Tag: switzerland

Swiss Government Discusses Revoking Protections, Benefits For Military-Aged Ukrainians

During the opening years of the Russia-Ukraine war European states were quite welcoming to Ukrainian refugees and anyone fleeing the carnage and chaos, but now in the conflict’s fifth year the general sentiment among EU populations and governments is changing.

Switzerland, once hailed as Europe’s most neutral state – and among the most ‘welcoming’ countries for asylum seekers – is mulling a policy change which would exclude Ukrainian men of military age from protections granted to refugees.

The Swiss Federal Council announced in a statement Friday that it has begun consultations over the legal status of some 66,000 Ukrainian nationals who fled to Switzerland after the conflict erupted.

Welfare assistance and refugee protections are quite good in Switzerland, given individuals receive basic living items as well as government payouts, and can even freely travel in and out of the country.

For now, protections are expected to extend to Ukrainians in the country, but there’s new talk of revoking this status for men of military age at a moment the Ukrainian military continues to face a severe manpower shortage:

The government announced on Friday that, at a national asylum conference in November 2025, the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM), the cantons, cities and municipalities had been tasked with drawing up clear regulations for the future of S protection status.

The results of this deliberation are now set out in a concept paper entitled “The Future of S Status”. According to the government, it serves to prepare for three possible scenarios: the continuation of S status; its abolition in the event of a stable ceasefire; and a phasing out of S status in the event of a protracted conflict.

Specifically pertaining to men of fighting age, the government is considering “a possible future restriction for Ukrainian men subject to conscription,” a new statement reads.

“This is because the EU is currently considering an extension of temporary protection with a possible restriction for these men,” the country’s Federal Council has explained. A final decision could come by the end of the summer, but political pushback is said to be growing.

It should be remembered revocation of protected status is something the Zelensky government itself has long asked Western allies to do. It wants the rapid return of military-aged men, at a moment Ukrainian recruiters have resorted to harsh tactics cracking down on what are seen as draft dodgers.

EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner has also confirmed “This is also what the Ukrainians are asking us to do” – commenting on the question of no longer extending protections to Ukrainian men in EU states.

For now, no major policy shifts are expected, but as the war goes on and on, the tone of the conversation has shifted among many European officials. Washington in particular has emphasized that Ukraine’s populace must stand up for itself, and has even leaned heavily on Kiev to make the mandatory conscription age younger.

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Switzerland Votes Tomorrow on Proposal to Limit Population to 10 Million People

The Swiss may cap the number of inhabitants.

Against the backdrop of the unchecked mass migration, neutral Switzerland is considering closing its borders and establishing a ceiling to the number of people living in the country.

The cap applies to Swiss nationals and migrants, but as the birth numbers all around Europe are declining, it stands to reason that the objective of tomorrow’s vote is to stop the invasion.

So, Switzerland will vote to decide on a proposal to be the first country in the world to limit its population: 10 million.

BBC reported:

“The move is backed by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, which describes it as a ‘sustainability initiative’ aimed at easing pressure on housing, public services and the environment.

The Swiss government, all other major parties, business leaders and trade unions have dubbed the proposal a ‘chaos initiative’, arguing it will deprive hospitals and hotels of much needed staff, and damage hard-won relations with the European Union, leaving non-EU member Switzerland isolated in a very risky world.”

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Swiss Bank Accounts are DEAD – The New Banking Hub

For decades, Switzerland sold one thing better than perhaps any country on earth: privacy. That became its true export. People think of watches, chocolate, pharmaceuticals, or skiing resorts, but Switzerland’s real business was protecting capital from governments. That was the foundation of modern offshore banking.

Switzerland has destroyed the very industry that made it rich. Hong Kong has officially overtaken Switzerland as the world’s largest offshore wealth hub, managing roughly $2.95 trillion in cross-border wealth compared to Switzerland’s $2.94 trillion, according to the latest Boston Consulting Group report.

This was entirely self-inflicted. I warned years ago that Switzerland was committing financial suicide by surrendering banking secrecy under pressure from Washington, Brussels, the OECD, and the global tax authorities. Once Switzerland agreed to automatic information exchange treaties and effectively transformed Swiss bankers into tax informants for foreign governments, they destroyed the very reason international capital flowed there in the first place.

Offshore banking was never simply about taxes. It was about protection from political instability, confiscation, currency collapse, revolution, war, and predatory governments. Switzerland became wealthy because it remained neutral and outside the endless political insanity consuming Europe.

But after 2008, the entire Western financial system changed. FATCA turned foreign banks into enforcement agents for the IRS. CRS reporting standards spread globally. European politicians demonized offshore banking because governments drowning in debt cannot tolerate wealth escaping their reach. Suddenly, confidentiality itself became suspicious.

