Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A Nigerian man who was being sent back to Nigeria on a special repatriation flight died at Zurich Airport Wednesday night 17 March, under circumstances that the police and federal authorities have not made clear. An investigation into his death has been opened and Bern announced Thursday that all such special flights are cancelled until further notice.
Details about whether the man was an asylum-seeker or not have not been released, but asylum-seekers whose requests are turned down are returned on “special” flights, as are people without papers who are arrested for serious crimes.
Swiss news agency ATS reports that the man, 29, was arrested for drug trafficking and that he had been on a hunger strike.
Update 15 March /A 32-year-old woman, Candice Berner, appears to have been the victim of a wolf attack, which if confirmed would be the first deadly attack by wolves in the US in 50 years, according to the BBC. Berner, a special education teacher, was jogging by herself near a small village in the Alaska Peninsula, Chignik Lake, which is 475 miles southwest of Anchorage. Her body was found by snowmobilers and the tracks around the body were those of wolves. It appears that two or three animals were responsible and that Berner, who was training for a long distance race and was very fit, put up a strong fight.
A criminal death was ruled out and officials believe it is likely wolves, whom residents had said were aggressive recently, are to blame. State troopers in Alaska told KTVA television that this is the first such death they recall or have had to record.
Berger wrote a rich blog about her life as a teacher in Alaska, notes reporter Julia O’Malley in a feature article in the Anchorage Daily News.
Links to other sites: CNN, Fairbanks Newsminer, KTVA
Ernst and Hildy Beyeler, from catalogue of 2007-08 hommage at the Beyeler Foundatio
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Ernst Beyeler, one of Europe’s major art collectors for over 50 years and a co-founder of Art Basel, has died at the age of 88 in Basel. He and his wife Hildy, who died in 2008, gave some 200 works of art to a foundation named after them, in 1982.
Beyeler began his career in 1945 when he bought an antiques shop, which grew into the Beyeler Gallerie. His first art show was in 1947.
The Beyeler Foundation was given a new home in Riehen, near the city of Basel, in 1997, becoming one of Switzerland’s best-known art museums, with well over 300,000 visitors a year, half of whom are international visitors.
The International Luge Federation (FIL) has decided that it wants tracks to be slower, de-emphasizing their speed, the group’s head, Svein Romstad, has told journalists, suggesting that the track for the 2014 Winter Games in Russia should be slower than the one at Whistler in Canada, where 21-year-old Nodar Kumaritashvili died in a training crash. The young man’s father, who was once a top luge competitor, is quoted by journalists as saying Monday that his son spoke to him of his fears about the speed of the track just days before he died.
More than a year earlier the FIL president, Josef Fendt, said the organization was starting to consider speed limits, something that had never been an issue before the world’s fastest track was opened and tested at Whistler. “The topic ’speed limit’ in luge came up during the international training week at the Whistler Sliding Center carried out on the luge track for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada, in November,’ reported the FIL web site in December 2008. “Top speeds of up to 149 km/h were registered on the new track. ‘This is not in the interest of our International Luge Federation and it makes me worry’, said Fendt, who criticised the designers of the new Olympic track: “We’ve always assumed that, on principle, top speeds of 135 or 136 km/h were possible. But we didn’t reckon with such a leap.”
Links to other sites: BBC, FIL 2008, Time
Background, GenevaLunch
Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Rosa Rein, who would have turned 113 in March, has died in a nursing home in canton Ticino. She was Switzerland’s oldest person and, according to wikipedia, one of the 15 oldest “verified” people in the world. When she celebrated her birthday in 2009 she was still able to walk, although she had some vision and hearing loss.
Rosa Rein was born in 1897 in Dzietzkowitz, now part of Poland, the daughter of relatively comfortable farmers, according to RTI, Swiss Italian radio. She married for the first time in 1935, at age 38, after running a textile business, but the young Jewish woman and her German husband fled to Brazil at the time of the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom.
Update 13 February 09:15 Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Georgia’s athletes, wearing black armbands and with a black ribbon on their flag, received a sombre standing ovation from the 60,000 people attending the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. Their countryman, luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili, died Friday 12 February while training for the Olympic Winter Games. The death of the 21-year-old is reportedly the first during a Winter Games. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) in Lausanne issued a statement saying that he died at the Whistler Sliding Centre and that the circumstances of the accident are being investigated. “Mr Kumaritashvili died after crashing on the last corner of the course during training. Doctors were unable to revive the athlete, who died in hospital.”
Early news agency reports say that he hit a beam after flying out of the luge at 144kph, but Olympics organizers have not officially confirmed this, although the IOC footage as a reposted video is publicly available on YouTube, showing the official clock.
The luge event will still take place as planned Saturday, Vancouver Games officials say, but the course is closed until then for a police investigation into the accident.
