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The World Economic Forum says the gap between the rich and the poor is the most likely risk to the global economy in coming years. In its annual risk assessment ahead of next week's gathering of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum says income disparity in the wake of the global financial crisis is the "most likely risk to cause an impact on a global scale in the next decade." It warns of a "lost generation" of young people coming of age in the current decade that could hamper the global economic recovery and stoke...

With a new wave of terrorism, mass shootings and unprecedented social violence around the globe now a part of the daily routine for billions of people across both developed and developing nations, one group wants to be certain there is no chance of "close encounters", violent or otherwise, with the peasantry during its upcoming annual boondoggle at the World Economic Forum in Davos. According to Swiss info, when the world's billionaires land their private jets in the gorgeous Swiss town (which at 1,560 m is also the highest town in Europe) on January 20, they will have up to 5,000...

The World Economic Forum’s annual gathering of globalist political, financial and cultural elitists is underway in Davos, Switzerland, but the organization’s founder is planning an emergency Washington, D.C., meeting in 2017 for worried elites worldwide to discuss how to deal with President-elect Donald J. Trump. “The World Economic Forum is listening to Donald Trump,” Bloomberg’s Stephen Morris and Erik Schatzker wrote on Sunday. “The organization will convene a special meeting in Washington this year to discuss issues raised during the president-elect’s campaign and the populist wave that swept him to victory, WEF founder Klaus Schwab told Bloomberg Television on Sunday....

Members of the public are calling on Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) to remove controversial posters from its railway stations just days after right-wing campaigners launched their provocative publicity campaign. The poster, unveiled in railway stations on Monday, shows a woman wearing a burqa with the strapline “Uncontrolled naturalization? No to facilitated naturalization”. It was commissioned by a committee co-led by Swiss People’s Party (SVP) MP Andreas Glarner to oppose the forthcoming referendum on facilitated naturalization for third generation immigrants, which goes to the polls on February 12th. Opponents of the bill — which would make it easier for third generation...

A left-wing Dutch vegan who campaigned against cowbells in the Swiss village where she lives has had a request for a Swiss passport thrown out after annoying the locals. Nancy Holten, who was born in the Netherlands but moved to Switzerland at the age of eight, is a fluent speaker of Swiss German and has children who are Swiss nationals.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Muslim parents in Switzerland will have to send their children to attend mixed-gender swimming lessons, despite conceding that religious freedoms were being interfered with, on the grounds that mixed-gender swimming lessons were part of a ‘full school curriculum’ and the children’s ‘successful integration’ into society. According to the BBC, the case was initiated by two Swiss nationals of Turkish origin from Basel who wouldn’t send their teenage daughters to compulsory mixed-gender lessons. Swiss education officials, however, said that exemptions were available only for girls who had reached the age of...

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US President-elect Donald Trump expressed his “respect” for Switzerland to Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann in a phone call on Wednesday. The Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (WBF) confirmed the anticipated phone call took place, saying in a statement that Schneider-Ammann “congratulated the future US president on the election and reaffirmed the strong economic and political partnership between the ‘sister republics’.” The Swiss president “spoke of Switzerland’s strengths and its unique dual-track education system — which meets with great interest in the US — and its strong capacity for innovation,” said the WBF. …

Swiss police have found no radical Islamist or far-right motives by a gunman who killed himself after carrying out a shooting spree at Zürich mosque that wounded three worshipers, a top police official said Tuesday. Authorities are still investigating the possible motive of the 24-year-old Swiss citizen of Ghanaian origin with a penchant for the occult who carried out Monday’s shootings in Switzerland’s largest city. […] The suspect, who was not identified by name but had a criminal record for a bike theft years ago, had only days earlier repeatedly stabbed and killed an acquaintance of South American origin with...

Three people were shot and injured in an "ongoing situation" near an Islamic center in Zurich, Switzerland, according to police.

