Icelandic poet, activist and co-founder of the Pirate Party, Birgitta Jonsdottir (Reuters) Democracy must become much more diverse and involve greater experimentation, says Birgitta Jónsdóttir, co-founder of the Icelandic Pirate Party, whose platform includes direct democracy and greater gove ment t...

The free movement of people accord is in the line of fire as Europe battles with its migration crisis. But which European countries have more people leaving than arriving? We took a look at the data. It's over 14 years since the free movement of people accordxa0between Switzerland and the European U...

Stunning views over Lake Luce e and surrounding mountains in central Switzerland. (Villa Honegg) A short Instagram clip by a Brazilian travel blogger that paints Switzerland’s mountains in a dramatically stunning light has gone viral. A coincidence? Not quite. The video begins unspectacularly. And t...

A Swiss city that is closed in on two sides by Germany and France shows its efforts to do away with borders (SRF/swissinfo.ch/cp) The underlying theme of the Basel 2020 Inte ational Building Exhibition, “Growing together across borders”, is inspired by the particular location of Switzerland’s third-...

Between 1961 and 1976, 114,000 tons of chemical waste was dumped in the Bonfol site. (SRF-SWI) For years, tonnes of toxic waste were thrown into the landfill at Bonfol, one of Switzerland’s most contaminated sites which took more than half a century to clean up. swissinfo.ch retu s to the scene of a...

Could the face that launched several Indian films also be the one painted on an iconic Swiss watch? (Nikhil Dhanrajgir) Sébastien Marcel is an unlikely judge of beauty queens, but his face recognition expertise could finally solve the identity of an Indian woman on a precious Swiss watch.xa0 Marcel ...

A school gym hosts a town hall assembly: Citizen of Wolfenschiessen in central Switzerland meeting to discuss a storage site for spent nuclear power rods in 1994 (Keystone) Town hall meetings in Switzerland are generally poorly attended, undermining their political legitimacy. Researchers have revea...

Choir leader Helene Haegi didn’t have much success with crowdfunding: “Our club members have great networks, but not over the inte et.” (zVg) The arts are one of the major beneficiaries of crowdfunding in Switzerland. But that isn’t to say that every project is successful – far from it. Without a go...

People fleeing conflict or persecution have to battle to be recognised as refugees by countries like Switzerland. It’s another challenge to integrate into a foreign culture, especially without a job. (SRF/swissinfo.ch) Only a third of all asylum seekers accepted by Switzerland have found work after ...

Justice Minister Sommaruga attended festivities of the foster care initiative committee in Be on Fridayxa0 (Keystone) A committee campaigning for financial compensation for victims of a controversial Swiss foster care system has officially withdrawn its initiative, following parliament’s final appro...

Here are some of the stories we’ll be following the week of October 3: (Keystone) Monday A critical look at the crowdfunding phenomenon in Switzerland. It’s a rapidly growing trend, but one that still has untapped potential and can be tricky to define and navigate. Swiss crowdfunders tend to be gene...

Oct 2, 2016 - 09:00It was a shock to the nation which gave the gove ment and banks pause for thought. “My world collapsed,” recalls one former Swissair flight attendant.“A national legend brought to the ground”: for the media, the grounding of a once-proud flying icon 15 years ago was a “national me...

Distance lea ing Katy Romy / Flurina Rothenberger “If young people have access to these tools, maybe they won’t drown trying to reach Europe,” said Benjamin Yao, an Ivorian teacher, interpreting the hope behind MOOCs, free online courses open to everyone. The dream is to offer better educational pro...

The next frontier in space exploration is usually left to gove ments and scientists to decide, but the European Space Agency (ESA) decided to ask ordinary citizens directly in a series of forums like this one held in Switzerland. About 100 people came together at Luce e’s Transport Museum to exchang...

Many agree that Switzerland should transition to green energy, but opinions differ as to where the plants producing renewable energy should be built. (SRF/swissinfo.ch/cp) At the beginning of June, one chamber of parliament – the Senate – deleted a passage of Switzerland’s energy strategy, and in so...

Hairdressing is an apprenticeship with a high early drop out rate (Keystone) Even though two-thirds of young people in Switzerland go into vocational training – a highly-praised system – the drop-out rate has, until now, been rarely publicised. Between 20- 25% of apprenticeships are currently termin...

Christian Hänny knows all of the cows by name, and they know him by sight. (swissinfo.ch) If your job description is alpine ‘midhusband’ to dozens of pregnant and nursing cows, what exactly does that entail? When I hear the cowbells, I know I’ve got the right man on the other end of the phone line. ...

A big rock looks set to come down on the Aletsch glacier in Valais. Geologist are alarmed, but no one can tell how and when exactly it will break. (RTS/swissinfo.ch) At 30km long, the Aletsch glacier is the largest in the Alps. It has shrunk significantly over the past decades as a result of global ...

Emergency responders were going over the wreckage at the crash site on Wednesday (Keystone/Ti-Press/Samuel Golay) A military helicopter crashed in the central Swiss Alps on Wednesday, killing two pilots and injuring a flight assistant. The head of the Swiss Air Force, Aldo Schellenberg said the inci...

A visitors walks past a picture of Winston Churchill in the bunker that used to house the Cabinet War Rooms in central London (Keystone) UBS invited some of its wealthiest clients to London this month to fight war games in Winston Churchill’s underground bunker, Britain’s headquarters during the sec...