License Plate Lassie; Highway Honey; Natural Disasters Hit Insurer

News For 25 May 2021

Like Lassie, the celebrity dog of movie fame that always found its way home, a vanity license plate bearing the insignia BL-1 has found its way back to its owner after 5 years.  Vanity license plates in Switzerland are much sought after, especially if they bear very low numbers - the number one, of course being the holy grail.  Apparently, this specific plate went missing in 2016, having been pried off of the car bearing it, despite additional fasteners and reinforcement for the mounting.  An international search ensued, but ultimately, it was returned last week via Swiss Post, with an anonymous letter apologizing, and, saying it had been found in the vacated room of a now-gone flatmate.  According to the overjoyed owner of the plate, this was not even the first time the plate had gone missing, having been stolen twice before.

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On Thursday, the Basel-Landschaft police were abuzz with an unusual mission. A colony of bees was found lost on the A18 in Reinach BL - a road which has in excess of 20,000 vehicles per day. The colony of bees was spotted in one of the lanes on the highway by a passing police car, who stopped to inspect the unusual find. It quickly became clear that there were hundreds of bees that needed rescuing, so the area was secured by the police and a specialist bee keeper was called to the scene. Pictures and videos were uploaded to Facebook by the police, which generated a lot of interest and amusement by locals. It remains a mystery as to how the bees became stranded on the autobahn, but they were successfully removed and relocated to a safer place.  The outcome remains to BEE seen.  

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The number of natural phenomena causing property damage increased from 2203 to 5482 last year in Basel Land.  All of this lightning, fire, flooding has left a painful mark on the operating results of the Basellandschaftliche Gebäudeversicherung (BGV) Basel Land's largest insurer of property.  The significant increase in damage claims has resulted in an operating loss of 7.6 million francs for the 2020 fiscal year.  Thanks to successful investing activities and strong capital markets, the insurer was, however, able to report a net profit for the year as a result of gains in its investment portfolio.