Switzerland Today
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Here are the latest news and stories from Switzerland on Tuesday.
In the news: Covid situation gets worse, army on standby and Catholic Church study into abuse.
- Health officials warn that the Covid virus situation is getting worseExternal link in Switzerland. New infections hover at around 10,000 a day. Covid hospital admissions are doubling every three weeks. Intensive care units are currently 79% full. The vaccination rate meanwhile remains flat (66% of the population double-jabbed). If this situation is not reversed soon, the critical threshold of 400 intensive care patients could be exceeded in December and this could have repercussions for all hospital patients, says Covid-19 task force member Urs Karrer.
- Up to 2,500 members of the Swiss militia army will be made available to support Swiss hospitals with the care and transport of Covid-19 patients and to help cantons administer Covid jabs, the Federal Council decidedExternal link today. Various cantons had again requestedExternal link military support to help during the pandemic. Soldiers may start this week.
- The leaders of the Catholic Church in Switzerland have commissioned a study into the Swiss church’s history of sexual exploitation since the mid-20th century. Two University of Zurich history professors will lead the study which is due to start officially in March 2022.
Sisters repatriated to Switzerland from Syrian prison camp.
The Tages-Anzeiger newspaper has the full storyExternal link on the repatriation of the two half–sisters, aged 15 and nine, from a Kurdish-controlled camp in Syria back to Switzerland. It is the first such operation by the Swiss federal authorities, in cooperation with the Kurds.
The girls were taken from Geneva to Syria by their mother in 2016 when she joined the Islamic State terror group. The mother claims she fell in love with an Algerian jihadist on Facebook who lured her to Syria. The mother and two half-sisters ended up in the Kurdish-controlled al-Rojdetainment camp in north-eastern Syria.
Swiss public television SRF reported that a Swiss team visited the camp and managed to persuade the mother to release her two girls.
On Monday, the foreign ministry confirmedExternal link that the two sisters had arrived at Geneva Airport in Switzerland having first been transferred to Iraq. In Geneva they will be under the care of child welfare services and receive counselling before a decision is taken on whether they can be reunited with their fathers, according to SRFExternal link.
The mother was stripped of her Swiss citizenship last year and cannot return to Switzerland. Since 2019, Switzerland has enforced a strict policy of not repatriating adults who leave the country to join banned terror groups. The returning girls were among seven children with Swiss citizenship stuck in war-torn Syria.
The al-Hol and al-Roj camps, run by Syrian Kurdish forces, hold nationals from some 60 countriesExternal link who fled from IS’s last enclaves.
A “tangerine-sized” meteorite crashes close to Verbier in southern Switzerland.
A meteorite weighing half a kilo crashed in a high mountain area above the chic ski resort of Verbier in canton Valais last week, it was reportedExternal link today.
The “tangerine-sized” rock has still not been located. It is thought to have hit the Corbassière Glacier in the Val de Bagnes area.
As most meteorites (90-95%) do not survive the journey through the Earth’s atmosphere, there are only about 60,000 or so documented specimens worldwide. Meteorites with masses more than 500g are estimatedExternal link to fall on Earth at an annual rate of about one per one million square kilometres.
Meteorite collecting is quite a competitive, and lucrative hobby, according to the auction house SothebysExternal link, with prices ranging from a few thousand dollars to a few millionExternal link.
Michaël Cottier, a scientific expert at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Observatory, based in St-Luc in the Val d’Anniviers, said the Verbier meteor was probably of “scientific interest” but not particularly valuable.
If you find it “you should not expect to become a billionaire”, he said. He urged anyone who does come across the object to contact the Museum of Earth Sciences in Martigny or his observatory in Saint Luc so that it can be properly analysed.
The EU is reorganisingExternal link its relations with a group of third countries from January 2022.
From the start of next year Switzerland will be part of the European Union’s “Western European Partners” department, which will also include Britain and European Economic Area (EEA) states. The department will be attached to the Secretariat-General of the European Commission and headed by Richard Szostak.
The Polish-British dual national was a key figure in former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s cabinet and a tough negotiating partner for Swiss diplomats.
The Tages-Anzeiger sees the move as an “upgradeExternal link” for Switzerland – but with several downsides – in its relations with the EU, which have been frosty ever since Switzerland decided in May to walk away from talks to establish a new set of rules governing future bilateral relations.
Following the Swiss decision, the EU has taken a tough stance, relegating Switzerland’s status in the Horizon Europe and Erasmus+ education and research programmes and banning its stock exchange from trading EU shares.
In an attempt to get both sides back around the negotiating table, Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission Vice-President responsible for Swiss relations and for Brexit, and Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis held talks in Brussels on November 15. Both politicians agreed to meet again at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in January to take stock of the situation.
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