Switzerland Today
Greetings from Bern,
You know you’re getting old when ambassadors are younger than you. The new US ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein (confirmation pending) will be 41-year-old Scott Miller, a gay rights activist and philanthropist. Once he’s settled in, we look forward to interviewing him.
In the News: UN climate report described as a “code red for humanity”.
- The UN panel on climate change told the world on Monday that global warming was dangerously close to being out of control and that humans were “unequivocally” to blame. Extreme weather events – heat waves, heavy rains and droughts – are also set to become more frequent in Switzerland, say the Swiss scientists who contributed to the latest report.
- In less depressing news (for the time being), the Swiss national football team has a new football manager: Murat Yakin. The Basel-born former player was appointed almost two weeks after Vladimir Petkovic, Switzerland’s most successful national manager ever, packed his bags for Bordeaux. Yakin, 46, has less than a month to prepare for two World Cup qualifiers.
Deep Dive: Faster, higher, stronger, over.
The 2020 (sic) Summer Olympics came to a colourful end in Tokyo on Sunday, but Swiss athletes and fans will be celebrating for some time to come. The 13 medals (three gold) are the biggest haulExternal link since Helsinki in 1952.
Purists might grumble that none of the medals was for track and field (they were for mountain biking, road cycling, tennis, shooting, BMX, beach volleyball and swimming), but several milestones were reached. Jérémy Desplanches’s bronze in the 200m medley was Switzerland’s first swimming medal since 1984 and the country’s 200th podium at the Summer Games.
Since the previous Games five years ago the number of Swiss Olympic champions has remained the same, at three. But while only men struck gold in Rio, only women struck gold in Tokyo: shooter Nina Christen, mountain biker Jolanda Neff and tennis player Belinda Bencic. What’s more, Switzerland’s mountain bikers achieved the first “Swiss podium” in 85 years – and the first ever for Swiss women.
Helvetic History: Our most popular story at the moment is about the Lion of Lucerne.
Tomorrow marks the 200th anniversary of the unveiling of one of Switzerland’s most famous monuments, which sparked controversy right from the start. The monument commemorates a key episode in the French Revolution: the capture of the Tuileries Palace by armed insurgents on August 10, 1792. From the Swiss point of view, that day is associated with the sacrifice of the Swiss Guards who were defending the palace (how many died is one of the bones of contention, with recent historical studies putting the number at around 300 – not the 760 as claimed in the inscription on the monument).
Apart from the numbers, it was the image of Switzerland conveyed by the Lion that stirred up emotions. The monument seemed to glorify a conservative, counter-revolutionary Switzerland, and this was seen as a deliberate provocation by liberals at the time, some of whom tried to disrupt the inauguration and later even damage the monument.
Despite being a historical flashpoint, the Lion has always been loved by tourists. Mark Twain no less described it as “the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world”.
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