Singer Michael Jackson’s doctor, who treated him the night he died, was arrested earlier in the week for involuntary manslaughter, and the Los Angeles county coroner in the US has released the official autopsy results. They show that the singer died from acute propofol intoxication. Propofol is the drug administered by Dr. Conrad Murray. The involuntary manslaughter charge states that Murray acted “without malice” but also “without due caution and circumspection.” The report noted that “the levels of propofol found on toxicology exam are similar to those found during general anesthesia for major surgery,” but none of the usual pre-surgery precautions appear to have been in place, including having an anesthesiologist at hand.
Murray has pleaded not guilty and the Los Angeles Times suggests that it is his police statement, made in the hours after Jackson’s death, that will make or break the homicide case.
Links to other sites: CNN, Los Angeles Times
Popular US actress Brittany Murphy’s sudden death 20 December was accidental, a Los Angeles coroner has ruled. She died from pneumonia, with complications from iron-deficiency anemia and multiple drug complications. The medical report noted that the drugs, a combination that included cough syrup and antibiotics were prescription drugs with some over-the-counter medicines. Murphy was age 32 and she had had flu-like symptoms with laryngitis shortly before she died. She became a celebrity a few years ago in comedies that included “Uptown Girls” and “Little Black Book”.
Links to other sites: CNN, Yahoo News
Chur, Graubuenden, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The apparent suicide of Markus Reinhardt, police chief for canton Graubuenden and head of security operations for the World Economic Forum in Davos, has Swiss-German media doggedly pushing for more information. Reinhardt was found dead in a Davos hotel room Tuesday morning 26 January. Cantonal officials said that signs pointed to suicide, that it was a personal tragedy, and they would not share further information out of respect for his family.
But journalists have been pursuing the story, insisting on more information, as details of problems Reinhardt has had in the past 10 years, including alcoholism, according to Blick magazine, have surfaced.
Lucie, whose murder near Zurich in 2009 prompted Swiss authorities to set up a kidnap alert system
Lucie’s murder sparked passage of Swiss alert system for abducted children
Fribourg, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The family of Lucie Trezzini, a 16-year-old au pair girl from Fribourg who was murdered 4 March 2009 in Rieden, not far from Zurich, is pressing charges against canton Aargau’s prison service. A parliamentary investigation into the events leading up to the girl’s death last year concluded that Lucie’s murderer was given a conditional release from prison without an adequate plan in place for him. He was a serial offender but had not been considered a high risk when he was released, some months before Lucie’s death.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The circumstances surrounding the death of 66-year-old Catherine Ségalat of Vaud-sur-Morges, a longtime political figure, are being called suspicious, say Vaud police. They have taken in her 45-year-old stepson for questioning in relation to her death, reports wire service ats.
Ségalat was the town manager of the tiny hamlet of Vaud-sur-Morges.
Paris, France (GenevaLunch) - French news headlines Monday 11 January pointed to two deaths: first the death over the weekend, by hanging, of the former wife and mother of two children of French musician Bernard Cantat, 41-year-old Kristina Rady, and then the death of 89-year-old French filmmaker Eric Rohmer.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A Vaud man, in his 40s, was killed when his car crashed into a wall at the entrance to the Arrissoules tunnel on the A1 autoroute, Monday 4 January at 23:40. Police are still trying to determine the speed at which he was traveling and the cause of the accident. He was driving in the direction of Bern and was in the left passing lane when his car veered to the right for unknown reasons, hitting the emergency lane concrete wall at high speed. The autoroute was closed for three hours to allow rescue services to cut the man, who was killed on impact, out of his car and to allow police to record details of the accident.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Myles Robinson, the 23-year-old British tourist whose body was found late Monday 28 December, had a “high level of alcohol” in his blood, 2 per 1,000 (200mg alcohol/100ml blood), canton Bern police announced late Wednesday, without providing his name, the norm for crimes and accidents in Switzerland. He had been drinking at a bar in Wengen before he walked a friend home, then disappeared. Initial tests showed no signs of drugs. The autopsy did not give any indication that a third party was involved in his death.
Ed. note: the alcohol level was four times that allowed for drinking and driving in Switzerland.
Police are strongly urging the public to stay away from the area where he fell and where his body was found. The weather has warmed up and there is a serious danger of ice and rock falls. The notice to the public is unusual, but the initially inexplicable disappearance and the nature of his death have prompted huge public interest, particularly among foreigners in the area and Britons in particular.
Philippe de Weck (photo: UBS)
Fribourg, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Philippe de Weck, who was the managing director of Swiss bank UBS from 1966-1976 and then head of the board for another four years, has died, age 90, in Fribourg. De Weck was the only head of the bank who has come from the French-speaking part of Switzerland. He remained a member of the board until 1988, after stepping down as chairman in 1980.
De Weck was one of a trio of experts called in to investigate the l’Instituto per le Opere Religiose, the Vatican’s bank, when it was faced with the Banco Ambrosiano scandal in 1982. He also served on the boards of several large Swiss companies, including Nestle and SGS.
