ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Credit Suisse Thursday pushed its GDP growth forecast down sharply, from 2 percent to 0.5 percent, for 2012. The bank points to the euro crisis, which “continues to weigh on markets, with economic momentum in Europe fading unexpectedly quickly.” Switzerland will be hurt by the fall in exports due to “decidedly gloomier” prospects for countries to which the Swiss export, and the accompanying fall in capital investment on new machinery and equipment.
Consumers and the construction industry, which continues to boom thanks to low interest rates, will prop up economic growth, the bank’s analysts say.
Renovations, new construction: building industry and consumption will prop up Swiss economy in 2012
But “a significant cooling of European growth is no longer avoidable”, according to Credit Suisse, and “while the US economy has accelerated again slightly following the dip seen in mid-2011, the opposite is occurring in Europe. Most significantly, economic momentum in Germany – Switzerland’s key trading partner – has slowed. At the same time, the partial spillover of the debt crisis to Italy has brought increased volatility on the financial markets, growing tensions on the credit and interbank markets, and falling confidence among households and businesses.”
Sentiment is more of an issue than home-grown problems, the bank notes, pointing out that Swiss public finances and companies do not have excess debt.
“On the contrary, interest rates in Switzerland will remain low until at least the end of 2012. In addition, inflation is not an issue in Switzerland at present; pressure on consumer prices is holding up, so purchasing power is safeguarded (inflation in 2012: 0.4%). Finally, immigration is likely to remain strong, meaning an important driver of the growth in consumption will remain in place. By contrast, the constant talk of crisis, together with a deterioration in the labor market situation (unemployment rate in 2012: 3.3%), is increasingly impacting sentiment, and poses certain constraints for the growth in consumption.”
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss government said Wednesday night 2 November that it condemns Israel for two new measures, voted by the Israeli cabinet Tuesday, shortly after Unesco admitted Palestine as a member.
Bern stopped short of calling the measures retaliatory, but it notes that the decision by Tel Aviv to “speed up construction of several thousand additional housing units in the settlements in and around East Jerusalem” is illegal and constitutes a violation of international law”.
The Swiss Federal Council also says that it is “preoccupied by the Israeli government’s announcement concerning a possible freeze on transferring funds to the Palestinian Authority. Such a decision would be contrary to Israel’s international obligations. Switzerland calls upon the Israeli authorities to continue to turn over the tax revenues collected in the name of the Palestinian Authority. These funds make up a significant part of the Palestinian Authority’s budget.”
Switzerland abstained from the Unesco vote on Palestine, but swissinfo cited a statement Monday night by Rodolphe Imhoof, Swiss permanent delegate to Unesco in Paris: “If Switzerland abstained in the voting, it’s because it believes that this debate should not be held in the context of an organisation whose role is a technical one, such as Unesco,.” Imhoof added that the matter was one for the political organs of the UN to decide.
The Israeli government has denied charges that the two cabinet decisions are retaliatory, but AFP quotes an unnamed Israeli official as saying the measures were a “punishment” for the vote.
Artist's rendering, Aminona luxury resort, now on hold
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The CHF500 million Aminona Luxury Resort project has been put on ice for now by the Swiss Federal Tribunal after a last-minute appeal from environmental groups was accepted. The canton Valais high court in August refused to accept the groups’ objections to the project.
The high court also ruled Monday against the company behind the project, which was asking for a CHF5 million deposit from the environmental groups to offset costs linked to the delay.
The project would create a large resort in Aminona, next to Crans-Montana, with a five-star hotel, 32 chalets, five towers and luxury services. The complete project would have 2,500 beds.
The tribunal accepted the arguments by three groups, WWF, Patrimoine Suisse and the Fondation suisse pour la protection et l’aménagement du paysage (Swiss Foundation for Landscape Conservation). The court notes in its decision that the site of the new resort is in a stretch of dry prairie which is provisionally on the federal list of dry prairies and pastures of national importance.
The court ruled that starting construction could cause “irreparable damage” to the dry prairies, and they must benefit from “provisional preventive protection”.
ATS (TSR, Fre) reports that the court is unlikely to rule before January on the basic right of the project to go ahead.
The project has faced hurdles from the start. It calls for three construction phases, and one of the arguments of the environmental groups is that this division of the project into smaller parts has allowed the backers to avoid presenting a coherent overall plan to competent authorities.
