The Habsburgs founded a number of monasteries ( with some structures enduring, e. g., in Wettingen and Muri ), the closing of which by the government in 1841 was a contributing factor to the outbreak of the Swiss civil war – the " Sonderbund War " – in 1847.

2008 has brought announcements of new or additional sales to Singapore, Finland, Morocco and South Korea ; in December 2010 the Swiss government requested 150 AIM-120C-7 missiles.

The government of Libya subsequently put a boycott on Swiss imports, reduced flights between Libya and Switzerland, stopped issuing visas to Swiss citizens, recalled diplomats from Bern, and forced all Swiss companies such as ABB and Nestlé to close offices.

On September 9, 2007 the Swiss government acknowledged the " racist thinking " of Agassiz but declined to rename the Agassizhorn summit.

The Swiss were victorious, and the Swiss Confederacy was proclaimed, and Switzerland has retained a republican form of government to the present.

In addition to the centralization of the Swiss government, the new Constitution also included protections for trade and other progressive reform measures.

In the 1990s, controversy over a class-action lawsuit brought in Brooklyn, New York over Jewish assets in Holocaust-era bank accounts prompted the Swiss government to commission the most recent and authoritative study of Switzerland's interaction with the Nazi regime.

The five parties represented in the Federal Council are generally called the government parties: Free Democratic Party, Social Democratic Party, Christian Democratic Party, Swiss People's Party, and Conservative Democratic Party of Switzerland.

The rightist Swiss People's Party ( SVP ), traditionally the junior partner in the four-party coalition government, more than doubled its voting share from 11. 0 % in 1987 to 22. 5 % in 1999, thus overtaking its three coalition partners.

The Swiss Federal Constitution limits federal influence in the formulation of domestic policy and emphasizes the roles of private enterprise and cantonal government.

* Swiss government site ( in English )

On 8 January 2006, the Swiss newspaper Sonntagsblick ( Sunday edition of the Blick newspaper ) published a secret report produced by the Swiss government using data intercepted by Onyx.

The Swiss government did not officially confirm the existence of the report, but started a judiciary procedure for leakage of secret documents against the newspaper on 9 January 2006.

The Swiss government thought that the aim of an invasion of Switzerland would be to control the economically important transport routes through the Swiss Alps, namely the Gotthard, the Simplon and Great St. Bernard passes, because Switzerland does not possess any significant natural resources.

The Swiss government on June 25, 2003, eased most of the sanctions against the Republic of Iraq in accord with UN Security Council Resolution ( UNSCR ) 1483.

In 1992 Swiss voters approved membership in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, but later that year rejected the European Economic Area agreement, which the government viewed as a first step toward European Union membership.

The Swiss electorate rejected a government proposition to deploy Swiss troops as UN peacekeepers ( the Blue Helmets ) in 1994.

Gustloff, who worked as a Swiss government meteorologist, joined the NSDAP in 1929 and put much effort in the distribution of the antisemitic book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to the point that members of the Swiss Jewish community sued the book's distributor, the Swiss branch of the German Nazi Party, for libel.

This is an unsolved problem which probably has never been seriously investigated, although one frequently hears the comment that we have insufficient specialists of the kind who can compete with the Germans or Swiss, for example, in precision machinery and mathematics, or the Finns in geochemistry.

One of Nikita Khrushchev's most enthusiastic eulogizers, the U.S.S.R.'s daily Izvestia, enterprisingly interviewed Red-prone Comedian Charlie Chaplin at his Swiss villa, where he has been in self-exile since 1952.

Statistically, Aarau has the most jobs per capita of any Swiss city.

The Bahamas has a few notable industrial firms: the Freeport pharmaceutical firm, PFC Bahamas ( formerly Syntex ), which recently streamlined its production and was purchased by the Swiss pharmaceutical firm Roche ; the BORCO oil facility, also in Freeport, which transships oil in the region ; the Commonwealth Brewery in Nassau, which produces Heineken, Guinness, and Kalik beers ; and Bacardi Corp., which distills rum in Nassau for shipment to the U. S. and European markets.

Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany.

It has the oldest university of the Swiss Confederation ( 1460 ).

