Riddes lumberyard fire set by children
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A huge fire that destroyed a lumberyard in the centre of the village of Riddes last weekend was set by five children, police in canton Valais say. The fire late Ssunday 20 May caused heavy damage but no injuries, and the A9 autoroute was closed for more than two hours due to smoke.
The two oldest in the group, both aged 13, have been turned over to juvenile authorities, but the three younger children, ages 6, 7, and 9 have been released because of their age. The group entered the building and lit a fire for fun at about 18:00 say police. They then left and the fire smouldered before it suddenly took off at 21:45 and was noticed. The foehn wind was blowing hard Sunday evening and police evacuated about 100 people whose homes were near the fire, as a precaution.
You read that right: former US presidential candidate confirms she is officially Swiss
Bachmann’s dual citizenship muddles more than the Tea Party
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The ranks of dual US-Swiss citizens have just been plumped by former US presidential candidate Michele Bachmann from Minnesota, whoe certainly knows how to wax poetic about the old country, which the family frequently visits.
Bachmann’s husband was interviewed by Swiss-German international television Tagesschau during a visit by Swiss parliamentarians to Washington, about her husband, son of Swiss immigrants to Wisconsin, and their children taking up their inherited Swiss nationality. The reporter is quoted by US media as saying that a wife of a Swiss citizen automatically becomes Swiss, which is incorrect: he in fact says that all the rules were followed. The law changed in 1992 and the wife of a Swiss citizen must actively apply to become Swiss today, not formerly the situation, but an expedited process can be used. The same is true for children of a Swiss citizens, in some situations.
The fact that the Bachmanns were married in 1978 appears to have given them the option to register their marriage with the commune in Switzerland in March, and include the entire family in the official Family Certificate document, which is necessary for a Swiss passport.
A Swiss embassy official in the US confirmed to WRS radio in Geneva Wednesday that he was told by the Bachmann family’s commune that they registered their marriage with a commune in March.
Becoming Swiss isn’t automatic for spouses, some children
The news zoomed around the US that Michele Bachmann has become Swiss, although Bachmann herself doesn’t say so in the televised interview. The TV station said it had confirmation that 19 March the entire family took up citizenship in Wigoltingen, canton Thurgau (the bumpf on spouses of Swiss citizens, from the federal government). One niggling detail seems a little difficult to verify: “The applicant receives the citizenship of the canton and commune of his or her Swiss spouse. Article 26 of the Citizenship Act requires by analogy that the applicant be integrated into Swiss life …”
The reports making the rounds in the US also state that the children are automatically citizens because their father claimed his citizenship in March 2012, but this would apply only to children born after 2006, so the Bachmann children, like their mother, had to actively register as citizens. Technically, this makes the sons liable for military duty, but overseas Swiss are frequently able to avoid this and at age 28, eldest son Lucas is past the normal recruitment age and Harrison, who has been teaching for two years, is also unlikely to be chased by his local Swiss recruiting centre.
Tax benefits a myth for dual citizens
The biggest blooper made by some of the media picking up the story is the innuendo that the Bachmanns could ultimately avoid US taxes by becoming Swiss, overlooking the fact that dual US-Swiss citizens have to file taxes in both countries, and future US taxes could be avoided only if taxes due were first paid and then the Bachmanns renounced their US citizenship, making it clear they were not doing it for tax reasons. This would probably be accepted only if they have lived in Switzerland, based on accounts from US citizens who have renounced their citizenship there.
The Bachmanns, as Swiss citizens, may or may not have a Swiss bank account – the Swiss TV reporter didn’t ask – but given the media play given to Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s offshore Swiss account, the question is likely to be raised in the US. For the Swiss abroad, living in the US, who are finding that Swiss banks are closing their accounts, and for Americans living in Switzerland who have the same problem because of the cost and potential problems with the IRS for the banks, any special treatment the Bachmanns might receive would not go down well.
Michele Bachmann worked for the IRS as an attorney from 1988 to 1993, leaving when she became a mother.
The Bachmanns say they claimed Swiss citizenship for their children, Tagesschau reports; oldest son Lucas, a medical student, has already spent some time in Switzerland and a passport gives the children the right to work here. They may, however, find it difficult to open a bank account to pay their rent, the case with a growing number of dual nationals with US and Swiss citizenship.
Bachmann laughed at the interviewer’s suggestion that she could now run for president of Switzerland. But she might want to study this a little more closely, since being female wouldn’t be the issue it was in the US: Switzerland has already had three women presidents.
Hollywood Reporter interviews Bachmann children, January 2012
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Save the Children’s annual State of the Mother Report, which ranks countries around the world according to women’s and children’s wellbeing, is focusing on maternal nutrition ahead of this month’s G8 meeting in Camp David, at which US President Barack Obama is expected to discuss food and agriculture.
