Bitesize News

Montreux turned into a giant Freddie Mercury tribute this weekend, as the town marked what would have been the Queen singer's 80th birthday last Friday

Hundreds of Lausanne residents got a rare look inside the giant rebuild of the city's main station this weekend

Geneva has opened a new underground archaeological site displaying nearly 2,000 years of the city's history

Roughly one summer in two will be hotter than 2026, according to an ETH Zurich climatologist

After a decade of talks, 128 countries have reached the first global accord on autonomous weapons in Geneva

Switzerland's 27 September vote on tightening neutrality is splitting the political left three weeks out from polling day

Drought is squeezing Swiss cheese producers, with some Fribourg farmers now importing fodder from France just to keep their cows producing gruyère

Geneva's government will not appeal a court ruling that halted the tram 15 extension across the border to Saint-Julien-en-Genevois

A new University of Geneva study suggests the best way to get people to act on climate change is not to lecture them, but to move them

The commune of Crans-Montana has finally published the fire-inspection reports and internal audit tied to the Constellation nightclub tragedy, after months of refusing

Switzerland's family doctors have gone public with their anger at the new medical tariff Tardoc, saying it has failed to deliver the promised boost to general practice

French authorities have shut an Annecy street food outlet for 90 days after finding it employing five foreign workers without permits

Freddie Mercury would have turned 80 this Friday, and his statue still watches over Lake Geneva from Montreux

Leaves across Switzerland turned brown in mid-July, well before autumn — a sign of severe climate stress, not a natural cycle

Jura's parliament has voted down a motion demanding tighter rules for ride-hailing platforms like Uber and Bolt

The payment app Twint is branching beyond payments with a new digital shopping list

Switzerland's national railway is under fire for a blog post advising passengers to travel outside peak hours if they want a seat

Antoine Armand, elected mayor of Annecy in March, has made his first back-to-school visit as head of the cross-border city, meeting pupils and teachers at Cran-Gevrier's Vernay school on Tuesday morning

Rain in Switzerland is falling less often but more heavily when it does, and the trend is likely to continue, according to MeteoSwiss

Every big public event is likely to face tighter security after the fatal Aarau festival shooting, according to former national security chief André Duvillard

Zurich-based insurer Swiss Life will cut around 600 jobs by the end of 2028, with half of them in Switzerland

The security officer for Chermignon has told Valais prosecutors that no proper inspection of the Constellation bar ever took place before it opened in December 2015

Authorities now believe a lithium battery may have triggered Friday's warehouse fire at the Thévenaz-Leduc recycling site in Ecublens, though the cause has not yet been formally confirmed

Lake Geneva is up to 656 times more polluted by microplastics than previously thought, according to a new University of Lausanne and EPFL study

Swimming pools across French-speaking Switzerland have recorded unprecedented visitor numbers this summer, driven by four separate heatwaves

Nearly CHF 8 million has been declared for the two federal votes on 27 September, with the neutrality initiative alone drawing CHF 5.5 million

Switzerland's gender pay gap has narrowed slightly, but the unexplained portion still amounts to around CHF 640.- per month for women

Starbucks has banned electric scooters from all its Swiss branches, and Coop and Migros have followed suit

Swiss police have escalated the Aarau shooting to an international manhunt, with Fedpol launching arrest warrants through national and international systems

A University of Geneva study has confirmed what demographers call the "widowhood effect", and it hits Swiss men harder than women

A small exhibition opening this week at UBS headquarters in Zurich is celebrating 60 years since the first cash-machine withdrawal in Switzerland

Roger Federer has been inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame, and the Basel-born champion broke down in tears during his acceptance speech

Lausanne pedestrians have handed the city a petition with nearly 1,000 signatures, demanding action against cyclists and e-scooter riders who ignore pedestrian zones

Switzerland's Nepalese and Tibetan communities are still waiting for word from relatives after violent floods tore through a Himalayan valley last Wednesday

A 22-year-old woman has been identified as the victim of Saturday’s Aarau rave shooting, and German police have joined the Swiss manhunt for the gunmen still at large

Zurich will vote next month on whether Exit and Dignitas should be allowed to operate inside hospitals and rehabilitation clinics

British long-distance swimmer Neil Gilson has completed a two-year challenge to swim the length of Switzerland's ten largest lakes, finishing at Geneva's Bains des Pâquis on Wednesday

Switzerland's Federal Office of Transport has approved the second phase of the Lausanne tramway, clearing the way for a 3.1-kilometre northern extension from Renens to Villars-Sainte-Croix

