Free Republic

ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland could eventually be in the market for as many as 70 new fighter jets or as few as 20 under scenarios laid out on Tuesday by a defense ministry task force examining how to replace the neutral country's aging air force fleet. The most expensive and powerful option would be to buy 55-70 aircraft and ground-based air defense weapons for an estimated 15 billion to 18 billion Swiss francs ($15.3-$18.4 billion), according to the report. It did not say which aircraft the government should consider. The least expensive option would be procuring 20 jets and accompanying...

The convicted rapist who escaped from a prison in the canton of Zürich in February 2016 with help from his female prison guard lover has had his sentence extended. Syrian prisoner Hassan Kiko, 28, broke free from the Limmattal jail on February 8th and fled along with guard Angelica Magdici, with whom he had developed a romantic relationship. After seven weeks on the run, in March Italian police tracked the pair to a building in the Bergamo region of northern Italy and they were arrested. They had spent a couple of weeks in the town of Romano di Lombardia and...

Young Swiss women will be obliged to attend an “information day” about military service from 2020 in order to encourage more to join the army, according to reports. Currently, military or civil service is compulsory for all Swiss men over 18, who must pay an exemption tax if they are excluded due to health reasons or refuse to serve. It is not compulsory for women, but they may choose to volunteer. Last year, only around 65 women out of 7,600 recruits began their service. In February this year, army commander Daniel Baumgartner said in an interview that he wanted to...

Just a fortnight after the revelation that Switzerland conducted a spying mission in Germany in 2012, media in the two countries have reported that the neighboring nations recently signed an agreement to stop all such espionage. Citing sources close to the Swiss government, Swiss paper Tages Anzeiger and the German Süddeutsche Zeitung said that in January 2017 the two countries concluded a “Memorandum of Understanding” to forbid each country’s intelligence service from carrying out espionage activities against the other. From now on, Switzerland will tell the German government if it wishes to conduct an anti-crime operation in Germany, and vice-versa....

The Swiss Federal Court in Lausanne has found former leading members of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) guilty of racism over a poster used in its mass immigration initiative campaign in 2011. It upheld an earlier ruling that former SVP secretary-general Martin Baltisser and his deputy Silvia Bär violated anti-racism laws with an advert claiming that “Kosovars slash the Swiss”, according to media reports. The advertisement claiming that “Kosovars slash the Swiss” was used as part of the SVP’s campaign in its successful “stop mass immigration” initiative. […] The country’s top judges said that most readers would have understood...

America’s bureaucratic largesse as well as its erosion of property rights and rule of law are affecting the country's Human Freedom Index, while Hong Kong remains the top-ranked country with even Communist China looming overhead. The U.S. dropped to twenty-third in the world from nineteenth, while Switzerland, New Zealand, Ireland and Denmark round out the top six countries in the index. Canada, America's northern neighbor, ranks sixth in the world and Mexico ranks seventy-seventh. The Cato Institute released its jointly-produced 'Human Freedom Index' with other think tanks from across the world, ranging from Canada's Fraser Institute to Switzerland's Liberales Institut...

You are more than just just a tongue of men and angels , Yeah more than this, for your purpose and life is mine for I hold you in My Hand as a songbird singing out My Love for My Children. So do not cage My Love but set it completely free for only through this freedom shall they receive My unconditional Love " Through Grace " carved out in My Word for truly the words I desire for you to form from their mouths upon their tongues are Eternal Life all from the fruit from The Tree of Life....

Justice minister Simonetta Sommaruga has said Switzerland’s membership of Schengen is vital in the fight against international terrorism and that those who seek to end the Schengen agreement are “irresponsible”. Sommaruga was speaking in an interview with Blick following the terror attack outside the Houses of Parliament in London on Wednesday. […] Though Switzerland is not in the European Union, since 2008 it has been a member of the Schengen zone, which allows people to move freely between its 26 member countries without a passport. […] “Without Schengen, we would be less protected from terror. We would not get any...

The upper house of parliament has rejected the idea of a nationwide ban on the Islamic face veil and other face coverings. The draft bill, which was narrowly passed by the lower house last September, was opposed by the senate after a debate on Thursday, reported news agencies. The proposal by hardline Swiss People’s Party (SVP) MP Walter Wobmann called for a federal ban on the burqa, niqab and other full face coverings in public, along the same lines as a cantonal ban that came into effect in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino in July last year. …

Dear friends, It is very important to not only pray a lot but also to keep our eyes open for the very powerful and devastating traps of Satan, which are very well camouflaged and disguised “as an angel of light” (2Cor 11:14). Due to the greatest lack of prayer and lack of regard for the holy Laws of God today, we have given great influence to the “powers of evil” (CCC 409) to be able do deceive us! A great number of people today have taken the easy way of “ignorance is bliss”, imagining that the truth and reality are...

