Latest news with #Lucerne
BBC News
a day ago
- Health
- BBC News
Ingle training return boosts Wales before Euros
Midfielder Sophie Ingle has taken a significant step towards winning her Euro 2025 fitness race after returning to Wales training following a serious knee head coach Rhian Wilkinson says she will not push or rush the 33-year-old, who is aiming to recover in time to play a part in Wales' debut at a women's major has not featured this season after injuring her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) during Chelsea's pre-season win over Feyenoord last begin their campaign on 5 July against the Netherlands in Lucerne, before moving to St Gallen for their last two group games against France on 9 July and then England on 13 July. Wilkinson was also non-committal on the fitness of teenage Manchester City defender Mayzee Davies, who suffered a knee injury in the opening minutes of Friday's Nations League defeat in results are not expected until after Tuesday's game with Italy in Swansea, with Wilkinson saying: "Whenever you see a player go down like that you're concerned and our fingers are crossed for quick healing - but equally this is a young player and we'll do everything we can to make sure she's looked after." Wilkinson said assessment of Rhiannon Roberts is also "ongoing", with the 79-cap defender suffering a fitness issue on the eve of the 1-0 loss in Odense that confirmed the side's relegation from the top tier of the Nations the Wales boss said neither were being ruled out at this stage, with the squad for the Euros being named on 19 Wilkinson did say Ingle is "on track" to be part of that selection after the "milestone" of training with team-mates in a session before the game with Italy."It was great to see her back," said Wilkinson of the 141-cap former captain, who is also continuing rehabilitation at Chelsea despite announcing her departure from the Women's Super League (WSL) champions following the end of the season."Any injury is a lonely place to be... and one of the big gains is not just being back on the field with the ball, but being back with team-mates."She's done it with her club and now she's done it with her international team-mates."That milestone is such a boost and you could see it in her, it was a big moment."But with Wales' match with Italy their final fixture before they open their Euro 2025 campaign against Switzerland - and Ingle having not played a competitive match for so long - Wilkinson said she would remain cautious."She's in a great space and she doesn't feel like she's overextending herself, because when players in stressful situations try to rush back from major injuries that's when you can see reoccurrence," Wilkinson added that Ingle will be part of a training camp in Portugal in the tournament build-up,"That's why we want to do it properly. It's very obvious we want her with us in Switzerland, everything is tracking that way, but she will not be rushed or pushed," said Wilkinson."The most important thing is being able to play, not 90 minutes, but can she contribute?"She's aware there will be conversations coming up to the tournament and she's doing everything she needs to, to be coming to Switzerland with us."Fellow defender Lois Joel added: "Sophie's such a core part of our group, so well respected, so it's great to have her back in whatever capacity."It was great to see her smiling and kicking a ball – and she barely looks rusty."
Gizmodo
3 days ago
- Business
- Gizmodo
How to Watch the F1 Spanish Grand Prix 2025 on a Free Channel
Can you believe it's already June? It sounds almost as unbelievable as Piastri's third place at the last GP! Will he be able to bounce back? That's a question we'll soon answer, with the F1 Spanish GP available on a free channel. You don't have to spend a fortune to watch some heart-pounding Formula 1 races. As you'll see, there's a convenient free channel that broadcasts the Spanish Grand Prix without requiring an account. We'll explain how to access it in just a moment. Date and time Sunday, June 1st, 3:00 PM CET / 9:00 AM ET / 6:00 AM PT Free channel that broadcasts the race SRF (Swiss TV channel) Stream the race from anywhere with NordVPN Which Free Channel Broadcasts the F1 Spanish GP Live? Have you heard of SRF? SRF is a Swiss-based TV channel with an online streaming platform called SRF Play. SRF Play is an on-demand service that allows you to stream the F1 Spanish GP live for free. It doesn't need a subscription. Users also don't need to make an account to watch it. SRF broadcasts the race on June 1st in Full HD but with Swiss commentary (and the qualifying the day before). It's also worth mentioning that the majority of SRF's content is region-locked. Thus, only people in Switzerland or with a Swiss IP address can access it. If you're traveling to Lucerne, Zurich, or Lugano, good for you. But, if you're enjoying the comfort of your home, you're not lost. There's a clever solution to this problem that people smarter than us have discovered long ago. Get a Swiss IP address with NordVPN How to Stream the Spanish Grand Prix on a Free Channel People online have been using VPNs to counteract geo-blocks. VPNs have paved the way for F1 fans to watch pretty much all races for free. NordVPN, which