The first phase, to build 10 towers on the eastern side of the project, prompted a temporary ban on construction to allow time to review the impact of such dense construction. The ban was lifted by the cantonal council in the summer of 2010, then confirmed by the cantonal court in August 2011. Phases 2 and 3, to build 45 chalets and a number of towers, lag behind in the approval process.
The environmental groups also argue that the scale of the project is out of tune with the times and that with 70,000 “cold beds” or unused hotel, apartments and chalets, it makes little sense to build such a large number of new places.
History of the Village Royal Aminona Luxury Resort project, GenevaLunch:
Aminona resort takes on green tint, September 2010
Aminona Russian Alpine resort faces WWF opposition, December 2009
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - The tight housing situation in Geneva is not likely to ease much thanks to new construction, if construction and permits issued in the first half of 2011 are any sign.
Throughout Switzerland, new permits were up by 19 percent, an increase of some 30,000 new units. Five percent more new units were under construction, some 70,000, during the first half of the year, compared to the same period in 2010.
Geneva new permits up but total units only 2,000
But the picture for the greater Lausanne and Geneva areas is mixed. Geneva had a 26 percent increase in new buildings in the first half of the year, but buildings under construction were down by 11.3 percent in the second quarter (semester figures not available).
New permits issued during the first six months rose by a 63.5 percent, representing more than 2,000 units.
Lausanne area sees slowdown in building
The greater Lausanne area saw new construction fall during the first half of the year by more than 39 percent, with buildings under construction up 6.7 percent and new permits down more than 11 percent.
Will also create more secondary school places
ISLL, new international school, opens in Morges, September 2011
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Two schools, one new and one expanding, will significantly ease the pressure on the local English language and bilingual primary school offer starting in September. The continually growing international population in the Lake Geneva region has resulted in a worsening of what was already a shortage of places in schools where English is one of the teaching languages.
Morges school finds a home, thanks to regional development agency and town of Morges
The LLIS (Lake Leman International School) opens at La Gottaz in Morges 12 September, with kindergarten starting at age 3 to grade 5 (ages 9-11) opening during the first year, as well as a multi-lingual crèche or daycare centre for children from age 3 months. The school is planning to open a secondary school for the 2012-2013 academic year, with International Baccalaureate (IB) preparation.
It can take several years for a school to receive IB accreditation, but the new school, opening in its first year with seven classes, is basing its education programme on the IB, particularly for language learning, it says.
Finding a location for the school, especially given high rents in the Lake Geneva region, was not easy, but the Vaud Economic Development Agency and the town of Morges worked with the school, which is in a commercial complex next to the BAM regional train line and the A1 autoroute exit for Morges Ouest.
Anna Kaeser, who has several years experience in education in the UK and Switzerland, is the director of the school and a group of investors is working with management to ensure the financial viability of the school.
International schools also attract local Swiss famililes in part because they often offer a full-day programme, unlike Swiss state schools. The new LLIS will be open from 08:00 to 17:00, including the lunch hour, with a lunch service. The Cap Canaille crèche is located in the same building and is open from 06:30 to 18:30, five days a week, year round.
La Chataigneraie, part of the Int’l School of Geneva, adds 500 new students this September
New primary school at La Chataignerai, Founex
The oldest international schools in the world and a founding school of the IB programme, the International School of Geneva, has had waiting lists for several years.
This September it increases its intake dramatically at La Chataigneraie, its canton Vaud campus in Founex, thanks to a major construction programme. The school, with four campuses, had more than 4,000 students in September 2010.
Atrium in the centre of the new primary school creates light and airy space
The La Chataigneraie campus has built a new primary school that will house 642 students, and it added another storey to the old primary school, which is being turned over to the secondary school. Seven new classes are currently planned in the primary school and three in the secondary school, “but more classes may be added in the primary school if demand warrants it,” Catherine Merigay of the development office told GenevaLunch.
Total additional capacity is 500 students, potentially bringing the campus’s population to about 1,700 students.
La Chat, as it is popularly known, has been able to get rid of a number of portacabins and it is offering a “reception”, or kindergarten class for the first time, for children age 4 and up, starting in September.
Portacabins are disappearing thanks to an additional storey on La Chat's old primary school, now handed over to the secondary school
Muehleberg peaceful anti-nuclear protest, ©2011 Herbi Ditl on flickr
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss parliament’s lower house Wednesday morning 8 June backed the government’s recommendation to close down the country’s nuclear energy plants, voting two to one in favour of several motions similar to the one sent to parliament by the government.