The charity considers “nutrition as one of the key factors in determining mothers’ and their children’s well-being”. Maternal malnutrition is responsible for one-fifth of deaths in childbirth and one-third of all childhood deaths.
Save the Children is recommending that the G8 take “bold efforts” to tackle malnutrition. Carolyn Miles, CEO of the charity said, “We urgently need global leadership on the malnutrition issue, so that policies and programmes are put in place to ensure the health and survival of mothers and their babies.”
In its annual ranking, Norway tops the list of 165 countries where it was best to be a mother in 2011. The United States moved up from 31st to 25th position this year, while Switzerland slipped from 14th in 2011 to 18th place, behind the United Kingdom (10th), France (14th) and Portugal (15th). Niger occupies the last place on the list as the worst place in the world to be a mother. Seven of the 10 countries at the bottom of the list, located in central Africa, including Niger, are currently affected by a severe food crisis.
The Mother’s Index brings together factors such as womens’ and children’s health statistics, socio-economic information, including schooling, and political status achieved by women, adjusted according to the level of development in various groups of countries.
A family no matter which name they choose
BERN, SWITZERLAND – All is supposed to be fair in love and war, but Swiss law covering keeping your name or changing it when you marry has not treated men and women equally.
This will change 1 January 2013, when married couples and homosexual couples will have more options.
The changes passed by parliament in September 2011 also cover the names of children, so it extends to unmarried couples with children.
Bern’s announcement of the change states: “Marriage in theory no longer has an impact on the name of the members of a couple nor any obligation to change these. Each of them keeps his or her own name and the right to maintain it. An engaged couple may, however, announce that they intend to use the name of either one as the single family name. The same option is available to same-sex couples who have registered their partnership.”
A partner who changed his or her name upon marriage under the current law and who wishes to change it back to the pre-marriage name may, at any time, tell the civil authorities that he or she wants to make the change.
Same-sex couples who registered their partnership before the change in the law have one year to declare the pre-partnership name they want to share.
The changes include:
- Children of married parents take either the single shared family name or, if the parents have different names, the pre-marriage name that the parents choose as a family name when they marry
- If the parents are not married, the child carries the mother’s name
- If the parents have shared custody, they may opt for the child to have the father’s name; they have one year to officially declare this
- In the case of unmarried parents with joint custody the parents have one year to give the child the father’s name, but once a child is 12, the child’s agreement is needed to make any name change.
Swiss government to review safety of tunnel pullover emergency areas
Holy Cross Church in Sierre was filled to overflowing as the town's citizens came for special mass Thursday night, for those who died or who have been hurt
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Eight of the children injured in the 13 March bus crash in Sierre, canton Valais, that killed 28 people are heading home in specially-equipped planes, police said in a statement issued Thursday evening.
They were discreetly taken to say goodbye to their friends who remain hospitalized in Sion until they are able to travel. Three Belgian armed forces planes were given a special dispensation to land at the airport in Sion in order to pick up the children and their families.
Dr Jean-Pierre Desfarzes, who has headed the emergency medical team dealing with the accident, says that the next 48 hours will be crucial for the most seriously injured, who may suffer long-term neurological and “functional” damage due to the severity of their injuries.
Four of the eight who are heading home have been in the hospital in Visp and four in Sion. Another 10 remain in the Sion hospital, but all have now been moved out of intensive care. The three in Lausanne at the Chuv remain in critical condition and one child flown to Bern suffered multiple fractures and a severe concussion.
“In the hours following the accident we were pessimistic,” Desfarzes told GenevaLunch, “but quite a few are recovering well.”
Dr Desfarzes says that despite the small size of the towns in the area, “Valais has an amazing capacity to absorb” a large number of injured people. The Valais Hospital trauma centre status means that 16 medical disciplines must be on call 24 hours a day. During the night of Tuesday to Wednesday some 150 medical workers were part of the emergency trauma team. Valais Hospital is a collection of nine medical treatment sites throughout the canton.
Fifty operations were carried out on 16 patients, mainly in Sion, which has served as the planning and main treatment centre this week.
Valais Police Chief Christophe Varone briefs the media at the site of the crash Thursday, after the families visited it
The staff included dozens of nurses and operating room assistants, radiology technicians, 10 surgeons and 10 emergency medicine doctors, anesthetists, intensive care specialist physicians, radiologists, pediatricians and pediatric surgeons.
The small city of Sion was able to handle such a heavy burden because of good coordination, say police: Visp, Martigny and Sierre hospitals were able to promptly take in those with lesser injuries and provide them with a very high level of care.
