Switzerland Today
Hello from Bern,
Here are the latest news and updates from Switzerland on Wednesday.
In the news: e-voting trials continue, but do people want more digital?
- A proposed new online voting system in Switzerland still needs technical improvements, according to a report by independent experts. The system being developed by the Swiss Post is hoping to perform better than previous software, sunk by security flaws in 2019. The government is due to present the legal basis for a resumption of e-voting trials by the middle of this year, which would allow cantons to apply for participation from next year at the earliest.
- An annual survey by health insurance foundation Sanitas suggests people in Switzerland are increasingly digitally saturated. While some habits are changing – for example many are more open to sharing health-related data – people say they are using social media, video conferencing and smart technologies in the home less often than during the Covid pandemic. About 50% of respondents in this year’s poll said they used streaming services, down 10% on last year.
World’s biggest particle accelerator near Geneva to fire up again post-pandemic.
“It’s not just about pressing a button.” This is not a reference to how to launch a nuclear war, but to the imminent re-start of the Large Hadron ColliderExternal link at CERN. The 27-km particle accelerator, situated on (or rather under) the Swiss-French border near Geneva, has been out of action since the start of 2019 – first due to maintenance, then Covid-19. This week it’s to get moving again, in a complex procedure akin to directing “an orchestra”, where “all the right steps have to be taken at the right time”, CERN scientist Rende Steerenberg told Reuters. If everything goes well, the next phase of the LHC’s operations (until 2025) will focus on the search for dark matter; a decade ago, the LHC celebrated its biggest feat, the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson subatomic particle.
World’s biggest(?) collection of wine bottle labels adds to museum history.
The French word “éthylabélophile” designates someone with a passion for collecting alcohol bottles, writesExternal linkLe Nouvelliste today (in English, it’s difficult to find an exact equivalent; but there is at least “labeorphilist”, which refers specifically to beer bottles). The newspaper writes that over 60 years – and an estimated 42,000 hours – canton Valais man Nikolaus Bodenmüller amassed 400,000 different wine bottle labels, classifying them all by region, municipality, manufacturer, grape, and year. Now, he has donated 100,000 – those from canton Valais – to a local museum. Bodenmüller told Le Nouvelliste that “a nice label can really add to the pleasure of tasting a wine. But it can’t make a bad wine into a good one”. The Guinness Book of Records says the current biggest collection of wine and champagne labels is 17,758; maybe he should consider applying…
Swiss goat with record-breaking horn spread passes away.
The 20 Minuten paper reportsExternal link today that world record holder “Albino” has died. Measured in June 2020, the goat from canton Valais (southern Switzerland) had a “horn spread” of 144cm – the “largest on a living goat”, the Guinness Book of Records notesExternal link. Albino’s owner said in a Facebook post that he died early on Easter Monday. Albino was a Sempione goat (see photo), a rare breed from regions around the Swiss-Italian border, and a breed which at one point in the 20th century was thought to be close to extinction. Nowadays, according to the Swiss ProSpecieRara foundation, Sempiones are still rare, but the threat of dying out is less critical. As for the horny Albino, 20 Minuten didn’t say if he had produced any offspring to add to the revival.
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