Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Ri Tcheul (also spelled Chol) 75-year-old North Korean diplomat who has been ambassador to the United Nations and international organizations since 1987 and ambassador to Switzerland as well since 1998, is rumoured to be leaving Geneva soon. The North Korean mission has not confirmed or denied the information. AP news agency reports that the South Korean government cannot confirm the information.
Media reports from South Korea say that Ri, who is widely believed to have managed funds for longtime leader Kim Jong-il, is leaving for unknown reasons, but given his long tenure in Geneva they are probably not political. He arrived in Geneva in 1980 as foreign minister for the North Korean mission.
Hydroelectric station, canton Valais, Switzerland
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Electricity price increases announced in 2009 by several suppliers were provisionally rejected in July 2009 by Bern as unnecessarily high, and Monday 8 March the federal electricity commission confirmed this. The commission’s report says that the increases were based on costs that were over-estimated in some cases and unacceptable inefficiency in other cases. The energy companies have the right to appeal, but if they do not the rate hikes will have to be abandoned.
The companies concerned are: Alpiq, BKW, Axpo (Axpo AG, CKW, EGL), EWZ and Rätia Energie, along with a number of smaller firms.
Cantonal votes: Genevans could see rents go up
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Retirement benefits should not be cut, research on human beings should be coordinated at the federal level and the Swiss Confederation does not need a lawyer to represent animals’ rights: these were the three decisions by Swiss voters Sunday 7 March. The Swiss went to the polls in the first of four federal voting sessions in 2010. The strong popular vote against cutting pensions offered a good reminder to the government and parliament of how direct democracy continues to give the people a say in legislative changes.
Lyss, canton Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Twenty-six people were injured in Lyss, canton Bern, after a fire broke out in the early hours of Thursday 25 February at a centre for asylum seekers. Cantonal police say there is no reason at this stage of the investigation to suspect criminal activity. The fire broke out shortly after 04:00, waking residents of the centre. Many of them appear to have panicked and jumped out of windows rather than taking the emergency exits, which were open. Several of the injured suffered pelvic fractures from hitting the hard ground when they jumped.
The center has a population of 135 people from 30 countries.
Links to other sites: ats/romandie (Fre), Bern police (Fre)
Bjoerk the bear and her two cubs, 18 February (photo: Bern Bear Park)
Update 26 February, link added Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Lausanne newspaper 24 Heures called it one of Switzerland’s best-guarded secrets, proving that it isn’t only bank accounts the Swiss are quiet about: Finn, one of Bern’s two much-loved zoo bears who was shot by a policeman in November when he attacked an intruder, became a father in December. The news came out only this week. Bjoerk, the mother, surprised everyone by not just hibernating but giving birth to two cubs at the Bern Bear Park, which is one of Switzerland’s most popular tourist attractions.
Finn, the father will remain alone in his part of the park, say zoo authorities. “Male bears have no fatherly feelings – he would just kill the cubs.”
The cubs have been named Urs and Berna.
Carneval march in Miege, canton Valais, February 2009
Lucern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Carnaval, a festive time before the sombre period of Lent, called Fasnacht in most Swiss German-speaking areas, kicked off early Thursday morning in Lucern and Soleure, with marches and music in the streets. Swiss cantons and villages celebrate their carnivals at different times around the start of Lent, the period leading up to Easter. The Catholic cantons generally start earlier and end before Lent, on Ash Wednesday, 17 February this year.
Canton Valais’s Carnaval begins tomorrow, Friday 12 February. Festivities continue until 17 February, although some of the German-speaking areas celebrated early.
The most famous of the Protestant cantons’ carnivals are in Basel, 21-23 February and Bern, 18-20. Bern’s fete is relatively young, started only in 1982, but it’s a colourful event.
Links to: Valais dates, Basel Fasnacht (Ger) and city tourism office in English, Bern Fasnacht (Ger)
View from Neuchatel-Chaux de Fonds train Tuesday late afternoon: icy roads, plenty of snow
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 67-year-old man and the conductor plus 97 passengers of a TGV traveling between Bern and Paris were happily unhurt when the man’s car, stranded on a TGV line near Bayards, canton Neuchatel, was hit by the train. The accident occurred Tuesday evening 9 February at 20:35, say police. Train service on the line was re-established only at 17:30 Wednesday evening. Travelers scheduled to take the TGV via Neuchatel were shunted to Basel and Lausanne for other trains.
The man had lost control of his car, which skidded onto the rails and was stuck there.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Le Temps, the main newspaper for intellectuals in French-speaking Switzerland, is calling for reforms to the way the Swiss Federal Council works, in the wake of a series of international crises.
Le Temps is harshly critical Wednesday morning 10 February in an editorial that calls for the whole “collegial” approach to government to be re-thought. The Swiss government consists of seven federal councilors from five parties, approved by Parliament, who work behind closed doors. They reach decisions that are then supported publicly by the group, which speaks with one voice.