Desfarzes told GenevaLunch that he was proud of the team’s preparedness, which involved quickly bringing together a large number of people who were off-duty or on vacation.
Valais police and the hospitals will not be allowing interviews with any of the children or their families in order to protect their privacy, they told media.
Thursday, late afternoon, more than 250 journalists were taken to visit the site of the crash, the cause of which remains unclear for now. The federal highway department told news agency ats earlier in the day that it is reviewing the “angled” (with corners) emergency areas that are the norm throughout Switzerland.
Media from around the world have streamed into Sierre; today they were taken by police to visit the tunnel crash site before it re-opens
Journalists were taken to the site of the crash Thursday evening, after families of the victims had visited and left flowers and messages, including a chalk heart, on the wall that the bus hit head-on
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – All 28 people who died in a bus crash Tuesday 13 March in Sierre have now been identified, say police. The formal identifications are necessary in order for police to release the remains to families.
The bodies will now be flown back to Belgium Friday on the two airplanes made available by the Belgian army, according to canton Valais police.
Police in Sierre earlier took about 250 journalists Monday evening to the closed Geronde Tunnel where the bus crashed Tuesday 13 March.
One of the distressing bits of news as part of their update was that only 19 of the 28 bodies had been identified.
Three hours later, police said that backup personnel and “exceptional means” made available for the identifications had allowed the process to be speeded up so that all the bodies could be identified in less than 48 hours.
Three of the problems the investigators ran into were the lack of a clear list for the occupants of the bus, since the group had three buses and one list of names, but also the fact that some of those who died in the violent crash were badly “mutilated”, making identification difficult, and too few witnesses given the number of deaths and serious injuries.
The peaks above St Luc, where the children stayed, 15 March 2012: the village is nestled in the wooded area seen here, below some of Switzerland's most beautiful peaks. Famed hikers' Weisshorn hotel is visible centre-left, above the tree line
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Two airplanes provided by the Belgian government are taking home the bodies of the victims of Tuesday night’s bus crash in a tunnel in Sierre but as of Wednesday not all of them have been formally identified and a forensic laboratory in Lausanne is taking on extra help to speed up the process as much as possible.
Families are visiting the morgue Thursday to identify the bodies.
Late Wednesday night the last two unidentified injured persons were identified, ending some of the uncertainty which faced families.
Investigators say an autopsy will be carried out on the driver of the bus.
The blog the group kept while on their ski trip to St Luc in the Val d’Anniviers, written by Frank Van Kerckhowe, a teacher in his 40s, with comments from the students and messages home, serves for many families as the last word from the children.
Sierre is holding a service at the Holy Cross church Thursday evening for local people to be able to pay their respects.
Updates on the crash victims, injured, from outside Switzerland
The bus drove the 21km down to Sierre via the twisting Val d'Anniviers road, visible here in the centre, lower half of the photo, then entered the tunnel via the autoroute access road seen bottom left here. The Geronde tunnel, where the bus crashed, is behind the Geronde hill, covered in vineyards, bottom centre of the photo (photo, Ellen Wallace, 15.03.12)
World media have focused on the Sierre bus crash that killed 28, including 22 children, Tuesday night 13 March, and stories are now beginning to surface about who the families are, and the last days of the children at a Swiss ski camp. We’ll regularly update this list of links to other sites that we think our readers will want to see; note that some are not in English:
Alexander en Luca overleven achter in de bus, DeMorgen, Belgium, about 11-year-old Alexander, at the back of the bus, who survived 15.03.12 (Dutch)
“Kinderen andere schoolbus hoorden nieuws op de radio”, Nieuwsblad, Belgium: children on one of the other buses, from Sint-Victorschool Beersel, heard the news on their radios while on the bus, 15.03.12 (Dutch)
SA doc’s child survives Swiss bus crash, News 24 in South Africa about the one child taken to hospital in Bern, 15.03.12
Belgium prepares to fly home bus crash victims, swissinfo, 15.03.12
Video interview with the first witness, who alerted emergency services, Swiss television RTS, 14.03.12 (in French)
Dr Jean-Pierre Desfarzes, in charge of the emergency medical team, reflected the exhaustion and distress of the 200 rescue workers called to the scene, who worked throughout the night to save the injured and remove the dead
GENEVA / SION, SWITZERLAND – The death toll from Tuesday night’s horrific bus crash in Sierre, canton Valais remained at 28 Wednesday, according to Canton Valais police.
But in a rundown of the condition of the 24 passengers who are hospitalized with injuries there was good news and bad 20 hours after the accident.
The bus crashed head-on into a wall that is part of an emergency pullover area inside the tunnel, killing 28 and injuring 24, at 21:15 Tuesday 13 March.
