BERN, SWITZERLAND - A 46-year-old man from Zug died after he crashed while skiing in Grindelwald Tuesday afternoon 7 February. The man was coming down the First in the area of Horbach, with relatives, when he crashed, without anyone else involved. When he failed to get up, emergency help was called, but the man was declared dead on the slopes by the Rega rescue crew.
Police are investigating the cause of his death.
Update 8 February 09:00 LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 43-year-old man has died and a 44-year-old woman is in critical condition at the Hug university hospitals in Geneva after what appears to have been a carbon monoxide leak at a chalet in Rossinière, near Château-d’Oex. The man was visiting the area during the ski season, say police. A downstairs neighbour woman, age 58, went up to the first floor apartment to say she smelled something suspicious shortly after noon Tuesday 7 February, but when she discovered the two inanimate bodies she phoned police. She was also briefly hospitalized in the area.
Police are investigating the cause of the accident.
Later in the day, at 20:00, firefighters were called to route de la Frasse in Rossinière where a chalet had caught fire. No one was injured by the blaze, in an unoccupied chalet with two apartments, but the building was entirely destroyed.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 30-year-old French man who lives in the Lausanne area died Sunday 29 January while diving at Rossinière, near where the Chaudanne river comes out, a Fribourg region spot popular with speleologists. Canton Vaud police say he dived alone, but when those caving with him saw air come up one immediately dived to his rescue and brought him, unconscious, to the surface. Despite first aid by the group he was with, he died at the scene of the accident, despite the arrival of an ambulance crew and emergency doctor.
Police have taken his diving equipment for the investigation.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Sarah Burke, 29-year-old Canadian freestyle ski champion, died Thursday 19 January at the University of Utah hospital where she was taken following an accident during training near Salt Lake City a week earlier. Burke had won numerous gold medals in the past five years and CNN reports that she “is considered a pioneer of freestyle skiing and was a major force in getting the ski halfpipe event added to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi”.
The accident occurred as she was doing a superpipe training run. In a fall after making her jump, she tore one of the main arteries that supply blood to the brainstem and the rupture sent her into cardiac arrest. She was without a pulse and spontaneous breathing while the CPR emergency team worked on her at the site and after being taken to the hospital she had surgery 11 January. The surgery was successful in repairing the artery, but she sustained irreversible brain damage in the minutes following the accident and this ultimately caused her death Thursday, according to the skier’s publicist.
In accordance with Burke’s wishes, reports CBC, her organs were donated to others.
Burke married another freestyle skier, Rory , in October 2010 in British Columbia, Canada.
Links to other sites: AP, CBC, CNN, Ski Channel, Vancouver Sun
News video, ABC
Wedding video, Sarah Burke and Rory Bushfield
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A Swiss woman from canton Valais has learned that the French man she divorced in November in fact died in July 2009, but she was never informed by Geneva authorities, the canton where the couple resided, reports Le Nouvelliste.
The two were married for three years, but parted company once she realized he was a spendthrift and fast talker. They had no children, and lost contact with each other. Three years after they separated, in July 2011, she decided to ask for a divorce but was unable to locate him.
She asked French authorities to help, to no avail, reports the Valais newspaper, which spoke to her lawyer. She then asked for a no contest divorce, where the state announces the news twice in order to allow the other partner to come forward. She was awarded the divorce in November – but it was only in December 2011 when she needed money to enlarge her boutique and she was asked for a legal document, the livret de famille from Geneva, that she learned to her shock that her partner had died in July 2009 and she is a widow.
Her lawyer is now seeking an explanation from Geneva and looking into the possibility of having the divorce annulled.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – British satiric artist and cartoonist Ronald Searle died, age 91, in his sleep at the home in the south of France where he had lived since 1961. Searle was best known for his cartoon gothic girls’ school, St Trinians, where murder and mayhem reigned. His dark side is often attributed to his harrowing second world war experience as a prisoner of the Japanese, but his body of work was far-ranging. He illustrated for a number of major publications, including Punch, The New Yorker and Le Monde, and he had a significant influence on a number of other important illustrators and cartoonists, from Ralph Steadman to Walt Disney and Matt Groening.
Links to other sites: Independent, New York Times
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The “Great Successor”, Kim Jong-un, has officially been named the successor to his father, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, 69, who died Monday 19 December of a heart attack while traveling, according to media reports coming out of the country. The son, who is reportedly in his late 20s, surfaced as part of N Korea’s political picture in 2010, when he was appointed to several senior posts, including military ones.