stands out from the crowd, is a popular pick, as it offers countless Swiss servers with 10 Gbps ports and unlimited data for streaming. Additionally, it provides modern protocols that emphasize speed. This is essential for not missing a single moment of the race. NordVPN works on all devices, so watching the Spanish Grand Prix online for free is possible on the fly. Moreover, it's very easy to install and use, making it perfect for beginners. The solution revolves around connecting to a VPN server in Switzerland and obtaining a Swiss IP address. That's virtually all you have to do. Once you're on SRF, it'll detect your Swiss IP and unblock its content for you, including the Spanish Grand Prix free live stream. Keep in mind that NordVPN isn't free, but many people 'make' it free. They leverage its 30-day money-back guarantee for new accounts. This way, they watch the desired race, quit the VPN, and snatch a full refund after the fact. Can I Watch the Race on F1 TV? Yes, it's accessible on F1 TV, but not every subscription tier allows you to watch it live. The F1 TV Access plan is the one to avoid, as it only provides delayed race replays, some F1 documentaries, and radio recaps. The F1 TV Pro plan is better because it includes all live streams of Formula 1 races without ads and on-demand. Just be mindful of its price which usually stands at $64.99/year in most countries. The last tier is F1 TV Premium. It enables Multiview and 4K Ultra HD streaming on up to 6 devices at a time. Given the price of $89.99/year, it's the priciest, so only the most fiery fans will splurge their money on it. One more thing — it's not available in every country. Some people use a VPN to access it, others do the same for other free channels. Spanish Grand Prix 2025 Full Schedule Here's the full schedule of this weekend's Grand Prix: Event Date Time (EDT) Time (PDT) Time (CET) Practice 1 30th May 7:30-8:30 04:30-05:30 13:30-14:30 Practice 2 30th May 11:00-12:00 08:00-09:00 17:00-18:00 Practice 3 31st May 06:30-07:30 03:30-04:30 12:30-13:30 Qualifying 31st May 10:00-11:00 07:00-08:00 16:00-17:00 Race 1st June 09:00 06:00 15:00 The main race is on June 1st, while the event begins on May 30th with the first practice. You'll be able to watch three free practice sessions and the qualifying, which takes place the day before, on May 31st. Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya spans 4,657 kilometers, includes 66 laps, and the entire race distance is 307,236 kilometers. The fastest-ever lap was driven by Max Verstappen in 2023, clocking at 1:16.330. Try NordVPN risk-free today
BBC News
3 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
The Euro 2025 lessons learned from Wales' Denmark defeat
It was not the ideal scenario for what Wales still hope will be an idyllic summer in in Denmark – albeit amid controversy – means Rhian Wilkinson's side were relegated from Nations League also ensures a tricker path to World Cup qualification in 2027 as a result of dropping into the second with their opening Euro 2025 fixture against the Netherlands in Lucerne just five weeks away, what will be of greater importance is how Wales are shaping up ahead of their first ever major finals in women's as they prepare to face Italy on Tuesday in their final Nations League fixture - and their final game before their European Championships debut – what can Wales take from their 1-0 loss in Odense? It should not come down to technicalities There are no regulations that insist goal-line technology has to be used in the Nations goes for the men's tournament as well as the women' as Wales head coach Rhian Wilkinson suggested for this level of international football, there should Fishlock's goal that never was may have proven the difference. It may not have – and Denmark certainly had chances before and after to argue the given Nations League A is meant to be the elite of women's international football in Europe – and that goal-line technology if not VAR has been used in other fixtures at this level – it was hard to argue with the viewpoints of those such as former Wales captain Kath Morgan who pondered if men's football at this stage would really be put in the same not forget, a guaranteed play-off for the 2027 World Cup was also a reward for Wales staying in League A."I'm just fed up with the system," Morgan said. "If that means we won't stay in League A, you have to question Fifa and Uefa. There shouldn't be a debate over which games to send VAR to."For the record, Euro 2025 will have goal-line technology, VAR and semi-automated offsides all in operation. Uefa have also been asked for their thoughts. Out of League A, but not out of their depth A third defeat for Wales in League A, and a third by the solitary goal."It's fine margins again," said Wales captain Angharad James. "We're disappointed to be relegated but we have put on good performances. "They were slowing the game down in the corner and doing little things and that wouldn't have happened a few years ago – this is the new us now and we can built on it."Compared to their last appearance at this level – where there were five goals conceded in one game against Denmark and another against Germany – Wales have looked a different may have hung on in periods but, they have not