Nuclear power plants currently provide 39.3 percent of the country’s energy, hydroelectric and dams 55.8 percent (TSR has several charts on Swiss energy).
The vote sends a strong signal to the Swiss upper house, the senate, which will vote on the recommendations after the summer session, but no date has been set. It now appears likely that, in line with Wednesday’s vote, existing power plants will be shut down when their current licenses to operate come to an end, by 2034, and that no new plants will be approved.
Zurich says no to both proposals to limit assisted suicide
Update 13:00 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – First Swiss 15 May voting results are in:
- Geneva accepting a re-zoning project for Plan-les-Ouates and Confignon, but a bicycle and pedestrian paths system looking like it is headed for defeat
- Vaud voting to support families in need, in particular those reaching the end of long-term unemployment claims.
- Zurich voters gave little support to either of the two proposals to limit assisted suicide (TSR, Fr).
a Zurich voters are famously having their say about suicide tourism 15 May, UK media in particular report, but inside Switzerland the hot issues include rezoning for a new housing area in Geneva, and nuclear waste and a minimum wage in canton Vaud.
Geneva: green transport support, re-zoning for new building
Geneva debates giving cyclists more space
The 15 May votes do not include any federal-level popular referendums. The Swiss go to the polls three to four times a year and the next federal voting session is in October, when members of parliament are elected.
Geneva voters, with the entire canton now eligible to vote online, have five items on the ballot. The one that has prompted the liveliest French-language media coverage is a zoning change in Plan-les-Ouates and Confignon, in the areas known as Les Cherpines and Les Charrotons. The re-zoning would permit agricultural land to be re-zoned for offices and homes, with the possibility of creating 3,000 homes near l’Aire, to the west of the A1 autoroute. The government is backing the plan, but opponents argue, among other things, that in order to eat local food as a feature of supporing the environment, you have to have land to grow it.
Geneva is also voting on a popular initiative to create pedestrian and cycling paths that would have priority, but the cantonal government says it is opposed to the plan, citing the fact that only 6 percent of those using “transport” systems are on bicycles and that the plan goes against a Geneva constitutional article that does not allow one form of transport to be given priority over others.
Vaud: nuclear waste, minimum wages
Vaud citizens are being asked to decide on a popular referendum that would create a minimum wage; Switzerland in general does not have minimum wages except for certain categories of workers, such as household staff, where they were established to avoid abuse. Unions and employer organizations generally negotiate wages that set a minimum.
Vaud is also one of several cantons that had planned votes on nuclear power stations, but in the wake of the early 2011 federal government moratorium on building nuclear plants, the ballot item was dropped. In its place is part of the larger ballot issue: voters are being asked to approve Swiss plans to bury nuclear waste deep underground. The cantonal vote is not binding on the federal government.
This weekend also sees the final round of voting to elect local officials.
Neuchatel, Valais, Zurich
Neuchatel: There are no cantonal voting items but the communes of Boudry, Cortaillod and Bevaix are voting on whether or not to join together.
Valais is not voting this weekend.
Zurich: Voters are being given two popular referendums on assisted suicide, one to end it and the other to limit it to Zurich residents when carried out in the canton, but neither is expected by most observers to pass. The importance of the vote lies in the message it will send to the federal government, which is expected to propose stricter legislation, possibly in 2011, and to canton Vaud, where a vote will probably be held in 2012 on allowing assisted suicide in homes for the elderly.
British media have covered the Zurich vote as part of ongoing coverage of suicide tourism, focusing on people going from the UK to Switzerland to die at one of the two main Zurich area clinics, Dignitas and Exit. Numbers are unconfirmed by vary widely, from 100 mentioned by the Telegraph to 800 on a waiting list mentioned by the Guardian.
Ed. note: one BBC story, and as a result other UK media stories, mistakenly reported that Switzerland is voting on the issue this weekend: only canton Zurich is voting on it (BBC’s Imogene Foulkes got it right).
Polls have shown a majority of Swiss in favour of ending suicide tourism, while safeguarding free choice about ending one’s life, for Swiss citizens.
Tibet roadside view (photo, Liam Bates)
The Chinese government is using the March anniversary of the Tibetan uprising in 1952 to underscore its commitment to better connecting the distant western province to the rest of the country by detailing its transport plans. A new rail line, as part of the 2011-2015 Five Year Plan, will link Golmud in northwestern Qinghai Province and Korla in Xinjiang, the vice-governor of Qinghai, Luo Yulin, said in Beijing 6 March. The new rail connection will cut 1,000 km from the current rail link between Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, currently a 4,000km journey.
