Rome, Italy (GenevaLunch) – Barcelona beat a strangely subdued Manchester United in the final of the European Champions League. Man United dominated for the first 10 minutes but failed to convert their chances on goal. Barcelona then scored with their first attack as Eto’o took a pass from Iniesta, cut back past Vidic and then pushed the ball past Van der Saar in the Man U goal. The goal knocked the energy out of the English team and they never looked like coming back. Messi scored the second Barcelona goal and settled his personal contest with Ronaldo over who should be considered the player of the season. Details, Times, UK
Title: Nyon’s monthly flea market
Location: Nyon, Vaud
Link out: Click here
Description: One Sunday a month, Nyon is inundated with sellers (amateurs and professionals) and buyers looking for bargains. The market will resume in July.
Date: 31 May 2009
Orquestra da bomba do Hemeterio, Brazil
Montreux, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The popular Brazilian night at the Montreux Jazz Festival will be open to all this year, festival organizers announced 27 May as they unveiled the free festival programme. The Carnival Olinda-Recife will be at the centre of Brazilian night 11 July but the party will spill onto the streets of Montreux as the evening unfolds, to create a very carioca atmosphere in the lakeside city.
Music in the Park and the Montreux Jazz Café will also open to non-ticket holders that day.
Title: Concert, the rose and the lily
Location: Coppet, Vaud
Link out: Click here
Description: English and French vocal music from the 1600s presented by the Ensemble Vocal Amaryllis.
Date: 29 May 2009
Title: Astronomy: public watching
Location: Morges, Vaud
Link out: Click here
Description: For one night only the public at large will have the chance to mingle with amateur astronomers at the observatory in Morges.
Date: 02 Jun 2009
Update 17:00 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The search for a soldier who disappeared in the River Aare Tuesday 26 May continued Wednesday, with the Swiss army releasing details Wednesday afternoon about the accident but not the identity of the soldier. The soldier, who was working on bridge reinforcements as part of his training with the disaster intervention unit of the army, went swimming in the river with two other soldiers during their lunch break. He began to have trouble in the water and couldn’t make it to the bank, then was pulled under. The government report on the accident notes that soldiers in training are not allowed to go swimming during their breaks. A large rescue operation on land and in water has failed to turn up any signs of the young man, who is serving in the one year military programme.
Lausanne, Switzerland (24 Heures, Fre) – The 38-year-old mother who murdered her six-year-old son by drowning him in November 2007 did it out of vengeance, to remove him from his father, a judge in Lausanne declared Wednesday 27 May. He referred to the crime as an “assassination” and the work of an ego-centric woman who mistakenly saw herself as a victim and her husband as the one who should bear responsibility.
Background, “Mother drowns her six-year-old in Romanel-sur-Morges,” GenevaLunch, 20 November 2007
Bern, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – The lower house of the Swiss parliament has voted to bring back fixed prices for books, but given that the Federal Council has said clearly it opposes the idea, the proposed legislation has an uneasy future. In practice, the Conseil national is insisting that the Federal Council review to see if it is working efficiently, every three years, a price-setting system.
Rome, Italy (swissinfo) – Massimo Busacca might not be one of the best-known names going out on the field in Rome tonight for the Champions League football final, but he could well be one of the most important. The Swiss referee from Ticino is considered the number two referee in Europe, according to swissinfo, and he’ll be the man making the calls during tonight’s game. The semi-professional, who will earn CHF5,000 working the game, spends his weekdays managing the Ticino cantonal government’s restaurant in Bellinzona during the week.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss federal Competition Commission has decided to look more closely at the situation that will be created by a morning newspaper distribution agreement that could leave almost no competition in German-speaking Switzerland and parts of French-speaking Switzerland. The commission concluded after a preliminary review that further study is needed. Tamedia, NZZ and La Poste are seeking to cut costs by joining forces to distribute papers.
In another development linked to the increasingly difficult situation of Swiss media, several hundred journalists took to the streets in Zurich and Bern Tuesday 26 May over editorial staff job cuts announced by Tamedia.
Planned extension to WTO building (photo: Wittfoht)
Geneva, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – A referendum on a major extension to the lake-side Centre William Rappard, which houses the World Trade Organisation (WTO), will be put to the vote in Geneva 27 September 2009. The organizers of the referendum deposited 6,919 signatures with the city of Geneva 26 May. They oppose the planned building’s supposed encroachment on public land and claim that access to the lake will be restricted by a new security fence
Geneva, Switzerland (Tribune de Genève, Fre) – the city of Geneva’s notoriously complicated salary and benefits packages is about to be streamlined, with standard pay rates and fewer exceptions, according to the Tribune, which obtained a copy of a political agreement reached after months of wrangling.
Canadian writer Alice Munro says she is “absolutely amazed and thrilled,” writes The Globe & Mail, to have won the Man Booker International award for literature, which is open to writers from around the world and honours a writer for a body of work. The prize is a spinoff of the Man Booker, one of the best-known literary prizes, awarded to a writer from the British Commonwealth. The international prize, given every other year, carries an award of £60,000.
Lake Geneva, afternoon 26 May: storm lights warn sailors
Bern, Lucerne, Zurich, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – Several areas in eastern Switzerland were hard hit by heavy thunderstorms and winds Tuesday afternoon 26 May. A man was killed when a tree blew down and landed on the car he was driving in Romanshorn, Thurgau and a woman is in stable condition at a Bern hospital after she was hit by a falling branch. Lucerne was hit by flash floods that swamped cellars and Zurich had several minutes of hail. Fribourg suffered heavy damage from falling trees.
The Lake Geneva area had gusting winds and rain, but was spared the strength of the storm that hit further east.
The man from Missouri, John Yettaw, who swam across a lake to visit Burma/Myanmar political activist Suu Kyi is to give testimony Wednesday 27 May at her trial which Western governments are calling a “charade.” She is on trial for breaking the terms of her house arrest: she allowed Yettaw to spend two nights at her house on what she has said were humanitarian grounds because he had leg cramps. Suu Kyi is expected to be found guilty, which would lengthen the time of her house arrest at a time when the country is preparing for elections. Yettaw is under arrest for “immigration violations, illegal swimming and breaking a security law that protects the state from ‘subversive elements’,” reports Reuters.
Photo: IFRC
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Zimbabwe will mark its 100,000th case of cholera this week or next, says the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, IFRC. Almost 4,300 people have died of the disease since its outbreak in August 2008.
Updated 15:45 Ed. note: the number of deaths is rising and is now reported to be 23. A “powerful bomb” exploded in the centre of Lahore, Pakistan’s business centre Wednesday 27 May, killing 15 people and shearing the fronts off of several buildings in the area. The blast appears to have been set off by a suicide bomber but CNN reports that it was a well-coordinated attack with gunmen involved as well. The target was a police station with some 200 people inside and the building was demolished. Lahore was the target of bombs in March 2009, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility. BBC, CNN
US President Barack Obama has nominated US appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by David Souter, who is retiring. The US Senate must confirm the nomination. Sotomayor would be the first Supreme Court judge of Hispanic descent, and only the third woman to serve on the court. BBC, Reuters
Former US boxer Mike Tyson’s four-year-old daughter Exodus died in a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona a day after an accident where she became entangled in a cord on a treadmill which strangled her. She was found by her seven-year-old brother and rushed to hospital in critical condition. NPR
