Guitarist Thomas Raggi (left) and bassist Victoria De Angelis (right) of Italian rock band Maneskin.

Switzerland Today

Greetings from Lausanne!

If you missed last month’s “supermoon”, tonight is when you have another chance to check out the biggest and brightest Moon of the year.

This month’s full moon is today, Wednesday. At the same time, the Moon's orbit will bring it closer to Earth than usual. That can make it appear slightly bigger and brighter, weather permitting.

In Switzerland the supermoon should be visible in the clear night sky between 10pm and 6am on Thursday morning. Happy skywatching!

This content was published on July 13, 2022 - 18:00

4 minutes

I am a climate and science/technology reporter. I am interested in the effects of climate change on everyday life and scientific solutions. Born in London, I am a dual citizen of Switzerland and the UK. After studying modern languages and translation, I trained as a journalist and joined swissinfo.ch in 2006. My working languages are English, German, French and Spanish.

mural in venezuela — Keystone / Ronald Pena

In the news: new dinosaur species, Mühleberg nuclear plant and Swiss minister forced to land plane.

A financial asset manager from Switzerland and another from Argentina have been charged in the United States for their alleged involvement in a $1.2 billion (CHF1.2 billion) Venezuelan money-laundering scheme.
The dismantling of the Mühleberg nuclear power station, one of Switzerland’s oldest, is making good progress, officials said on Wednesday.
The remains of a new pachypleurosaur marine reptile species have been discoveredExternal link in canton Graubünden by a team of researchers from Zurich. The 50-cm-long reptile lived 240 million years ago in an ocean that was then covered a large part of present-day Switzerland.
While on holiday in France last week, Swiss Interior Minister Alain Berset was forced to landExternal link a light aircraft he was piloting after reportedly straying close to a prohibited area. Berset allegedly misinterpreted information from the French air traffic control tower prompting an intervention by the French air force. He was able to continue his flight with the hired plane after an identity check and further inquiries.

women in office — © Keystone / Gaetan Bally

Switzerland falls in WEF gender gap ranking

Switzerland has slipped from tenth to 13th place in the latest edition of WEF’s Global Gender Gap reportExternal link which measures comparative opportunities offered to men and women in society.

Despite health-related improvements, the country dropped three places mainly due to poor progress on professional participation and economic opportunities. It also lost points for education and political emancipation.

Iceland continued to dominate the WEF Gender Gap ranking this year, followed by Finland, Norway and New Zealand.

But WEF warned that more globally current efforts around the world to achieve gender equality were “stalling”. At the current rate it will take another 132 years to reach gender parity, the Geneva-based organisation said. This is a slight improvement from last year, but three decades longer than the situation in 2020, before the impact of Covid-19 on gender equality.

A wage survey published in March showed that the gender wage gap is narrowing in Switzerland, but only slowly. In 2020, women earned on average 11% less than men for doing the same job. The gap is more pronounced among the higher earning strata.

Switzerland has introduced legislation aimed at eroding discrimination, including the requirement of larger companies to report wage levels for male and female staff every four years.

Aerial view of canton Zug — Keystone / Alessandro Della Bella

Is Switzerland a weak link in the West’s sanctions against Russian oligarchs?

In a lengthy new articleExternal link, Wall Street Journal reporters travelled to Zug in central Switzerland (photo above) – home to numerous Russian billionaires and businesses – to investigate how Swiss sanctions linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine are being implemented.

Switzerland has decided to follow the European Union in imposing six packages of sanctions on Russia since February 24. Over 1,100 Russian individuals and almost 100 entities have been placed on a Swiss sanctions list. The Swiss authorities have so far frozen CHF6.7 billion ($6.8 billion) of assets belonging to sanctioned Russians. However, they have faced criticism from abroad about how eagerly the country is really enforcing measures.

“This is a very difficult time, especially for the Canton of Zug,” Zug’s Finance Director Heinz Tännler told WSJ.

In “Little Moscow”, as some Swiss papers call Zug, a team of officials has had a hard timeidentifying homes or local businesses officially owned by any sanctioned individuals. The WSJ said they have found one company out of the roughly 30,000 registered in the canton that they believed was owned or controlled by one of the sanctioned Russians on the Swiss list.

“Zug’s slow startis emblematic of the country as a whole,” writes the WSJ team.

Despite Switzerland’s status as a global commodities trading and financial hub, the country’s regulators are hamstrung by limited resources, say the reporters. Their work is also frustrated by a long-standing structural problem: the business of registering companies remains a hive of secrecy, making it difficult to identify ultimate ownership of assets.