Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
The images of a PostBus on fire shook Switzerland. After a mentally ill man set himself alight, claiming six lives, PostBus wants to provide its drivers with additional training.
Also in today’s briefing: due to a drone attack on Dubai airport, holidaymakers had to land back in Zurich after being in the air for almost ten hours. And what’s the story behind the foul-mouthed insults aimed at Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter by a chatbot?
The burning PostBus in Kerzers shocked Switzerland last week. A mentally ill man set himself on fire on Tuesday. According to media reports, there is a systemic problem behind the tragedy that left six people dead: psychiatric wards are releasing patients earlier and earlier.
According to an article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, sick people are now often discharged after just 32 days. Due to the lack of outpatient places, some of them end up in emergency shelters or on the street. This political change should promote integration, but it creates new risks for society.
Following the fire drama, PostBus wants to respond to the uncertainty among staff with additional practical training on site, PostBus boss Stefan Regli told SonntagsBlick. Drivers are to practise de-escalation and fire emergencies in role plays. The aim is for staff to feel safe again despite increasing violence in everyday life.
Regli also gave practical tips for passengers. If a window has to be smashed in an emergency, it should be smashed on the edge and not in the centre. This is where the tension is greatest, causing the glass to shatter immediately. In addition, all PostBuses have an emergency lever marked in red by each door that can be used to open the door.
Almost ten hours of flying from Zurich, only to land back where they had taken off: a drone attack on a fuel depot at Dubai Airport made this necessary for travellers from Switzerland. This shows how vulnerable global hubs are in the current Middle East conflict.
Flight EK86 from Zurich had to turn back after four hours. According to the Tages-Anzeiger, it had taken off from Zurich Airport at 10:27pm and was already over Medina in Saudi Arabia when the airport in Dubai had to be closed due to a drone attack. After nine-and-a-half hours, the passengers landed back at the starting point of their journey.
Dubai is one of the central hubs in the Middle East and is considered one of the most important in the world. The airlines there rely to a large extent on transit passengers who plan their long-haul journeys from all corners of the world with a transfer in Dubai.
The fact that this central hub was attacked marks a new level of escalation in the war with Iran. It shows that civilian infrastructure is increasingly becoming a target. The flight schedule had already been massively restricted beforehand. At the weekend, several media reported that the airline SWISS had suspended all its flights to Dubai until the end of March.
In addition, the Swiss foreign ministry held a media conference on Monday to provide information on the situation in the Middle East and the situation of Swiss nationals there. The Swiss embassy in Tehran has been temporarily closed since last week, while Ambassador Olivier Bangerter and his team are back in Switzerland. Around 1,000 Swiss nationals are currently still in the Gulf States and have contacted the foreign ministry, said Monika Schmutz Kirgöz, head of the Middle East Division at the foreign ministry. In the past few days, however, the number of enquiries to the foreign ministry helpline had “dropped significantly”.
It was only last summer that Lausanne University Hospital Vaud (CHUV) introduced a reporting centre for bullying. And it is already inundated with reports of problematic behaviour.
Bullying, sexual harassment and other inappropriate behaviour: 143 reports have been received by the new “safe cell” contact point at Lausanne University Hospital in just seven months, reported Swiss public radio RTS.
“It’s a cause for concern and vigilance,” RTS quoted Claire Charmet, director-general of the CHUV. Around 12,000 people work at the hospital, including 2,000 doctors.
The reports have already led to around 300 conversations with those directly affected or witnesses. Twenty of these cases have been forwarded to the HR department of the university hospital; four cautions and four reprimands have been issued. Two cases resulted in dismissals, one of which was contested in court.
Artificial intelligence as a rabble-rousing tool: Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok has insulted Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter. The incident triggers a debate in Bern about legal boundaries and the authorities’ communication on Platform X.
At the request of a user, Grok insulted Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter in a sexist and vulgar manner, the Aargauer Zeitung newspaper reported. Unlike its competitors, Musk’s AI deliberately dispenses with filters against defamation and is marketed as “truthful”.
The finance ministry is now examining criminal charges for defamation. However, the legal situation online is complex: is the user who wrote the prompt, Elon Musk’s company “xAI” as the developer, or platform boss Musk personally liable for such abuse?
Despite the escalation, the Federal Chancellery maintains that X is “the most important social media channel for international government communication”. However, only two members of the government are currently still actively using their profiles: Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis and Economics Minister Guy Parmelin, who holds the rotating Swiss presidency this year. Critics, on the other hand, describe the platform as a “dirty corner” and are calling for the authorities to withdraw from it.
Translated using AI/ts
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