Swiss transport police are being handed tasers to tackle rising violence on trains and stations

Geneva Airport has shut parts of its Terminal 2 after a wooden-framed hangar collapsed overnight in mid-July

A Swiss national is among more than 1,300 people missing after Wednesday's flash floods in Nepal, according to the Tourism Board

Cracks are showing inside the SVP over Christoph Blocher's neutrality initiative, ahead of the 27 September vote

Switzerland is rolling out its first biometric identity card, with applications opening from 2 October

Jura police are warning young adults about a car-leasing scam that could leave them facing heavy financial and criminal consequences

Raiffeisen has announced it will cut up to 180 jobs next year, even as the bank posts one of its strongest half-year results.

Switzerland's rail operator will now prioritise maintaining its existing network over building new lines, its new president André Wyss has said

Switzerland is heading into a mixed few days, with Saharan dust returning and thunderstorms sweeping in later today

Geneva's La Bâtie festival opened its 50th edition yesterday with three weeks of theatre, dance, circus and music across venues around the city

ChatGPT started displaying adverts to users in Switzerland yesterday, part of the biggest geographical rollout of paid promotions on the platform to date

The Salève cable car will reopen this morning, its director has confirmed, after a two-day shutdown triggered by travellers parking their caravans in its car park

Vaud communes, not the canton, are the ones responsible for making school buildings liveable through the region's worsening heatwaves

Around a hundred Skyguide employees rallied outside the air traffic controller's Geneva headquarters on Monday warning management against pushing through a planned wave of redundancies

Geneva's public-sector unions say the cantonal government is undermining the right to strike, after the education department refused to notify parents by post or email about last week's two-day walkout on 17 and 18 August

A former Yverdon-les-Bains resident convicted of plotting attacks in France has been stripped of his Swiss nationality, in a decision confirmed by the Federal Administrative Tribunal

Ahead of the 27 September vote on the "Safeguard Swiss Neutrality" initiative, Geneva Council of State member Nathalie Fontanet has restated the cantonal executive's rejection of the text

Switzerland's forests are being reshaped by drought faster than researchers expected

Switzerland is falling behind the European Union in tackling forced labour, La Liberté argues in a new analysis.

Switzerland's Federal Council has thrown out a parliamentary bid to curb English-language announcements on SBB trains and at railway stations

The Salève cable car has been shut down indefinitely after around fifteen caravans set up camp on the parking lot at the base station on Sunday

The foundation set up to help victims of the Crans-Montana fire has lost four of its nine board members in less than two months.

Vaud Green MP Sophie Michaud-Gigon has confirmed she will run for the Council of States in 2027

Le Temps reports Swiss insect populations are in sharp decline, with roughly 60% of studied species now threatened or potentially threatened

Vaud MPs are about to decide whether to hand the canton's hospital patient records to an American company — a switch critics call a strategic error over data sovereignty

A boat carrying 14 people has capsized on Lake Geneva, triggering a major rescue operation off the French shore near Évian

Swiss motorists and truckers are facing a fresh fuel shock, with diesel now averaging CHF 2.27 per litre — 27% more than in January

A runner's quest to break 30 minutes for 10 kilometres has become, in his own words, an obsession

Couples share not only similar backgrounds but also more of their DNA than chance would predict

The Federal Council have asked parliament for another CHF 970 million this year for air defence

A leading Swiss forest scientist says his profession's worst fears have now been realised

MeteoSuisse says a cold front is settling over Switzerland, bringing heavy showers and thunderstorms across the country.

Switzerland's decades old marriage tax penalty will finish on 1st January 2032, the Federal Council has confirmed

Residents of two Haute-Savoie villages have said the stench from a nearby agricultural methaniser has become unbearable

Swiss Post has confirmed 40 job cuts and 20 contract changes in its IT division after negotiations with the union Syndicom

Paleo Festival is asking you to help build the line up for next year

After weeks of hot, dry weather we are now expecting lots of rain through Thursday and Friday

Medbase, the retailer's medical arm, has bought the Ardentis chain of dental clinics from British investor Columna Capital

Road closures and parking restrictions are in force ahead of Friday's Athletissima meeting in Lausanne

Visitors to Europa Park are being warned of a slick new scam website copying the German theme park's real site

The payment app with more than 6 million users will offer digital direct debits from next year

A public sector strike coincided with the return to Geneva classrooms yesterday, but the impact on schools was limited

Sales of air conditioners are surging in Switzerland as households struggle through successive heatwaves