The weather was fine, the tunnel well lit, no other vehicles were involved: in short, there is no easy explanation for the accident.
The bus was carrying children from southern Belgium who had been at a winter sports camp in the Val d’Anniviers. They were returning home and had only traveled 15 or so kilometres.
A press conference by Valais Police at 18:00 Wednesday provided a few new details:
- Of the 24 who are injured, 22 have been identified; police are still working to identify all of the dead definitively in order to tell their families, but the identification of two of the three who are in critical condition in Lausanne has not yet been possible and police have called in a number of medical specialists to try to speed up the process
- Numerous Dutch and Belgian families have come to Switzerland: some do not yet know if their children are dead or alive because there were three buses on the trip and although police quickly obtained a list of students, it was not immediately clear which children had taken which bus
- There were 52 people on the bus and the latest information indicates that in addition to the Belgians, 10 were Dutch, 1 German and 1 Polish person
- The state of the injured: the three patients at the Chuv university hospitals in Lausanne are in critical condition and Dr Jean-Pierre Deslarzes, head of the cantonal medical emergency group, choked up as he said that their lives remain in danger
- State of the others who are injured: one child flown to a hospital in Bern is in stable condition, six who were taken to hospital in Visp are medically well enough to leave the hospital; by Wednesday evening, of the 14 children hospitalized in Sion, one remained in intensive care but was being prepared to be moved to the pediatric care centre
- 200 rescue workers toiled throughout the night to free the injured and remove bodies; several passengers were incarcerated and cutting through the metal proved a long and difficult task, given the state of the bus, which suffered a violent impact
- translators and counselers are working with the canton to welcome and help house families and to help them cope with their grief and also the uncertainty.
The cause of the bus crash in Sierre, as well as its trajectory, are not yet clear
The cause of the accident remains unclear, but the district public prosecutor was rapidly contacted to open an investigation and ensure that police were able to safeguard any clues that might help clarify the cause.
Investigation head Olivier Elsig told reporters that the bus appeared to be traveling within the speed limit and that the children appeared to have used their seat belts, but the impact was so great that many of the seats were torn out.
He ruled out problems with the road surface or the tunnel itself, which is very well lit and relatively new (1999-2002 construction).
Police guard the area in the tunnel, near the Sierre west autoroute exit, where the accident occurred (left). The tunnel was closed Wednesday evening in the direction of Sion, for the investigation.
He cited the fact that the investigation is continuing, as a reason for not providing more details, but he also noted that the accident had occurred less than 24 hours earlier and a top priority was to remove the passengers, identify them and contact families.
The investigation could take some time, Elsig noted, as they look for witnesses who saw the bus before the accident and as they analyze wall and road tracings and interview survivors, once they are in a condition to talk.
The bus came from the south, bottom of image, entered the roundabout (centre of image), then headed west into the tunnel, shown with dotted lines, bottom left
SIERRE / GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The cause of the Tuesday night 13 March bus crash that killed 28 in Sierre could remain a mystery for some time, with the two drivers dead and no immediate explanation for an accident in good weather, at the start of a trip, in a relatively new and well-lit tunnel.
The group was from two towns in Belgium, and was mostly children, who had been at a ski camp in the Val d’Anniviers.
Correction: The bus entered the 13-year-old Gamsen tunnel, which is 2km long, shortly after a roundabout at the end of the road coming down the mountain from the Val d’Anniviers in canton Valais.
Near the end of the tunnel, towards the A9 west exit for Sierre, heading in the direction of Sion, the bus veered to the right and crashed head-on into an emergency area wall.
The tunnel will be familiar to anyone who goes to resorts in the upper Valais area, including Zermatt, Saas Fee and Leukerbad, or from western Switzerland to Italy via the Simplon pass or tunnel, since it links the end of the autoroute and the cantonal highway that is the main artery to these areas.
Gamsen tunnel (photo, 2002, ©2012 Swiss Federal Highway Department)
It was inaugurated in 1999 and is part of a project to complete the autoroute to Italy via the Simplon, planned for 2019. The stretch to be completed is 31.8km, of which 15.8km will be tunnels, in part to protect the eco-system along the Rhone River and the Pfyn forest, the region’s first national forest.
There are several stretches of the road from Sierre to Brig that are under construction, but the area around the Gamsen tunnel, in the direction of Sion, does not have any roadworks at the moment.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Working couples with children who were worried when they saw the UDC People’s Party popular initiative that would give tax cuts to families with a stay-at-home parent received support today from the government. The Swiss Federal Council says it cannot back the initiative because “fiscal law must be as neutral as possible and not favour the traditional family model, as the initiative does”.