parked the bus. In fact, it is needing to be more clinical at the other end that has ultimately cost are still missing that win though – and the squad know it."We can be positive about our performance, but we also need to have a little bit of mentality that it's almost not good enough and needs to be better – because we want to get better and win games," said senior star Fishlock. Shaky starts must stop Fishlock made her 161st appearance for her country – just like matchwinner and former Chelsea forward Pernille will be disappointed they switched off just after the restart to allow the Bayern talent to score her 78th goal for her country."Wales were not switched on enough and got punished," admitted former men's captain Danny also hit the bar in a determined Danish start to things where Wales could not settle and put their foot on the impressing defensively, Wales have conceded in the first 15 minutes of halves in all four games to be on it and at it from the off against the likes of England, France and the Netherlands this summer, and Wales could be out of games before they know it. Fishlock's still got it Plenty of observers were a little worried when it was revealed key midfielder Fishlock would start, less than a week from her comeback for Seattle Reign in the US after more than a month out 38, Wales' record goalscorer and appearance maker may no longer be at the peak of her powers, but she will be needed in made her first start for Wales since the Nations League opener in Italy back in February and only her second appearance on any football pitch since March – but it proved both needed and her own admission, there were some rusty touches, but there was also a presence and an uplift to Wales' no mistake, Wales will look to their icon in Switzerland – and other sides should look out for her too. Wilkinson has options Wales will not have the same top-flight pedigree among their players as the nations they face in their depth and options are better than arguably ever before."What's really positive for me, if we go back 18 months, you're looking at the same 11, maybe one or two players coming off the bench constantly," said former striker Gwennan Harries. "But there is a lot more depth now."You're always unsure with [Rhian] Wilkinson on the team and who is going to start in these positions. She is trying to give players opportunities and to be more adaptable."She said beforehand she wants the team to be able to adjust and adapt and that they're not predictable, and I think we are seeing that."Wales can change systems to suit and are not weakened by change as much as they were a very short time ago,Alice Griffiths coming off the bench early after the unfortunate – and hopefully, minor – injury to Mayzee Davies was a case in point. Some of her passes helped Wales get a foothold in the game and will give her confidence of performing come this too for a player who has just been released by Southampton and effectively could be going to the Euros without a says she sees it as an opportunity. With one last game to go before Switzerland, Wales will hope to be ready to seize theirs this summer.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
Why does Switzerland have more nuclear bunkers than any other country?
At first, Zora Schelbert, the chief operating officer and tour guide at the Sonnenberg nuclear bunker in Lucerne, Switzerland, wasn't sure whether the requests she was receiving were a joke. It was February 2022, and Russia had just dropped the first bombs over Kyiv. 'People were asking me what kind of measures they should take, where they would have to go,' Schelbert said. She quickly realised they had confused the historical society she works for, Unterirdisch Überleben (Surviving Underground), for the local department of civil protection. To the alternating fascination, bewilderment and envy of its European neighbours, Switzerland, population nearly 9 million, has more bunkers per capita than anywhere else in the world – enough to guarantee shelter space to every single resident in the event of a crisis. (Sweden and Finland are a close second, covering all major cities.) The queries Schelbert was receiving came from frightened people trying to locate their assigned places. Today, however, the Sonnenberg bunker is mostly a museum. Originally built in 1971 to protect up to 20,000 people, it remained one of the largest nuclear shelters in the world until 2002, when its capacity was reduced to 2,000 to improve efficiency and reduce costs. 'Of course I took my replies seriously,' Schelbert said, explaining how she redirected concerned parties toward the appropriate people. 