by 13% in 2017 compared with the previous year, a new report has found.  The KnightFrank 2018 Wealth Report published on Tuesday said there were 52,950 multimillionaires in Switzerland last year, up from 47,000 the year before. By 2022, this figure is expected to rise to 64,000. Worldwide there are thought to be around 2.5 million multimillionaires. The biggest rise last year was in Russia. Читать дальше...

As guard dogs have been a threat to the wellbeing of hikers, Swiss authorities have now committed to measures to better train the animals. (SRF, swissinfo.ch) The breeder Christian Mühlethaler from Meinisberg in Canton Bern is one of the 20 breeders in Switzerland working with livestock guard dogs. At the end of December one of his dogs had a litter of twelve puppies. As part of new measured introduced by authorities, Mühlethaler’s dogs will have to undergo training within the first year of age... Читать дальше...

The Swiss agribusiness group Syngenta has agreed to pay more than $1.5 billion (CHF 1.4 billion) to American farmers in what is believed to be the largest agricultural settlement in US history. The farmers complained that the marketing of the company’s genetically modified corn seeds had excluded them from the Chinese market. The settlement, involving more than 100,100 farmers, was reached on Monday, the Associated Press reported. The farmers said that Syngenta had caused five years of depressed... Читать дальше...

Geneva’s public prosecutor has opened a criminal investigation into top managers at an oil trading firm in the city and has made two arrests, allegedly linked to a corruption scheme in Venezuela.  According to an Associated Press (AP) report on Monday, two executives at oil trading company Helsinge in Geneva have been arrested by Swiss prosecutors. The AP cited an anonymous source familiar with the case who said the arrests followed allegations made in a complaint linked to the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA. Читать дальше...

As the United Nations Human Rights Council hears a new report on abuses in South Sudan, we look at how two Swiss non-governmental groups are working against the odds to help alleviate the suffering of the population. On Tuesday, the Human Rights Council is discussing a UN commission report documenting new abuses against civilians in South Sudan, including gang rapes, beheadings and blindings. “We talk of a crime against humanity of persecution with an ethnic dimension,” says commission member Andrew Clapham... Читать дальше...

A new test makes it possible for Swiss police officers to find out whether someone is smoking an illegal substance. The test is reliable and cheap to carry out, and quickly allows the police to see if someone is in possession of legal, industrial hemp or a banned type of cannabis. (RTS/swissinfo.ch)  Legal cannabis has become a flourishing business in Switzerland, which changed its laws in 2011 to let adults buy and use cannabis with up to 1% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the active ingredient that gets smokers high. Читать дальше...

The trial opens on Tuesday of a man accused of the December 2015 murder of a woman, two boys, and a girl. According to prosecutors, the accused was planning further murders when captured. The murders took place in Rupperswil, in the northern canton of Aargau, after what the charge sheet has described as the meticulous planning of the (now) 34-year-old accused. Some months before the crime, the man, who had been aware of his own paedophilic tendencies for years, purchased his weapon, a 30cm kitchen knife... Читать дальше...