GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Hug university hospitals in Geneva late Tuesday 15 November said it is bringing charges for endangering life against lab workers and the union that is backing them in their hospital strike, following an incident today in the maternity unit. Urgently needed lab results were supplied to medical staff with delays of three to five hours, says the hospital, a clear violation of the guarantee to ensure basic services during a strike.
The hospital is also filing criminal charges against the lab workers’ union (VPOD-SSP) for inciting to endanger the lives of others for its threat to block the immuno-hematology transfusion unit Thursday.
Tensions between the hospital and the union rose Tuesday when the union announced that it will treat only blood units that the Hug buys. This, says the hospital, is only about 115 of the 500-700 needed a week not just by the hospital but also private clinics, doctors’ offices and elsewhere. The entire canton’s blood supplies will thus be “held hostage” says the hospital’s direction.
The other blood units are dealt with by the hospital’s lab, whose workers are striking; the union says the blood products will be treated and stored until after the strike.
But the Hug notes that in the meantime, this will put at risk several units, in particular emergency services, maternity, surgery and the pediatric unit.
Alessia, Livia and their father in 2010
Update 10 March: video added Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The mother of missing twins Alessia and Livia Schepp has posted a video asking the public for help, after two new witnesses came forward. Vaud police said 7 March that the witnesses provided precise information about the presence in canton Geneva of a father and two little girls, one of them wearing glasses, who may well have been Mathis Schepp and his six-year-old twins Alessia and Livia. The trio were seen between 16:00 and 17:00 Sunday 30 January, and there is also evidence that his car, a black Audi A6, was seen in Geneva.
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Video from Missing Alessia and Livia Facebook page
Police are now seeking other witnesses in canton Geneva Sunday 30 January to help them pinpoint more precisely the father’s movements. Anyone with information is asked to please telephone the police at +41 21 644 4444 or to contact the nearest police station.
In Italy, police reportedly found a microchip Saturday 5 March from Schepp’s Audi navigation system, which will be sent to the US for the manufacturer to try to determine if data can be recovered from it. Police are hoping to obtain clues about the path the father took once he picked up the girls in Saint Sulpice, in Switzerland, Sunday 30 January.
The chip is reported to have been about 15 metres from the place where Schepp threw himself in front of a train in Cerignola, near Bari in southern Italy.
Background, GenevaLunch
Missing Alessia & Livia on Facebook
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Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Canton Geneva’s government president, Mark Muller, says the office that oversees property belonging to the canton is undertaking a vigorous housecleaning, and methodical review of several problem areas. He spoke at a press conference Thursday 9 February, following harsh political and media criticism after an audit brought to light several major problems.
These included buddy prices for some people renting cantonal property and mismanagement of some properties left to the state. The audit called for the government to clean up the situation by the end of 2012 but Muller says the governing council approved plans at a Wednesday night meeting to move more quickly.
Muller insists he will not step down, despite calls for him to do so.
Canton Geneva in the distance and the city of Geneva with its jet d'eau fountain
Update 17:00 / Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Standard & Poor’s, the credit rating institution, at the end of 2010 gave the canton an AA-/stable rating. The full report, in English, was made available this week by the canton. S&P’s assessment for Geneva was mostly upbeat: “The rating on the Republic and Canton of Geneva in Switzerland reflects Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services’ view of Geneva’s very stable, predictable, and supportive institutional framework; the canton’s recent sustained solid budgetary performance; and its large debt reduction since 2006.”
S&P’s notes that while the canton has finished paying out for the losses of BCG that resulted from a mismanagement scandal in the 1990s, a weakness is its “still sizable unfunded pension liabilities, even though a reform of public pension pensions is under way”.
The forecast for Geneva is relatively bright, with a short-term dip in the tax revenues that make up the bulk of the canton’s resources, expected to fall by 13 percent in 201o compared to 2009 as the impact of the economic recession is felt. But S&P’s expects this revenue to pick up again in 2011-2012, “even if at a low pace. Despite management’s strong commitment to control costs, this expected trend in tax revenues will likely result in a slightly negative operating margin over 2010-2012.”
Source: Standard & Poor’s, reproduced with permission
Economic profile of Geneva shows wealth, higher wages, far higher than average foreign population
S&P’s report profiles the city using a rich set of statistics that include these details:
Public referendum in 2013 likely
The French and Swiss power grids: multiple electricity sources include nuclear power
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Three requests to build new nuclear power stations, on the site of existing ones, have passed their first hurdle, with the Federal Nuclear Safety Commission saying the sites meet legal and other requirements. The commission will now study the applications, the first in a series of approval stages that is expected to take three years. The three sites are in Muehleberg, canton Bern, Goesgen, canton Solothurn and Beznau, Aargau. The requests to build were filed by Forces motrices bernoises (FMB) for Muehleberg, Axpo for Beznau and Alpiq for Goesgen.