'But then more emails came in. And phone calls.' Faced with unrelenting Russian aggression and the simultaneous withdrawal of American military and diplomatic support, European countries across the continent are reinvesting in defence. But civilian protection – non-military measures for civil defence, including the construction of nuclear and air raid bunkers – has also emerged as a fresh priority. In January, Norway reintroduced a cold war-era mandate to build air raid shelters in all newly constructed residential buildings – a requirement Switzerland has upheld continuously since 1963. In Germany, which recently passed groundbreaking legislation to finance billions in new military spending, the question of how and whether to build civilian bunkers is once again a matter of active public debate. Partly inspired by efforts in Germany and Norway, in March of this year, the European Union issued official statements urging residents to keep an emergency stockpile containing 72 hours' worth of supplies on hand at all times. The exposure to war and human-made disaster feels more acute than it has since any other time since the end of the cold war. In Switzerland, the redoubled interest in civilian protection is more a bellwether for shifting public attitudes than a sign of an actual change in policy. Before 2022, 'the shelters were seen by a big part of the population and even some politicians as unnecessary', said Daniel Jordi, Switzerland's federal director of civil protection and training. 'And this definitely changed.' Silvia Berger, professor of Swiss and contemporary history at the University of Bern and a leading expert on the cultural history of bunkers, confirmed that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has deeply affected public perceptions of civil protection: 'We're in the middle of a transformation' of public attitudes 'that is not yet finished,' she told me. Switzerland's policy to provide shelter to every single resident in the event of a crisis was first enshrined into law more than 60 years ago. Every new residential building must either include an on-site bunker, or else developers are required to earmark funds for a nearby public one maintained by the state. As a result, Switzerland is now host to 370,000 bunkers designed to protect civilians underground for anywhere from a few hours to two weeks. Ventilation systems have a shelf life of about 40 years, and neutralise the effects of radiation, nuclear fallout and chemical and biological weapons. The maintenance and construction cost per person, borne largely by developers and property owners, is comparable to annual premiums for Swiss health insurance. Historically, the price per spot is about 1,400 Swiss francs in bunkers with a capacity of 50 to 200, or about 3,000 Swiss francs for smaller ones. In peacetime, most Swiss use them as wine cellars, storage facilities or saunas. In the 1990s, as cold war tensions relaxed, bunkers even played host to paintball and band practice, or served as community centres. A second type of bunker – command posts for civil protection and emergency personnel who manage operations – is designed for longer stays, and is equipped with showers, kitchenettes and internet access. In recent years, these command centres have been used, not without controversy, as overflow housing for refugees, asylum seekers and the homeless. 'This is what we wanted,' Jordi said of the bunkers' extracurricular uses, 'a system which is normally used, but when it comes to the worst, you can rather quickly change it into a protected room.' Current regulations require bunkers to be crisis-ready in less than five days. Of the notice period, Jordi said: 'War does not happen tomorrow without any introduction.' My own apartment block in Geneva, where I live, is outfitted with a typical residential bunker, though I didn't know it was operational until Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when the public mood shifted. I heard about friends of friends packing suitcases and stocking up on iodine. (At the cantonal level, Swiss civil protection units are responsible for stocking enough iodine for the entire population at all times to counteract exposure to radiation.) I learned the expression 'Chornobyl baby', an idiom equivalent in meaning to the anglophone: 'Your mother must have dropped you on your head.' I went to the basement of my own building, home to more than 100 families, to visit our on-site nuclear shelter, now divided with raw wooden barriers into 10 separate caves, or storage spaces. A painted green door of reinforced concrete, a foot thick (and always propped open), seals hermetically with the help of a heavy mechanism. There's a drain in the middle of the floor. My neighbours' caves are filled with skiing equipment and old cookware. Ours holds suitcases and American electronics not compatible with European voltage, nor likely to be of much use in the event of a nuclear attack. If our lives depended on it, I estimate we could clear it out in a few hours or less. The entrance to the Sonnenberg bunker is a brisk 15-minute walk from the Lucerne central train station. I arrived on a drizzling Sunday morning and walked along the glacial lake, past tourists balancing heavy, panoramic camera lenses, through the cobblestone streets of the historic city centre and to the hills that rise above it, until I reached a playground made lush by heavy recent rains. A cement ramp led along the far end of the park, just beyond the swings, to a set of heavy grey doors set in the hillside. If you weren't already looking for the entrance to a nuclear bunker, you could easily mistake it for some far more mundane piece of municipal infrastructure, like a water treatment plant. About 20 of us gathered for a public tour of Sonnenberg organised by Unterirdisch Überleben. Aside from Schelbert, our guide, only five of us were women. A father, here with his 13-year-old son, joked that interest in nuclear bunkers appears to be decidedly male-coded; his son insisted on a visit after his younger brother came home raving about a school field trip to the facility a few weeks earlier. The family lives in a prewar home in central Lucerne, which means they have no on-site bunker in the basement. The father admitted he had no idea to which public shelter they've been allocated. 