LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A car that attracted the attention of police in Founex, canton Vaud, at 10:40 Saturday morning 3 March turned out to have stolen plates and when police took up positions to try to stop the car it took off rapidly. The car led police on a high-speed chase through Commugny, Founex, Chavannes-de-Bogis and Bogis-Bossey, driving on the wrong side of the road at times and crashing into two police vehicles, one belonging to customs police and the other to the cantonal gendarmerie.
When the vehicles was stopped the three occupants fled on foot. Two were captured and one remains at large. The two Frenchmen who were arrested are ages 27 and 28.
Customs police in Geneva activated the French-Swiss customs police cooperation centre (Centre de coopération police douane, CCPD), which coordinated the work of 23 patrols called into action, from Bursins, the Vaud gendarmerie dog unit, Nyon communal police, customs police, canton Geneva police and the French gendarmerie.
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
Nations campus, ISG, in Geneva
Celebrating a new sports hall at La Chataigneraie, Founex, part of the ISG
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Nicholas Tate, director-general of the International School of Geneva (ISG), will retire in August 2011, the school’s governing foundation has announced. It has begun a search for his successor to head the world’s oldest and largest international school.
Divonne-les-bains, France (GenevaLunch) – A Saturday 11 December carjacking in Divonne, France over the border from Founex, in canton Vaud, Switzerland, is the third in the region since October, according to Dauphine Liberé and 20 Minutes (Fre). The driver left the keys in the ignition while he ran an errand, with his companion sitting in the passenger seat. A man threatened the woman with a gun, then stole the car, an Audi with Swiss plates.
Founex, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Motel de Founex may make a Cinderella style transformation if local residents agree to a new Hilton Hotel project that is open to public consultation starting tomorrow, 7 August.
The old motel on the busy Founex-Divonnes road, next to the A1 autoroute and near the Chavannes de Bogis shopping complex, closed several years ago and then gradually disintegrated.
P Pardeshi, right
Founex, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – La Chataigneraie (International School of Geneva) final year student Pratyancha Pardeshi is one of six students to win a top award and CHF500 prize for an economics essay she submitted to the Swiss National Bank’s economics teaching programme, iconomix. Her paper, “How can government intervention be used to correct the market failure occurring in Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary?” was written as part of the International Baccalaureate diploma programme’s “extended essay” requirement.
Iconomix gold winners 2009
La Chataigneraie, Founex, new sports hall
La Chataigneraie students approve new sports hall during pre-opening visit, October 2008
Geneva, Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A series of open houses in the Lake Geneva region will showcase recent contemporary architectural works during two weekends and the week between, from 18-26 April. The 15n is organized every year by the Swiss society of engineers and architects to allow the public to see a variety of public and private buildings in French-speaking Switzerland. Details and visiting hours for buildings in six cantons are on the group’s site. A highlight this year is the growing number of Minergie (energy efficient) constructions and renovations, both homes and public buildings. The buildings that can be visited in Geneva and Lausanne:
Students give a thumbs-up to the new La Chat sports hall.
Founex, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – An easy-to-spot landmark for many people as they flew into Geneva was for several years the large bright blue and yellow “Bubble” sports hall near the autoroute at La Châtaigneraie, a campus of the International School of Geneva. It was torn down in 2006 to make way for a more permanent and larger sports hall, inaugurated 9-11 October with a ceremony and other events.
Founex, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The world of wine, take notice: women have arrived. This is the clear message that came out of the annual general meeting Friday of International Associated Women in Wine, who compiled what appears to be the first-ever survey of women about their wine buying and consumption habits. National surveys were relatively small samplings done in seven major wine producing countries but the same thread ran through all the results: women are the ones the wine industry should be targeting for marketing. the group says the next step is to carry out a larger and more sophisticated survey that might include, for example, the US.
Women are now buying wine more often than men, they are knowledgeable consumers and tend to select their wines first by region, then by grape and only much further down the list, by price and because wine is on special offer. They buy for the family and in most countries they prefer to buy it to have at home, although buying to share with friends is a close second. Forget the old cliches about women drinking mainly white wines and sweet wines: they like it red, dry, and of good quality.
The sharpest message is aimed at wine stewards, who well over 75% of the time hand the wine card to a man rather than a woman in a restaurant- but the selection is made by both, with women often the wine expert in the family.
The group, which brings together women wine producers from around the world, says the next step is to carry out a larger and more sophisticated survey that might include, for example, the US, not part of this survey.
Photo: women wine producers from Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, France, Greece, Italy and Spain offered their wines to the group to sample during breaks from their meeting.
