Switzerland

Switzerland has decided to eliminate passport checks at its airports for travelers flying to and from Bulgaria and Romania, following the European Union's recent move to admit the two countries into "air and sea Schengen".

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has sought to allay public concerns over Disease X, a theoretical virus believed to be 20 times deadlier than COVID-19, stating that it's not a real thing.

"A presumed disease. Disease X, as the [World Health Organization] WHO calls it. It has no equivalent in real life," Koca said on social media platform X on Jan. 24, attempting to calm fears.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has had to cancel a planned visit to the United States after coming down with flu, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis confirmed on Tuesday.

Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni held consecutive meetings with the ambassadors of Switzerland and Albania on Friday.

During her meeting with Swiss Ambassador Stefan Estermann, they discussed the planning of joint actions between the two countries, and jointly promoting sustainability and innovation in tourism.

Greece's center-right government will soon submit legislation allowing same-sex civil marriages, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in Davos, Switzerland on Friday, voicing his optimism that the law will be voted in Parliament next month.

The new study of The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is based on a survey of public opinion conducted by YouGov, Datapraxis, and Norstat in nine EU member states (Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Spain) and two non-EU states (the United Kingdom and Switzerland).

Pakistan's Prime Minister will hold an emergency security meeting on Friday with military and intelligence chiefs after trading deadly air strikes with Iran on militant targets this week.

The rare military actions in the porous border region of Baluchistan — shared between the two countries — has further stoked regional tensions already enflamed by the Israel-Hamas war.

The huge gap between how women and men's health are treated costs $1 trillion a year worldwide, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said yesterday. 

Women spend a quarter more of their lives suffering from poor health than men, a disparity that includes an unequal focus on men across medical research, diagnosis and treatment, the report said.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is scheduled to travel to Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday afternoon to participate in the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Pakistan said Wednesday that Iran carried out an air strike on its territory that killed two children, after Tehran launched attacks in Iraq and Syria against what it called "anti-Iranian terrorist groups".

Pakistan denounced the strike, near the nations' shared border late on Tuesday, as "completely unacceptable", saying it was unprovoked.