By the numbers: Avalanche scare puts Switzerland on edge

Behind almost every story about Switzerland is a number of some kind. Here’s a round-up of the most interesting statistics to appear in the week that was. Monday 2 That’s by how many degrees the average temperature in Zurich-area train carriages will drop as part of a Swiss Federal Railways experiment to lower the heat and save energy.  5 The maximum avalanche warning level of 5 was issued for large parts of southern Switzerland, and later in the week access to the resort town of Zermatt was cut off for several days as a result of avalanche threats. Tuesday 5,000 The European Court of Human Rights ordered Switzerland to pay €5,000 (CHF5,860) to an anti-racism group for infringing on the group’s freedom of expression. Swiss courts had forced the group to remove online comments citing a politician’s speech as “verbal racism”, a ruling that Europe’s highest human rights court did not agree with.  18 That’s the number of years that have passed since the last US President ...