NewsTracker Answers for week of Oct. 18, 2010

Q: Swiss engineers drilling the world's longest tunnel broke through the last section of rock last week, crowning 14 years of work. Where is Switzerland?

Circle the area on this map

Q: The tunnel runs under the mountain range that runs through Switzerland. What is the name of those mountains?

A. Alps

B. Black Forest

C. Carpathians

D. Urals

A. The Alps are a high mountain range running across the central-south of Switzerland, comprising about 60 percent of the country's total area.

Q: When it opens in 2016, the 35-mile rail tunnel is expected to revolutionize transport across Europe, providing a high-speed link between the north and south of the continent. It will slash travel time as much as one-and-a-half hours between Milan to the south and Switzerland's largest city . . .

A. Basel

B. Bern

C. Geneva

D. Zurich

D. Zurich is Switzerland's largest city with a population of 365,098. Geneva is the second largest city, and Bern is the capital.

Q: Where is Milan located?

A. Southern Switzerland

B. Southeastern France

C. Northern Italy

D. Western Austria

C. Switzerland is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. The Milan metropolitan area is the largest in Italy,

Q: Switzerland's Gotthard tunnel is longer than the 33-mile tunnel linking the islands of Hokkaido and Honshu in . . .

A. Hawaii

B. The Philippines

C. China

D. Japan

D. The Seikan Tunnel links Japan's two largest islands and is the deepest rail tunnel in the world.