But Le Temps argues that the group has been too much influenced by the members’ parties since the days when Christoph Blocher ruled the right-wing UDC, and that it is increasingly difficult for the Council to make decisions quickly, after adequate reflection. The councilors are also overloaded with work as ministers in charge of government offices, departments and ministries, says the Geneva-based newspaper. In a related article Le Temps points to the slowness of the council in making decisions about banks and double taxation agreements, but most importantly a lack of clear communication and strategy as evidence that reform is needed.
Thomas Held, director of the think tank Avenir Suisse, says in an interview that is part of Le Temps’s package of articles that the government is being overtaken by events and is not guiding reactions as it should, as a result.
Title: Carnival in Bern
Location: Bern
Link out: Click here
Description: This is the third largest pre-holy week festival in Switzerland.
Start Date: 2010-02-18
End Date: 2010-02-20
Avalanches in several cantons catch snowboarders, hikers, skiers Sunday 31 January
Grimentz is in the Val d'Anniviers, Valais
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 24-year-old Vaud man was killed by an avalanche Sunday 31 January while snowboarding off-piste in Grimentz with three friends. They were just 100 metres from a groomed piste when the avalanche caught and buried him. The other three were not hit by the avalanche.
Nyon train station, CFF controllers will be helped by new transport police
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss transport police, who will have the right to make provisional arrests, will become part of the CFF rail system starting in 2011.
The Federal Council Wednesday 27 January approved legislation drawn up by a parliamentary transport commission which will create two security systems for public transport companies. The transport police, who will be identifiable by their uniforms, will be employed only by the CFF, and they will have greater policing powers than those given to security officers, who will be used by smaller transport companies.
Tanja Frieden, 2006 boardercross Olympic champion, retires (image: Swiss Ski)
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Tanja Frieden’s retirement comes earlier and in a more painful way than the boardercross Olympic gold medalist would have hoped: that much was clear from the press conference she gave Tuesday 26 January. The 33-year-old Bernese woman who won in Torino in 2006 had her hopes of another medal dashed five days ago when a bad fall left her with two torn ligaments and a badly strained left shoulder. At her press conference, in a wheel chair following surgery last Saturday, she said that she would not only not be participating in the Vancouver Games, but that she is retiring from the sport after 14 years competing at the top international level.
Image 2010: Bakbasel
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Lech in Austria and Lucerne in Switzerland were the two most popular seasonal tourist destinations in the Alpine region in 2009: Lech in winter and Lucerne in summer. Switzerland has three destinations among the overall top 10 for the year: Lucerne, Zurich and Engelberg. But a report published 21 January on tourism in the region shows Austrian resorts well ahead of Swiss ones as popular winter resorts, taking the first seven places, with Zermatt in eighth. Zermatt gains ground as a year-round destination because it is also popular in summer.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Peter Maurer, who is currently Switzerland’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York, has been named the country’s new secretary of state, in the Foreign Affairs Office. He will service under Federal Councilor Micheline Calmy-Rey, minister for foreign affairs.
Maurer, 56, replaces Michael Ambuehl, who was named 13 January to the new post of International Financial and Tax Matters. Maurer will most likely take up his post in March 2010, when Ambuehl, whose post must be confirmed by parliament, begins his new job.
Early January evening snowfall at Bern's Aare River and Bear Park
Bern's new Bear Park offers a lovely riverside walk, information on the animals
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Winter may not appear to be the ideal time to visit bears at parks, given their reputation for hibernating, but this is not stopping tourists from streaming to see the new bear park in Bern, which opened in late October 2009. Finn, a young male bear recovering after he was shot when an intruder went into the animal’s den, is particularly sought out.
”He’s in a kind of micro-hibernation,” says bear park spokesperson Marc Rosset, who says you have to have luck on your side to see Finn during these wintry days.
Finn, swimming again in December 2009
”He came to us from the Helsinki zoo, where he did hibernate during his first two years.” But in the slightly warmer climate of Bern, he occasionally goes outside. “He gets hungry, so he goes looking for food,” says Rosset.
Finn’s fourth birthday is 15 January.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva Servette Hockey Club had a good weekend, thumping EHC Bienne 8-1 (3-1, 2-0, 3-0). Its fourth consecutive win pushes the club to the top of its class, where it is tied with Bern.
Links to other sites: Le Matin (Fre), TSR TV interview with Tobias Stephan (Fre)
Update 12:20 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Police in Bern closed off a large area around the US Embassy in the city Wednesday morning 6 January but the area has been re-opened. A suspect object was found at the embassy and police investigated. Police and the embassy did not provide details, but embassy staff told GenevaLunch they were not evacuated.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Three bodies were found Tuesday 5 July shortly before noon by a search team hunting for three people still missing following two avalanches Sunday morning in the Dietigtal region of the Bernese Oberland. Four people had already died from the avalanches, bringing the death toll to seven.
The three individuals, two men and a woman, were found in the cone (bottom) of the avalanche. Sixty people were involved in this morning’s search, mainly from the Secours Alpin Suisse Bern unit and the Swiss army’s mountain research team.
