Switzerland

GENEVA (AP) — The World Trade Organization is postponing its conference of government ministers set to open Tuesday after Switzerland initiated new travel restrictions following the emergence of a worrying new coronavirus variant, officials said.

The MC12 conference at WTO headquarters in Geneva was set to take up key issues like a long-awaited agreement on subsidies for fisheries, seen as a major way to prevent overfishing in the world’s seas, and an effort to waive patent and other intellectual property protections linked to COVID-19 vaccines.

GENEVA, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Switzerland is open to compromise in talks on the intellectual property (IP) rights of COVID-19 vaccines and drugs at the World Trade Organization, but remains opposed to a full waiver of those rights, a senior Swiss diplomat said on Thursday.

Switzerland is one of a handful of WTO members alongside the United Kingdom and the European Union opposed to a waiver of IP rights protected by the TRIPS agreement in negotiations at the WTO that began in October 2020.

GENEVA, Nov 24 (Reuters) - As children and adolescents are at lower risk of severe COVID-19 disease, countries should prioritise adults and sharing vaccine doses with the COVAX programme to bring supplies to poorer countries, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday.

Some rare cases of heart inflammation called myocarditis have been reported in younger men who received vaccines based on mRNA technoloy - Pfizer (PFE.N) BioNtech(22UAy.DE) and Moderna (MRNA.O) - but these were generally mild and responded to treatment, it said.

24 Nov 2021; MEMO: The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has called on the UN to send an international investigation team to Israeli settlements in the occupied territories to inspect their laboratories, Wafa reported on Tuesday.

GENEVA, Nov 5 (Reuters) - A group of climate activists convicted for a protest against Swiss bank Credit Suisse applied on Friday for a review by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), in a step their lawyers said could set a precedent for such cases.

A Swiss appeals court last year reversed a ruling that had acquitted the 12 climate activists of trespassing at Credit Suisse on the grounds their actions were necessitated by the "imminent danger" of global warming. That decision was later upheld by Switzerland's top court.

GENEVA, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The United Nations human rights council on Friday agreed to a British-led resolution on Sudan condemning the military coup and appointing an expert to monitor alleged rights violations in its aftermath.

The 47-member council agreed to the resolution in an emergency session on Friday without a vote. The new expert is mandated to monitor the rights situation there and report back to the Geneva-based council at a session in mid-2022.

GENEVA (AP) — A new project trumpeted by U.S. President Joe Biden in which companies underpin development of low-carbon technologies through their buying power amounts to a “big transformation,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Thursday.

GENEVA, Nov 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The World Health Organization on Wednesday called for the urgent development of a vaccine against a bacterial infection responsible for nearly 150,000 stillbirths and infant deaths each year.

  A fresh report by the UN health agency and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that the impact of Group B Streptococcus infection (GBS), which is estimated to live harmlessly in the intestinal tracts of up
to a third of all adults, is a far bigger cause of preterm births and disability than previously thought.

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. human rights chief said Wednesday that Ethiopia’s yearlong war has been marked by “extreme brutality” as a joint investigation into alleged atrocities faulted all sides for committing abuses, and “the big numbers of violations” are linked to Ethiopian forces and those from neighboring Eritrea.

The investigation was hampered by authorities’ intimidation and restrictions and didn’t visit some of the war’s worst-affected locations. It said all combatants have committed abuses which may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes.

GENEVA, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Britain said on Monday that it had requested that the U.N. Human Rights Council convene an emergency session on Sudan following last week's military coup.

The request was sent to the president of the 47-member Geneva forum on behalf of 18 member states, more than the one-third required to convene a special session. It was backed by 30 countries with observer status, including the United States.