The official notes that two other major railway lines are to be built in the west, between Golmud and Dunhuang in Gansu Province, and between Golmud and Chengdu in Sichuan Province, and local authorities are also considering lines linking Xining with Chengdu, and Xining with Kunming in Yunnan Province, reports Xinhua news agency.
A new highway programme for the Tibet Autonomous Region will increase roads in the vast area from the current 58,000km to 70,000km, and by 2015 all Tibetan villages should be accessible by blacktop road, Li Shenglin, China’s transport minister says. Xinhua reports that “an expressway network, or ’4-hour economic zone’, linking five major cities, Lhasa, Xigaze, Nagqu, Shannan and Nyingchi” will put the last four cities all within four hours of Lhasa by car.
Major building projects: cutting-edge neuroprostheses centre gets new home
Proposed EPFL hall, architect Perrault
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - EPFL, one of Switzerland’s two federal polytechnic institutes, is embarking on a new construction programme that will bring some of its older buildings into line with the new Rolex Learning Center.
The rationale behind the building work, which goes well beyond renovations, is to regroup part of the central services of the school and to create a number of new laboratories for engineering students.
“The work is a follow-up—to a certain extent—to the building of the Rolex Learning Center, since the content of the central library has been moved to EPFL’s flagship building, freeing up significant space,” the school notes in a press release.
“The Center for Neuroprosthetics, which was started at the end of 2008, and is supported by several foundations will thus benefit from a dedicated and perfectly equipped location.”
The Bertarelli family and Borel family (Defitech) foundations are major donors.
Architect Dominique Perrault, who is French, will work with the Swiss Karl Steiner company, which was awarded the general contractor work. Perrault is currently redesigning the Locarno rail station in canton Ticino.
Exterior view, Perrault's hall at EPFL
He is known for his architectural work on the French National Library (the François Mitterand site) in Paris in, 1995, the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, the Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea and the Fukoku Tower in Osaka, Japan.
“The winning project convinced us because it establishes a strong link between the older buildings on the campus and the new constructions on the south side of the campus”, says Francis-Luc Perret, EPFL vice-president who is responsible for real estate and who was president of the jury.
City also celebrating western Lausanne urban development award
Lausanne, December 2010: city reduces its debt but will continue investment programme
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Lausanne handed its taxpayers good news Wednesday 19 January, saying it will reduce the city’s debt by CHF25 million in 2010, after a reduction of CHF2 million in 2009.
The city, which has grown by 6,500 inhabitants since 2007, has invested more than CHF600m in the past four years for what it calls “modernization and efforts to increase its attractiveness”.
The city’s mayor, Daniel Brélaz, has come in for heavy criticism for the size of the debt and 24 Heures (Fr) points out that some investments planned for 2010 were not carried out in order to reduce the debt, possibly in time to woo voters before coming elections.
The debt reduction covers 1.1 percent of the city’s CHF2.3 billion debt, which has grown by CHF44.55m in the past four years and which includes a CHF141 million increase to cover recapitalization of the city’s pension fund for municipal workers.
More housing on the books as international population boosts city’s size
Lausanne at dusk, December 2010
The local government says it plans to continue its investment programme, pointing to the debt reduction as a positive sign that city finances are under control, even if the debt remains substantial.
It points out in its statement about the payoff that the city’s assets are greater than its debt.
One part of the current investment programme is increasing housing by 3,000 homes. Future investment projects call for an additional 5,000 homes by 2020 to ease the tight housing market.
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.
Green go the Russians, oh!
Electric vehicles only, with parking in Sierre
Aminona's existing 3 towers (white) likely to see several more as part of new luxury resort project
Sierre, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The controversial CHF350 million resort complex that Russia’s Mirax company is planning to build in Aminona, near Crans-Montana in canton Valais, is suddenly looking greener than its original plans showed.
Swiss environmental groups in December 2009 filed appeals against the project to build a 2,500 resort with several towers and a five-star hotel plus 32 chalets.
WWF and the Swiss Fund for the Protection of Nature said at the time that they “fear[ed] a fiasco for nature and the surrounding countryside, as well as for the region itself.”
Concerns focused particularly on the supply of drinking water and protecting the dry prairies in the region, which are considered to be of national importance.
Mirax announced plans in 2007 to build on the 60,000m2 stretch to the east of Crans-Montana.