The association that runs the An’Nour mosque in Winterthur has lodged a complaint with police against two members of the congregation thought to have reported their imam for inciting murder — a day after ten people were arrested for allegedly beating up the duo in revenge. On Tuesday morning, police in the canton of Zürich arrested ten suspects in a raid on a dozen houses in Winterthur. One was later released, but eight adults and one juvenile remain in custody, accused of having beaten up and threatened two individuals at the mosque last November. The pair are thought to have...

Increasing the number of women recruits would be “beneficial” to the Swiss army, a top commander has said. “For me, it would be desirable if we could significantly increase the proportion of women in the medium term,” said Corps Commander Daniel Baumgartner in an interview with Neue Zürcher Zeitung published on Wednesday. “Women think and act differently. That would be good for the army,” he added. While Baumgartner did not suggest that compulsory military service should be extended to women, he said a compulsory ‘information day’ should be introduced where women can find out about the opportunities the army could...

As part of just-inaugurated President Obama’s new foreign policy to improve relations between the United States and Russia, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in March 2009. Meeting in her hotel’s Salon Panorama in Geneva, she presented him with a small gift box containing a bright red button symbolizing the Obama administration’s desire to “reset” the relationship between the two governments. Thus began an effort to transfer American technology to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s own “Silicon Valley,” called Skolkovo. In a report released in late July by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) entitled From...

A 27-year-old Nigerian migrant has been arrested in Switzerland after murdering a 22-year-old asylum home worker in Germany and then fleeing the country.

In a setback for government efforts to abolish low tax rates for thousands of multinational firms while encouraging them to stay, the Swiss voted overwhelmingly against an overhaul the country's corporate tax system. Swiss broadcaster SRF said voters rejected the tax plans by about 60% to 40%. As Reuters notes, Switzerland has been in the European Union's firing line for years because Swiss cantons have a special tax status for foreign companies that means some pay virtually no tax other than an effective federal tax of 7.8%, an incentive to incorporate and stay on Swiss soil. In 2014, the...

Switzerland voted Sunday on whether to make it easier for third generation immigrants to become citizens, after a campaign tainted by anti-Muslim messages and charges of religious prejudice. Preliminary results pointed to the measure being approved, in what would be a defeat for the far right nationalist Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which put issues of Islam and national identity at the center of the debate. The government as well as most lawmakers and political parties supported the proposal that would allow the grandchildren of immigrants to skip several steps in the lengthy process of securing a Swiss passport. According to...

Geneva (AFP) - The woman's shadowed eyes stare out from a black niqab with the poster's tagline urging Swiss voters to reject "uncontrolled naturalisation." But critics of the campaign image distributed across the country ahead of Sunday's referendum say the poster is really just a brazen appeal to those worried about more Muslims becoming Swiss. "That is exactly what they are trying to (do)", said Pius Walker, who heads the Zurich-based advertising agency Walker AG. "It is a very, very frightening thing that is going on here." The issue in Sunday's vote, the latest in Switzerland's direct democracy system, is...

From July 1st it will no longer be forbidden for men who have had sex with men to give blood — provided they have been celibate for the past 12 months. Medical watchdog Swissmedic has approved the request, lodged by blood donor service Swiss Transfusion SRC last June, reported news agencies on Tuesday. Currently, all men in Switzerland who have had sex with another man since 1977 are barred from donating blood — a rule brought in during the 1980s to stop the spread of AIDS. However, medical groups have argued that the presence of new diagnostic tools that can...

Thousands of refugees are taken in by Switzerland on an annual basis, granted asylum in the country due to war-torn conditions in their home countries. But while Swiss residents may be okay with their government taking in the tired and poor, they may not be too happy about a recent report in the Basler Zeitung. According to the Swiss newspaper, thousands of refugees head back to the African nation of Eritrea every year, despite the fact that it is supposedly too dangerous for them to live there. The paper reports that many of these refugees have been rejected for asylum...

China’s President Xi Jinping warned on Tuesday against scapegoating globalization for the world’s ills or retreating behind protectionist walls, staking out an alternative vision for the international economy days before Donald Trump takes office. The global economic order has been led for decades by the United States, but the president-elect is threatening to tear up the rule book, and Xi used his debut appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos to insist that globalization was irreversible. “Pursuing protectionism is like locking oneself in a dark room. Wind and rain may be kept outside, but so is light and air,”...