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Important headlines in the Sunday press in unverified reports:
Bund avoids the turntable deal
According to the “SonntagsBlick”, the federal government prevented a millionaire agreement with Russia. Between July and September, Moscow tried to obtain Swiss technology that could be used for military purposes. A private Russian company ordered record players worth 1.3 million francs from a Swiss technology company, supposedly for civilian use. But the federal government stopped the deal because it assumed the delivery should be sent to a military recipient. The turntables could be used to make sensors that would be used in combat aircraft and missiles. Use in electronic warfare is not out of the question either, he said. Which Swiss company did not want to disclose the Secretary of State for the Economy (Seco) to “SonntagsBlick”. “There were considerable doubts about the plausibility of the end use,” confirmed a Seco spokesperson for the newspaper. A control group with representatives of various departments and specialists from the Federal NDB intelligence service had suspected, the newspaper also wrote about it.
UBS cuts ties with Ivory Coast
According to a report by the “SonntagsZeitung”, the main bank UBS is cutting off all commercial relations with the Ivory Coast. The bank closes all accounts and credit cards of clients who lived in the West African country. Swiss were also said to be among those affected. Therefore, AHV can no longer be mined in Côte d’Ivoire through a UBS account, the newspaper described. Those affected only had 45 days to close their account. This is evident in the bank’s letter to clients. The big bank UBS did not want to explain to the newspaper why it was breaking relations with all clients in Côte d’Ivoire. It also left open the number of Swiss affected by the measure. According to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, around 260 Swiss currently live in the country.
Criticism of the EMS by Tibetan asylum seekers
A group of professors and lecturers expressed harsh criticism from the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) to the “NZZ am Sonntag”. In a report from its language and origin analysis department, a series of statements like Chinese state propaganda rang out. Specifically, it is an analysis of a Tibetan asylum seeker classified as confidential, which had been prepared by an expert from the SEM department and which was leaked to third parties. It is obvious that the SEM expert is very friendly to China, he said. The group also criticized the expert’s lack of competence and the poor quality of the analysis. The case also suggests that the linguistic analysis of the Secretary of State is not or is only inadequate quality management. In many cases, however, the reports of SEM experts are decisive in determining whether asylum applications are rejected, the newspaper continued.
IT specialists are not in high demand
According to a report from “NZZ am Sonntag”, IT specialists are not as popular as they are supposed to be. The newspaper quotes a still unpublished study by economics professor George Sheldon of the University of Basel. Together with Thalwil-based analytics company X28, it evaluated around five million job postings that appeared on the internet in Switzerland between 2012 and 2019. The number of jobs posting online has increased dramatically each year since 2012. Without However, during the same period, the proportion of job openings that required candidates to have specific IT skills fell from 36 percent to 26 percent. The length of the ad does not indicate that there is a particular shortage of computer cracks. The study assumes that the longer positions are advertised online, the more difficult it is to fill. However, there is hardly any difference in ad duration when viewing job postings with and without computer skills requirements.
61,452 gambling addicts in Switzerland
At the end of 2019, 61,452 gambling addicts were banned from casinos and online games in Switzerland, according to the “NZZ am Sonntag”. The newspaper is based on statistics recently published on the Internet by the Federal Gaming Board. The number of game bans increased by 4,278 people last year compared to 2018. This increase was larger than in previous years, he said. This development was due to the opening of four online casinos in the second half of 2019, a spokeswoman for the commission told the newspaper. “The total number of bans is constantly increasing because the exclusions are hardly lifted,” he also said.
Tourism worries about the number of Corona cases
The growing number of coronavirus cases is shaking tourism in Switzerland, according to a report by “SonntagsBlick”. The newspaper quotes a hotelier from Valais, according to which the second wave of coronavirus arrived with much more intensity and speed than previously assumed. Although his hotel operations were still fully utilized this weekend, the increasing number of coronavirus cases gradually made guests uneasy. The tightening of the measures was the right decision to control the second wave and save the beginning of the winter season, he said.
Doctors are treated poorly in Switzerland
According to a report by “NZZ am Sonntag”, female doctors and students in Swiss university hospitals are subjected to discrimination and harassment. The newspaper cites conversations with more than a dozen affected people. People were denied further training, research time, or long overdue promotions for no objective reasons. Women who got pregnant had to justify themselves and even lost their jobs, he said. Even doctors in senior positions confirmed such processes. The university hospitals, however, distanced themselves in the newspaper from any behavior harmful to women. The problem of disadvantage already begins during training, the newspaper wrote, citing a survey from Lausanne University Hospital. According to this, a third of the surveyed students and medical assistants have already suffered sexual harassment.
Boosting digitization in the corona pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic is driving digitization in the healthcare sector. This is what the “SonntagsZeitung” writes, quoting the Santésuisse health insurance association. While nearly 20 percent of hospitals and health insurers were still faxing their files in 2019, more and more cantons, health insurers and hospitals were exchanging information digitally. This is done using Swiss Health Information Processing, or Ship for short. The system is a data superhighway between healthcare providers and payers. It was developed by the data logistics company Sasis, a subsidiary of Santésuisse. Information can be retrieved and transmitted day and night, he said. So there is no need to wait for someone to operate a fax machine or process an email. The largest hospitals would send more than 100,000 letters to health insurers and cantons each year for cost credits alone. This could be processed electronically more cheaply, the association told the newspaper.
Large regional differences in economic problems
An analysis of business income commissioned by Economy Minister Guy Parmelin (SVP) shows large differences across industry and region when looking at the difficulties companies face during the coronavirus crisis. This is reported by the French-speaking Swiss newspaper “Le Matin Dimanche”. According to the report, only a third of the 390,000 commercial leases in Switzerland were affected by the country’s closure. The number of tenants in trouble during the height of the crisis increased from six to 33 percent. The problem mainly affected French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino, he said. About 40 percent of commercial tenants did not even ask to speak to their landlord about rent. However, for the roughly 60 percent who did this, in most cases a solution was found in the form of a rent reduction.
