Get out the waterskis!
Here comes the sun! Show melt season is here
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – There is plenty of snow but you’ll have to be an earlybird this weekend to avoid skiing in soupy stuff. Temperatures are rapidly climbing, with highs Friday of 16C in Geneva, 17 in Lausanne, 19! in Sion and 11C even in Zermatt, this is spring ski season.
Weather forecast
MeteoSwiss is promising us more of the same Saturday, but temperatures will drop Sunday to highs of 10-11C around Lake Geneva and 3C in Zermatt. Expect the snowline to fall to 800 m Monday, with some snow forecast.
Check out Jared Bloch’s videos from his snowshoe trek up the Salève next to Geneva last weekend on his “Wheels Enthusiast” blog.
Jura report
by Shirley Curran
Spring is almost here in the Jura mountains and this week has seen temperatures shoot up so that our sun-facing slopes become rather slushy after about 11:00. If you want to enjoy the thick layers of snow that still cover our pistes despite the almost drought conditions of the month of February, you do well to get onto the snow early in the day or to stick to the north-facing slopes. We have the promise of yet more sunshine for the next few days, and everything is operating until March 12th from when the Crozet side of the Lelex/Crozet resort will only operate on Wednesdays and at weekends.
Local weekend highlights
If you’ve just returned to the Lake Geneva region from school ski holidays in the Alps you might want to stay closer to home. Check out our events page, and consider heading to beautiful Annecy for its Venetian Carnival weekend. GenevaLiving blog carries a complete list of Carnival activities.
Enjoy the sunshine!
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The weekend search for a missing teenager who drowned in Lake Annecy 2 July turned up a grim toll of four bodies by Monday morning, one of which is the missing 15-year-old, who jumped from a pedalo.
Searchers found three other bodies in various states of decomposition: all had been in the water for more than a year, French media report, which will make identification difficult. One body reportedly had identity papers.
There doesn’t appear to be any link between the bodies that were discovered, in an area of about 800 metres around the Impérial hotel. The search used sonar equipment from Strasbourg.
The first body was found Saturday evening, two others Sunday and the fourth Monday morning.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The 2018 Winter Olympics will be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, to the dismay of Annecy, France, one of three contenders. Pyeongchang received 63 votes from the IOC (International Olympic Committee) delegates meeting in Durban, South Africa. Munich received 25 and Annecy 7.
IOC President Jacques Rogge, in announcing the award, said perseverence played a role, since this the Asian city’s third attempt to win the Games.
Geneva is considering bidding on the 2022 Winter Games and there is some sentiment, according to the Tribune de Geneve, that it will have a better chance if its neighbour has not held the previous Games.
Rogge, at a press conference in Geneva in June, denied that it is IOC policy, or even encouraged, to move the Games from one continent to another or to avoid holding two Games in a row in the same region. He cited several past examples, notably for Europe.
TSR and other Swiss media, however, underscore the importance to Lausanne-based IOC of ensuring that the Games are embraced by Asians and the developing world in general.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – IOC boss Jacques Rogge says that negotiations for European broadcast rights for the 2014 and 2016 Olympic Games are nearly completed. The deals may not receive the same level of attention as last week’s $4.2 billion award to NBC for the US rights for 2014 to 2020, but Europeans can rest confident that they will be able to see the televised Games.
“We’re 85-90 percent close to our goal, so we’re nearly there,” Rogge told journalists at a press conference in Geneva 14 June.
European rights were open to bidders nearly three years ago and two bids were put forward, by Geneva-based European Broadcast Union and Sportfive, both representing groups of countries. The EBU bid was turned down by the IOC despite a 50-year relationship. Sportfive represents 40 countries in a $316 million agreement reached in 2008. Five large markets have been negotiating separately, however: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The deal with Spain was concluded early on and Rogge said Tuesday that Italy’s rights negotiations have been concluded and most of the others are nearing completion, with the UK looking likely to be the last to be sewn up. Rogge says that the IOC is negotiating with several British broadcasters, including the BBC and ITV.
Fifa’s Blatter doesn’t need to hear from the IOC about stricter rules: “he knows them”
Rogge also fielded questions about whether the IOC, which withstood its own corruption scandal in Salt Lake City in 1998-99, will step in and help the international football federation, Fifa. He says he is convinced that “if Fifa takes the necessary steps it will be saved”, referring to the need for very strict rules for candidate cities applying to host games. He pointed out that Sepp Blatter was an IOC board member at the time and voted for tougher rules. “We don’t need to remind him of the rules. He knows them.”
The Globe & Mail in Canada recently put forward a list of how Fifa and the IOC differ, however.