'We're more of a music family,' he said by way of justification. In addition to the father and son, there were two tourists from London; an Austrian family of four who were drawn to the bunker after seeing a TV documentary; a rowdy group of young friends on a Sunday lark; a middle-aged couple from the nearby town of Aarau; and two attentive Swiss thirtysomethings in hiking boots. We were joined at the last minute by a young Norwegian woman and her elderly father. As we headed in, our most committed member, another Swiss man with an expensive-looking camera, volunteered to act as caboose; he lingered behind to take photos. What we were visiting was not the Sonnenberg bunker itself, but rather the former command centre – the seven-storey, subterranean concrete block where emergency squads were meant to implement the technical and logistical operations that sheltering 20,000 people underground entails. The original civilian 'bunker', in fact, was no less than the four lanes of traffic whizzing below our feet: an underground highway. The Sonnenberg Tunnel was conceived in the 1970s to ease traffic flow through mountainous central Switzerland, but when construction coincided with national efforts to bolster civil protection, the twin throughways were reinforced to serve a second purpose as emergency shelter space. In the event of a nuclear attack, traffic would halt, and instead civilians would stream in, sealing off the tunnel entrances with the aid of four concrete doors 1.5 metres thick and capable of withstanding a nuclear detonation just half a mile away. The command centre overhead stocked a whole town's worth (450 tonnes) of equipment – including bunk beds, dry toilets, water and other supplies – ready to be mobilised into the tunnels below by way of dolly carts. It's a tall order to erect a small city overnight. While today's bunkers are ready for emergency use within five days, and often less, the timeline for Sonnenberg was two weeks. In the one and only trial run, conducted in 1987, emergency squads managed to erect only a fraction of the necessary infrastructure. They were also unable to close one of the four, 350-tonne concrete doors; left ajar, it is unlikely to have been much protection against a nuclear bomb dropped at any distance. The failure fed suspicions over the feasibility of maintaining Sonnenberg at scale, culminating in the local government's decision to reduce capacity. Still, it remains an exception: most shelters in Switzerland house anywhere from a single family up to 200 people. Nor does your typical civilian bunker double as a semi-permanent museum, as Sonnenberg does today. Exhibitions preserving original equipment complement the tour, giving visitors a sense of what life might have been like within the command centre during the cold war. The LED strip lighting, exposed pipes and spotless concrete hallways gave the impression of a brutalist prison. We moved from floor to floor via sloping ramps originally designed to accommodate carts for delivering supplies into the tunnels below. The kitchen was a row of glistening steel vats, domed tops raised like hood dryers at hair salons, set with ladles the size of human heads. A gallon-sized food tin was labelled, unpromisingly, 'Überlebensnahrung' ('survival food'). The kitchen and its canned menu were intended for the command staff only; even today, civilians are required to bring their own nonperishables underground. The original command centre was also outfitted with a hospital; the pre-op room contains the only shower in the entire facility. There were tall stacks of dry toilets – glorified grey plastic buckets – of the kind still allocated to shelters today, which protect against the spread of faeces-borne disease, emergency water tanks and internal phone lines to facilitate communication between departments and floors. There were no windows. The analogue clocks on the walls included a little red bulb to indicate whether it was day or night above ground. Is it worth it? In the surgery, the Norwegian man in his mid-70s, visiting with his daughter, shared that he doesn't put much stock in the idea that nuclear war is survivable. He reasoned that 'if the Swiss go underground for two weeks, when they come back out, still they won't be able to live'. He added wryly that 'the greatest protection the Swiss have is money'. Certainly, it's no accident that Switzerland, with the sixth highest GDP per capita in the world, and his native Norway, with the ninth, have historically boasted some of the world's strongest civilian protection programmes. In truth, the efficacy of the bunkers depends on the type and scale of the crisis. The worst of the fallout from an atom bomb typically dissipates within days or weeks, conceivably within the intended length of stay, and when reducing