He spent some of his time in early adolescence at a state school in Bern.
South Korea has put its military forces on high alert; the two countries have officially been at war for more than 60 years and N Korea in recent months has been the target of much criticism from the West for its nuclear programme.
Links to other sites: CNN, Sydney Morning Herald, Reuters,
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GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 50-year-old Italian man who lived in Italy died 13 December in hospital in Sion after sustaining critical injuries in an avalanche at Monte Moro near Saas Almagell Sunday 11 December at 14:30. Canton Valais police say that he was part of a group of six Italians who were ski touring in the area. They were on the east face of the Weisstor when the avalanche was triggered and he was buried under 130cm of snow. His fellow skiers were able to locate him and with the help of a rescue team to dig him out.
He was taken to the hospital in Visp and later transferred to Sion.
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GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - A 48-year-old German climber died after falling 20 metres into a crevasse while climbing the Allelinhorn near Saas Fee. He and his guide, also German, had left the Mittelallelin lift station and skied across the Feeglatscher.
At about 3,700 metres the climber lost a pole when they were on a very steep bit. The guide told him not to move while he fetched it, because just a few metres further there was a crevasse that runs the length of the glacier. He unroped himself and took off his skis and backpack. When he returned, his client, who had moved from the spot, had fallen into the glacier.
The rescue team that was called was too late and could only declare the man dead at the scene of the accident, say canton Valais police.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – An update to our story about the suicide one week ago of Ricola CEO Adrian Kohler, which came as a shock to the Swiss business community:
Family owners say the amount of money involved in irregularities was “minimal”, according to Swiss media. Board chairman Felix Richterich issued a statement saying that the company is still struggling to understand Kohler’s action. “I would like to stress that there is no indication that the company’s sound financial situation or its business development have been impaired.”
The board in an emergency meeting, perplexed by Kohler’s admission 24 November that he was responsible for irregularities, decided to suspend him and asked to meet with him the following morning, assuring him he would get a fair hearing. But police contacted the company during the night to say “Kohler had left his house during the night and that they could not rule out reckless actions against the company or persons connected to it. This was why the police came to the company’s offices in the early morning,” according to Richterich’s statement, which was issued to put an end to media speculation and to allow Kohler’s family some peace to deal with his death.
Agrandir le plan
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 25-year-old woman was found dead in her car at 07:30 Saturday 26 November, in a field between Le Lieux and Le Sentier, next to the cantonal road in the hamlet of Hameau de Combe Noir on the northwest side of Lac du Joux. Her car had rolled several times after she apparently swerved hard and went off the highway. The woman, who was Swiss, was driving a car with French plates.
The highway was closed Saturday for the investigation; police are still seeking to learn why she abruptly swerved.
PARIS, FRANCE – Danielle Mitterrand, 87, the widow of former French President François Mitterrand, has died in France, after being hospitalized Friday evening 20 November. She was best known in France as a humanitarian who at age 17 joined the French resistance. She married her husband at age 20 and had three sons with him, one of whom died at birth.
She created the foundation France Libertés in 1986, a human rights organization that among other projects focused on ensuring people have access to water.
Le Monde notes that she was always more comfortable in the role of humanitarian than showpiece first lady, at her happiest working with what she saw as oppressed groups of Tibetans, Cubans and Kurds. She was awarded the Prix Nord-Sud in 1996.
Outisde France, she was in the limelight briefly in 1994 when her husband’s illegitimate daughter with a long-time mistress became public knowledge.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 43-year-old Valais man died Sunday afternoon while working at a chemical plant belonging to Syngenta in Monthey, canton Valais. He and another worker were trying to recover a tool that had fallen into an emptied vat. When they failed to reach it he went into the vat, but without first putting on a protective mask. He lost consciousness and despite the quick arrival of a rescue team, he died at the site of the accident.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 37-year-old man died Wednesday of gunshot wounds inflicted Tuesday in the Les Cygnes shopping centre near the Cornavin train station. A man admitted to the shooting at 18:45, shortly before stores closed, after he was arrested by police nearby. No motive has yet been provided, although the two men apparently had an argument shortly before a gun was pulled on the victim.
Lausanne was the scene of another gun attack, this one at 08:45 Wednesday when the Loterie Romande offices were held up by an armed robber, who then escaped. Lausanne police are giving few details except to say that a large manhunt was promptly underway. The team includes police search dogs.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Heavyweight champion boxer Joe Frazier is dead, age 67, following a one-month battle with liver cancer. He was the only man to defeat Mohammad Ali in 1971 and the three fights the two had, ending with a victory by Ali in 1975, remain among the greatest matches in the sport’s history.
