Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Dalai Lama will be in Lausanne 4-5 August, part of a European tour organized by the Tibetan community, but the Swiss Federal Council (cabinet) will not be sending a delegation to greet him. The highest-ranking Swiss official outside the Cabinet, the head of the lower house of Parliament, Chiara Simoneschi-Cortesi, will instead travel to Lausanne to welcome him as head of a spiritual community. The Dalai Lama is scheduled to hold a public conference Wednesday 5 August on “World peace through inner peace” and this event, plus the other talks at the conference at the Malley sports centre, are sold out.
Zurich train station
Geneva, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Switzerland’s weekend vote in favour of biometric passports is a positive sign in terms of the country’s closer relationship with the European Union (EU), but there are disquieting signs, too, says Jacques Barrot, EU vice-president. Barrot is interviewed at length in Le Temps about Switzerland the Schengen accord. Two areas for concern are the possibility that Swiss border guards’ patrols of Swiss trains could become routine and that the Swiss Federal Council could decide this week to exercise its option to reduce the number of foreigners allowed to work in the country.
Geneva, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Caesar Menz, who handed in his resignation 7 May when a highly critical audit of Geneva’s museums was made public, has told Le Temps in a lengthy interview that the report amounts to a public lynching. He was scathing in his assessment of the auditors, a French company, saying that they appeared to be treating the Swiss museums like French museums, with little understanding of the local context.
Geneva, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – A diagnostic test for swine flu (A/H1N1) is now in use after its rapidfire development in Geneva by the three-person team of virologist, Dr Laurent Kaiser A/H1N1, head of the virus lab at Geneva’s university hospitals (HUG). Kaiser’s team developed the test in only 4 days. Le Temps carries a lengthy interview where Kaiser compares the experience with the creation of a diagnostic test for SARS in 2003, which took three weeks.