The Swiss chemical industry operates largely from Basel, and Basel also has a large pharmaceutical industry.

Since then, the Swiss People's Party has moved to the extreme right and is no longer considered to be conservative.

The Anti-Defamation League has accused them of manipulating issues such as immigration, Swiss neutrality and welfare benefits, awakening anti-Semitism and racism.

It has inspired a new genre, the Robinsonade as works like Johann David Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson ( 1812 ) adapt its premise and has provoked modern postcolonial responses, including J. M. Coetzee's Foe ( 1986 ) and Michel Tournier's Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique ( in English, Friday ) ( 1967 ).

His reference to gold washing in rivers has been taken as evidence for an early presence of the Helvetii in the Swiss plateau, with the Emme as being one of the gold-yielding rivers mentioned by Poseidonios.

Other products are Cenovis, a Swiss spread and since 1913, Vegex, a similar autolyzed yeast product has been available in the USA.

Article 58. 1 of the April 18, 1999, Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation ( official, French version ) provides that " Switzerland has an army.

For example, Switzerland is constitutionally a confederation of cantons, and has four official languages, but it has also a ' Swiss ' national identity, a national history and a classic national hero, Wilhelm Tell.

In modern times, the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung defined the mythological figure of Proteus as a personification of the unconscious, who, because of his gift of prophecy and shape-changing, has much in common with the central but elusive figure of alchemy, Mercurius.

A halberd ( or Swiss voulge ) is a two-handed pole weapon that came to prominent use during the 14th and 15th centuries but has continued in use as a ceremonial weapon to the present day.

Swiss cheese has a savory, but not very sharp, taste.

Since 1848, the Swiss Confederation has been a federal state of relatively autonomous cantons, some of which have a history of confederacy that goes back more than 700 years, arguably putting them among the world's oldest surviving republics.

From then, and over much of the 20th century, continuous political, economic, and social improvement has characterized Swiss history.

The Winter Olympic Games have been hosted in the Swiss, French, Italian and Austrian Alps.

Alcott had been influenced by educational philosophy of the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and even renamed his school " The Cheshire Pestalozzi School ". His style attracted the attention of Samuel Joseph May, who introduced Alcott to his sister Abby May.

" By about 15: 00 the Swiss had been pushed out of the village into the marshes beyond.

In September 2005, Nigeria, with the assistance of the World Bank, began to recover US $ 458 million of illicit funds that had been deposited in Swiss banks by the late military dictator Sani Abacha, who ruled Nigeria from 1993 to 1998.

Swiss chiropractors have been found to treat conditions in a similar way to their international counterparts while enjoying a greater number of medical specialist referrals.

However, the nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt noted that Jean Buridan had climbed the same mountain a few years before, and ascents accomplished during the Middle Ages have been recorded, including that of Anno II, Archbishop of Cologne.

Many traces of it have been found in the Swiss lake-dwellings.

The Josty company had been founded in 1793 by two Swiss brothers, Johann and Daniel Josty, who had emigrated to Berlin from Sils in Switzerland and set up a bakery from which the café was a 1796 offshoot.

There have been four Generals in Swiss history:

The Swiss Air Force has been traditionally a militia-based service, including its pilots, with an inventory of approximately 456 aircraft whose lengthy service lives ( many for more than 30 years ) overlapped several eras.

However, over the years, the Swiss army has been part of several peacekeeping missions around the world.

Since the responsibilities of the NNSC have been much reduced over the past few years, only five people are still part of the Swiss delegation, which is located near the Korean DMZ.

Since 1970, the Pontifical Swiss Guard has been the only active military of the Vatican City.

Other major currencies except the Swiss franc have been declining relative to the yen.

The Swiss have won more medals than any other nation, and since the 1990s Germans have been dominant in international competition.

Albanian asphalt from Selenice in Southern Albania is well known for its durability as it has been used on some Swiss motorways.

Meanwhile, evidence of lentil cultivation has also been found in Egyptian pyramids and dry pea seeds have been discovered in a Swiss village that are believed to date back to the Stone Age.

However, this claim has been disputed by historians who cite the existence of detailed invasion plans, which rated the overall Swiss defense capacity as low.