Afghan authorities say 17 people died early Friday 26 February in a spate of attacks in Kabul that were aimed at foreigners. Suicide bombers struck in several areas, starting with one at 06:30 next to the city’s largest shopping centre. Indian and Pakistan nationals were among those who died. Other bombs went off in areas near United Nations and humanitarian groups’ offices. The blasts come just a day after the Afghan flag was raised at Marja, a longtime insurgent stronghold. Responsibility for the blasts was taken by the Taliban, according to Reuters.
Links to other sites: Bangkok Post, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Telegraph, UK
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Canton Vaud citizens will go to the polls, probably in 2011, to decide if foreigners who live in the canton should be given the right to vote. A popular referendum will be scheduled once officials verify the nearly 14,000 signatures gathered for the initiative. Only 12,000 signatures are required, so the item is likely to be added to the ballot.
Organizers of the initiative estimate that this would give 85,000 foreigners in the canton the right to vote.
Title: Report presented: “L’Ecole et l’élève d’origine étrangère”
Location: Geneva, Haute Ecole, social work (HES-GE)
Link out: Click here
Description: Authors Geneviève Mottet and Claudio Bolzman present their new book, which looks at foreign children in the Geneva school system since 1960, followed by discussion with the public.
Start Time: 12:15
Date: 2010-01-19
End Time: 13;30
Foreigners’ injuries falling, as part of whole for Swiss winter sports, avalanches biggest killers
Click on images to view larger
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Foreign tourists are gradually becoming a smaller group among the total of those injured in winter sports in Switzerland, new statistics show.
BPA, the Swiss safety board, Monday 11 January issued its annual detailed statistics for non-work accidents: at home, doing sports, on the road.
Foreigners accounted for 40 percent of ski accident injuries, 18 percent of snowboard ones and 27 percent of injuries from other winter sports (average: 32 percent).
By comparison, the figures for 2003 were: 47, 29, 28 (average: 40 percent).
Foreigners accounted for 19 of the 39 deaths from winter sports in 2007, the most recent year noted, up from an average of 15 out of 40 deaths a year recorded for the five years from 2003 to 2007.
Knees for skiers, shoulders for snowboarders
Knees remain the most vulnerable body part for ski injuries, while shoulders and the upper arms are for snowboarders.
2009 Unemployment figures for Switzerland: Seco
Update 17:55 Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Unemployment in Switzerland rose in December to 4.4 percent, up from 4.2 percent the previous month. Neuchatel and Geneva rose to 7.2 percent, the highest rates in the country, while canton Valais had the largest single month increase. 1.1 percent. Vaud’s rate in December was 5.9 percent.
Ed. note: Geneva, reports the Tribune de Geneve, argues that the federal statistics are skewered because they use data from 2000 for the canton’s working population. The canton in fact has an unemployment rate of 6.6 percent, it says.
Foreigners have been reported in the past to be affected more than the Swiss, and 2009 was no exception, with the rate for Swiss workers climbing 1 percent in December compared to 12 months earlier, but 2.5 percent for foreigners. Non-Swiss unemployed workers accounted for 46.4 percent of the total.
For the first time, jobless rates published by Seco are broken down according to nationality, although the figures provided, only in German, are limited to these groups:
Foreigners in Moscow are shying away from luxury apartments, while the number of Russians taking them has tripled, reports the Moscow Times, while noting that foreign companies with offices in the city are shocked at sudden unexplained increases of up to 50 percent in their rent. “Elite” apartments still have a majority of foreigners living in them, says the newspaper, but the number has fallen by 18 percent in the first nine months of 2009, a change attributed to foreign companies pulling out top expatriate managers because of the economic crisis. Top apartments, which start at $10,000 a month, remain in demand.
Lausanne/Bex, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 20-year-old who was knifed in the heart Tuesday 1 September by two youths he didn’t know as he walked through Parc Montbenon in Lausanne, died Saturday of his injuries, Vaud police say. The 15- and 17-year-olds who killed him were caught near the train station shortly after the crime and told a judge they pulled a knife on him because they didn’t like the way he looked at them.
One of them had been charged in the past with attempted murder and spent time in a juvenile detention centre in the Jura, but he escaped in January 2009.
A second violent crime was committed by juveniles in Bex Sunday night, near the Vaud/Valais cantonal line, that sent a police officer to hospital with head, throat and knee injuries.
All four youths are of foreign nationality, from three countries, and none of them have permanent residence status. The crimes come at a time when Switzerland has been debating what to do with foreigners who have not become well integrated into Swiss society and who commit serious crimes.
Fribourg, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Two youths, who were 17 when they committed the crime, have been sentenced for sexually abusing two 14-year-old girls in 2008, in a case that was closely followed by Swiss media last year. One has been given a 10-month prison sentence and the other a six-month suspended sentence.
