News and saying of the day: “I learned to spit” – She tastes everything she serves to her customers!

blue News and Keystone-ATS give you a first overview of the news, with the latest news unearthed in the press. Without forgetting birthdays and the saying of the day!

Today’s highlights

EXPERIMENTATION ANIMALE : The more than 100,000 signatures required for the popular initiative “Yes to a future without animal experimentation” were submitted to the Federal Chancellery on Monday. The association behind the text had already announced in mid-October that it had collected the necessary number of initials. The initiative calls for animal experiments and the breeding and trade of animals intended for such experiments to be banned.

HEALTH COSTS: Federal Councilor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider invites health stakeholders on Monday for a round table on measures to curb rising health costs. Constant efforts must be made to ensure that health care remains financially sustainable, according to her. The Minister of Health will hold a press briefing at the end of the round table.

CLIMATE : COP29 begins Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan. The meeting will bring together nearly 200 countries including Switzerland until November 22. Participants must adopt a new collective financial target for investments in the fight against global warming. One of Switzerland’s objectives at this summit is to increase the number of donor countries.

Seen in the press

CLIMATE PROTECTION: Despite its support for the Paris climate goals, Switzerland apparently wants to support new gas plants abroad. According to Tamedia’s German-speaking newspapers, this concerns a gas project in Turkmenistan and Swiss Export Risk Insurance (Serv) planning for two other projects in Vietnam. Together, the three gas plants are expected to emit around eight million tonnes of CO2. The amount for the three projects amounts to around 520 million francs. The company General Electric, and its 2,000 jobs in Baden (AG), which supplies the technology, would benefit. This support is in contradiction with the commitment of the Swiss delegation to the 2021 climate conference. Too strict management of gas projects by Serv could lead to the loss of jobs in Switzerland, justified the State Secretariat at the economy.

ASYLUM: The president of the German-Swiss human rights organization Libereco, Lars Bünger, criticized Switzerland for its lack of commitment to politically persecuted people in Belarus. According to Lars Bünger in the German-speaking newspapers of Tamedia, only a few dozen people from Belarus have found protection against political persecution in Switzerland since 2020. “Poland and Lithuania have welcomed more than 300,000 people seeking protection in from Belarus since 2020. The press service of the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) responded that six humanitarian visas had been issued to Belarusian nationals between 2019 and 2023. Libereco recently helped a critic of the Belarusian regime and an activist LGBTQ to obtain a visa in Switzerland. They encountered many obstacles. The man is currently living in an asylum center in Ticino and hopes that his asylum application will be accepted.

LACK OF STAFF: The head of human resources at a hospital in Bülach (ZH) solved his personnel problems with a working model that Charité Berlin is now demanding. According to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), he adapted the concept of his former employer in the catering sector. True to the motto: He who is more flexible earns a better living. Employees can be divided into three levels: Fixed, Flex and Super-Flex. Super-Flex employees receive, in addition to their base salary, a monthly bonus of 350 francs. After the model was introduced, the rate of staff fluctuation fell by 30% and that of absenteeism by 20%. Personnel manager Manuel Portmann told the NZZ that the hospital hardly needs any temporary staff anymore. This model even earned the hospital the Swiss HR Award 2024.

TRADITIONS : The markets and gargantuan meals of St. Martin’s Day attract crowds in November in the Jura. “St. Martin’s Day festivities underwent a big change in the 1970s and 1980s, when they left the local and family sphere to become public,” explains historian Lionel Guenin in the columns of the Quotidien Jurassien. He emphasizes that it is no coincidence that this coincides with the birth of the 23rd canton. Some are even toying with the idea of ​​including St. Martin’s Day as a UNESCO world heritage site.

PALACE REVOLUTION: The French sommelier, already a multi-award winner, promises to be one of the great figures of the European Sommellerie Championship which will be held in Belgrade, from November 10 to 15, we read in Le Temps. “I taste between 40 and 60 bottles in a normal working day,” she says quietly, and she is asked to repeat anyway, just to make sure it’s not a slip of the tongue. But yes, Pascaline Lepeltier tastes everything she serves to her customers at the Chambers restaurant in New York, and it is therefore a daily fiesta for her taste buds. How does she cope with all this? We have memories of tastings from which we came out almost lying down after a good dozen tests, even without swallowing everything. “First of all, I hate being drunk. And I learned to spit, no choice,” she explains, showing that the relationship with alcohol can be healthy, despite the danger that constantly lurks. Better yet: it can also become an art.

Birthdays and jubilees

– 20 years ago (2004): Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat dies.

– 20 years ago (2004): Death of French director Richard Dembo, Oscar winner for best foreign film in 1984 for “The Fool’s Diagonal”. He was born in 1948.

– 30 years ago (1994): Bill Gates buys at auction for $30.8 million the Codex Leicester (also known as the Codex Hammer), a bound collection of sheets containing scientific writings, notes, sketches and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci. This codex thus becomes the most expensive manuscript ever sold in the world.

– 50 years ago (1974): Birth of American actor Leonardo DiCaprio (“Titanic”, “Aviator”, “Blood Diamond”, “Inception”, “The Wolf of Wall Street”), one of the highest paid and most famous contemporary actors in Hollywood.

– 60 years ago (1964): Birth of American actress Calista Flockhart (“Ally McBeal”, “Brothers and Sisters”).

– 90 years ago (1934): Birth of French director and writer Nadine Trintignant (“Mon amour, mon amour”, “L’Été next”).

Saying of the day

On Saint Martin’s Day, winter is on its way, muffs on your arms and gloves on your hands.

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