US President-elect Donald Trump has requested a phone call with Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann in the coming days, the latter told Swiss broadcaster RTS on Saturday. Trump wishes to speak “entrepreneur to entrepreneur, and politician to politician”, said Schneider-Ammann, who was head of his family’s mechanical engineering business, Ammann Group, from 1988 until his election to the Swiss Federal Council in 2010. “I’m looking forward to talking to him,” he told RTS. This will be the first telephone conversation between the pair since Trump’s election on November 8th. …

Police in Switzerland are arming themselves with assault rifles to be better prepared in the event of a terrorist attack, according to reports. Stefan Blättler, chief of Bern cantonal police, told Swiss-German TV program 10vor10 that his service had bought assault rifles for its police officers and that “several” other cantonal police services in the country were doing the same, reported news agencies on Wednesday. […] The advantage of assault rifles — a long-range selective-fire gun frequently used by the military — is that “they can be used over a longer distance”, he said. …

Swiss federal prosecutors on Saturday expanded a criminal probe into jihadist propaganda to take in the leader of the country’s largest Islamic organization. The office of Switzerland’s attorney general confirmed in an email to AFP that Nicolas Blancho, of the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS), was under investigation. The ICCS slammed the move as “political” and said it was ready to “counter the accusations in a courtroom.” Prosecutors opened the case last December, charging that an ICCS board member — German national Naim Cherni — had violated “the prohibition of groups like Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and similar organizations.” …

No action will be taken over the Swiss government’s half-a-million-franc donation to the Clinton Foundation, a parliamentary commission has decided. The donation to the foundation set up by former US President Bill Clinton and his wife, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was made between 2011 and 2013 but only surfaced in the press last week. The money was donated by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (DEZA), part of the Swiss foreign office, to support a project aimed at reducing infant and maternal mortality in Liberia. …

A drop in millionaires in Switzerland this year has failed to significantly dent the country’s impressive wealth, as a report by Credit Suisse declares it the richest country in the world yet again. The Global Wealth Report 2016, published on Tuesday by the Swiss bank’s Research Institute, said Switzerland had an average wealth per person of $561,900 in 2016, making Swiss adults 11 times richer than the average world citizen. However Switzerland’s average wealth in 2016 was slightly down on last year’s figure of $567,100. The country experienced the second biggest drop in wealth per adult behind the UK, meaning...

Archaeologists are puzzled over the discovery of a Roman-era earthenware pot filled with oil lamps and bronze coins in the commune of Windisch, in the northern Swiss canton of Aargau.

The Swiss foreign ministry is in the spotlight for donating nearly 500,000 francs to the Clinton Foundation in 2011, when Switzerland and the US were locked in a dispute over tax evasion. The donation, revealed by the Schweiz am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday, was made by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (DEZA), which is overseen by the Swiss foreign ministry. […] At the time, the US and Switzerland were embroiled in a dispute over banking secrecy after allegations that Swiss banks were helping US clients to dodge taxes. The US was pressuring Switzerland to force banks to hand...

Prosecutors have opened criminal proceedings against four people associated with a mosque in the city of Winterthur for public incitement to crime and violence. Police descended on the An’Nur mosque on Wednesday morning to conduct a search of the building and three other houses in the area after receiving evidence against four people, Zürich’s public prosecutor’s office said in a statement. The investigation relates to a sermon given by the mosque’s Ethiopian imam on October 21st in which he “called for the murder of Muslims who refuse to participate in communal prayer”, said the statement. […] Winterthur is considered a...

A growing number of young people in Switzerland identify with the political right, according to a national survey. Commissioned by the Federal Defense Department (VBS), the Young Adult Survey Switzerland (YASS), published this week, showed that 36 percent of young people in the country identified with the political right, up from 28 percent five years previously. The figures, which refer to the period 2006 to 2011, showed that the number of young people in the political center had also grown, from 31 percent to 36 percent, while those on the left had decreased from 41 percent to 28 percent during...

KIROVSK, Murmanskaya Oblast - The 30,000 inhabitants of this Arctic town in the middle of the vast Kola Peninsula pride themselves on being happy and hospitable. There are reasons for this: For an industrial town, the multicolored buildings look refreshingly pristine and the view is panoramic, especially this time of year, when the sun always hangs in the sky, except for an occasional dip behind the barren and breathtaking Khibiny mountains. But life hasn't always been so idyllic. Like hundreds of other outcroppings in Stalin's gulag system, Kirovsk was designed as a labor camp of death and detainment. It is...