Tag Archives: 3) Swiss Markets and News

When the Belle-Idée project is fully up and running, three shuttle buses will offer a 24-hour on-demand door-to-door service at the Geneva hospital site. swissinfo.ch Over the past five years, various kinds of autonomous vehicles, including buses, have popped up on Swiss roads. But though testing continues, a driverless future might yet be some years away. On a crisp autumn morning in the Geneva countryside, a bright orange-and-white electric bus is winding through...

FINMA described the bank’s money laundering processes as “inadequate” and reprimanded it for a breach of its duty of due diligence in relation to anti-money laundering rules. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally The Swiss financial market regulator FINMA has reprimanded Bank Syz for breaching money laundering rules involving a business relationship with an Angolan client. “FINMA found that the bank did not make sufficient efforts to investigate the substantial growth in the...

Some countries like India have made rapid antigen tests a key part of their strategy for containing the coronavirus. Keystone / Str Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche plans to launch a test that can detect the coronavirus in 15 minutes. Could tests like this become the norm? With no vaccine in sight for at least a few months, testing is becoming a more important part of containing the coronavirus. Antigen tests, which detect the presence of a specific viral antigen...

EHL – source Wikipedia Around three quarters of the students at the hotel school of Lausanne (EHL) have been placed in quarantine after a number of students tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, reported RTS. The 2,500 students affected will be isolated until 28 September 2020 to stop the spread of the virus. The Swiss canton of Vaud, where recorded infections recently reached 213 per 100,000 over 14 days, is currently Switzerland’s Covid-19 hotspot. Eleven students spread...

Britain’s controversial Internal Market Bill has prompted Switzerland’s former chief negotiator with the EU, Michael Ambühl, to examine the thorny issue of sovereignty in EU talks. The issue of balancing access to the EU market in exchange for a degree of EU regulatory intrusion on home turf has come to the fore during the ongoing Brexit negotiations. The British government is trying to enact new legislation, the Internal Market Bill, that could limit the ability of...

The federal government will have more power to approve vaccines and treatments for Covid-19. Keystone / Peter Klaunzer Measures put in place by the federal government to help manage the coronavirus crisis can be officially extended thanks to a decision by parliament. On March 13, the federal government assumed some executive powers that allowed it to enact certain laws and measures to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. With the unanimous decision on Wednesday,...

Davos has hosted thousands of political, business and civil society leaders for 50 years. © Keystone / Christian Beutler The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) flagship summit may not take place in Davos next year, businesses in the alpine town have been warned. The pandemic had already forced organisers to postpone the event from its usual January slot to a potential early summer date. But hoteliers in Davos, the alpine resort that has hosted the global conference for the...

The public examines some of the 25 luxury cars seized by canton Geneva during a money laundering probe into Teodoro Obiang, the son of Equatorial Guinea’s President – but such seizures are rare, according to Thelesklaf. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron The former head of Switzerland’s anti-money laundering office says the country is failing to pull its weight in the fight against large scale corruption. Daniel Thelesklaf is convinced that billions of dollars are still...

© Jesada Wongsa | Dreamstime.com Compared to much of the world, confidence in the safety of vaccines is low in Switzerland, according to a recently published study. In 2015, only 30% of Swiss questioned strongly agreed that vaccines were safe, ranking it 133rd out of 149 nations in terms of confidence in vaccine safety. This compared to 89% in Argentina and 86% in both Liberia and Bangladesh. At the same time only 3% in Switzerland strongly disagreed with them being...

© David Moreno | Dreamstime.com The banned substance chlorothalonil, which is in some pesticides, has been found to be above the limit in 60% of ground water samples taken across the canton of Zurich over the last 12 months, reported SRF. Ground water is different to drinking water. Only 20% of drinking water samples taken across the canton had chlorothalonil concentrations above the legal limit, according to the study. However, Natalie Rickli, Zurich health...