radiation exposure is life-saving. A meltdown at a nuclear plant the scale of Chornobyl, by contrast, can render the surrounding area uninhabitable for centuries. The Austrian family also expressed doubts about surviving a worst-case scenario. They pointed out that while Vienna was even closer to the iron curtain during the cold war, with the Hungarian and then Czechoslovakian borders only an hour away, no comparable infrastructure was built, nor do they wish Austria had followed Switzerland's path. The family consensus was that there are 'better things to spend money on', and that 'diplomacy is more effective'. Scepticism comes easily to life underground. How will large groups of strangers in great psychological duress cooperate for days in cramped concrete cells? (One early recommendation from the 70s – to channel rivalrous or aggressive impulses into card and board games – seems less than foolproof.) What about commuters far from their allocated spaces when crisis strikes? Can hospital patients and elderly people be efficiently ferried to the bunkers that have been built specially for them? And while ventilation systems will protect civilians from radiation, nuclear fallout or chemical weapons – invisible dangers that simply hiding deep in the London underground system, say, would fail to counteract – no bunker can withstand a direct hit from a nuclear bomb. Nevertheless, the Swiss attachment to universal civil protection remains notable, and the reasons behind it go deeper than finances alone. Bunkers are simply 'an integral part of Swiss identity', argued Guillaume Vergain, deputy head of service for civil protection and military affairs for the canton of Geneva, and whose job it is to make sure shelters are built to code and at capacity within his jurisdiction. 'It's in our DNA.' That DNA is inherited directly from the second world war, when bunkers were already an established part of Swiss military strategy. In the early 40s, when neutral Switzerland was entirely surrounded by Axis powers, the army stocked the Swiss Réduit ('National Redoubt'), a series of military fortifications in the central Alps dating to the 1880s, with supplies and ammunition to prepare for a potential Nazi invasion. The rate of civilian casualties in air raids elsewhere across Europe, however, proved the need for an equivalent civilian protection programme. The nuclear arms race during the cold war made civilian protection programmes all the more urgent. The result, historian Silvia Berger said, was a new mentality of 'total national defence', including the ideological defence of 'core values of Switzerland', such as federalism, independence, participatory democracy and political neutrality, ideals positioned in contrast to Soviet authoritarianism. Other cultural factors made bunkers a logical strategy. Compared to the United States, Berger added, where during the cold war going underground could be viewed scornfully as weak or culturally 'un-American', in Swiss military history, the mountains and the subterranean were always seen as a 'safe space'. To expand access to civilian bunkers, however, the government first had to sell the public on the extraordinary effort; in 1945, only about 30% of the Swiss population had access to a shelter. Early propaganda videos and cartoons from the 1950s and 1960s featured the Murmeltier, or marmot, drawn or filmed at peace among alpine wildflowers – then quickly ducking into its hovel at the sight of an eagle or other threat passing overhead. A later video dating to the 1960s, shown on the Sonnenberg tour, features mountain vistas, couples dancing at the disco and nuclear families sharing a peaceful meal around a red checkered tablecloth. A voiceover acknowledges that while war and crisis may seem 'far away' and confined 'to the TV', and that while it may seem as if the worst that could fall from Swiss skies is a 'flowerpot' from someone's window box, the threat of war is in fact all too real. Early implementation of the 1963 policy to build shelters in new buildings was met with little protest; rare critics could be cast as Russian sympathisers or communists. With the rise of the peace movements in the 70s and 80s, however, more people began to question whether nuclear bunkers were necessary – or practical. One of the most enduring criticisms is whether bunkers in fact enable nuclear war: what's to stop countries from using the nuclear option if it is, in fact, survivable? In the late 80s, sudden, human-made disasters like the meltdown of the Chornobyl nuclear facility in Ukraine in 1986, or the major chemical spill at the Sandoz pharmaceutical plant outside Basel that same year, made bunkers seem even more suspect and obsolete, shifting the focus of civil protection from war to disaster preparedness. Along with Finland, Switzerland is also a top exporter of bunker design and knowhow, providing plans, construction materials and other expertise that can expose firms to geopolitically motivated critiques. In 2003, at the start of the Iraq war, the Swiss firm Zellweger Luwa, which produces ventilation systems, came under fire for having taken on Saddam Hussein as a client in the 80s. The debate has continued to wax and wane according to the public perception of the threats. In 