The politicians pretended this was about “fairness” and fighting tax evasion. Nonsense. This was about governments hunting capital because sovereign debt is spiraling out of control worldwide. Europe is collapsing economically under regulation, welfare spending, energy costs, migration pressures, and war expenditures. Once governments cannot sustain themselves honestly, they begin searching for private pools of wealth to confiscate.

Switzerland surrendered to that pressure completely. The famous Swiss numbered account became little more than mythology. Automatic reporting agreements gutted the entire purpose of Swiss banking secrecy. Once confidentiality disappeared, wealthy clients naturally began looking elsewhere.

That is where Hong Kong entered the picture. Hong Kong operates under an entirely different mentality. While Switzerland spent years apologizing to foreign governments and dismantling privacy protections, Hong Kong positioned itself as the gateway between Chinese wealth and global markets.

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Scientists INTENTIONALLY Trigger 8,000 Earthquakes Deep Beneath Swiss Alps

Scientists at ETH Zurich university in Switzerland have deliberately induced around 8,000 seismic events deep underground in the Swiss Alps as part of an experiment called Fault Activation and Earthquake Rupture (FEAR-2).

The team injected 750,000 litres of water into the ground via two boreholes over approximately 50 hours at the BedrettoLab facility. The quakes were too small to be felt at the surface or cause damage, with magnitudes ranging from -5 to -0.14.

The researcher explained “While some seismic events occurred on the target fault zone, a large number of events took place on neighbouring geological structures activated by the fluid injection.”

Professor Domenico Giardini, one of the lead researchers, stated: “If we master how to produce quakes of a certain size, then we know how not to produce them.”

He also noted the advantages of the site: “It is perfect, because we have a kilometer and a half of mountain on top of us… and we can look very close at the faults, how they move, when they move, and we can make them move ourselves.”

He doesn’t seem all that worried about the mountains crumbling on top of him.

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Scientists mimicking the Big Bang accidentally turn lead into gold

Medieval alchemists dreamed of transmuting lead into gold.

Today, we know that lead and gold are different elements, and no amount of chemistry can turn one into the other.

But our modern knowledge tells us the basic difference between an atom of lead and an atom of gold: the lead atom contains exactly three more protons. So can we create a gold atom by simply pulling three protons out of a lead atom?

As it turns out, we can. But it’s not easy.

While smashing lead atoms into each other at extremely high speeds in an effort to mimic the state of the universe just after the Big Bang, physicists working on the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland incidentally produced small amounts of gold.

Extremely small amounts, in fact: a total of some 29 trillionths of a gram.

How to steal a proton

Protons are found in the nucleus of an atom. How can they be pulled out?

Well, protons have an electric charge, which means an electric field can pull or push them around. Placing an atomic nucleus in an electric field could do it.

However, nuclei are held together by a very strong force with a very short range, imaginatively known as the strong nuclear force. This means an extremely powerful electric field is required to pull out protons – about a million times stronger than the electric fields that create lightning bolts in the atmosphere.

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Switzerland Temporarily Suspends Arms Exports to the United States Due to Its Neutrality in the War Against Iran

The Swiss Government announced that it will not grant new licenses to export war materiel to the United States while the armed conflict with Iran continues.

This is based on the Swiss federal law on war materiel, which strictly prohibits exports to countries involved in active international armed conflicts.

According to the official statement, “the export of war materiel to countries involved in the international armed conflict with Iran cannot be authorised for the duration of the conflict.”

The United States, which in 2025 was the second-largest buyer of Swiss armaments, now faces blocked new authorizations, although existing ones are not immediately revoked.

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Attacks on Iran a breach of international law, Swiss defence minister says

The United States and Israel have broken international law with their attacks on Iran, said Swiss Defence Minister Martin Pfister in an interview published on March 8.

He is the latest European leader to raise concerns about the conflict.

Legal experts have said many countries will consider the attacks unjustified under the United Nations Charter, under which member countries must refrain from using force or the threat of force without UN authorisation or unless acting in self-defence.

Mr Pfister, speaking to the SonntagsZeitung newspaper, said: “The Federal Council is of the opinion that the attack on Iran constitutes a violation of international law.

“In our view, it constitutes a violation on the prohibition of violence.” He also called on all sides to halt the fighting to protect the civilian population. The Federal Council is the Swiss Cabinet.

Mr Pfister said he was referring to all the countries not complying with the prohibition on violence, including the US and Israel.

“The Americans and Israel have attacked Iran from the air. In doing so, they, like Iran, violated international law,” he added.

