GenevaLunch

swissinfo - A team at Zurich University, working with scientists in Sweden and Denmark, Thursday published in the New England Journal of Medicine their findings that anakinra, a medicine used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, blocks the action of Interleukin-1 beta, which has a key role in diabetes type 2.

Diabetes type 2 affects 90% of diabetics and is on the rise worldwide, especially in older people. It is linked in particular to excess weight and can lead to a variety of other health problems. In the US, national statistics show that 7% of the population has diabetes. According to the World Health Organization diabetes accounts for 5% of deaths globally every year and the number of cases is set to increase by 50% in the next 10 years unless urgent action is taken. (continue reading)→

TSR, Fre - The board of Jelmoli, a real estate and commercial stores group, is recommending that shareholders be paid SFr50 dividends per share, after 2006 results were published. The company's net profits rose nearly 10% to 180 million francs, with turnover up 4.1% to SFr1.08 billion. (continue reading)→

Le Matin, Fre - The autoroute heading into Zurich from Bern was closed for three hours Tuesday following an accident that sent two people, including a police officer, to the hospital and totalled three cars. The accident occurred near Dietikon when a man driving on the shoulder of the road for reasons that are not clear plowed into the back of a car stopped by police. The impact was so great that the police car, stationed in front of the stopped car, was "catapulted" 10 metres. (continue reading)→

TSR, Fre - The door slammed Saturday night, 31 March, at midnight on requests for tickets to the Euro 08 football championship games - with 10.3 million tickets requested by 589,000 people. UEFA will now hold a notarized lottery within two weeks for the 33% of the 1.05 million tickets available for this sale. Anyone who ordered tickets will be informed by the end of April whether or not they will have them.

UEFA says the orders were 18 times greater than four years ago for the games in Portugal and nearly as high as for the FIFA world championship (10.8m) in Germany in 2006. (continue reading)→

Le Temps, Fre - NZZ, the parent company of Switzerland's grand old lady of newspapers, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, closed 2006 with profits up 130% to SFr31.3 million. The number of copies printed of the newspaper itself continued to fall, in line with other Swiss newspapers, with the exception of the Sunday edition of the paper, which has increased its circulation. Advertising revenues for the Sunday paper were up 58%. (continue reading)→