Zurich, one of three Swiss cities that will benefit from new jobs
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – The QS World University Rankings 2011-2012, published independently since 2010 and considered one of the main global education ranking systems, show EPFL in Lausanne slipping from slot no. 32 to 35, but ETHZ in Zurich holding its no. 18 place, just behind McGill in Canada and ahead of Duke in the US.
EPFL has gone up slightly with Leiden and remained at the same level with the Shanghai rankings in recent years, while since ETHZ has held steady with QS and Shanghai but gone up with Leiden. EPFL offers 20 programmes and ETHZ 44.
Swiss state universities that are given a world ranking: The University of Geneva is ranked 71, Basel University 137, Bern 162, Zurich 101.
The QS system was originally published jointly by universities by Quacquarelli Symonds, a UK-based company, jointly with Times Higher Education (THE), but the two split in 2010 to use different methodologies for determining rankings. The new QS system should not be confused with the older THE-QS World University Rankings.
THE publishes its new rankings in October.
Other major rankings systems, most of which show some national bias: Shanghai Jiao Tong, The CHE Ranking, The Leiden Ranking, CHE EUSID, Newsweek, several Financial Times specialty rankings, and the Karriere Hochschulranking.
The Swiss education department publishes a useful web site in four languages (including English) with a searchable data base of all the rankings for comparative purposes.
Highlights of the new QS rankings include:
- Cambridge is number 1 but close behind are Harvard, MIT, Yale and Oxford for the top five
- The top 10 are all US or UK universities
- Chinese mainland universities are inching up, with two of them, Peking and Tsinghua, in the top 50
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The 362 doping tests run for the July 2011 swimming World Cup in Shanghai have all come back negative, FINA (world swimming federation) announced 22 August from its head office in Lausanne. The tests included 311 urine samples and 51 blood tests.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – AP news agency reports Tuesday 7 June that Albert Einstein and Confucius won’t be part of a joint museum exhibit in Shanghai after talks ended between the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum and Bern’s Historical Museum. The Bern museum’s exhibit on Einstein, a son of the city, is currently on tour in Hong Kong, and Shanghai was interested in hosting it next, but wanted to add to it a large exhibit on Confucius, which the Bern museum says would not be possible, given the difficulties of putting up a travelling show and the short timeframe.
The exhibit, which has appeared in Beijing and Guangdong, is the same as the one that drew 350,000 visitors in Switzerland. It was put together, according to Swissworld, to mark the 100th anniversary of the theory of relativity.
Albert Einstein was living in Bern in 1905 when he developed the famous formula E=mc2 “and thus turned our previous concept of space and time on its head” notes Swissworld.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND - Hainan Airlines, one of the fastest-growing airlines in the industry and China’s fourth largest, starts three-times weekly flights between Zurich and Beijing Tuesday 31 May, the beginning of what promises to be stronger aviation ties between Switzerland and China.
Swiss is reportedly targeting Zurich-Beijing as one of its next offers, possibly linked to Swiss’s purchase of five new planes.
Photo: bridgestochina.com (Life in Beijing)
Hainan Air’s non-stop service will used an Airbus A330 with 34 business class and 179 economy seats. The flight runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday in each direction. Flights leave Zurich at 13:20 and arrive at Beijing International Airport at 05:20 local time the next morning. The departing time from Beijing is 01:50 local time, landing at Zurich Airport at 7:05 the same day. Both arrival times offer the possibility of good connections for further travel, says Hainan Air, China’s largest private airline.
“The frequency is much likely to be increased if the market demand is higher,” notes Hainan in a press release about the new line. It also notes that with code-sharing with its partner Air Berlin for Zurich-Berlin flights that connect with Berlin-Beijing on Hainan, Switzerland and China now have nearly daily connections between their capitals, on Hainan.
International sports, Formula 1, Chinese Grand Prix
Shanghai, China (GenevaLunch) - Lewis Hamilton stormed to victory in the third Grand Prix of the season when he passed the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel four laps from the finish, 17 April. It was the first loss of the season for Vettel. Mark Webber came third for Red Bull after fighting back from 18th place on the starting grid. Twit of the day award goes to Jenson Button who lost valuable seconds by entering the wrong pit, heading for that of Red Bull instead of his McLaren team. He still came in fourth. The Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Fernado Alonso were sixth and seventh, after the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg.
Walt Disney Co. is set to open a $4.4 billion amusement park in Shanghai in 2016. The ground-breaking ceremony for the new park took place Friday 8 April. This is the company’s first venture onto China’s mainland and it follows the opening of Disneyland Hong Kong in 2005.
However, there are fears that the resort faces a gloomy future: Disneyland Hong Kong still runs at a loss five years after its opening, and faces criticism from tax payers over its drain on government expenditure. China is the only major country without a Disney channel, and so many of the classic Disney images and characters may be harder to sell to the younger Chinese generation.
With China’s population standing at around 1.3 billion, Disneyland is joining the many western businesses attempting to get a hold on the huge consumer economy there. Not all meet with success: an enormous Barbie store that opened with great aplomb just two years ago has recently had to admit defeat and close.