Frazier was the 1964 Olympic boxing heavyweight gold-medallist, former heavyweight boxing champion and an International Boxing Hall of Fame member.
Link to other sites: The Globe and Mail, Daily Mail
Hickstead, the sensational Jumping stallion that Eric Lamaze (CAN) rode to individual gold at the 2008 Olympic Games in Hong collapsed and died in Verona (ITA) today (Photo, FEI/Kit Houghton)
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Hickstead, a stallion who was “really a one in a million” and who had taken Canadian Eric Lamaze to individual gold at the 2008 Olympics, died in the arena Sunday 6 November just after completing a 13-fence jumping competition in Verona, Italy.
The competition was stopped at the request of the riders, who gathered in the arena to pay their respects to the horse described by the Lausanne-based FEI (Fédération Equestre Internationale) in a statement after the race as “one of the greatest horses of all time”. The riders observed a minute of silence to share their sympathy with Lamaze for his loss.
Lamaze was riding the horse Sunday, which had drawn 22nd of 39 on the startlist. The Verona event was the fourth in the Rolex FEI World Cup Jumping 2011-12 season.
The cause of death is unknown.
He was owned by Torrey Pines and Ashland Stables Inc. The stallion was born in 1996 in The Netherlands and was a Dutch Warmblood.
Lamaze and Hickstead won the $1 million CN International in 2011 for the second time, at Canada’s Spruce Meadows Masters Tournament in Calgary, Canada.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – World headlines include the following, over the weekend:
- Clocks go back in the US, a week after Europe moves from summer to winter time – NPR
- Chinese mine workers, some 200-strong, pulled out 45 miners Saturday who had been trapped for more than 48 hours after an explosion – CBS, Xinhua
- Pakistan charges 7 in Bhutto death in 2007 – Aljazeera, Reuters Canada
- Syria: 553 of some 15,000 prisoners released, but 20 killed Friday – Aljazeera, Xinhuanet
- Colombia: Farc leader Alfonso Cano killed, but now what? – CS Monitor, Guardian, Jakarta Post
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Andy Rooney, age 92, has died, ending a 62-year television and writing career where he became a major figure on American television, for CBS News. His death came after minor surgery.
Links to other sites: Globe & Mail, New York Times
CBS video
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A roundup of what selected English language international media are saying about the death of Muammar Qaddafi and the end of his 42-year rule in Libya.
The circumstances surrounding his death remain unclear Friday morning, but most reports now point to his death in crossfire after being captured Thursday 20 October.
Links to: Aljazeera, Bangkok Post, BBC, CNN, The Globe & Mail, Jerusalem Post
The Matterhorn, often a scene of tragedy
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A climber who was not roped to his two companions slipped and fell several hundred metres to his death Wednesday 19 October on the north face of the Matterhorn.
It was the mountain’s second fatality, in separate accidents, this week.
The accident occurred at the Hoernligrat area.
The climber has not been identified but the two companions, two Greek men ages 42 and 37, were trapped by bad weather on the mountainside and could be rescued only Thursday afternoon.
Their companion’s body was airlifted out during the afternoon.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Reports are coming in from several major news agencies that Muammar Qaddafi has died, while other reports say only that he was captured after fighting in the area. Both are emanating from the new regime, reporting from Sirte.
PARIS, FRANCE – The French foreign ministry has announced the death of Marie Dedieu, 66, who was kidnapped the night of 30 September from her home on the small island of Manda, then taken to Somalia. Dedieu, who used a wheelchair, was taking medication to treat a cardiac problem and cancer; the wheelchair and the drugs were not taken by her kidnappers and the French government has surmised that she died as a result.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Bernard Valero said in a statement Wednesday 19 October that her kidnappers had refused to pass along the medicine the French government had supplied, and this most likely resulted in her death. Foreign Minister Alain Juppé called her death an act of “barbarism, violence and unspeakable inhumanity.”
Le Monde reports that she was an active and militant feminist in the 1970s in France. She moved to Kenya in the 1990s.
Xenia Minder, Loretan's companion, who survived the fall that killed the world-famous climber (TSR interview)
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Erhard Loretan, Swiss climber of legendary stature, shocked the world with his death on his 52nd birthday in April 2011, in a fall climbing a mountain he knew well, the Gruenhorn, and that should have been relatively easy for him. He was roped to another climber, identified only as a client, a 38-year-old woman from Canton Bern.