Swiss Federal Council (cabinet), 2010
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s cabinet, the seven-member Swiss Federal Council, which governs as a body of equals, has published its official photo for 2010. Left to right: Didier Burkhalter, the chancellor for the Swiss Confederation Corina Casanova, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, Ueli Maurer, Micheline Calmy-Rey, Hans-Rudolf Merz, Swiss President Doris Leuthard, Vice-president Moritz Leuenberger. The presidency is a one-year rotating position, while the chancellor’s job is to oversee the smooth functioning of the administrative side of the government.
Update 23:25 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Four people were killed by avalanches Sunday 3 January, two near Diemtigtal, canton Bern and one in Bagnes, Valais. Seven others were injured, some of them critically, in Bern and one other person was hospitalized following the Valais avalanche. In a separate incident, Valais police have reportedly arrested three young snowboarders who appear to have set off an avalanche near Zermatt Thursday 30 December that caught a group of seven, including five children.
The deadly accident in Bern occurred in an area that is not considered particularly at risk, although the Swiss avalanche and snow research institute has had level 3 “considerable danger” warnings out for much of the Swiss Alps during the past week. One member of a group of ski tourers was caught by a first avalanche at about 11:30 Sunday, and emergency services were immediately called. While the rescue operation was underway a second avalanche occurred. A Rega helicopter service doctor and one other skier were found and taken to hospital, where they died. Another skier was dead when uncovered. Eight people were found alive, but some of them are in critical condition Sunday night, according to Bern police. Eight helicopters were used in the rescue operation, to carry rescue teams, doctors and avalanche search dogs to the area.
The search was called off at 18:00 due to weather and snow conditions. Police in Bern ask that anyone waiting for news of ski tourers in the area phone them at +41 31 634 3434.
The other avalanche Sunday occurred near the Tête de la Payanne, in the Val de Bagnes region near Verbier, in Valais, about 14:00.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – It is hard to find a dry spot in Switzerland Wednesday 30 December, with the country soaked to the bones by a warm front from the southwest that has raised temperatures 7-10 C above normal for this time of the year. Aargau in the north has been worst hit, with 32.7 litres of rain per square metre in two hours.
Road safety test in action
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Fatal road accidents due to driving under the influence of alcohol have dropped 45 percent since the introduction in 2005 of the 0.5 per thousand blood alcohol limit.
Almost 15 percent of all road deaths are still due to drunk driving, and the main offenders are men, the young, and habitual drinkers, according to the Swiss Council for Accident Prevention, BPA, in a campaign coordinated with the cantonal police forces to raise public awareness of the dangers of drunk driving.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) -The latest twist in the increasingly tangled tale of client data stolen from HSBC in Geneva comes from the thief himself, formerly known as Hervé Falciani. The former HSBC computer system employee who now lives under a new identity in the south of France told French journalists from Nice Matin that in August 2008 he was kidnapped by two men in a van in Geneva’s Champel district. The men were of unclear Middle Eastern origin, perhaps Israeli, says Falciani, who accuses his Lebanese girlfriend at the time of being part of a plot to discredit him.
The Lebanese link has surfaced following accusations by Switzerland that Falciani was trying to sell the names and other information about bank clients, which he acknowledges he stole, to several governments, notably Lebanon.
Hans-Rudolf Merz
Update 18:00 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – France says it did not break any French laws in accepting stolen data from a Swiss branch of HSBC, and right-wing politicians in Paris called for Switzerland to be put onto an OECD black list of tax havens if the Swiss refuse to ratify a pending treaty with France over the theft. Switzerland says that France, in failing to provide judicial assistance in the matter, is not respecting the terms or spirit of the treaty.
The Swiss government late Wednesday 16 December said it intends to suspend the ratification of the new double taxation treaty with France. The news followed comments to the media by France’s budget minister, Eric Woerth, that he plans to start judicial proceedings based on information stolen from the Geneva branch of HSBC.
Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz says that he is asking the Swiss commission in charge of the ratification process, scheduled to meet in February, to hold off until the circumstances surrounding the theft, which took place in Switzerland, are clearer. The French citizen who stole the data has come forward publicly, and he is now being given a new identity in the south of France.
At issue for the Swiss: France has not responded to Switzrland’s repeated requests for judicial assistance, and no information has been provided about the stolen data. The theft, which started in July 2008 by an IT employee at the bank, is illegal under Swiss law. “In a state of law, this type of theft is unacceptable,” Merz told media Wednesday.
Swiss representation to OECD, Paris. © 2009 délégation suisse près l'OCDE
Bern, Switzerland/Paris, France (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s official assistance to developing countries obtains high marks in general in an evaluation by the OECD’s committee on development aid. The committee notes that Swiss official development aid (ODA) was 0.42 percent of GDP in 2009, still short of the 0.7 percent recommended by the UN, but 6 percent higher than in 2008. Swiss ODA is praised for its concentration on the poorest countries, and on multilateral agencies, but the committee’s report notes that Switzerland is still trying to do too many things in too many different places with its ODA.
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