The commission has asked the three project owners to supply more information, in particular details concerning earthquake, landslide and flooding risks, as well as the financial profitability of the operations.
12 November Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A man hung himself from a tree early Thursday morning 11 November in central Geneva, near the Swiss federal compensation office building, the Tribune de Geneve reports, noting that no details have been released by Geneva police. A spokesman for the Disability Insurance Office for insured people living abroad (OAIE) told GenevaLunch he is unable to confirm whether or not the man had a link with the office, as a GenevaLunch reader (see comment below) suggested early Friday.
The suicide caused a stir in the neighbourhood, according to the Tribune, in part because the body was initially easily visible, before police put a tent around it. The area where the man died, on avenue Edmond-Vaucher, is close to a school and at 07:20, when the body was discovered, the neighbourhood starts to get busier.
Ten days earlier another man took his own life near the offices of canton Geneva, with whom he had had a long-running dispute.
Some 1,500 people commit suicide each year in Switzerland, according to federal statistics, with the rate falling since 1980. Canton Geneva records about 75 a year, with 48 men and 30 women committing suicide in 2007, the most recent year for which figures are available.
Suicide prevention and information in Geneva, Stop Suicide (Fre)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The closing of Vernier’s Moa Club 6 October and another club, Weetamix, 8 October by canton Geneva for safety reasons has not gone down well with dance fans. Several hundred people gathered in the centre of Geneva Saturday 9 October from 17:00 to 22:00. An impromptu outdoor disco session in the Rive district to show support for the popular clubs pulled in some 5,000 people, according to an estimate by 20 Minutes (GenevaLunch could not confirm the figures with city police). The owners of the Moa Club say they have gathered more than 4,000 signatures to re-open the club, which has taken its petition online. The club’s Facebook pages have served as a forum for unhappy clubbing fans.
The safety concerns are linked in part to flammable materials stored nearby as well as to the overall safety level of the building, The Tribune de Geneve reported last week that the club was unlikely to re-open, given the scale and cost of the renovations needed to bring the 20,000 m2 space in line with safety standards. The owner of the building and the club owner have held talks over the necessary work since the canton’s demand in 2007 for the club’s safety to be improved.
Cancel your plans for a Swiss Alps barbecue near the woods this weekend
Train tracks under repair in Goms Valley, canton Valais: green forest but very dry undergrowth
Sion, Valais, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Storms that briefly dumped rain on the southern Alps Monday were not enough to avoid a ban on fires, announced Wednesday 14 July by canton Valais officials.
Conditions in much of the canton are very dry and as of now all open-air fires, except home barbecues, are banned.
It will take three days of rain to lift the ban, and with Wednesday predicted to be the hottest day of the year, with no rain in sight, the ban is likely to remain in place for some days.
Three fires broke out Monday, due to weather conditions, in Fully, Brigerbad and Muenster.
A fourth fire, near the Dents de Nendaz, is suspected to have been started by a cigarette thrown from a small plane that passed over the area shortly before the fire broke out.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Geneva Servette Hockey Club has won the love and admiration not only of its growing number of local fans, but of the city and canton of Geneva. The two have thrown their financial support behind the club led by Chris McSorley, which finished the recent Swiss season in second place:
- CHF1.6 million for the team for the upcoming season and CHF500,000 for the next year
- CHF 2.75 for 2010-11 for the juniors team
- CHF800,000 for a study to redo the Vernet ice rink and stadium, a CHF8 million project that should lead to a new stadum by 2015.
The other good news for fans of the club: subscriptions for the new season go on sale 21 June.
Satigny's vines just after the 2009 harvest
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One of Geneva’s most popular springtime events, the Open Day at the wineries, is Saturday 29 May, and it appears that the canton’s track record for great weather for the event will remain intact. Opage, the cantonal agricultural products office responsible for promoting wine, expects some 20,000 people to turn out. Virtually all of the canton’s 80 wineries will be open to introduce the public to their recently bottled 2009 wines and the 2008 ones that have spent a year maturing in barrels.
An advance sampling of the wines in April showed that 2009 was every bit the “fantastic year” that cantonal oenologist Alexandre de Montmoulin calls it, thanks to a near-perfect growing season, so expect crowds. The TPG is working with the wine producers again to offer visitors free public shuttle buses.
New in 2010: several cellars will be offering glasses for sale, for CHF5. “Managing glasses had become a problem for us, a result of the success of the Open Day with its thousands of visitors,” says Jacques Bocquet, winemaker from Sézenove. The new system means customers will have their own glasses. “We’d rather put our energy into presenting our wines and helping people sample them,” he adds.
GenevaLunch editor and wine writer Ellen Wallace, author of the blog on Swiss wines, Among the vines, provides readers with suggestions for wineries to visit.
