Switzerland Today
Hello from Bern,
Welcome to your daily meteorological update: politicians are on summer break, Euro 2020 has wrapped up, and Covid is gone on holiday to the UK, so there’s still not much to talk about except the weather, which is awful.
Deep Dive Weather setting the tone
SWI swissinfo.ch isn’t alone in its fixation on the heavens. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the most sober of Swiss dailies, had at least four weather articles on its homepage on Tuesday afternoon. It also published a science-rich overview of how “storms”, “hail”, “lightning”, and “thunder” actually work. Helpfully, the piece also debunks a German rhyme about how it’s better to stand under a beech than an oak tree to avoid lightning; neither tree is optimal, says the NZZ, which recommends getting in your car.
What’s happening: last night near-record amounts of rain fell on parts of the country. Particularly hard-hit were cantons Jura and Zurich, where there was also quite a bit of transport disruption. Ferries on lakes Thun and Brienz have been cancelled until at least Friday. Areas of Bern near the river Aare remain on high alert. With more rain to come, and the high-point for rivers and lakes to be reached later in the week, more flood warnings have been issued. An improvement is expected/hoped for the weekend.
Only at that point will a final appraisal of damage be made; in the meantime people in Switzerland can only be careful, and respect (and applaud) the efforts of emergency and fire services, which in some regions are working around the clock. Nobody wants to see a repeat of the 2005 “flood of the century”, when six people died and CHF2.5 billion ($2.73 billion) in damages were recorded. This archive piece describes how Switzerland learned the lessons of 2005 to better cope with the weather in future.
In the news Swiss Financial Times
After a “high-level meeting” involving Swiss finance minister Ueli Maurer and his Saudi counterpart Mohammed Al-Jadaan, the two countries have said they plan to boost cooperation between their stock exchanges, the SIX and the Tadawul. Saudi Arabia, which is often criticised by NGOs for rights violations, is one of the most important Swiss trading partners in the Middle East, with a trade volume of some CHF2.3 billion ($2.5 billion) per year.
Also on Tuesday, the name of the new boss to take over at FINMA, the Swiss financial markets supervisory authority, was announced. Urban Angehrn, who has worked for various big insurance and banking companies, will start the job on November 1. His predecessor Mark Branson has moved north after being named president of German finance regulator BaFin back in March.
Swiss Abroad Fonts – the “clothes words wear”
Some of us might associate switching through fonts, especially when we’re supposed to be working (e.g. writing a newsletter), as mere procrastination. For Nina Stoessinger, it’s a career. In a portrait published by SWI swissinfo.ch today, typeface designer Stoessinger, a Swiss living in Brooklyn (New York), talks about her love of fonts, which ones are useful for which purposes, and how she found her way into the font profession in the first place. She also talks about her latest creation, “Seaford”, currently being tested as one of the contenders for the next Windows standard typeface. Watch this space…
What’s trending Bovine facts
For your information, today – July 13, 2021 – is Cow Appreciation Day. Switzerland, as you know, is a land synonymous with cows. But did you know these (non-verified) facts about cows?
- Switzerland was founded in 1291 when a historic treaty was signed by representatives from cantons Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, as well as a brown cow who had been grazing on the Rütli meadow at the time
- Canton Bern originally chose the cow as its official emblem, but a copyright lawsuit launched by cheesemaker “The Laughing Cow” forced it to think otherwise; thus Bern opted for its now famous bear
- In 2011, an Italian-speaking cow from Ticino was just two votes away from becoming the seventh member of the Federal Council; last-minute negotiations among political parties meant that current Health Minister Alain Berset got the job
- “Mad cow disease” actually originated in canton Jura, when a stray hockey puck from a HC Ajoie game hit a fluffy-eared Allgäu cow in the udder, making her so mad that she starting butting all the other cows, sparking a global chain reaction of mad cows
If you have any other facts about cows, please do send to cowfacttaskforce@swissinfo.ch.
Finally, here is an article about cows and mountains.
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