He was born into a family that was part of Fribourg’s social set, a strongly Catholic society. His marriage to Alix de Saussure in 194 linked him to one of Geneva’s most notable Protestant families. He studied law in Fribourg and after working briefly in a law firm joined the family bank, Weck, Aeby & Cie, later bought out by Union Bank of Switzerland, which in turn merged with Swiss Bank Corporation to become UBS. The de Weck family is still active in banking today, with several members of the family involved in Geneva banks. Roger de Weck, his son, heads the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
The funeral will be Tuesday 15 December at the St Nicolas Cathedral in Fribourg.
Francis Blanchard, former ILO director-general
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Francis Blanchard, a French citizen who was director-general of the ILO (International Labour Office) from 1974 to 1989, died Wednesday 9 December 2009, at the age of 93.
He joined the ILO in 1951, where his first assignment was as deputy chief of the manpower division. He was appointed deputy director-general in 1968 with responsibility for technical cooperation and regional activities.
Meyrin, Geneva (GenevaLunch) - The driver who died when her car caught fire late Sunday night in Meyrin has not been officially identified, while police await the results of an autopsy on the person they describe only as a 72-year-old woman. According to the Tribune de Geneve the driver was from Vaud, a musician who had just given a concert, followed by a small celebration, and she was heading home to Begnins.
The circumstances surrounding the accident remain unclear, with police saying she drove up onto a pedestrian area and into a post in the area between the town hall and the Forum Meyrin. For reasons not yet understood, she appears to have left her foot on the gas pedal while the car was blocked, causing the tires to explode and the fire to start.
Airolo, Ticino, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 19-year-old soldier died while on a break during a football game at the Airolo boot camp for sanitary workers, the federal Department of Defense announced 26 November. His colleagues gave him first aid and CPR almost immediately, but were unable to revive him. He was in his fifth week of boot camp. The cause of death remains unknown.
image: ch.ch
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A small baby who died last week is Switzerland’s first death related to the A/H1N1 flu, authorities in canton Basel Land have confirmed. No details about the child or the exact cause of death have been released. The federal health department says the flu is now growing more rapidly, exponentially, with 773 cases, twice the number of the previous week.
Links to other sites: TSR (Fre), Swiss Federal Health Office web site on A/H1N1 pandemic, in English
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Passers-by discovered the body of a 58-year-old man from canton Vaud on the shore of Lake Neuchatel, near du Nid-du-Crô, Neuchatel Sunday afternoon, 20Minutes reports. Police speculate he may have slipped off the end of the pier.
Jacques Chessex (photo: ©2009 Ellen Wallace)
Yverdon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A man widely considered to be one of Switzerland’s greatest writers, the unassuming Jacques Chessex who was the first non-French winner of the prestigious Goncourt literary prize, died Friday night in Yverdon just after a public presentation in the town’s library, surrounded by the books that were his great love. He collapsed when his heart gave out and died shortly afterwards. Chessex, age 75, was the author of 31 books, most of them slim but incisive novels famous for their eloquent language. They often described the world around him, in French-speaking Switzerland, but captured the threads of human relations that run deeper than local stories: “Explorer of the human soul in all its complexity,” were the words Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz used to describe him.
A Neuve glacier as seen from La Fouly (image: MaxVT on flickr)
Sion, Valais, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 31-year-old Valais man died 5 October after he was critically injured during the previous afternoon by falling rock on the A Neuve glacier, near Orsières. He and a female companion were looking for crystals. He was taken to the Sion hospital but died during the night.
Police in Japan are investigating the death of Soichi Nakagawa, the country’s former finance minister, age 56, who was found dead in bed by his wife, in Tokyo. He left no will and the cause of death is not yet known. Nakagawa was considered by many to be one of the bright stars of the LDP party, which lost massively in August elections, after 50 years in power. He lost his seat in the sweeping-out. Nakagawa had earlier lost his post as minister, forced to resign in February 2009 after he famously appeared at a Rome conference of finance ministers in what appeared to be a drunken state, which he blamed on alcohol taken on his flight plus medication.
Links to other sites: Asahi, Bloomberg, Japan Today
Just a week after Typhoon Ketsana caused massive flooding in the Philippines, including major flooding in the capital, Manila, Typhoon Parma hit land in Luzon late Saturday 3 October, promising to dump 20-50 cm new rain on the area. Winds of 145 kph, gusting up to 185, wreaked havoc, but the larger concern was more flooding and mudslides. Manila avoided a direct hit as the storm changed course, but northern regions are reporting heavy damage and four deaths. Al Jazeera, CNN
Update 16 September Yverdon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The mother of a young child who fell out of a window and died while she was out partying has been given a six month suspended sentence for negligent homicide. The state prosecutor had asked for a 10-month prison sentence plus two years suspended sentence in the trial of a 24-year-old woman who left her three-year-old daughter alone while she went out for most of the night with friends. The child died in December 2006 after falling out of a six-storey kitchen window. She had managed to pull a chair up to the window, which had been left open, and climb out, then fell to her death.