A new federal law went into effect 1 January 2011 that allows an income tax deduction for the cost of childcare by a third party as long as the costs can be proven and the child is not yet 14 years old. The maximum allowed deduction is CHF10,100 a year for the federal income tax.
Cantons have until 1 January 2013 to adapt their legislation to allow the deduction, and they are free to set their own ceilings for cantonal taxes.
The federal tax system does not allow parents who care for children at home to deduct the cost, although cantons Zug and Lucerne do, but the UDC’s agenda calls for promoting the traditional family.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Malaria cases worldwide fell by 25 percent in the past decade and by 33 percent worldwide thanks to better prevention but threatened shortfalls in funding from governments could slow the fight against the disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports. Its World malaria report 2011, published 13 December, shows malaria rates falling in all parts of the world, but the disease is far from eradicated.
“In 2010, there were an estimated 216 million cases of malaria in 106 endemic countries and territories in the world. An estimated 81 percent percent of these cases and 91 percent of deaths occurred in the WHO African Region. Globally, 86 percent of the victims were children under 5 years of age.”
The disease is entirely preventable and treatable, notes the WHO, which makes the number of deaths from it, 655,000 in 2010, “disconcertingly high” even though it was 38,000 fewer than the year before.
AUSTRALIA – Child asylum-seekers in Australia may be victims of “child abuse,” said the Australian Medical Association, AMA, to a joint select committee looking into Australia’s detention network.
The AMA said it has “grave concerns for the mental welfare of child asylum-seekers and believes mandatory detention is akin to child abuse.”
According to the Association, asylum-seekers as young as nine, have attempted suicide while in Australian immigration lock-ups.
Currently there are 795 children in the detention network, including those in community placements, says The Australian newspaper. “Of these, 282 are unaccompanied, 688 are housed in mainland facilities and 107 are on Christmas Island,” the article says.
Links to: The Australian
Hiking near the Jungfraujoch (baby gets a backpack ride), August 2011
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – WWF, the environmental organization, and Switzerland’s largest supermarket chain, Migros, are joining forces to help children learn more about and appreciate the Swiss Alps. Mountainmania is a seven-week online quiz programme that kicks off 13 September, designed to teach children more about the Alps.
The two organizations are ready to hand out 50,000 diplomas to “mountain champions” who correctly complete the quiz.
“We need to take care of our Alps,” says WWF chief executive Hans-Peter Fricker. “We’ll only be able to do this if we instill a love for the mountains in children, starting as early as possible.”
Migros will be featuring its bio brands during this period, aiming to increase their sales by 10 percent during the seven weeks. The mountainmania albums that are sold will contribute CHF1 per album to WWF Alpine projects that include restoring areas of the Rhone and Rhine rivers to natural habitats for trout and beavers, and helping encourage the natural return of large carnivores to their Alpine habitats.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Vaud police say the 48-year-old man whose body was found in Begnins, not far from Nyon, Friday morning committed suicide, but the cause of death of his 39-year-old wife is not yet clear.
The Swiss couple were found in their apartment by someone who knew them about 09:00 Friday 9 September and police were called immediately. Those close to the situation and the two children of the couple, reportedly ages 4 and 7, were given counseling by police.
Police have ruled out the involvement of a third party in the deaths of the couple who, according to local media, had been living in Begnins for less than a year.
School is starting: watch out for little people crossing the road!
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Cantons Geneva and Vaud are back in school today, 29 August, and police are reminding motorists to slow down near schools.
School buses at Ecolint, the popular name for the campuses of the International School of Geneva, will start the year Thursday 1 September with a difference: the school has been working with EPFL in Lausanne to come up with the most efficient, environmentally-friendly system for its fleet of school buses in the two cantons.
“Our student population is increasing rapidly,” said Michel Chinal, responsible for the project shortly before his retirement in June. He noted that the rising number of parents picking up and dropping off their children is creating traffic problems in the village of Founex, just outside Geneva. The bus service offered by the school is too slow. The Founex campus, La Chataigneraie, will be adding nearly 300 students with its new primary school opening this week.
“Parents often say that they would like to sign their children up, but the bus ride is too long,” according to Chinal. The school transports nearly 300 students in an area bounded by Morges in Vaud, neighbouring France and Geneva.
The solution was to work with mathematicians in EPFL’s Discrete Optimization Group.
EPFL chemist Rainer Beck, whose child attends the school, offered to optimize the service and he asked his mathematical colleague Friedrich Eisenbrand to tackle the problem.
Eisenbrand notes that “coming up with a simple arithmetic algorithm is not difficult. But that’s not an efficient approach; due to the enormous number of possible itineraries, the calculations are painfully slow. We needed to develop an algorithm that quickly rejected most routes, so that the computation could be completed before the end of the Universe.”