Rogge, as expected, gave no hints about which of the three cities trying to win the 2018 games is in the lead. Annecy in France, Munich in Germany and PyeongChang in South Korea are all “excellent” he says: “The three of them would stage great games”.
The winner will be announced 6 July.
Silently rubbing elbows all year: for the Fetes des voisins, people come out and say hello to neighbours
ANNECY, FRANCE – Annecy, just over the border from Geneva, has a head start over its Swiss neighbours by celebrating its Fête des voisins day Friday 27 May, to encourage neighbours, particularly in large apartment blocks, to get to know and better appreciate each other.
Parties are set up in lanes, gardens or wherever neighbours find a convivial spot.
Geneva and 36 other cities and towns in Switzerland are holding their good neighbours’ days Tuesday 31 May, part of the European-wide party that in 2009 had eight million people in 30 countries taking part.
Visit the beautiful city of Annecy, in neighbouring France and see and purchase original ceramics and other handicrafts.
Location: Annecy, France
Link out: http://www.annecy.fr/index.php?idtf=366&TP…
Date: 28 May 2011
Annecy, France (GenevaLunch) - France will try two of its citizens on attempted murder and other charges stemming from an October 2009 fight outside a disco in Martigny, canton Valais in Switzerland. The attorney general in Valais, Patrick Burkhalter, said Tuesday 26 April that close work by French and Swiss authorities led to the arrest of one of the accused in Geneva in May 2010 and the second in Annemasse, France in June 2010.
The two men, aged 21 and 24 at the time, will now face charges in front of the Grand Tribunal d’Instance in Annecy, with the man arrested in Geneva extradited for the case. The two have admitted to the facts, say Valais police, who have now closed their file and turned over their information to French judicial authorities.
The fight broke out at 04:00 outside a disco, where one of the accused knifed a victim while the other intentionally drove a car into a group of six people, injuring them.
St Sulpice man, Canadian, dies under train in southern Italy, twin girls missing
International police alert for witnesses, information: +41 21 644 82 31 or the nearest police station
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Two six-year-old twin girls are missing and police in Switzerland have issued a missing persons bulletin for them after their father was found dead in the far south of Italy.
The body of Matthias, the father, a St Sulpice man in his forties, was discovered in Bari, Italy at 23:00 Thursday 3 February, after a train passed over him. Police there are trying to determine if his death was an accident or suicide. The man, who was Canadian, left Switzerland Sunday with his six-year-old twin daughters, at the end of a weekend with them. The girls’ parents were in the process of divorcing. The father had taken them over the Christmas holidays, without incidence.
Swiss police issued a Schengen system SIS international alert 30 January after the trio failed to return to St Sulpice. Police investigations showed the father passed by Annecy, France, near Geneva, then Marseilles 1 February. French and Italian police have been actively working with Swiss authorities, but there has been no news of the girls.
Description of the girls
Alessia: 115 cm, long blond hair, medically corrected glasses with bordeaux-coloured titanium frames, last seen wearing a red, white and pink striped tee-shirt, blue jeans, white jacket with beige lining and black boots.
Livia: 115 cm, long blond hair, last seen wearing a green tee-shirt, a purple ski jacket, bluejeans, Adidas white and pink sports shoes, medically corrected glasses with orange titanium frames.
Description of the father
Average weight, 180 cm tall, blond hair thinning at the front, wearing glasses. Was last seen wearing a smart sports outfit and driving an Audi A6 with Swiss license plates.
Includes free and paying concerts.
Location: Annecy, France
Link out: http://www.annecy.fr/index.php?idtf=620#par1650
Start date: 4 Dec 2010
End date: 19 Dec 2010
The 23rd annual fair takes place in Annecy, neighbouring France.
Location: place Annapurna, Annecy, France
Link out: http://www.annecy.fr/index.php?idtf=367&TP…
Date: 6 Nov 2010
A very French tradition the huge flower market in Annecy begins on 30 October and ends on 1 November.
Location: Annecy, France
Link out: http://www.annecy.fr/index.php?idtf=366&TP…
Start date: 30 Oct 2010
End date: 1 Nov 2010
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Annecy, France; Munich, Germany; and PyeongChang, South Korea are now official candidate cities for the 2018 Olympic Games, after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) met Tuesday 22 June to consider bids from just these three cities to host the Games. The number is the smallest in 30 years. Seven cities made bids for the 2014 Games.
Geneva / Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Three cities have officially put in their applications to bid for the 2018 Summer Olympic Games, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) announced. The cities are: Munich, Germany, Annecy, France near Geneva and PyeongChang, South Korea. The cities have until January 2011 to file their applications.