Mirax’s emphasis has now shifted from luxury resort to luxurious and green: the company says it will invest CHF250 million in green technologies for the resort, reports Le Nouvelliste, Valais newspaper.
The total expected cost of the resort has risen to at least CHF600m, with Mirax saying it will be not just the most ecological resort in Valais, but in all of Switzerland.
Swiss are building homes in the suburbs and towns
Geneva: a city with too few building cranes (winter 2010)
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The number of newly-built homes in Switzerland has increased by more than 12 percent since the start of the year, compared to 2009, but the figure hides major discrepancies between areas. Overall, in the second quarter of the year the number of new homes increased in villages with no more than 2,000 residents and in small towns of 5,000-10,000 people. But the five main cities in Switzerland showed a 20 percent drop in completed new homes, with Lausanne the only one showing growth: Basel, Bern, Geneva and Zurich all saw a decline.
Houses under construction up, but building permits down
A small glimmer of hope for the tight housing market in Swiss cities is that the number of new homes under construction at the end of June 2010 was more than 8 percent higher than a year earlier. For the country as a whole, federal statistics show 9,750 new homes being built during the second quarter of the year, a 2.5 percent increase over the same period in 2009.
The boost looks short-lived, however, with the number of new building permits down by 2 percent at the end of June for the country as a whole, but down 17 percent in the five main cities. Basel and Lausanne areas show an increase in permits, while the number is down sharply in Geneva, Zurich and Bern.
Services to expand, open to community
Artist's rendering of new CSS sports and health performance centre in Lausanne
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The CSS (Centre sport et santé), a sports performance centre shared by EPFL and the University of Lausanne, will have a new home in 2012. Lausanne architects Krüger and Kazan have been given the mandate to build the CHF11 million new centre, an extension to the existing Omnisport building, with construction to begin in January 2011.
The project is supported financially by cantonal bank BCV, Vaud’s cantonal sports fund and the Chuv university hospitals.
The new centre will have as its primary focus students at the two universities, but it will be open to the larger community, to others who are interested in measured sports performance at all levels including individuals.
The UK economy picked up in the second quarter of 2010, thanks in large part to the biggest rise in construction in nearly 50 years. New figures published by the Office for National Statistics Friday 23 July show a 1.1 percent GDP increase over the previous quarter, the largest such quarterly rise in four years, and a 1.6 percent increase over the same period a year earlier.
Links to other sites: Financial Times, Reuters
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, in Washington for meetings, is seeing US following sharp criticism from the US and increased tensions over Israel’s decision to build new settlements in East Jerusalem, but he came out forcefully on Israel’s right to build on land that is part of disputed territory taken during the 1967 Middle East War. “”The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 year ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It’s our capital,” Netanyahu said at a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an American pro-Israel lobby group.
He met Monday with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice-president Joe Biden and he meets Tuesday with President Barack Obama.
Links to other sites: BBC, Jerusalem Post, New York Times, Xinhua
Update 12:35 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) has criticized the impact on wildlife of construction projects for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. The cumulative impact, in particular, of several projects around the Black Sea resort are not being addressed, says Unep in a new report that was requested by the Russian government. The report follows a late January visit to the site by a Unep team.
It is not too late for the Games to serve as an environmental showcase, however, says Unep, which praises the Russian Railway, Ministry of Natural Resources and the 2014 Sochi Games organizers for being open to discussions.
Rolex Learning Center / EPFL by Sanaa ©2010 Hisao Suzuki
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The CHF110 million Rolex Learning Center at EPFL in Lausanne opens officially Monday 22 February. The 21st century education center is notable for its waves of floors without stairs and ceilings seemingly without support columns. It has Swiss cheese-like holes in the roof for light and aeration. The building is quite simply extraordinary to behold, and time will tell if its innovative design is as functionally pleasing as architects of the Japanese firm Sanaa promise.
The center is more than just an unusual building visually and functionally: in keeping with the work of EPFL into materials and processes research, the Rolex Learning Center has been built using several new construction methods.
Students, faculty and visitors who enter the building Monday will find a center which acknowledges that traditional learning methods and materials have been replaced by group work, using interactive and digital tools.
Geneva's Cornavin train station
Artist's rendering of new Cornavin station (image: CFF)
Update with artist’s drawings, video link
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva’s Cornavin station begins a major renovation programme next Tuesday, 18 January. Work will begin on the west entry hall and the ground floor of the station. Access from the west end of the station to tracks 1 and 2 will be changed and new access to the building will be provided from the Montbrillant passage.