Risenbrand and PhD student Adrian Bock came up with a solution for this complex problem. Using a few clever techniques, says EPFL, the calculations only take half a day to complete.
Grens, Vaud, near Nyon (Google map)
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A huge and costly fire in Grens, Vaud Saturday 20 August, at 15:00, was set off by three children from a Jura family, playing with lighters and straw, say Vaud police.
The parents noticed that the fire originated in an area where their children, ages 8, 9 and 12, had been playing, and when the family discussed it the children admitted to finding a box of lighters at the festivities to inaugurate the “ultra-modern” barn that would have housed 160 animals next week.
They then played with the lighters and some of the straw in the barn, which housed more than 800 bales of hay and straw.
The children, who were attending the festivities with their parents, were interviewed by the police and the file is now in the hands of the Juvenile Police Department.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Health-minded parents have won: McDonalds in the US will be putting fewer french fries in children’s Happy Meals and adding an apple plus low-fat milk and chocolate milk as drink options. The company will introduce the new meals in September as part of a nutrition drive that includes providing calorie and nutrition information via iPhone and other apps.
The new menus will be 20 percent lower in calories; Happy Meals account for an estimated 10 percent of the company’s business in the US, according to Ad Age, which notes that “the announcement comes just weeks after the National Restaurant Association, in conjunction with Healthy Dining, launched a voluntary initiative by the restaurant industry to spur chains to offer and promote healthier kids-meal options. Chains such as Burger King and Chili’s jumped on board, but McDonald’s was noticeably missing from the list of participants.” The advertising industry newspaper says that McDonalds, under pressure from consumer groups to reduce or completely cut marketing to children, reduced its marketing for Happy Meals by almost 46% in the first quarter of 2011, compared to a year earlier.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – London has not seen a show like this for a while, excluding the recent royal wedding: more than £17.2m million raised in one night Thursday 9 June at a party for Absolute Return for Kids (ARK), a UK-based charity, whose founding chairman is Swiss-British-French financier and social celebrity Arpad Busson, who heads EIM in Nyon.
The money will go to a series of children’s health programmes, including retro-virus vaccinations in southern Africa, to reduce the high incidence of dangerous early childhood diarrhea.
The charity had been honoured the previous day with the UK’s top award for charity, the UK Charity Awards 2011, for its work in Bulgaria.
Children might be the reason for the glamorous party, but all eyes were on the 1,000 people who paid £10,000 each to attend the fundraiser. The highlight of the evening, at least for the crowd outside, was the arrival of a stunning couple, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the royal newlyweds, who were attending their first official function, dressed to outshine anyone. And there were plenty of people to outshine, as the Daily Mail was at pains to point out Friday morning with a fine collection of photos to accompany its front page story.
EIM is a Swiss hedge funds company that manages some $13 billion in funds, up from $10b in October 2010, when the firm ended its distinction between alternative and other funds management, according to Swiss Bilan magazine. The recent rapid growth in the funds managed by the companies was cited by the San Francisco Chronicle as a sign that the recovery of the hedges fund industry is now well underway.
Busson is no stranger to the celebrity life, first as a student at Le Rosey in Rolle, canton Vaud, then in an early and well-publicized relationship with actress Farrah Fawcett and later during his long relationship with super-model Elle McPherson (mother to his two children) and four years with actress Uma Thurman.
The United Nations agency for children affairs, Unicef, appealed for a ceasefire in Lybia saying at least 20 children had been killed in attacks by government forces.
Anthony Lake, Unicef’s Executive Director said at least 20 children have been killed and countless others have been injured in the city of Misrata in Libya.
“Reports of the use of cluster munitions are particularly alarming,” saysLake.
According to Unicef, the situation is also critical in Yemen, where at least 26 children have been killed and more than 800 have been injured since early February.
In Syria, Unicef reports,nine children were killed and many injured over the last few weeks.
Links: Unicef, GenevaLunch
Missing St Sulpice twins, Alessia and Livia Schepp
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - SwissMissing, with help from Canton Vaud Police, carried out an 8km2 search in the Geneva countryside Saturday 9 April to Monday morning, looking for the bodies of the two missing six-year-olds, Alessia and Livia Schepp. Twelve people including a police officer and three dogs that are trained to look for bodies, teamed up and worked out of Confignon et à Chancy, Jean-Christophe Sauterel, head of press and communications for Vaud Police, told GenevaLunch.
He confirmed that the search turned up no results.
The search was undertaken after a sniffer dog confirmed the presence of the father, Matthias Schepp, in the area: a Geneva woman earlier reported that he had been seen with his daughters in the area Sunday 30 January.
