The Covid pandemic has forced red kites in Switzerland to rethink their behaviour. During the lockdown, there was less traffic – and therefore less roadkill. The birds, some of which fed on road casualties, had to adapt their hunting strategy. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox A new study by the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach, canton Lucerne, shows how they did this. "Before the lockdowns, red kites specifically sought out areas near roads when the natural food supply was scarce in order to feed on the carcasses of animals that had died in accidents," Benedetta Catitti, first author of the study, told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA. During the lockdowns, however, they avoided these areas. Instead, the birds orientated themselves more towards places where they were fed by humans, as the researchers showed in the study published in the journal Biology Letters. After the lockdowns, they adapted their behaviour again and preferred to stay close ...

Tuberculosis cases are on the rise in Switzerland, particularly due to the arrival of people from regions of the world where the disease is more prevalent, the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) told the Swiss news agency Keystone-ATS. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox Since the beginning of the year, 475 cases have been reported, compared to 376 and 375 for the same period in the past two years, which represents a 26% increase for the year. It should be noted that the increase does not affect people born in Switzerland. The FOPH had already noted an increase in tuberculosis cases in 2023. Young immigrants are particularly affected. Among the population born in Switzerland, it is mainly the elderly who are ill, the FOPH noted. Many of them contracted tuberculosis when they were young, when it was much more widespread in Switzerland. Tuberculosis (TB) is caused by a bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is transmitted by air, when the sick person ...

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis wants to use Switzerland's OSCE Chairmanship in 2026 to prepare for a possible ceasefire in Ukraine. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox "My goal is that we as the OSCE are ready," Cassis said in an interview with the SonntagsBlick. A deal sought by US President Donald Trump between Russia and Ukraine could happen "all of a sudden – like the Gaza deal". He said the Swiss OSCE chairmanship has three priorities: consolidating the organisation as a security policy exchange platform for confidence-building measures; finding a solution to the blocked budget issue; and preparing for a possible deployment after a ceasefire. The OSCE could deploy observers at short notice, monitor a ceasefire line and supervise elections, Cassis added. "But the front line currently consists of 1,300 kilometres – the OSCE alone is too small to monitor the entire length; this would require a great deal of commitment on the part of the ...

Several hundred people demonstrated peacefully in Lausanne on Saturday against police violence. The demonstration was organised by the anti-racist coalition of French-speaking Switzerland. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox The demonstrators gathered on the Place du Château at 2pm, a photographer from the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA observed. The police estimated the number of participants at 500 and the rally passed places associated with police violence. Among other things, it stopped in front of the police station where a Nigerian man died after being arrested at the end of May. The public prosecutor's office subsequently opened proceedings against four police officers on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter. The target of the rally was the Prélaz neighbourhood. A 17-year-old scooter rider was killed in an accident there in August while fleeing from the police. + Racial profiling judgement is a historic moment in Switzerland Among other things, the ...

One year after its launch, the fundraising project of the Digger Mine Action Foundation with schools from the Bernese Jura and Biel/Bienne has come to a successful conclusion: a demining machine can now be sent to Ukraine. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox On Saturday, the charitable Digger Foundation honoured the commitment of several hundred pupils and teachers who had taken part in the "Schools united for demining in Ukraine" project. The schools had organised fund-raising campaigns and referred the public to a crowdfunding platform. A private donor added a further CHF500,000 ($620,000) to the CHF60,000 raised by the pupils. For its part, the Digger Foundation contributed CHF100,000. This raised a total of CHF660,000. "This corresponds to the threshold value above which we can deliver this machine," the director and founder of the Digger Foundation, Frédéric Guerne, told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA. The trained engineer had never made a secret of ...