DNA dating site promises better sex

Sweaty t-shirts shouldn’t be a turn-off according to a new dating website. ScienceMatch.com promises to increase chances of better sex, fertility and lasting relationships with less risk of cheating. The bold claims are based on a Bern scientist’s odour attraction research. Claus Wedekind’s studies focused on genes that play an integral role in a part [...]

Catholic Church struggles with sex scandal

The Catholic bishop for Fribourg, Lausanne and Geneva in western Switzerland has asked forgiveness from victims of paedophile priests, after several cases of abuse came to light. In the most widely publicised case, a Swiss priest was moved to France by superiors who knew he had already sexually abused at least one child.

UPDATE: a priest [...]

What am I looking at?

Remember those strange pictures that a doctor would ask you to look at and say what you saw? I don’t know if NASA still uses them (at least that’s what they say in the movies), but despite these tests having no valid scientific basis, they are still part of the collective consciousness. Hermann Rorschach, the [...]

Anything to stop the Germans

A 70-year old German seeking Swiss citizenship has been told to go back to school to learn his native tongue according to Zurich’s Tages Anzeiger newspaper. The town of Dielsdorf ordered Ulrich Kring – who has lived in Switzerland his entire life but is only now applying for citizenship – to take a German [...]

Swiss witch could be rehabilitated

The last witch to be executed in Europe, Anna Göldi (or Göldin) could be rehabilitated. Members of canton Glarus‘ parliament have voted the measure despite the local government’s opposition to the move after lobbying by Swiss journalist Walter Hauser. Göldi was decapitated in 1782 after being sentenced for poisoning her employer’s child, although the heart [...]

Assisted suicide hits the road

Another twist in the assisted suicide plot: still unable to rent premises where foreigners could come to die of their own free will, the Zurich-based Dignitas association is now resorting to vehicles. Swiss television has reported at least two recent cases of Germans travelling to Switzerland to end their lives with Dignitas’ [...]

Macho man likes to speed

Forget all that talk about women drivers… A study from Neuchâtel University involving researchers from Zurich and Heidelberg has demonstrated something many people knew deep down: young men are mostly responsible for driving accidents due to excessive speed! A team at the university’s institute for work psychology tested 83 male guinea pigs. These testosterone fuelled [...]

Climate concerns

The Swiss are apparently the most worried people in the world about global warming according to a poll carried out by the Nielsen Company in 47 countries. To counter climate change, 68 per cent of those polled said they would buy local products, while nearly half said they would choose products with the least packaging. [...]

Death tourism

The Swiss appear to agree with assisted suicide, but are divided over whether the liberal regulations should apply to patients from abroad. Under Swiss law, assisted suicide is not illegal, ie the patient has to carry out the final act himself. According to the polling institute Demoscope, 53 per cent of respondents approve of assisted [...]