A Yemeni militia group says it’s secured the release of the three International Committee of the Red Cross workers kidnapped on Monday by another tribal group.

The local commander of the militia group says the kidnappers—a tribe of Marakicha—released a Swiss, a Kenyan and a Yemeni after tribal mediation. 

The ICRC says it is not yet able to confirm the claims.

The group also says that two Egyptians working for a Yemeni cement plant, who were kidnapped last week, have also been released.

The kidnappers were demanding the release of one of their members who’s been detained by authorities.

Swiss politicians scored poorly in a league table to establish which jobs people have the most confidence in.

The Reader’s Digest study “European Trusted Brands 2013” surveyed 18,000 citizens in 12 EU countries.

In Switzerland, firefighters topped the league with a 92 percent approval rating followed by nurses and pilots.

However, languishing at the bottom of the table were footballers, car salesman and politicians.

Swiss politicians were trusted by only 19 percent of those surveyed.

A five-year project spearheaded by the Federal Social Insurance Office has delivered interim results.

Project workers and experts met to exchange information as the “Youth and Violence” project reaches its halfway stage.

They found that repressive methods such as policing and CCTV surveillance don’t work as well as direct communication with young people.

Statistics also show that while violence in schools has been in decline since 2010, incidents have instead shifted into the public sphere.

The project, run by the Department of Youth Protection in Bern, is a collaboration between the Federal Council, cantonal authorities and local councils.

The man who’s confessed to kidnapping and killing a 19-year-old woman this week has led police to her body.

Police say the body that was discovered overnight in a forest near Payerne is “almost certainly that of Marie.”

She was abducted on Monday night. Last night police arrested a 36-year-old man who had previously spent 13 years in prison for raping and murdering a former girlfriend.

The man was under house arrest and was ordered to wear an electronic bracelet which he had removed.

The man’s confessed to killing Marie and led police to her body, but isn’t giving police any more details.

New statistics show that residents with a migrant background are often overqualified for the jobs they do.

The Federal Office for Statistics found that last year 17.3 percent of people with a migration background did not have employment suitable to their qualifications.

In contrast only 9.6 percent of Swiss nationals were overqualified.

Language skills also doesn’t play a role in finding better employment.

In 2010 almost 27 percent of second generation immigrants could speak two of Switzerland’s four national languages and 6,3 percent had proficiency in three.

People with a migration background were also found to be three times more likely to be unemployed than Swiss nationals.

A report shows that the majority of zebra crossings in the canton of Bern are safe for pedestrians.

The study, carried out by the cantonal Construction, Traffic and Energy Authority, found that 80 percent of the 3,100 crossings in the region were in good order.

It did however also highlight where work has to be done.This includes improvements to street lighting and widening of traffic islands.

As it could take quote “a few years” until upgrade work is carried out, cantonal authorities are calling on motorists to drive with increased caution.

The report was commissioned in 2011 after a spate of accidents happened on zebra crossings across the country.

Working as a police officer in the canton of Solothurn will continue to be possible only for Swiss nationals.

Proposals to relax the regulation were met with controversy during talks to implement changes to laws regarding police powers in the canton.

The local government said in a letter to the Cantonal Council that the idea had been shelved as no majority for it was reached.

Current regulations requiring applicants to be Swiss for police training school remain in force.

Police Chief Thomas Zuber thinks the decision was reached by fair means: “It would be wrong to pick out individual participants and say what their objections were. In the end it was decided to restrict access to police training schools to Swiss citizens. But in the end you had to say, the issue was opened up to public debate, it was properly evaluated and this was the conclusion that was reached.”

Objectors who refused to carry out military service are demanding a formal apology after their lives were made a misery.

The group, led by Piet Dörflinger, claim thousands were socially ostracized or imprisoned for refusing to carry out military service.

The incidents all predate 1996, when the alternative civil service was introduced.

Those affected are now demanding what they call “moral reparations” from the Federal Council.

However, not everyone is taking their claims seriously.

Swiss People’s Party MP Thomas Hurter sees no reason for a formal apology: “If mistakes were made, they can be corrected if they haven’t been already. I see absolutely no reason for any additional special treatment now.”

The Federal Council countered that if any suffering took place, it was a case for district courts and not grounds for “political rehabilitation”.

Prisoners escaped this morning from the Bois-Mermet prison in the canton of Vaud.

The escape happened at 10:20 a.m.

Police haven’t said how many prisoners were involved in the break but think they had help from the outside.

The unnamed prisoners, who were on remand, escaped during a walk on a nearby football pitch.

Several police divisions are working on the case.

A manhunt is underway in the canton of Vaud for a 19-year-old girl abducted by a man alleged to be her boyfriend.

The incident happened in Payerne after the pair were seen arguing on the street.

After the girl tried to walk away, the man, 38-year-old Claude Dubois, dragged her into his car.

Witnesses say they heard her cry for help before the car drove off in the direction of Moudon.

Claude Dubois was convicted in 1998 of kidnapping, rape and murder.

A large scale manhunt has been launched to locate his grey Toyota Yaris, with 20 patrols combing the area between Payerne and Moudon.

Last year was a near-record for the number of money laundering cases reported to the government. 

With 1,585 cases, 2012 was second only to 2011.

The Office of Communication for Money Laundering says 2011 was a record because of cases related to the Arab Spring. 

And even though there were no major political events last year the number of money laundering cases was almost steady.

The sum of the assets involved last year was 3.1 billion francs, again, only a bit lower than the previous year.

Six of the cases involved about half of the money. 

Three were related to diversion of public funds from a foreign government, two related to fraud and the last concerned an Asian criminal organization.

Two-thirds of the suspects are turned into authorities by banks…the rest by companies, trusts and asset managers.

The Federal Council is warning web users that data saved on cloud networks can be accessed by foreign intelligence services.

Concerns were raised regarding FISA, the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act, which requires sites such as Google and Facebook to provide U.S. authorities with data from citizens based outside the country.

The Federal Council is worried about mass surveillance via online technologies.

However they didn’t rule out the possibility of reaching agreements with some foreign intelligence services to restrict access to personal data online.

The European Court of Human Rights has asked Switzerland to define the conditions for assisted suicide.

The request comes in the case of an 82-year-old woman from Zurich who does not suffer from a terminal illness, but from steady decline in her mental and physical health.

The Court wants Switzerland to review its legislation and make more clear the conditions under which a person suffering can have help ending their life.

Influential care foundation for the elderly, Pro Senectute, has published a report supporting assisted suicide.

The paper says that people who want to end their own life have the right to do so.

The report echoes the current legal situation in Switzerland—euthanasia is illegal but assisted suicide is not as long as the person makes the decision and carries out the procedure themselves.

Pro Senectute Director Werner Scherer says the report is all about the dignity of a patient in their final days: “We recognize the rights of people who want to end their lives. At the forefront of this is the person and their dignity. They should be able to decide something like this for themselves. No one else has the right to make that decision for them.”

However, the report also says suicide prevention methods should be strengthened and alternative treatments to alleviate pain should be investigated before a patient resorts to assisted suicide.

Switzerland and China are ready to sign a free trade agreement. The two countries have concluded two years of talks.

The agreement now needs to be approved by the Federal Council and then signed by Bern and Beijing.

After the latest round of discussions in Beijing in April, Foreign Affairs Minister Didier Burkhalter said that the countries still had differences on industrial goods and agriculture. 

No details of the final agreement are being given.