SwissMissing has published a short report, in English, on the search, to thank donors who covered the CHF34,000 cost of the weekend search. The organization has also posted a YouTube video showing the search (in Italian). The family was not directly involved in the search.
Matthias Schepp’s treasured tape recorder may have been found in Italy
Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Police in three countries have issued no new reports Wednesday morning 16 February on their progress searching for missing twins Alessia and Livia Schepp. The mother, Irina Ludici, in an interview with 20 Minuten in German, mentions questions that have been raised, notably about the father’s presence in Lyons.
Matthias Schepp, was close to the airport in Lyons, France, not the logical route to take to Marseille or the one most likely proposed by his GPS navigation system. This is also the end of the trail of his cell phone. The girls’ mother is quoted by 20 Minutes as asking “We’re wondering if Matthias met an accomplice at the airport”.
The online daily notes that this might explain who was watching the girls while the father went into a travel agency in Marseille alone to buy three tickets for the ferry to Corsica.
20 Minuten also reports that a tape recorder, an older model that the father always kept with him, was found by Italian police, but this has not been confirmed officially.
Police from the three countries investigating the disappearance of the two six year olds are meeting today in Marseille to compare notes.
In other reported developments, none of them confirmed by investigators:
- French television TF1 reports that French police continue to search beaches in Corsica and spent Tuesday 15 February combing the area at the northern end of the island
- Macinaggio is reported by several media to have piqued police searchers’ interest, based on reports by a man in his 60s who claims to have seen Matthias Schepp with a blond woman in the passenger seat, in a parked, muddy car with Swiss license plates, near the harbour
- Police in Corsica are also checking wells and ancient furnaces among the ruins in Macinaggio, according to 20 Minutes.
- Ansa, the Italian news agency which has been closely following the story, reports that there have been no new elements.
Sarah Oberson disappeared in 1985 from Saxon, Valais (photo, Sarah Oberson Foundation)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s kidnap alert system, adopted in early 2010, is now available via cell phone networks and the government is asking the public to register online to participate, to ensure the widest possible alert network.
The minutes that follow a kidnapping are crucial, they say, and the quicker the alert is out to as many people as possible, the better.
The system works in four languages: English, French, German and Italian, in Switzerland only. It takes just seconds to register.
The system is based on the widespread success of a similar system in France and elsewhere. A young girl in Fresno, California was saved in October 2010 when a man who had just heard an alert saw a car going by that matched a description and he chased the kidnapper until the man stopped and pushed the girl out of the car.
The Sarah Oberson Foundation was set up in memory of a five-year-old Valais girl who disappeared walking from her parents’ to her grandparents’ house in the village of Saxon in 1985. The foundation’s site provides advice on what to do in case of a suspected or known kidnapping, with useful phone numbers.
Le Nouvelliste, Valais newspaper that has been active in the search for Sarah over the years and the campaign to set up a national alert system, proves more information on how the system works.
Family allowances are designed to provide cash to help cover a child's costs
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerlandta has a system of family allowances in lieu of standard tax deductions for children, with monthly payments for dependents, and it is about to take a step towards greater transparency.
Starting in January 2011 the public will have access to new, nationally coordinated online records for family allowance payment.
The rationale is to ensure that those who should be receiving the monthly payments can see when money has been issued, while also making it more difficult to fraudulently collect more than one payment per child.
The federal, cantonal and communal governments in Switzerland have been gradually harmonizing digital records and registrations data bases, as this week’s decision to move from a once-a-decade to an annual census made clear.
The combined records will now indicate if someone is registered in more than one place to receive a family allowance. The children who should be benefiting directly from the payments do not always receive them, says Bern, noting that “it is not unusual for a parent who has the right to receive the payment not to pass it on to the parent who is living with the child, even though they are obliged to by law.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Santiago Penados de Rivero, 10, wanted to join his mother Thursday morning 11 November, like so many other children in Geneva and Vaud who took part in the bring your kid to work day, which 11 Swiss cantons offered last week. Juliette de Rivero, his mother, is the Geneva advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, an NGO, and her work day included plans to meet with other advocacy groups representatives as well as some UN member government agencies in her role observing the UN Human Rights Council meetings at the UN, reports Foreign Policy magazine. But Santiago was stopped at the door and the pair were told he did not have the right to enter.
The guard told his mother that “Geneva ends when you step foot in this building. This is not Switzerland,” reports Foreign Policy. The UN communications office in Geneva later clarified that while UN employees and diplomats may bring their children, other children must have advance security clearance. Santiago, for his part, sat down and wrote a letter of protest, arguing for his rights.
