Staff at the test centre take on the roles during a "hearing" of an asylum seeker during the tour for jou alists (Keystone) Voters will shortly decide on whether to speed up asylum procedures in Switzerland – reforms based on a pilot project in Zurich. Officials argue the new system, which includes ...

Daniel Häni posing in front of a campaign photo that went round the world. In October 2013, eight million shiny copper coins were dumped in front of the Swiss parliament building xa0 (Keystone) The campaign to introduce an unconditional basic income has won admirers and detractors, spawning numerous...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Following the Second World War and until 2002, hundreds of thousands of seasonal workers came from Italy to Switzerland, where they were often forced to live under inhumane conditions. A photo exhibit in St Gallen focuses on their daily life. Immigrants from Swi...

The cartoon of the week is a new series at swissinfo.ch. Cartoonist Marina Lutz has worked with different Swiss media as a caricaturist, including the Nebelspalter satirical magazine. Lutz has won several awards for her work, notably during the Fumetto inte ational cartoon festival.xa0Click through ...

(swissinfo.ch) The fourth industrial revolution – the digitalisation of the economy – is set to radically transform or render obsolete half of all jobs in industrialised countries. As a result, Switzerland’s tertiary sector has been shedding jobs for 15 years. After mechanisation, electrisation and ...

Experts say leftwing extremism is underestimated in Switzerland (Keystone) Homegrown jihadism in Switzerland must not be over-exaggerated. At the same time, right and left-wing extremist groups remain equally problematic, wa s a Swiss expert. Just how appealing are jihadi, rightwing and leftwing ext...

Swiss tourism bosses are still cashing in on Heidi, 135 years after Johanna Spyri’s children’s classic was first published. (SRF/swissinfo.ch) The story received a new lease of life with a Heidi film in 2015, which lured a half a million viewers into Swiss cinemas and was sold to more than 50 countr...

Lukas Böni tests out the slime’s stretchy properties (ETHZ/Simon Kuster) The carrion-eating hagfish has been described as the “vacuum cleaner of the ocean”. But it also has another claim to fame: it can see off its attackers in a puff of slime. Zurich scientists are researching how this fast-forming...

Is Swiss politics just a numbers game? (Keystone) Winners versus losers, leftwing versus rightwing – the political process is full of rhetoric that separates people and issues into categories. But the reality is rarely so black-and-white, particularly in a direct democracy like Switzerland. On Febru...

In Be , some 170 pupils under the age of 20 came to hear the activists' testimony. (swissinfo.ch) Two Syrian refugees have described to Swiss studentsxa0the brutal torture they suffered while in a Damascus prison, as part of a tour organised by Amnesty Inte ational. Amal Nasr, who has received refug...

Swisscom boss Urs Schaeppi eraned over three times more than a gove ment minister last year. (Keystone) More than 8,000 state-owned public service workers are “overpaid”, according to research that tests the possible impact of a Swiss people’s initiative. If the initiative is accepted on June 5, the...

Jürg Zeltner took over as UBS’s head of wealth management in 2009 (Keystone) UBS wealth management boss Jürg Zeltner is 20 minutes late. He has apologies at the ready and the perennial good excuse of a banker: he was with a client. Mr Zeltner has more clients to occupy him than most. Some of the wor...

Signing up via a stand on the market – a thing of the past? Digital democracy advocates are aiming for half of signatures collected online. (Keystone) Campaigns increasingly take place on the inte et, and in Switzerland, initiatives and referendums can now be signed online, thanks to wecollect.ch. W...

Political art: This poster by Christian Mueller pokes fun at the election campaign of the People's Party ten years ago. The rightwing group used a goat as its mascotxa0 (f-u-k.ch) The promoters of an unusual people’s initiative to “deport criminal men” say the campaign has achieved its goal even tho...

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis and preimplantation genetic screening are often confused. (Keystone) When reproductive decisions and politics meet, the ethical arguments can quickly become complex and passionate – as they should in a direct democracy. But how can we understand the medical procedur...

Here are the stories we will be watching in the week of May 16: (Keystone) Monday Ahead of next month’s vote on whether to allow embryos created via IVF to be tested for genetic or chromosomal abnormalities prior to their implantation, we take a closer look at the differences between pre-implantatio...

It takes a lot of work to get ready for a major sports competitionxa0–xa0and not just on the part of the athletes. Why do it? This week swissinfo.ch talks to a range of people involved in the 2016 European Gymnastics Championships in Be .xa0 Let's block ads! (Why?)

The latest reform to our asylum law is tougher but also brings benefits for those entitled to legal protection, says Balthasar Glättli, a member of the House of Representatives for the Green Party. By Balthasar Glättli In the face of the humanitarian refugee crisis, we need to solve the problems in ...

The revised asylum law, which will be up for a vote on June 5, sends the wrong signals and makes Switzerland even more attractive for immigrants, says Sandra Sollberger, a member of the House of Representatives for the Swiss People’s Party. By Sandra Sollberger Switzerland needs more systematic bord...

May 14, 2016 - 11:00The Sihlfeld cemetery is the largest continuous green space in downtown Zurich. It was built in 1877 as the city’s first denomination-neutral cemetery.Measuring 200,000 square metres, it is open 365 days a year. The cemetery contains 10,600 plots and there are some 245 burials ev...