These are some of the stories coming up on swissinfo.ch for the week begi ing October 2, 2017. (Thomas Ke /swissinfo.ch) MondayDavid Leuenberger dreams of marriage and perhaps children. But both are not possible for homosexual couples under Swiss law. The 30-year-old design manager from Be talks to ...

luca1 Luca Luca Orduña, 27, put all his eggs in one basket. At the age of 22, he went to Japan for the first time and set himself up in business. Fascinated by the varied cuisine and the natural environment, this adventurous entrepreneur still isn’t thinking about retu ing to Switzerland. As the man...

Shelly Power, Artistic Director and CEO of the Prix de Lausa e, has been in the post since last year(swissinfo.ch) The world-renowned Prix de Lausa e ballet competition has a ounced that it is changing its selection rules for the 2018 contest, opening its doors to dancers under 15 for the first time...

Twenty-five years ago, the Swiss said 'yes' to the New Rail Link through the Alps, or NRLA (NEAT in German).(RDB/Ex-Press/David Adair) Travelling at speeds of 200km/h (124mph), trains have now been traversing the longest tu el in the world under the Alps for a year. The achievement comes 25 years af...

(Thomas Ke /swissinfo.ch) More than ever, today’s younger generations are refusing to be defined by a binary view of sexuality. And although the acronym has expanded to recognise this, people who identify as being part of the LGBTIQ community in Switzerland remain targets of violence and discriminat...

Valérie D’Acremont is a specialist in tropical medicine who researches new methods for diagnosis of acute fever in developing countries. Her work contributes to better targeted treatment and preventing the over-prescription of antibiotics. (SRF, swissinfo.ch)D'Acremont is a clinical epidemiologist h...

Tama Vakeesan was bo in Switzerland – to Tamil parents from Sri Lanka. This week, she joins a club for foreign women called "Femmes-Tisch" in her home town of Langenthal, which provides members with different forms of training such as German classes, and helps them to integrate in Swiss society. It'...

A Polish/Scottish couple decided to apply for Swiss citizenship to boost their children's integration. This is their story. (Julie Hunt, swissinfo.ch)David Kirk comes from Rothesay on the Isle of Bute in Scotland. Dominika Wieczorek Kirk is from the town of Piastow in central Poland. They came to Sw...

A e Jorstad calling Senator Patty Murray (Democrat, Washington State) from the terrace of the Swiss parliament in Be . She asked Murray to protect DREAMERS and increase federal funding for science.(A e Jorstad) No matter where you live, you’re never too far away to call the people representing you i...

One Swiss-based researcher who is conce ed about the future of research freedoms in Turkey has been working on a project involving old press photos of the country in the 1920s and 1930s, such as this one of a woman in a courtroom.(SIBA-Datenbank) The tense situation in Turkey is making it increasing...

(© KEYSTONE / JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT) Huge crowds filled the streets of Geneva on Friday to marvel at an eight-metre 83-year-old grandmother and her six-metre daughter: puppets from the French street theatre group Royal de Luxe. Smiles and cameras greeted the enormous marionettes, which awoke from a l...

Agassiz's reputation for his acclaimed early work on Ice Age theory became marred by his later writings on racist theories of anthropology and human origins.(Wikimedia Commons) The Swiss Alpine Club’s recent decision not to revoke the honorary membership of a controversial Swiss glaciologist raises ...

In Vas Narasimhan, a physician and Harvard Medical School graduate, the Novartis board has found a CEO whose professional background contrasts strikingly with that of his customer-focused predecessor.(Keystone) Vas Narasimhan estimates that using digital technology more efficiently could save up to ...

Honorary consuls are local personalities who represent foreign states in Switzerland, and they are not paid for their work. What motivates them? (RTS/swissinfo.chexte al link)There are about 130 honorary consuls them in Switzerland. They are not professional diplomats, but people who work on a volun...

The words - in German and French - most often used during the debate in the House of Representatives. (gramener.com) A majority in both chambers of the Swiss parliament have voted against a 'No Billag' initiative to scrap the compulsory Swiss TV and radio licence fee. We checked the claims of the po...

A demonstrator is detained by police during a protest rally in Moscow earlier this year.(Keystone / EPA / Maxim Shipenkov) The automatic exchange of tax information (AIE) between countries is generally seen as an effective way of cracking down on tax cheats. But what if a country uses the data to po...

Jewish refugees who had been tu ed away at the Swiss border(RDB) On September 25-26, 1942, the a ual conference of cantonal immigration directors took place in Montreux. On the agenda was Switzerland’s policy towards the growing number of refugees trying to enter the country, specifically Jewish peo...

For 20 years, Switzerland has been helping asylum seekers who choose to retu to their home countries. The gove ment is positive that giving money and advice to people to retu home is part and parcel of a credible asylum policy. (SRF/swissinfo.ch)For the gove ment Switzerland's repatriation program i...

We wanted to know how you would vote if you could(Keystone / Alexandra Wey) Although not all of our readers can vote in Switzerland, we suspected many had an opinion anyway. So, we put the main issues into a poll for our readers and fans on social media. These are the results.We asked:"Would you pay...

Jean-Marc Duvoisin - the 'real' face behind Nespresso(Keystone) If Hollywood star George Clooney is the public face of Nespresso, then Jean-Marc Duvoisin is the behind-the-scenes chief executive of a brand that transformed a commodity into a luxury through the coffee pod revolution.A soft-spoken Swi...