In canton Vaud in 2010 more than 14,000 children joined their parents at work for the day. Figures for Geneva and for this year are not yet available.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - It’s not your eyes or the chilly weather, you can reassure yourself, when you notice that Geneva’s landmark jet d’eau is blue Friday 12 November. The Geneva-based Gavi Alliance, a founder member of the Global Coalition again Child Pneumonia, is gathering early Friday afternoon at the Bain de Paquis with partners from several international organizations, all of whom have been asked to wear blue jeans, to honour World Pneumonia Day.
Pneumonia is the leading killer of children under age five worldwide. It kills more than 1.5 million children every year, despite the fact that there are effective vaccines and treatments to combat it, the group notes.
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Upper house of Swiss parliament
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A hotly debated measure has passed in parliament, to allow students who do not have Swiss residence permits but who are registered for school to take up apprenticeship places.
The two houses of parliament as well as cantonal parliaments have been struggling with the issue for months, with Green and Socialist politicians arguing for more help for children of illegal immigrants while right-wing politicians have insisted the system should not help them.
Reliable figures are difficult to come by, but the Tribune de Geneve recently cited an official register as saying that of 5,000 registered students in canton Geneva, only 250 were between ages 15 and 20, the age for apprenticeships, which are a key part of the Swiss education and training system.
Many students do not register, out of fear of being sent away from Switzerland, although the school registration system offers some protection.
Swissinfo in an article early in 2010 estimated the country has 10-30,000 unregistered children up to age 16, when compulsory schooling ends.
The upper house vote to adopt a measure earlier accepted by the lower house was relatively close, 23-20.
Overseas US citizens often surprised to find children have obligations but not the right to vote
By Clair Whitmer
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Most Americans assume that US citizenship automatically grants individuals the right to vote. However many expatriate American parents are shocked to learn that their children raised overseas, even if full US citizens in all other respects, do not necessarily have the right to vote in US elections. The states require that citizens establish residency prior to registering to vote. These residency requirements exist to facilitate election administration, not to exclude voters, and they are easily met in most states. That is, they are easily met unless you are an American born and raised overseas.
These Americans are called “non-domiciled citizens” and are full US citizens: they have American birth certificates and passports, must file US federal taxes, and males must register with the Selective Service. However, only 18 states allow them to register to vote using a parent’s [former US] voting address. The other 32 states will not accept their registration forms unless and until they move back stateside and meet residency requirements.
The fact that citizenship can still be granted without a guarantee of voting rights flies in the face of most Americans’ understanding of what it means to be a citizen. The constitution prohibits states from denying the right to vote from certain categories of citizens: women, blacks, adults aged 18 to 21. But, there is no constitutional guarantee of general voting rights.
Number of children born abroad
Claire Smith in an article, “These are our numbers: civilian americans overseas and voter turnout”, writes that the US Census Bureau does not count overseas citizens, thus there is no accurate way to know how many potential voters are left out of the democratic process in this way. It is almost certainly a fairly small number compared to the estimated 6 million Americans who live overseas and who exercise federal voting rights under the 1986 Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA).
Fortunately, new data provides insight into the number of children abroad.
Swiss police at the start of every school year run campaigns to emphasize road safety near schools
Sion, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 63-year-old school crossing guard in Vouvry, at the eastern end of Lake Geneva, is in stable condition with head injuries after she was hit by a car and dragged by it at 13:10 Monday afternoon, 6 September. She was conscious when she was taken to the nearby Monthey hospital.
The accident was witnessed by a number of children returning to school after lunch, and they are being given counselling.
The driver of the car was a 54-year-old Zurich woman who lives in canton Valais. She was arrested and has had her driver’s license confiscated after the accident. She was found to have an alcohol level of 2,03 %o, more than four times the legal limit. According to police, she did not see the crossing guard as she came up over a hill “due to her physical state.”
Indonesia is the only country in Asia not to have signed the World Health Organization’s framework on tobacco control. CNN has highlighted the extent to which children are affected by smoking with a story about two-year-old Aldi, a new media darling in the country who can’t give up smoking. His parents want him to stop, but not, according to health authorities because they recognize it’s bad for the child but because of the cost.
A new study in the US appears to show that there is a link between ADHD (attention deficit disorders) and the use of pesticides in food.
The report by researchers in Boston on studies of urine samples from 1,139 children, with 119 children in the group meeting diagnostic criteria for ADHD. The “findings support the hypothesis that organophosphate [pesticides] exposure, at levels common among US children, may contribute to ADHD prevalence,” say the authors.
Young children are more susceptible to the impact of pesticides, it appears, but further studies are needed to determine if pesticides can be pinpointed as a cause of the disorder.
Links to other sites: CNN, Pediatrics, Science Daily
