Long road to Swiss citizenship
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The state wants to make becoming Swiss easier but not everyone agrees, says the BBC's Imogen Foulkes.
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GENEVA  - Dashing the chance for almost 200,000 youngsters to get citizenship easily, voters in this Alpine country rejected two government proposals to loosen tough naturalization rules in a referendum Sunday.
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Neutral Switzerland, home to   humanitarian agencies and the International Committee of the   Red Cross, on Sunday voted heavily in favor of making it harder   for asylum-seekers to gain entry to the rich Alpine state.
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Swiss voters rejected controversial reforms making it easier for second and third generation immigrants in Switzerland to gain citizenship, official results in a referendum showed.
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President Jacques Chirac passed his 72nd birthday yesterday locked in a struggle to maintain his relevance in the face of an intraparty challenge and continuing friction with the world's only superpower.
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Germany is grappling with an unexpected  consequence of the industrialized world's aging population: how  to integrate its immigrant pensioners.
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ORADEA, Romania Like it or not, Frenc Alafi could become a European Union passport holder sooner than he had expected. The 43-year-old tailor from this city situated just inside Romania&#39;s Hungarian border
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Switzerland on Wednesday returned to Taiwan 34 million dollars out of a total 520 million dollars (391 million euros) frozen in Swiss banks following a giant corruption scandal involving the sale of French frigates to Taipei.
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HONG KONG - A German art student tried to join a Chinese dynasty's army - but he volunteered centuries too late.
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Big gains on the right and left in Swiss elections point to some of the bizarre contradictions in this Alpine nation that takes pride in being a cradle of humanitarian work, yet whose famed neutrality is often a mask for stubborn insularity.
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Neutral Switzerland, home to   humanitarian agencies and the International Committee of the   Red Cross, voted by a big majority on Sunday to make it harder   for asylum-seekers to gain entry to the rich Alpine state.
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Swiss voters head to the polls to decide whether the country should impose more restrictive asylum laws.
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The Swiss government is facing calls to take a more active role to ensure the success of 2008 European football championships.
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Voters in Switzerland  --  where more than one in five is a foreigner  --  rejected proposals to liberalize tough rules on citizenship in a national referendum Sunday.
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GENEVA, Sept. 24 -- Swiss voters ratified new asylum and immigration laws Sunday that make it more difficult for refugees to receive assistance and effectively block non-European unskilled workers from entering the country.
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ZURICH (SwissInfo) - Switzerland's military justice system is investigating a Swiss citizen who worked for the controversial U.S. security firm Blackwater in Iraq. Authorities are looking into whether the man broke a law that bars the Swiss from working for foreign military services, an official said on Tuesday. Switzerland started its probe in May, said Frank Zellweger, spokesman for the Swiss military justice system. If the judiciary rules that employment for Blackwater constitutes military service, the man - referred to by Swiss television only as "Mike" - could receive a prison term of up to three years or a fine. He declined to identify the Swiss national, citing the country's strict privacy rules.  Switzerland, which was famous in the Middle Ages for sending mercenaries throughout Europe, strictly prohibits service in a foreign military.
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The BBC's Imogen Foulkes reports on the Swiss mood after voters turned down plans to relax strict citizenship laws.