The woman, Xenia Minder, who initially refused to allow her identity be known or to make a statement, came forward and talked to Le Temps and to TSR’s “Paju” (Passe-moi les jumelles) about Loretan’s death, the death of his child 10 years earlier, where he was accused of manslaughter, and of the fine line between guilt and innocence for those left behind.
Minder had been Loretan’s close companion, not just a client. She was a far less experienced climber than the man who is often called the finest mountain climber Switzerland ever produced. By age 36 he had climbed all 14 world mountains of 8,000 metres or more. He began climbing at age 11.
Loretan’s 7-month-old child died after being shaken briefly by his father, who was given a suspended sentence and a fine in 2003 for negligent homicide. Loretan then pushed for more public information about the dangers to children of being shaken.
Minder says that in her final moments she prayed not to have pain before dying, but in the end it was her guide and close companion of two years who died. He remains her guide, she says, in how to live with the guilt that you have caused someone else’s death. As a judge she says she must believe in and respect the law, but she has now been forced to reflect on how very fine is the line between guilt and innocence in some situations.
Minder says she lost her balance and dragged both of them down some 200 metres. She was injured in the fall that caused Loretan’s death but in the interviews she doesn’t speak of her own injuries, called serious by police at the time of the accident.
Minder is a judge in canton Geneva’s civil courts.
Ed. note: Club Alpin Suisse is hosting an evening in memory of Loretan 19 November in Crans-Montana, with film footage and memories shared by his close climbing companions Jean Troillet and André Georges.
TSR video (Fre)
©2011 Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 56-year-old Swiss man who lived in Ain, France, died late Wednesday 5 October when his motorcycle and a car collided head on, on the Route de Mandemant in Russin, on the outskirts of Geneva.
The man was weaving his way downhill when he attempted to pass one or several cars, say Geneva police, and he was surprised by an oncoming car driven by a 45-year-old woman, who was uninjured but treated for shock. The man died at the scene of the crash.
The man’s death is the ninth on Geneva roads this year and the fourth serious accident involving motorcycles in eastern Switzerland in the past five days, with two other deaths and one person in critical condidtion.
Police are looking for witnesses, who are asked to call +41 22 427 64 50.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, died Wednesday, age 56. The news was announced by Apple in a brief tribute on the company’s home page: “Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.”
Jobs died of a rare form of pancreatic cancer. He had been ill for months and in August he resigned as CEO of the company he started with Steve Wozniak in 1976. His up-and-down relationship with the company he founded turned around in 1997 when he re-joined the company after 12 years away, and turned it into one of the most valuable companies in US business.
Tributes to Jobs, the man who turned Apple into the world’s largest technology company, are appearing in media around the world, but the most overwhelming public praise has come from China, where more than 35 million tributes were posted online in just hours early Thursday.
Links to other sites: Economic Times, India, Gizmodo Australia, Hindustan Times, PC World, Reuters Canada, the Wirecutter (on Gizmodo’s theft of iPhone 4 and relationship with Jobs), Xinhuanet
Mike Smith (photo: ISO, Geneva)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Michael Smith, a well-known figure in the international community in Geneva, died suddenly 25 September, while attending meetings in New Delhi, India. Smith, who had recently announced that he would retire later this year as (International Organization for Standardization) Secretary of the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) Technical Management Board had worked for ISO for 32 years. One week earlier he had been given a gift by colleagues, of mementos and photos from his time with the organization.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A nine-year-old girl who was hit by a car in Aigle 13 September died Saturday, 11 days after the accident, at the Chuv university hospitals in Lausanne, Vaud Police say. The 49-year-old man who was driving the car had had his license suspended in 1997 and police say he lied to them about who was driving the car at the time of the accident.
The girl was crossing the Route de Transit, the Aigle ring road, en route to Lausanne from Aigle, at 19:40, when she was hit. The driver and the owner of the car, a 36-year-old who was a passenger, told police the owner had been driving. The friend was aware the driver did not have a license but had loaned his car to the man in the past.
Police say the driver has previously been charged with driving without a license, on a number of occasions.
Taeschhorn, scene of climbing accident in canton Graubuenden
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 55-year-old man from Solothurn died Saturday 10 September after climbing the Taeschhorn in canton Graubuenden, in the company of a guide.
The small group of climbers was coming down from the peak and heading towards Taeschalp at 12:15.
They had just removed their ropes five minutes before, according to the guide, and were walking along Weingarten glacial moraine when the man fell 100 metres to his death from the edge of a cliff.
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.