The case made headlines in part because the two were the oldest in a group that included seven others, all minors and about the same age as the victims, as well as three to four other young adults who are still awaiting trial. The ringleaders, one of whom was the target of the affections of one of the girls, are both from Serbia, and the case came to light during a period when the Swiss were considering tightening the law for offenders of other nationalities. They voted in favour of the law. The young man given a firm prison sentence had already had charges dropped in a similar case, but where the girl had consented to sex, but he also had a police record for damaging property and traffic violations.
Switzerland has the highest rate of foreigners in Europe.
Two powerful bombs exploded Friday morning 17 July in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta at luxury hotels, killing at least nine people and injuring more than 45, according to early reports. No group has claimed responsibility. The bombs tore the front off of the Ritz-Carlton and it appears police may have found a third bomb. Foreigners were among the dead and injured: Reuters reports that Tim Mackay, president of PT Holcim Indonesia, a New Zealand citizen was killed. Holcim is a Swiss multinational. The Manchester United team, who were scheduled to stay at the Ritz-Carlton this weekend, have canceled their trip. BBC, Sky News, Jakarta Post
Vaud, Switzerland (Genevalunch) – Men and Women from Vaud show a preference for marrying foreigners, according to the Cantonal service of research and statistical data – Vaud Statistics (Le SCRIS). The number of marriages between Swiss people and foreigners increased from 1,331-1,553 between 2000 and 2007, according to the statistics. It is more common for Swiss men (813 couples) to marry foreign women than the inverse (740 couples), according to SCRIS.
A three-part special on housing and the international population in the Lake Geneva region: part 1
(Also see part 2: Myth and reality: how housing in the Lake Geneva region adds up)
Geneva, Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland’s population grew by 1.6 percent in 2007, the highest rate since 1963, thanks to immigration fueled by a healthy economy and the country progressively opening up to the Schengen Area free movement of labour, starting in 2002. One result was to put more pressure on the demand for housing, especially in the Lake Geneva region where demand has long been greater than supply.
A new peak in housing demand in 2008 in canton Geneva coincided with new construction falling off, leaving Geneva with an apartment vacancy rate of 0.25 percent on 1 June 2008, the date when national figures are compiled.
More German and French hands at work ©Laila Rodriguez
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The number of foreigners working in Switzerland rose 5.8% in the second quarter of 2008 compared to the same time a year earlier, with Germans and French leading the group.
Chances are: 20.8% are foreigners
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s resident foreign population continued to grow in 2008, but the makeup of it shifted, a reflection of stronger ties with the European Union (EU). The total foreign population was 1.64 million on 31 December 2008, of which 1.03m came from the EU and Efta (European Free Trade Association). The increase from EU and Efta countries was 6.8% while only 0.4% from other countries.
Property prices are collapsing, government projects have been called to a halt, abandoned cars sit at the airport and “tens of thousands have left” Dubai, reports the International Herald Tribune. The IHT says that many of the well-heeled foreigners who were flocking to the city even just a year ago are now out of jobs and frightened at their inability to pay huge debts from credit cars, car loans and mortgages.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Foreigners have been top of the news this week in Switzerland, from researchers showing that less-educated foreigners pay more rent in cities, to government proposals to tighten rules for obtaining permanent residence and citizenship as well as rules covering applications for refugee status. The government is also proposing tougher measures for foreigners who commit serious crimes.
Foreigners and rent
A paper published by the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, reports Le Temps (the SSES paper is not available online) shows that some foreigners pay 2.3% more for rent in Geneva and 2.6% more in Zurich than a Swiss person.
Updated, 20:30 A judge in the US ruled Monday that Bernard Madoff should remain free on bail. NPR The amount of money actually lost by Madoff’s investors is not yet known, with his own $50 billion estimate unverified as yet by investigators, but it appears that half of that loss is being borne by people and companies outside the US. Financial Times
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss Federal Council Wednesday announced it will prepare a counter-proposal to the right-wing UDC party’s popular initiative to deport foreigners found guilty of serious crimes or of abusing the social welfare system.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The foreign population in Switzerland continues to grow, up 1.8% in 2007 over the previous year, according to figures published by the Swiss Statistical Office in its bi-annual report on foreigners.
Geneva’s Collogny: pots of gold for foreign investors one day?
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A study done for the Swiss government shows that lifting the Lex Koller, the law that limits property purchases by foreign buyers would not fundamentally change the Swiss housing market, although the impact of this would vary from one region to another. The study, published Thursday, notes that some chic neighbourhoods and rental buildings, particularly in Geneva and Zurich, could well see a change in property owners, with Swiss landlords being pushed out by higher prices. The shift would not, however, provoke increases in rent, since the government-controlled rent ceilings would remain in place. Lifting the law would also likely prompt an increase in the price of second homes at the high end of the market, especially in areas already popular with foreigners, such as Geneva, Zurich and parts of central Switzerland.
The report concludes with a recommendation that if the law is lifted it should be accompanied by measures that help the Swiss real estate market adapt, to avoid a speculative bubble.