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ProtonMail Logs Activist’s IP Address With Authorities After Swiss Court Order

End-to-end encrypted email service provider ProtonMail has drawn criticism after it ceded to a legal request and shared the IP address of anti-gentrification activists with law enforcement authorities, leading to their arrests in France.

The Switzerland-based company said it received a “legally binding order from the Swiss Federal Department of Justice” related to a collective called Youth for Climate, which it was “obligated to comply with,” compelling it to handover the IP address and information related to the type of device used by the group to access the ProtonMail account.

On its website, ProtonMail advertises that: “No personal information is required to create your secure email account. By default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be linked to your anonymous email account. Your privacy comes first.”

Despite its no IP logs claims, the company acknowledged that while it’s illegal for the company to abide by requests from non-Swiss law enforcement authorities, it will be required to do so if Swiss agencies agree to assist foreign services such as Europol in their investigations.

“There was no possibility to appeal or fight this particular request because an act contrary to Swiss law did in fact take place (and this was also the final determination of the Federal Department of Justice which does a legal review of each case),” the company said in a lengthy response posted on Reddit.

Put simply, ProtonMail will not only have to comply with Swiss government orders, it will be forced to hand over relevant data when individuals use the service to engage in activities that are deemed illegal in the country. This includes monitoring IP addresses from users in “extreme criminal cases,” according to its transparency report.

“Proton must comply with Swiss law. As soon as a crime is committed, privacy protections can be suspended and we’re required by Swiss law to answer requests from Swiss authorities,” ProtonMail founder and CEO Andy Yen tweeted, adding “It’s deplorable that legal tools for serious crimes are being used in this way. But by law, [ProtonMail] must comply with Swiss criminal investigations. This is obviously not done by default, but only if legally forced.”

If anything, ProtonMail users who are concerned about the visibility of their IP addresses should use a VPN or access the email service over the Tor network for additional anonymity.

“The prosecution in this case seems quite aggressive. Unfortunately, this is a pattern we have increasingly seen in recent years around the world (for example in France where terror laws are inappropriately used),” the company said.

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Credit Suisse had many more bank accounts with Nazi ties than previously known, investigation finds

The financial services company Credit Suisse had hundreds more bank accounts with Nazi ties than it had previously revealed, a new investigation reported this week.

The findings were discovered during an audit by independent investigators of UBS, the Swiss bank that acquired Credit Suisse in 2023.

“What the investigation has found to date shows that Credit Suisse’s involvement was more extensive than was previously known, and it underscores the importance of continuing to engage in research efforts about this horrific era of modern history,” Neil Barofsky, a lawyer overseeing the inquiry, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Barofsky’s report found 890 accounts potentially linked to Nazis: 628 individuals and 262 legal entities.

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WEF Conference Center Evacuated Over Mysterious Smell

The Davos Congress Center was evacuated Wednesday during the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting.

“We have just been evacuated from the Congress Center,” Fox Business reporter Edward Lawrence reported in an X post. “Emergency crews trying to determine what is causing a smell that is making some people in our area cough,” he added.

The post was accompanied by a video that showed attendees streaming out of the building through a walkway while fire crews could be seen entering.

The conference center, located in Davos, Switzerland, is the primary venue and central hub for the WEF’s Annual Meeting, which has been held there annually since 1971. The WEF organizes and hosts the event and uses the conference center for major sessions, addresses, and gatherings of world leaders, CEOs, and delegates.

Some reports link the smell to a fire at a nearby hotel, though no fire was confirmed inside the conference center itself, according to a report from the Daily Mail.

The incident occurred around 8:00 PM local time on January 21, 2026, with no indications of foul play, a bomb threat, or other security issues. Helicopters were observed overhead, and firefighters entered the building as part of the response.

“They evacuated us all. We left all our things inside because there seems to be a fire in a hotel nearby,” Italian journalist Lilli Gruber told the Daily Mirror. “There are helicopters flying overhead, it’s full of firefighters.”

Gruber and her team were set to hold a live broadcast on La7TV when the evacuation order was given. She and her team were forced to stand up and leave mid-setup, leaving equipment behind.

The evacuation came just hours after Trump addressed the World Economic Forum. At the time, the event had just wrapped up key discussions between President Trump, senior cabinet members and NATO representatives.

Much discussion was had about the ongoing negotiations over Greenland, the Russia-Ukraine war and other pressing foreign policy issues.

The U.S. had its largest-ever delegation at WEF 2026, led by President Trump and including cabinet members like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and others.

Trump was reportedly still in the building when the incident began. The evacuation affected all attendees in the conference center, including the U.S. group, but there are no reports of injuries, targeted impacts, or delays to their schedule beyond the immediate disruption as of this report.

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