Legislative: French Jews leave the country for Switzerland in the face of growing tensions

blue News and Keystone-ATS wish you a great start to your day and give you a first look at the news, with the scoops found in the press. Not forgetting birthdays and the saying of the day!

Today’s highlights

FOOTBALL: The Euro football round of 16 kicks off on Saturday at 18:00 with the highly anticipated clash in Berlin between Switzerland and Italy. At 21:00, hosts Germany will face Denmark in Dortmund.

CYCLING: The cycling Tour de France starts on Saturday with a first stage in Italy, contested over 206 kilometers between Florence and Rimini. The first three stages take place on Italian territory before returning to France on Tuesday.

GONE: The Swiss Socialist Youth elects its new president on Saturday. Two candidates are in the running to succeed Nicola Siegrist, who is retiring after three years as vice-president and two years at the head of the youth section of the PS: Mirjam Hostetmann, 24, current vice-president of JS Switzerland, and Jakub Walczak, 19, co-president of the JS of the City of Bern.

FRANCE: The early French legislative elections of June 30th begin already Saturday in some French territories. The poll opens at noon (Swiss time) for voters in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, followed by those in the Antilles, French Guiana, French Polynesia and those living on the American continent. Turnout is expected to rise sharply throughout France, pending the hypothesis of the arrival of the extreme right in power. The second round is scheduled for July 7th.

TODAY IT’S…: As every June 29, today is the International Day of the Tropics. It is an opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary biological, cultural and linguistic diversity of this region. All the information on the UN website:

https://www.un.org/fr/observances/tropics-day

Seen in the press

FRENCH LEGISLATIVE: Tensions around the French Jewish community caused by the war in Gaza and the early legislative elections are pushing some of its members to leave for Switzerland, the Tribune de Genève and 24 Heures reported on Saturday. “The phenomenon is not yet massive, but, for several months, we have seen people who want to leave France, because the Jewish community there feels threatened,” declares tax lawyer Philippe Kenel, who is also the president of the Swiss section of the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA). He says he has received requests from people to settle in Switzerland. “These are people who would undoubtedly have gone to Israel before October 7. But today there is a certain fear about the situation in the country,” since the Hamas attack in October 2023, adds the lawyer.

SEVERE WEATHER: The damage to the A13 motorway in Grisons caused by bad weather is not the result of inadequate flood protection by the renaturation of the Moesa River, experts assure in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on Saturday. It was a landslide that damaged the roads, explains Volker Weitbrecht, an expert in river management at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ). Christoph Graf, a geomorphology specialist at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), also believes that there is no negligence in the renaturation project. Renaturations are also intended to give a river more space, he explains, which allows its force to be distributed over a larger area and thus reduce the risk of flooding.

FEDERAL CHANCERY: The procedure launched to replace Federal Council spokesperson André Simonazzi, who died at the beginning of May during a hike, is stalling to the point of worrying several ministers, Schweiz am Wochenende reported on Saturday. Many candidates were rejected, in particular French-speaking people, although the chancellor and vice-chancellor are German-speaking. Among the names crossed out are those of Romain Clivaz, a former personal collaborator of Federal Councilor Karin Keller-Sutter for four years, of Nicole Lamon, the former head of communications of the former Minister of the Interior Alain Berset , of Christian Favre, the co-head of communications of Federal Councilor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, of Agnès Schenker, the personal communications advisor of Ms. Baume-Schneider, and of Nicolas Bideau, the head of communications of the Minister of foreign affairs Ignazio Cassis.

MUSIQUE: The organisation of the Eurovision Song Contest in Switzerland next year is only met with limited enthusiasm, Blick reported on Saturday, citing a Sotomo survey. Less than half of the 24,720 respondents (46%) say they are looking forward to the event. On the contrary, 49% of those surveyed are opposed to its organisation. The remaining 5% say they do not yet have a clear opinion on the subject. Women are more pleased than men. The older the people, the more sceptical they are about the competition coming to Switzerland. The cities of Bern and Biel together, Geneva, Zurich and Basel are candidates to organise the event.

Birthdays and anniversaries

– 5 years ago (2019): Swiss footballer Florijana Ismaili drowns in Lake Como at the age of 24. She played for Young Boys Bern and the national team.

– 5 years ago (2019): death of Argentine cartoonist Guillermo Mordillo. His illustrations were imbued with a dark humor that he himself defined as “the tenderness of fear.” He was born on August 4, 1932.

– 5 years ago (2019): death of South Korean actress Jeon Mi-seon (“Love is a crazy thing”, “Memories of Murder”) at the age of 48, probably as a result of ‘a suicide. She was born on December 7, 1970.

– 10 years ago (2014): Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaims the “caliphate” over the territories that the jihadist organization controls in Syria and Iraq. He calls himself “caliph”, that is to say “leader of Muslims everywhere” in the world.

– 15 years ago (2009): American financier Bernard Madoff is sentenced to 150 years in prison by a New York court, the maximum sentence required. He is behind one of the biggest scams of all time.

– 25 years ago (1999): Turkish justice sentenced to death the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Öcalan.

– 30 years ago (1994): Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger commits suicide in his cell after being sentenced to life in prison. He hangs himself with the same complicated noose he used to strangle his victims. He had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of an 18-year-old German girl in 1975. During his sentence, Unterweger wrote several novels and plays in prison. He was released early in 1990, under pressure from Austrian literary circles.

– 95 years ago (1929): birth of the Italian writer and resistance fighter Oriana Fallaci (“Letter to a Child Who Was Never Born”). She died on September 15, 2006.

– 110 years ago (1914): Birth of the naturalized Swiss Czech composer and conductor Rafael Kubelik. He died in Lucerne in 1996.

Saying of the day

“Saint-Pierre and Paul rainy is dangerous for thirty days”.

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