2011, just before a tsunami engulfed the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, the Swiss parliament had discussed discontinuing the 1963 shelter mandate. After the Fukushima meltdown, however, the existing policy was continued. The horrors in Ukraine and Gaza have had a similar effect on public opinion. Schelbert, the guide, has noticed that today visitors to Sonnenberg, once sceptical of the value of maintaining bunkers in a land as peaceful and insulated from crisis as Switzerland, are now more likely to see them as a 'privilege', even a luxury. Public messaging accords with this new attitude. Today, official communications focus on promoting Switzerland's 'culture of preparedness' – and remind the Swiss public that while spending money on shelters is unpopular during peacetime, continual maintenance is essential for readiness in the event of war. In a small cell crammed with civilian sleeper bunks meant to model how closely packed people would have been in a shelter like Sonnenberg, I ducked into a lower berth. It was as comfortable as a hammock, and more comfortable than a couchette on a night train. It was made from green mesh slung across metal supports and came complete with a pillow and thick wool blanket. Schelbert urged us to imagine this same space overwhelmed with screaming, crying, terrified people with no more than 1 sq metre to call their own. I closed my eyes. I couldn't. The entire time I was underground, it was impossible to shake off a latent sense of the absurd. The planning was exceptional, the engineering impressive; Swiss civil protection services thought of everything. But to house an entire nation underground for even a few days is akin to trying to colonise the moon. There are so many unknowns that even the most brilliant and thorough plans can easily fail. As, in the case of the Sonnenberg trial run in 1987, they did. Exiting back into the sunlight, it was hard not to feel, therefore, that deterrence, diplomacy and nonproliferation are more urgent than ever. Yet supporters of diplomacy are now fighting a losing battle, especially along the transatlantic axis. When I mentioned that I'm American, one person pulled up screenshots, shown on the local news, of the invasive letters Elon Musk's Doge initiative had sent to European universities that have received American grants or funding, with profound ripple effects for researchers in Switzerland and elsewhere. When two visitors avoided speaking to me, I wondered, for a fleeting moment, whether it had been a mistake to mention that I'm an 'amerikanische Journalistin'. Then I reminded myself that's just the paranoia talking – the slow creep of a nationalist strain of thought that conflates individuals with their passports, and which I'd rather resist. If there was one impression that the Swiss civil protection system leaves, it's that impulsiveness is no way to deal with a crisis, and that the very best civilian protection programme is one whose bunkers need never be used. The opposite tack translates to a world ruled by belligerence, unpredictability and close calls – a world of 'America first', where diplomacy is reduced to an outrageous race to press the red button before your enemy can. An earlier version of this piece appeared in the Dial Listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here.
BBC News
21-05-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Injured O'Sullivan-Jones set for Wales Euros role
Manager Rhian Wilkinson says goalkeeper Laura O'Sullivan-Jones will have a role with Wales at Euro 2025 despite missing the tournament due to injury.O'Sullivan Jones, 33, has sustained an ACL injury which has ruled her out of the July tournament in Switzerland - Wales' first ever appearance at a major women's Gwalia United player has won 59 international caps since making her Wales debut in 2005. When asked if O'Sullivan-Jones will still travel to Switzerland with the team this summer, Wilkinson said: "She will be there."Wilkinson added: "I think there are certain players that whatever their role in Switzerland - whether they're on the team, whether they're a training player or whether they can't be there - have to be there in Switzerland in one capacity or another".O'Sullivan-Jones was unlikely to start Wales' opening match against the Netherlands in Lucerne on 5 July but was expected to be involved as a squad keepers Olivia Clark and Safia Middleton-Patel have been the preferred choices during the Nations League campaign. "There are players that grab the headlines with their injuries because they are front and centre," added Wilkinson."Her [O'Sullivan-Jones] representing Wales has been an integral piece of the success of this team."Every time I name a roster and her name is not on it, I know that her heart has broken."She's not happy just sitting as the second or third string keeper but she does it for the betterment of the team and has done it with such grace and leadership."To see her have that injury was really heartbreaking. She is a phenomenal woman who is going to do great things in the sport once she's back."But it really is one of those reminders that things can change very quickly and we will miss her in Switzerland and hope that she'll be joining us in a different way".