Ed. note: the Montbrillant passage will provide the only access to the building from the west side during the construction period, from January to August 2010, with the main area closed for renovation. A number of shops and other businesses in the station wil close for part of the renovation.
Artist's rendering of new Cornavin station (image: CFF)
Pedestrian traffic flow in future, Cornavin station
The first phase of the three-year project, the west wing, will be ready by May 2011 and the east wing in autumn 2013. The project is designed to improve traffic flows, but also t0 make the station brighter, livelier and more comfortable, says the CFF.
The area around the station will be particularly disrupted during the summer of 2010, with work going on inside the station and the nearby Place-des-Vingt-Deux-Cantons, next to the Notre Dame church, torn up to make way for the new Bernex tram line terminus.
Berlin Monday 9 November is recalling the fall of the wall that divided East from West, politically if not necessarily geographically. Thousands of tourists are in the city for celebrations and commemorative events on the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. Key figures at the time, including Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and Polish union leader Lech Walesa, are taking part in ceremonies.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, Telegraph, UK and Deutsche Welle home page 9 November featuring special section on the Berlin Wall, in English
Background: Wikipedia on the Berlin Wall, Media coverage of the wall from 1961-1989 from Newseum
Update 12:00 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The gray line between freedom of speech and racism continues to be toyed with by the Swiss right-wing UDC party while municipalities in Switzerland debate whether or not to stop the group’s campaign posters for an upcoming popular vote. The 26 November referendum with three items includes one to ban the construction of new minarets in the country. The proposal is widely expected to be defeated, based on recent polls, but it could be close.
Basel-City and Lausanne have refused permission for the posters to go up, while Geneva Wednesday afternoon 7 October decided to allow them. Several cities asked the Swiss Federal Commission Against Racism for an opinion, which it issued Wednesday afternoon 7 October. Since then Winterthur, Zurich and Lucerne have decided to allow the posters, but Fribourg has banned them.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Mortgage loans in Switzerland, 40 percent of which are new construction loans, rose by 4.6 percent in July. They had been falling but began to rise after Swiss interest rates moved lower starting in November 2008, says the Swiss National Bank (SNB). Mortgage loans constitute 80 percent of all loans.
Loans other than mortgage loans fell by 1.6 percent in July, however.
China is starting to build a train line Lop Nur, an area known as “the sea of death” in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, reports Xinhua, noting that the region is rich in potassium salt, a very rare resource in China, used in fertilizers. A road to the remote area opened in 2006. China currently imports 4 million tons a year of potassium fertilizer but plans to produce 3m tons a year once the rail line is open. The area has reserves of 500m tons, worth more than 500 billion yuan.The region once held NW China’s largest lake, which “dried up in 1972 as a result of desertification and environmental degradation”.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.8 percent in the first three months of 2009 compared to the last quarter of 2008. The drop was 2.4 percent compared to the same period in 2008. Foreign trade was the main culprit, says the federal government: exports of goods fells by 6.6 percent and of services by 2.3 percent.
International School of Geneva, Switzerland, Nations campus (click on image to view larger)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The International School of Geneva has been given a green light by the canton to proceed with construction of a new sports hall and a five-storey building that will provide 14 additional classrooms and an administrative centre at the Nations campus in Grand-Saconnex.
Geneva, Switzerland (Tribune de Geneve, Fre) – Palexpo, Geneva’s congress and exhibition centre, has asked for building permits to start a project to modernize its complex, including installations, at a cost of CHF100 million. The project, if approved, will take five years. Details of the project, Palexpo, Fre
Geneva, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Rémy Pagani on one side, Mark Muller on the other, and let the fight begin: the two Geneva politicians have begun throwing insults, each accusing the other of being responsible for continuing Geneva’s housing crisis.
Forest, central Switzerland, Nov 2008, viewed from helicopter
Winterthur, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss are using more wood for home heating and construction, but this use can still be increased and should be, to help forests play a better environmental role, the Federal Environmental Office said Monday. The office held a press conference to announce a new government programme that will oversee all forestry and wood resources, starting in 2009.
St Sulpice, Vaud, Switzerland (24 Heures, Fre) – A landmark in St Sulpice will soon disappear if the public inquiry currently open for a new neighborhood allows the project to be passed: it would demolish 11 of the 12 old Castolin-Eutectic soldering company buildings.
