WorldcrunchToday is Dieter Meier’s 70th birthday. In addition to being the best Swiss in the world, the frontman of the band Yello, a millionaire, a performance artist and a professional poker player, Dieter also released a couple of punk records with his previous band Fresh Color. In 1978, their track “Cry For Frame” proved that […]
Radiohead’s guitarist Jonny Greenwood will play tonight at Geneva’s prestigious Victoria Hall with the London Contemporary Orchestra. He will perform his own experimental compositions with the small line-up, with which he has been playing since 2008. For those not lucky enough to live in Geneva or attend the concert, Jonny Greenwood and the LCO sounds […]
Scientists are increasingly revising the idea of human nature as inherently competitive and violent. A documentary explores the possibility of a prehistoric “utopia,” when people lived without cruelty or war.
The more time technology saves us, the less we feel we have. Three researchers explore this modern ‘double paradox.’
Geneva-based daily Le Temps features on its Monday front page an ominous-looking photo of HSBC’s Geneva headquarters together with the headline “What the Falciani files reveal,” referring to the latest developments in the giant tax evasion scheme led by the world’s second largest bank, HSBC via its Swiss subsidiary, HSBC Private Bank. According to a […]
The dynamics of social networks have established a climate of caution for young people, whose sense of fun is more narcissistic and less political than previous generations.
Technology has transformed the world of prosthetics. But are all the bells and whistles, and the hefty price tags they require, really what ordinary patients need?
LAUSANNE — She’s seen me naked. How can I leave her? He brought me so much. How can I tell him I’m leaving? I spent so much time finding the right one. Now we’re supposed to just split up? And yet things were clear from the start: This was always going to be a temporary […]
DISENTIS — The snow hasn’t fallen yet, and the crowds are still to come. It’s a rainy December day under a low grey sky. A ray of sunshine sometimes pierces through the clouds to caress the eternal whiteness of eastern Switzerland’s summits. Having departed from the town of Coire, the small red train takes travelers […]
Uschi, scratching herself on the leg, takes a picture of her udder. Fat Lola, who is mainly interested in eating, keeps her head down, which means the photos she takes are close-ups of grass blades. Only old Frida shows considerably more artistic talent, because she looks around while chewing her cud and takes in the […]
LUCERNE — In 2001 Kurt Mathis bought the Haldigrat chairlift “spontaneously,” after he’d read about it in the newspaper. The previous owners, two brothers from the Swiss canton of Aargau, felt that running it no longer was worth it. “It was a little bit like when I decided to marry my wife,” the 59-year-old says. […]
The past few years have seen Switzerland forced to reveal secret banking details to national authorities. That means a brutal job for the bankers of Geneva
Gender, virility, violence and fear: warmaking has long been thought to have a very specific and masculine identity. But a French researcher has shown that it’s not so simple.
A new Swiss study suggests that playing video games, especially first-person shooter games like GTA and Call of Duty, facilitates the kind of learning that could be useful for other tasks.
A Swiss NGO convenes representatives of 35 rebel groups in Geneva to talk about the mechanics, and great difficulties, of respecting humanitarian laws when fighting civil wars.
Can fish get sore scales? Without a doubt, says the Federal Ethics Commission for Non-Human Biotechnology domaine (CENH), in a report released this week. It found that there is “no reason to conclude that fish are insensitive” to pain. Until the 1980s it was commonly believed that fish behaved more or less like machines and […]
Especially since the breakthrough on the Higgs Boson particle, running CERN in Geneva may be the most influential job in physics. For the first time it will be filled by a woman.
LEIMBACH — At first glance, nothing distinguishes this apartment building on the outskirts of Zurich from those around it. Located on the upper reaches of a peaceful neighborhood in Leimbach, Switzerland, its sandy-colored walls are surrounded by a wild and vast garden. The tall trees of the Entlisberg Forest, perched on the nearby mountain, cast […]
Zurich-based group Zürcher Tierschutz launched a campaign earlier this year to set a quota for the country’s cats, deeming them a threat to other wildlife, including small mammals, reptiles and birds. However, since the campaign began, cat lovers have been pawsitively up in arms about it. The group estimates there to be 1.4 million cats […]
Invented by Buddhist monks, secularized and developed by Western science, mindfulness seems to be everywhere. But the aim is to make the most of life, not to seek nirvana.
European universities are a bastion of original thinking, but as more and more gets taught and learned in the English-language, conformism is bound to spread.
Many of Google’s services have been created in Switzerland, and the Zurich site has grown from just two employees in 2004 to 1,300 today. It’s like a snow-capped Mountain View.
Switzerland’s Federal Council, it’s seven-member collective head of state, has been called to intervene to guarantee children the right to be heard, notably in divorce cases.
Video game competitions can attract millions of spectators online. A Swiss “cyber athlete” shares his story as the booming industry sets its sights on real-world credibility.
Tiny freshwater hydrae have incredible powers of regeneration. In the quest for human longevity, researchers in Switzerland are trying to learn from their very little and long lives.
Top executives and even ordinary folks use the skills of the French company Net Dating Assistant to pose for them online and woo would-be lovers.
What’s most interesting about this shot is not the Swiss wrestlers (or Schwingen) in the foreground — meaning no disrespect, guys — but instead the rapt audience in the background, all wearing their Sunday best.
GENEVA — In a way, the worst thing that could have happened for physicists at CERN, the world’s largest particle physics research center, was discovering the holy grail of physics — the so-called God particle, also known as Higgs boson. Because after finding it in July 2012 — and confirming it six months later, after […]
GENEVA — Philippe Rey-Gorrez, founder of the software company Teamwork, has a passionate belief in what can be achieved in groups. And this self-taught IT engineer, officer in the French army at 18 and sports enthusiast has applied his passion to his work in a very real way: He offers the 280 employees of his […]
Driving back from Switzerland to Montbéliard, where I’m from, you have to go through “heaven” — Le Paradis being the name of an isolated Swiss farm.
GENEVA — When it comes to insomnia, some use the megaphone of the digital era, posting Facebook status updates to round up companions of misfortune — one-night or lifelong problem sleepers who want to talk. But there are myriad other coping mechanisms for this growing societal issue. And though insomnia can mean pure agony, it […]
“Science needs time. Bear with us, while we think,” declares a new movement of researchers pushing back against the demands to always make breakthroughs and publish findings.
The Chinese-born fashion designer creates clothes that react to light, sound, even a passing glance. What would Lady Gaga think?
In Switzerland, famous and infamous for its secretive banks, the digital currency Bitcoin is already arriving in the real economy.
MUNICH — In many places in the northern Alps, the winter sports season is already over before Easter. Some view the mild winter as a kind of foretaste of climate change, but experts warn against reading too much into any single year’s weather. “What was extreme is that the weather this winter on the whole […]
Falsely considered a type of magic, achieving hypnotic trance is already part of our everyday lives. Its potential applications for medical science are vast, if still largely unexplained.
A side-effect of the digital revolution may be the death of cursive writing. Though some may argue that pure utilitarianism is a trap, students must be prepared for a different future.
Did you know that city life is good for bees?