See Among the vines, a guide to visiting Geneva’s cellars Saturday
Home sweet home: Bernese Swiss can now vote from abroad, electronically
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss citizens from Bern will be able to vote from abroad electronically in future, from several countries, using canton Geneva’s electronic voting platform, Bern announced Friday 23 April. They join Swiss abroad from Basel, Geneva, Neuchatel and Zurich in having the right to vote from abroad.
Links to other sites: Swiss federal chancellery, swissinfo
Update 27 January Washington, DC / Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The US Justice Department has handed over to the Geneva and Swiss governments a man of Uzbek nationality who was detained at Guantanamo Bay, Washington announced Tuesday 26 January. It thanked the canton and Switzerland for their efforts to help the US close the detention centre in Cuba, but it provided no details of the transfer, including when it took place. “The identity of the individual is being withheld at the request of the Swiss government, in the interest of protecting the individual’s privacy and facilitating his transition to life in Switzerland,” the Justice Department said in a press release.
The Swiss government later in the day announced that the man had arrived in Switzerland in mid-January and tghat he has promised to learn French and to work to cover his keep.
The man’s release leaves 192 detainees at the centre. Another 570 have been released since 2002.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Canton Vaud citizens will go to the polls, probably in 2011, to decide if foreigners who live in the canton should be given the right to vote. A popular referendum will be scheduled once officials verify the nearly 14,000 signatures gathered for the initiative. Only 12,000 signatures are required, so the item is likely to be added to the ballot.
Organizers of the initiative estimate that this would give 85,000 foreigners in the canton the right to vote.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The son of Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi, Hannibal, has acted on his earlier threats to sue the canton of Geneva, the Tribune de Genève newspaper and one of its reporters. The younger Qadaffi filed charges 17 December, the Tribune has learned, against the newspaper and its journalist for publishing in September 2009 unflattering official police shots of the man taken in July 2008 when he was arrested.
Jet d'eau, Geneva
Update 10:15 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Canton Geneva elected its new 100-strong Grand Conseil, or parliament, Sunday and voters approved a multi-party mix that sees the power of the Socialists waning and a stronger centre-right. Geneva has long had a centre-left leaning. The biggest winner was the centre-right MCG, Mouvement Citoyens Genevois, which nearly doubled the number of seats it holds, to 17.
Media in French-speaking Switzerland are putting the accent on the populist nature of the party, pointing to its strongly anti-frontalier (workers who cross the border) platform. Le Temps notes that the party has taken advantage of a chink, growing concerns along the border about security and jobs, where many thought it did not have the strength.
WTO, a very large open house. Photo courtesy ®Jez S at flickr
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The World Trade Organization (WTO) throws open its doors Sunday 6 September to allow the community, both local and international, to become more familiar with its work and its site. The open house has been organized in response to an impending referendum, 27 September, a city-wide vote to on a planned extension to the WTO building at the Centre William Rappard, along Lake Geneva’s shore.
The extension and, earlier, threats by the WTO to move if it could not expand, have been hotly debated by the public and local media for several years.
The WTO is the world’s advocate for liberalizing international trade and solving trade disputes between its 153 member countries. On Sunday, it hosts a series of events, including guided tours and children’s activities, to highlight its presence in Geneva for over 60 years.
The WTO, founded in 1995, is the successor organization to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, Gatt.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Two popular initiatives, both dealing with assisted suicides, have gathered enough signatures to call for a vote in canton Zurich. No date has been scheduled for the votes. The first calls for the canton to allow assistance but only for people who have been resident in the canton for at least a year. The second calls for the canton to insist on a change in Swiss federal law by banning all encouragement of and assistance to people committing suicide.
Both initiatives were started by the UDC, Switzerland’s right-wing party. Swiss citizens vote several times a year, at all three political levels (communal, cantonal, federal) on grassroots or political party initiatives that have gathered a minimal number of signatures.
Schaffhausen, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A four-year-old boy was bitten by a one-year-old Rotweiler dog while his family picnicked near a main road in an industrial zone in Schaffhausen, north of Zurich, Sunday, around 17:00. The boy is in serious condition with head injuries but his life is not in danger.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Canton Vaud 1 September 2009 will join the growing ranks of Swiss cantons that ban smoking in public areas. The final discussions in the cantonal parliament concluded today 23 June and the law will now go into effect.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva’s efforts to ban smoking face another political fight, with opponents to the canton’s pending legislation to ban smoking getting the necessary 7,000 signatures to force a referendum.
Updated 8 April 08:10 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The canton of Geneva will not see the likes of it again before 2012-2013, says David Hiler, finance director for the canton, who Tuesday 7 April announced results for 2008: a surplus of CHF492 million for the budget of CHF7.2 billion. Le Temps Wednesday morning shows a more dire picture in its analysis of the situation, noting that some costs, such as staffing, have risen and that while the city’s infamous debt has been reduced to CHF11.4 billion, it remains “astronomical.” Zurich, Le Temps notes in its article, is ending 2008 with a deficit of CHF179.3, largely due to the banking sector crisis.
