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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.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Jean-Claude Mermoz’s sudden death Tuesday 6 September, four days after emergency heart surgery, has shocked the political world in canton Vaud. The cantonal councilor who was minister for the economy, and his death is the first of a member of the cantonal council while in office.
The 59-year-old Mermoz, a UDC party member who had been on the council for 13 years, had a reputation for being a diplomat, the cantonal government president, Pascal Broulis, said Tuesday, and he would be sorely missed.
Mermoz’s condition was reported late Monday to be stable, and his death just hours later caught everyone by surprise. He was known for his healthy lifestyle – a daily runner, he enjoyed a healthy diet, one politician told TSR television, and he had taken part in the grueling Glacier Patrol race. A month ago he ran the difficult Sierre-Zinal mountain race. Two weeks ago he sent an SMS to one of his regular climbing buddies, from the top of Mont Blanc.
His family lives in Eclagnens, Gros-de-Vaud.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The body of Julie Codourey, 21 years old, who had been missing since Thursday, was found Saturday afternoon near La Forclaz in the commune Ormont-Dessous. The young woman’s death is being called “accidental” by the police, based on initial evidence, but an investigation has been opened to determine the cause of death.
She disappeared Thursday from her parents chalet near La Forclaz.
Her body was found on a steep slope near the Leyderry rail bridge, which crosses the Forclaz river.
The Moench, viewed from the Jungfrau (photo: Dirk Beyer / wikipedia)
BERN, SWITZERLAND – A 51-year-old Dutch climber died when he fell while coming down from the Moench to Lauterbrunnen, in canton Bern, Wednesday 31 August.
He was climbing with a friend and during the afternoon they began their return, down the south face of the mountain.
When they were at about 3,940 metres the first climber heard a noise and saw the other, who was not roped, falling.
He alerted rescuers but he was dead when the Air Glacier team arrived on the scene, say canton Bern police.
The Moench is one of the three triplet mountains that are hugely popular with climbers: the Eiger, the Moench and the Jungfrau.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 15-year-old boy on a walk in the Alps with a family member and friend fell 50 metres to his death Thursday afternoon 18 August at 16:30. The trio paused for a rest and the youth walked off to a nearby waterfall to cool off. When he didn’t return after a few minutes the others went to look for him.
They were hiking in the “Plan de l’Au”, area near Champex d’en Bas. Police were alerted at 20:00 when the other two had still not found the young man. A rescue operation worked until 04:00, then began looking again at 07:00 but it was only at 13:00 that his body was spotted by a helicopter.
The youth, who was Mauritian, had been vacationing in the region.
Valais climbing death: trainee guide falls to his death
SION, SWITZERLAND – A 17-year-old Valais youth died in hospital Friday 12 August, a week after being involved in an altercation with a 15-year-old in the village of Réchy. The young man was kicked in the chest and lost consciousness Saturday 1 August during a village festival. He was taken to Sion Hospital, where he had been in a coma since and where he died Friday morning.
The two were involved in an argument, according to police inquiries, early in the evening of Saturday 6 August, and the youth who died punched and broke the glasses of the 15-year-old. The two were separated by security services but later in the evening the younger man kicked the other one; the circumstances are not yet clear.
Both youths are Swiss and live in the region. An autopsy will be performed to determine the exact cause of death.
Guide was climbing Egginergrat alone
Valais police Friday 12 August also announced the death of a 28-year-old Jura man who had been training as a mountain guide. He had taken a group climbing Thursday, then left them at the Allalin restaurant in Saas Fee before heading out to climb the Egginergrat on his own.
When he didn’t return Thursday night a search mission was sent out and his body was found at the foot of the mountain, several hundred meters below where he had been climbing.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The US House of Representatives homeland security committee looks set to investigate claims by a New York Times columnist that Sony Pictures is producing a film about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011 and that the filmmakers have had access to US government footage of the raid. Maureen Dowd’s column claims that the film, made by “The Hurt Locker” director and writer team of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, will be used to gain support for Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election in the US. The White House says both claims are unfounded.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A man driving the wrong way on the A1 autoroute early Wednesday morning crashed head-on into an oncoming car, killing the driver of that car and seriously injuring himself.
The accident happened at 06:00 near the Chavorney exit on the A1 in the direction of Yverdon. The highway in that direction was closed for more than four hours while police investigated.
The man who died was a 55-year-old Frenchman living in eastern canton Vaud. He died at the scene of the accident after his car, which had been in the left lane, plowed into the central divider.
The 51-year-old driver who was on the wrong side of the autoroute was driving without a license; he lives in canton Fribourg and the Highway Service in that canton had earlier lifted his license, but police have not said why. His car ended up on its roof, in the righthand lane. He was taken by helicopter to the Chuv university hospitals in Lausanne. He remains in serious condition but his life is not in danger.
Several motorists had called the 117 emergency number to alert police to the driver; a police car was en route and was at the junction of Yverdon-sud and Essert-Pittet when the crash occurred.
