Switzerland Today

Hello from Bern,

Where November is now well underway, with colder weather, shorter evenings, and to cap it all, fewer free postcards offered by the postal service – this and other stories are in today’s roundup from Switzerland.

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In the news: mpox, fireworks, and Palestine funding cuts.

• An international research team with Swiss participation has discoveredExternal link that strains of mpox (formerly “monkeypox”) have been circulating among humans since at least 2016. Mutations of the virus over the past years indicate that mpox is spreading through the human population instead of passing sporadically from animals to humans, the researchers wrote. As such, it is not just a zoonotic disease.
• Campaigners aiming to limit noisy fireworks handed inExternal link over 136,000 signatures to the Federal Chancellery in Bern on Friday. The initiative, which gathered support over the past 18 months, does not necessarily target large-scale public displays, but rather loud private fireworks which are notably a menace to animals. After the government and parliament discuss the initiative, it could come to public vote in the next years.
• The Palestine Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) has criticisedExternal link the recent decision by Switzerland to freeze funding to 11 Palestinian and Israeli NGOs. The Swiss decision, based on concerns about the political neutrality of some of the groups, is “dangerous” and unhelpful for Gaza, the ICHR said. The ICHR itself receives funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), but is not affected by this decision.

Keystone/gaetan Bally

Swiss Post: cutting costs, but still upbeat about it.

Since launching in 2014, the Swiss Post’s online “Postcard Creator” has been quite a success. The app, which allows users to easily send cards with personalised pictures, was used 8 million times last year – that’s almost a postcard for every member of the population. And while a standard card costs CHF2.10 ($2.33) to send, users were until now also able to send one every day for free – a nice service which surely led to a large amount of pointless but pleasant missives shuttling around.

This is now changing, Keystone-SDA reports. As of this month, the rate of free cards has dropped to one per week – the measure coming as part of the Swiss Post’s general cost-cutting of CHF42 million announced in September. Despite this manifestly bad news, however, the Post Office’s comms team managed to put an astonishingly positive spin on things when notifying users via mail last month: “we have the pleasure to announce”, it wrote, that “free cards will henceforth only be able to be sent once per week”. The pleasure is all theirs!

Keystone

Swiss army adds a digital feature to its knife.

The plodding old Swiss institutions are slowly but surely moving into the 21st century. After the government’s foray onto Instagram last year, and the Swiss Post’s apparent embrace of positive comms strategies (above), the army is now on TikTok, it was reported this week. “Informative” yet “entertaining” videos, aimed at a young audience, present “a vision of daily life in the military and a realistic vision of military service”, the defense ministry said; presumably, to encourage more of them to not try to dodge the obligatory service themselves.

Like various others reacting to the news, public broadcaster RTS helpfully remindedExternal link us that while TikTok is indeed popular among Swiss youth – 34% of users are under 18 – there are also concerns about data protection on the Chinese platform, which have led to the EU and US banning employees from using it. The army is aware of this, it says, and has taken steps to secure its activities – overall however, an “urgent need” to reach a younger audience also had to be considered. The army account currently has 3,639 followers; let’s see how long it takes it to catch up with @swissinfo.chExternal link.