Gigantic bill apparently reflected using 9.5 gigabytes of data on a phone that had not been set up for international roaming A Florida man was stunned to come back from a European trip and – upon checking his phone bill – realize that he had been charged a staggering $143,000 by his phone company for using his device while overseas. ABC Action News reported that Rene Remund and his wife had toured Switzerland last September and had even gone to a T-Mobile store to share his travel plan with his phone provider before leaving ..read more

Swiss food firm’s infant formula and cereal sold in global south ignore WHO anti-obesity guidelines for Europe, says Public Eye Nestlé, the world’s largest consumer goods company, adds sugar and honey to infant milk and cereal products sold in many poorer countries, contrary to international guidelines aimed at preventing obesity and chronic diseases, a report has found. Campaigners from Public Eye, a Swiss investigative organisation, sent samples of the Swiss multinational’s baby-food products sold in Asia, Africa and Latin America to a Belgian laboratory for testing ..read more

Last week a group of older women successfully challenged the Swiss government’s climate policies at the European court of human rights. Isabella Kaminski reports “It took me a while until the penny dropped that we’d actually won.” Elisabeth Stern, 76, is a climate activist with the KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz (Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland), a campaign group of 2,400 older Swiss women ..read more

Decision by European court of human rights around vulnerability of older women to heatwaves marks significant shift A landmark legal ruling at the European court of human rights could open the floodgates for a slew of new court cases around the world, experts have said. The Strasbourg-based court said earlier this week that Switzerland’s failure to do enough to cut its national greenhouse gas emissions was a clear violation of the human rights of a group of more than 2,000 older Swiss women. The women argued successfully that their rights to privacy and family life were being breached because ..read more

In a landmark decision, the European court of human rights has ruled that weak government climate policies violate citizens' fundamental human rights, in a win for a group of Swiss female climate activists. The court’s top bench ruled that Switzerland had violated the rights of a group of older Swiss women to family life, but threw out a French mayor’s case against France and that of a group of young Portuguese people against 32 European countries Human rights violated by inaction on climate, ECHR rules in landmark case ..read more

Court finds in favour of group of older Swiss women who claimed weak policies put them at greater risk of death from heatwaves Weak government climate policies violate fundamental human rights, the European court of human rights has ruled. In a landmark decision on one of three major climate cases, the first such rulings by an international court, the ECHR raised judicial pressure on governments to stop filling the atmosphere with gases that make extreme weather more violent ..read more

Farmers lay carcasses in front of government building in Lausanne to press for resumption of wolf cull Farmers in Switzerland dumped the carcasses of sheep that were killed by wolves in front of a regional government building on Saturday as part of a protest to demand more action against the predators. About a dozen breeders came from the Saint-Barthélemy area in the western Swiss canton of Vaud to lay 12 carcasses in front of Lausanne’s Chateau Saint-Maire, the regional government headquarters, AFP reported ..read more

Three others injured after aircraft slid down slope during drop-off near summit of Petit Combin mountain Three people have been killed and three others injured after a helicopter crashed while dropping off skiers on the Petit Combin mountain in the Swiss Alps. The B3-type helicopter crashed at a landing site during a heliski drop-off on Tuesday, the Wallis regional police force said in a statement ..read more

Bill being laid before Scottish parliament could, if approved, allow people in Britain to take their own lives within the law UK membership of Dignitas, the Swiss assisted dying association, has jumped to 1,900 people – a 24% rise during 2023 – as an assisted dying bill is laid before the Scottish parliament. People from the UK now make up the second largest group who have signed up to the organisation, which is based near Zurich and helps people take their own lives. The largest group is currently Germans, although they can now get help to end their lives at home after a 2020 court ruling ..read more

Paola Marra ended her life last week in Switzerland after being told by doctors she could not be guaranteed a pain-free death from bowel cancer in the coming months. Robert Booth reports Last week Paola Marra arrived in Zurich for the last journey she would ever make. She was in the final months of her life with stage-four bowel cancer and had an appointment with Dignitas for an assisted death. She had gone alone, partly because she wanted peace in her final moments, but also because of the legal risk to her friends or family who could be seen to be assisting her. She spoke several times over ..read more