23 July, 2013: Fire destroys village Kindergarten; 21 year-old stabbed by his girlfriend; Planned tram line extension covered in doubt; Border guards catch thieving duo in flagranti

A village Kindergarten in Möhlin in Canton Aargau has been completely destroyed by fire. Residents first noticed dense smoke coming from the Ängerlikiddies school at about half past five yesterday afternoon. Despite a swift turnout of some 70 firefighters from the Möhlin and Rheinfelden brigades, they weren’t able extinguish the blaze before the entire wooden building had burnt to the ground.

Nobody was injured in the blaze which is estimated to have caused a million francs’ worth of damage. Investigators are now looking into what started the fire.

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 The great and good of Basel, encouraged by the growing success of the city’s trade exhibitions, such as MUBA and Basel World, now want to go one better and organise professional conventions here as well.

Last year Basel hosted  23 congresses, attracting more than 22,000 visitors to the city.

Now, flushed with excitement by this popularity, and of course the business these well-heeled visitors bring to local restaurants and hotels, the City’s government is now keen to make concrete plans to attract a new sort of customer. Over the next few weeks they’ll be setting aside funds needed to pitch more aggressively for a larger slice of this increasingly lucrative international pie.

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 Police and an ambulance called to an incident in an apartment buildingin Basel last Thursday night were greeted by the sight of a 21-year-old man with serious knife wounds. It seems he and a woman had earlier had an argument which ended when the 26-year-old picked up the knife and stabbed him. She alerted the emergency services shortly before 7 p.m. who then had to evacuate the man through an upper floor window of the building in Hebelstrasse near the University, in order to get him to hospital where he received emergency treatment.

The woman was arrested pending a full investigation of the incident.

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 A report just out from Bern is causing some concern with transport officials in both Basel Stadt and neighbouring Alsace over the planned tram line 3 extension to St. Louis.

The Swiss Government has decided to review a list of transport projects worth a total of more than 1 point 6 billion francs, including the 67 million francs it had planned to provide for the extended tram route. Until recently the line 3 extension, which would see trams running all the way to the St. Louis railway station via Bourgfelden, had been listed as priority "A", guaranteeing funding and a timetable for construction in partnership with the Alsace region. However, the new report has now effectively downgraded this project to priority "B", meaning funds will probably not be available and the whole extension could be shelved for the foreseeable future.

France could well hold back on providing its share of the funding should Switzerland refuse to join in the project. This now begs the question, if the Swiss state won´t come to the party with 67 million francs should the people of Basel pay for it themselves to ensure the new, longer tram route gets built on time?

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 As we reported last week, this year’s week-long Basel Tattoo is now well underway.

In a bold new move this year, the Tattoo featured 60 horses from British and Italian regiments and police forces. Also making their debut were 5 shiny new road sweepers belonging to the City that neatly pirouetted in formation around the parade ground - cleaning up after the horses after they had, shall we say, finished.

The annual show has become increasingly popular throughout Switzerland and overseas, and is second only in size to the world’s largest event of its kind - held every summer in Edinburgh. And this despite a more organised opposition mounted by some residents living close to the Kaserne in Klein-Basel. Although they didn’t get the ban they were looking for, they did manage to dampen enthusiasm just a bit. For most of the 8 years since the event was first launched, tickets have been completely sold out well before the first night. As English Show listeners will remember from our report last week, this year the organisers were left with quite a few thousand still unsold. A quick check on the website shows that latecomers have hoovered up most of the remaining tickets, with just a few left for this Saturday’s early evening show – the last day of the 2013 event.

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Border guards in Basel whose job it is to protect the Swiss frontier must be celebrating after the luckiest of incidents played out yesterday evening on a train standing in the City’s SBB main rail station.

A patrol of sharp-eyed officers spotted two men in the train in the act of rifling through the handbag of a woman they had just robbed.

In a text-book operation, they challenged the two 56 year-olds. One made a break for it, but was caught and arrested shortly after. One of the men was Bosnian, with his accomplice coming from Croatia. They were both handed over to police who say that one had already been banned from re-entering Switzerland following a previous brush with the law.

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