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Swiss authorities have opened an investigation into the managers of the bar where a fire at a New Year's party left 40 people dead, police said Saturday. The two are suspected of negligent homicide, negligent bodily harm and causing fire by negligence, police said in a statement. They said that the investigation was opened on Friday night, but didn't give further details. More than 100 people were injured in the blaze that broke out about 1:30 am on Thursday at the Le Constellation bar in the Alpine resort town of Crans-Montana. The process of identifying the dead and injured was still underway on Saturday, leading to an agonising wait for relatives desperate for news. Investigators said Friday that they believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited the fatal fire when they came too close to the ceiling of the crowded bar. Many of the injured were in their teens to mid-20s, police said. Authorities planned to look into whether sound-dampening material on the ceiling ...
Switzerland's glaciers have faced enormous melting this year with a 3 per cent drop in total volume the fourth-largest annual drop on record due to the effects of global warming, top Swiss glaciologists have reported. The shrinkage this year means that ice mass in Switzerland home to the most glaciers in Europe has declined by one-quarter over the last decade, the Swiss glacier monitoring group GLAMOS and the Swiss Academy of Sciences said in their report Wednesday. Glacial melting in Switzerland was once again enormous in 2025, the scientists said. A winter with low snow depth combined with heat waves in June and August led to a loss of 3 per cent of the glacier volume. Switzerland is home to nearly 1,400 glaciers, the most of any country in Europe, and the ice mass and its gradual melting have implications for hydropower, tourism, farming and water resources in many European countries. More than 1,000 small glaciers in Switzerland have already disappeared, the experts said.
Once largely confined to spiritual use among Indians, Rudraksha seeds are now gaining popularity in Switzerland, with rising demand from both the diaspora and local Swiss, an official said. "It is a niche market now, set to be solidified by the India-EFTA Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA), which comes into force from October 1," an official said. India and the four European nations bloc, EFTA (European Free Trade Association), signed the agreement on March 10, 2024. In 2024-25, India exported the commodity worth Rs 0.97 crore. "While Switzerland's Indian diaspora of over 27,000 people provides a foundational market for these seeds, the primary driver is a burgeoning wellness and mindfulness movement among the broader Swiss population," the official said. Swiss online retailers and yoga shops now market Rudraksha malas (prayer beads) not just as religious items, but as tools for a secular kind of spirituality. A Zurich-based online yoga store sells a simple Rudraksha
India is actively negotiating bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with over a dozen countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, Oman, European Union, Switzerland, Russia, and Australia, a government official said. Besides these nations, talks are underway with Tajikistan, Cambodia, Uruguay, Maldives, Switzerland, and Kuwait. These investment treaties help in protecting and promoting investments in each other's countries. With India approaching to become the third-largest economy and a hub for global manufacturing, the government is taking a series of measures to further improve its investment regime that encourages investors. "It is expected that in the next 3-6 months, BIT with some of these countries will be finalised and announced," the official added. The government in the last Budget has announced revamping the current model Bilateral Investment Treaty to make it more investor-friendly and attract foreign players. The country signed BITs with two countries in 2024. La
Europe's continuing heat wave on Wednesday helped fuel a deadly wildfire in Spain while the European Union presented plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under scorching temperatures. The blaze that broke out late on Tuesday created an enormous thick plume of ash and smoke that rose 14,000 metres into the sky, making it the largest registered by firefighters in Catalonia, a northeastern region of Spain. Two farmers were killed while apparently trying to flee in a vehicle, local authorities said Wednesday. Firefighters said that the fire spread at 28 kph (17 mph) at one point as it consumed 6,500 hectares (16,000 acres) mostly of grain fields. Wildfires today are not like they were before, Salvador Illa, the regional president of Catalonia, said. These are extremely dangerous. From the very first moment, it was considered to be beyond the capacity of extinction. I mean that not even with two or three times the number of firefighters, they have told me, it would have been possib
Climate change appears to be making some of Switzerland's vaunted glaciers look like Swiss cheese: Full of holes. Matthias Huss of the glacier monitoring group GLAMOS offered a glimpse of the Rhone Glacier which feeds the eponymous river that flows through Switzerland and France to the Mediterranean shared the observation with The Associated Press this month as he trekked up to the icy expanse for a first maintenance mission" of the summer to monitor its health. The state of Switzerland's glaciers came into stark and dramatic view of the international community last month when a mudslide from an Alpine mountain submerged the southwestern village of Blatten. The Birch Glacier on the mountain, which had been holding back a mass of rock near the peak, gave way sending an avalanche into the valley village below. Fortunately, the town had been evacuated beforehand. Experts say geological shifts and, to a lesser extent global warming, played a role. The Alps and Switzerland home to