On a Swiss Roll

A cracker of a news story here that I first discovered this morning in France's only Sunday newspaper, the snappily-titled Le Journal du dimanche, and which has since been confirmed by the New York Times. Swiss military personnel, whilst on manoeuvres earlier this week, got lost and accidentally invaded their tiny eastern neighbour Lichtenstein, an infraction made doubly embarrassing by the fact that the army of this most neutral of countries is barred by law from operating outside of Swiss territory. The Lichtensteiners, who possess no army of their own, are not unduly worried by the mistake, though a similar thing did happen in 1989, when adverse weather conditions caused shells launched by the Swiss as part of a training routine to land down on a section of forest in Lichtenstein. So much for the famed Swiss precision.