Prison for SocialMedia Rapists; Effort to Engage Young Voters Violence in Basel; Language Immersion for young Baselers; Swiss Idyll shattered in murder/suicide

in October  2013 three men aged 18-20 at the time, sexually coerced and raped a highly intoxicated woman.  As if their crime was not enough, they documented it and distributed the videos to their friends via SMS and the Whatsapp smartphone application.  Today, justice was handed down as the men appeared before chief justice dominik kiener.  The men were ordered to serve three years in prison each and pay a 20000 franc fine as satisfaction of their criminal act.  The judge expressed his displeasure  at the craven behavior of the men for having documented an act which the victim herself in fact could not remember.    ******************************************************************************   Easy vote was a project started to help with voter engagement by employing the possibility of on-line and phone-in voting on referendums and elections- methods more familiar and comfortable for the younger generation of swiss citizens.  strikingly however, one of the latest studies conducted by the organization has found that more than 2/3 of young citizens avoid political elections all together because of an unfamiliarity with issues and candidates.  In an effort to address this issue and engage the disaffected youth, the easy vote process will be utilized to allow prospective voters to directly ask questions from candidates, and rate their responses in real-time.  The project began late last week and is slated to run unitl November 9.  So far, the program has generated a number of high importance issues for the youngsters: specifically, a reduction of the voting age to 16, and engagement with school curricula selection.  The federal social insurance office, which is funding the easy vote project hopes to use this pilot project as a starting point for establishing a nation-wide young voter engagement program.  

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Violence visited Basel this week when two women were killed and one man was seriously injured in attacks around Wildensteinerstrasse. The attacks occurred on Monday afternoon, with one woman found dead in a multi-family home, while another body was discovered in a Wildensteinerstrasse apartment. Riot police were called to the scene where an alleged perpetrator was detained. Despite the twin crime scenes, police believe the attacks are linked, although the causes of death are not yet known.

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A program run by the Education department of Basel for the last year sought to intervene with intense german language support for 3 year olds of foreign families in the swiss school system.  the program has affected approximately 35% of all basler children entering kindergarten and part time play groups.  the language exposure is meant to be immersive which appears to have the greatest and most positive impact on the children, rather than classroom type language instruction.  the program currently has no funding to continue, and at a cost of approximately 3800 chf per student, the department of education is having a long look at the costs and benefits.

 

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The picturesque Swiss alps town of Wilderswill has been rocked this week with the death of three people in an apparent murder suicide.

Police were called to the sleepy town early yesterday morning where the bodies of three people were found. The deceased include a woman, her partner and a jealous ex-husband, and earlier reports that a child was among those dead has been retracted. A crime scene remains in place, with train carriages and buses placed around the area to block visibility of a nearby school.