The winner of the 2018 Games will be announced in Durban, South Africa 6 July 2011.
Annecy, France (GenevaLunch) - The killer of a young man, Freddy, murdered near Geneva in September 2007 because his murderer suspected Freddy had stolen €450 from him, was sentenced 3 March to 30 years in prison. The crime drew massive regional media coverage at the time partly because of the gruesome business of finding the victim’s body, which had been chopped into pieces and thrown into or near the Arve river. Two fishermen were the first to find part of his body, the trunk.
Swiss high court ruling on Haitian ex-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s money will lead to new law
Talloires, France, near Geneva, where the Duvaliers fled after leaving Haiti in 1986 (photo: Talloires Tourisme)
Update (links added) 23:30 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government Wednesday morning 3 February took the unusual step of freezing funds in a bank account once held by Haiti’s former dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier, based on a special cases clause in the Swiss constitution. At the same time the Swiss supreme court published its ruling on the frozen assets, saying that they cannot be returned to the Haitian people as mandated by the Swiss Office of Justice in 2009. The court decision has prompted the Swiss Federal Council to freeze the funds long enough to pass a law that will help it avoid releasing the assets “for the benefit of the Duvalier clan, which the Federal Criminal Court deems to be a criminal organization.”
A new law would allow the Swiss parliament input on how to best return the money to Haiti.
The ruling Federal Council is asking the Foreign Affairs Department to “complete by the end of the month its work on drafting a federal law that would ultimately allow such assets to be confiscated, and to submit the draft law for consultation.” A spokesperson for the Federal Foreign Affairs Office told GenevaLunch that the law is likely to be passed in 2010. It will cover similar situations of confiscated assets, several of which have come up in recent years.
Switzerland is the only country in the past 20 years to have returned stolen “potentates” funds to the countries previously ruled by the dictators: more than CHF1.6 billion has been returned to Peru, the Philippines and Nigeria among others.
The Duvalier family has been fighting to obtain access to $5.7 million sitting in Swiss bank accounts since they were frozen in 1986, when the Haitian government made a first request for assistance to obtain what it said were stolen funds. Jean-Claude Duvalier, popularly known as Baby Doc, ruled Haiti starting in 1971, when at age 19 he became the world’s then-youngest ruler. His father, known as Papa Doc, had ruled it for the previous 13 year.
Three people died in separate mountaineering accidents in the Alps 23 August.
A guide from Annecy in neighbouring France fell to his death on the Italian side of the Matterhorn. On the Mont Blanc mountain, another climber died near Peuterey, France, and a 75-year-old man became ill and fell 50 metres in the Pasubio massif near Vicenza in Italy.
Related: Le Dauphiné Libéré (Fre), Romandie News (Fre),
Ambilly, Haute Savoie, France (GenevaLunch) - A man was shot in the head once and killed Sunday 16 August while out walking his dog in a hamlet near Annemasse, neighbouring France, just metres away from the French-Geneva border. Two men aged about 20 were arrested hours later and taken in for questioning. The case is under investigation in Annecy. All three men were known to the police. Related: Le Dauphiné Libéré, TdG
Lake Geneva region, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A helicopter with seven people on board crashed Saturday evening 20 June in the French department of Ain, near Chambéry.
Annecy, France (Le Monde, Fre) – Annecy won in a first round of voting, France’s candidature for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games.
Geneva, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Geneva Tuesday presented details including likely routes and timetables, for an RER urban transport plan that is designed to greatly reduce automobile traffic in the greater Geneva area in Switzerland and France. The new project was signed by French, Geneva and Vaud authorities in March 2008 and will link by train a stretch from Coppet in Vaud to Annecy in France.
Title: Jazz and French chanson concerts, Annecy
Location: Annecy
Description: Series of concerts from old Brit rock-and-roll to jazz at Le Brise Glace in the beautiful city of Annecy in neighbouring France.
Start Date: 03 Feb 2009
End Date: 27 Feb 2009
map, Adelac 2008
Geneva, Switzerland and Annecy, France (Tribune de Geneve) – The A41 autoroute, nicknamed Liane, opened Monday morning to regular traffic, bringing Annecy in France and Geneva in Switzerland closer together: the car trip is now just 30 minutes. Some 23,000 vehicles daily are expected to use the 19 km stretch of road. (aerial views from the A41 project managers)
Geneva, Switzerland and Annecy, France (GenevaLunch) – Annecy and Geneva will be 10 minutes closer 18 December, thanks to the new Aliane strip of the A41 North autoroute in France, which is being inaugurated today. More significant to the cross-border workers and weekend trippers who travel this route regularly, the new road should reduce frequent traffic jams.