Disneyland also has resorts in Paris and Tokyo, in addition to its US and recent Chinese developments. The New York Times quotes Robert Iger, Disney’s chief executive, as having described its planned Shanghai project as “authentically Disney but distinctly Chinese”.
Number of deaths in highrise fire in China put at 53; four arrested
A 15-year-old building in a poor neighbourhood in New Delhi, India, collapsed late Monday 15 November, killing 66 people and injuring at least 70 (Times of India reports 80 injured) of the 200 who are believed to have been living there. Authorities are blaming water damage to the foundation, caused by unusually heavy monsoons earlier this year, reports CNN. The building owner, Amrit Singh, has fled with his family and is being sought by police, say Indian media.
A highrise fire that killed 53 in China Monday has resulted in the arrests of four people on charges related to using unlicensed welders, according to Xinhua. Scores more were injured, of the 440 people who lived in the building, which was being renovated.
A highrise in central Shanghai (map below: Jiaozhou Road and Yuyao Road intersection) that housed mainly teachers from nearby schools, many of them retired, caught fire early Monday afternoon 15 November and at least 40 people appear to have died, with scores more taken to hospital for treatment. The fire was brought under control within five hours, in part by hosing it down from the tops of nearby buildings. The building, which dates from the early 1990s, was being renovated when the fire broke out, for reasons that are not yet clear.
Links to other sites: AFP/Vancouver Sun, Xinhua
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Customers of Swiss who are flying to Shanghai or Hong Kong this summer will notice that the flight takes longer, and the usual view of vast stretches of Russia is no longer there: the airline has been told it cannot fly over Russian air space. No explanation is being provided by the airline, which Sunday confirmed to TSR television a report published by NZZ am Sonntag, that the fly-around to the south has been taking place since March. TSR hints that it may be the result of Russia demanding a higher tax to fly over its territory.
US President Barack Obama has arrived in Beijing, China after visiting Shanghai where he met with students and called for greater Internet freedom for the Chinese. Obama said in a town-hall style meeting with students that he believes the free flow of information strengthens societies. Obama will try to calm Chinese fears about Washington’s response to the global economic crisis. China is the world’s biggest owner of US Treasury bonds. Chinese leaders have said they fear that the US will try to devalue its way out of the massive obligations it has assumed to save the banking industry and to stimulate a faltering economy.
The government’s head of banking regulation, Liu Mingkang, Monday 16 November criticized the US Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy, saying it is having a “massive impact on global asset prices.” He said a weak dollar and low interest rates were endangering the economic recovery, especially in emerging econmies.
The US continues to call on China to revalue its currency, which it says is making Chinese exports cheaper and undermining other countries’ efforts to stimulate their economies. Economist, Financial Times, Reuters
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Roger Federer is withdrawing from two tournaments after consulting with his team and doctors, he says, to let his body rest and recuperate after a tough year. He is pulling out of the Tokyo and Shanghai tournaments, in what he describes as “two of his favourite cities in the world”, after consulting with his team and doctors. In the first four hours after he posted the information on his Facebook page, more than 16,000 of his three million-plus fans had reacted.
China’s state prosecutor in Shanghai has formally charged four employees of Rio Tinto, an Australian mining giant, with illegally obtaining commercial secrets, a lesser charge than the “theft of state secrets” originally under consideration. The four, Australian Stern Hu and three Chinese employees, were arrested in early July and accused of spying. The prosecutor’s office said that “a fair verdict” would be handed down, which is interpreted to mean that the case will go to trial. The case has complicated relations between China and Australia, where two-way trade was worth $53 billion in 2008. Chinese-born Hu and his team were accused of illegally obtaining China’s negotiating position ahead of crucial iron ore price talks. NYT, Reuters, Xinhua
Liam Bates, aka Li-Mu, back in Switzerland
Update: Liam won third place in the 2010 competition
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Liam Bates arrived home to the Lake Geneva region in Switzerland from China 28 July with more than the six-month scholarship he won from the Chinese government as a finalist in its international university competition for Mandarin speakers: he had a broken leg plus damaged shoulder from a motorcycle accident and headed straight for the CHUV (university hospitals) in Lausanne, scheduled for an urgent skin graft.
He also had several hundred new fans from among the two million television viewers who watched the popular annual “Chinese Bridge” competition that rewards the world’s best students of China’s language and culture.
The competitor who hobbled onto the stage to give a speech four days after surgery on his leg, explaining why he wouldn’t be showing them wushu (kung fu) moves, caught the crowd’s eye.
But it was the large-screen background clip from a film of his travels across their country – a journey few Chinese have made – that sent his Chinese web site traffic zooming up by almost 10,000 percent in just days.
"Mao, Motorbikes and a Yak" film: the journey
Bates and three friends had completed a 7,000 km journey on motorcycles across China shortly before the competition, filming conversations with young Chinese about their dreams and hopes for the future.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One of the popular attractions at the World Expo 2010 Shanghai, the largest-ever world fair, could well be a Swiss cablecar that “in a few seconds” will take visitors from city to countryside, playing on one of the fair’s themes: rural and urban interaction.
Shanghai, China (GenevaLunch) – Lewis Hamilton took a major step towards his first F1 championship by winning in Shanghai.
