A look at some of the world's longest railway tunnels

June 01, 2016

GENEVA (AP) — Capping a mammoth 17-year, $12 billion project, Switzerland has built the world's longest railway tunnel: The Gotthard Base Tunnel. Here's a look at it and others among the longest railway tunnels in the world.

GOTTHARD BASE TUNNEL, Switzerland

The inauguration of the 57-kilometer (35.4-mile) Gotthard Base Tunnel through the Alps and central Switzerland drew the leaders of France, Germany and Italy for the celebration Wednesday. At its maximum point, the tunnel is more than 2.3 kilometers (1.4 miles) underground, deeper than any other rail tunnel. The 17-year project cost $12 billion but is expected to reap benefits across Europe for years, including faster travel between Italy and points north and less reliance on trucks that were polluting the Swiss Alps air.

SEIKAN TUNNEL, Japan

This tunnel in Japan reigned as the world's longest railway tunnel for nearly 30 years. It travels 53.9 kilometers (33.5 miles) under the Tsugaru Straits, linking the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. While the Gotthard goes deepest underground, Seikan hits the lowest elevation for a tunnel — 240 meters (790 feet) below sea level.

CHANNEL TUNNEL, between Britain and France

More than 13,000 workers took over five years to complete this 50.5-kilometer (31.4-mile) undersea tunnel between Britain and France, which was inaugurated in May 1994. The Channel Tunnel runs as deep as 75 meters (250 feet) below sea level and had been Europe's longest tunnel until the Gotthard Base Tunnel came along.

LOETSCHBERG BASE TUNNEL, Switzerland

Inaugurated in 2007, the second-longest Swiss tunnel runs for 34.6 kilometers (21 miles) and is part of the same three-tunnel project in Switzerland as the Gotthard Base Tunnel to its east.

GUADARRAMA TUNNEL, Spain

This 28.4-kilometer (17.7-mile) tunnel in Spain was inaugurated in 2005 after about 32 months of construction. It links Madrid, the capital, with northwestern Spain.

Rhoda Shafner contributed from New York.

Swiss inaugurate $12 billion rail tunnel, world's longest

June 01, 2016

GENEVA (AP) — Just like Hannibal in ancient times, Swiss engineers have conquered the Alps. More than 2,200 years after the commander from the ancient North African civilization of Carthage led his army of elephants and troops over Europe's highest mountain chain, the Swiss have completed another gargantuan task: Burrowing the world's longest railway tunnel under the Swiss Alps to improve European trade and travel.

European dignitaries on Wednesday inaugurated the 57-kilometer (35.4-mile) Gotthard Railway Tunnel, a major engineering achievement deep under the Alps' snow-capped peaks. It took 17 years to build at a cost of 12.2 billion Swiss francs ($12 billion) — but workers kept to a key Swiss tradition and brought the massive project in on time and on budget.

Many tunnels crisscross the Swiss Alps. The Gotthard Pass itself already has two — the first, also for trains, was built in 1882. But the Gotthard base tunnel is a record-setter eclipsing Japan's 53.8-kilometer (33.4-mile) Seikan Tunnel as the world's longest — and it also bores deeper than any other tunnel, running about 2.3 kilometers (1.4 miles) underground at its maximum depth.

The tube bores through the Gotthard massif that includes the 2,500-meter (8,200-foot) Piz Vatgira on the way to Italy. It is part of a broader, multi-tunnel project to shift the haulage of goods from roads to rails amid concerns that heavy trucks are destroying Switzerland's pristine Alpine landscape.

The tunnel's impact will be felt across Europe for decades. The thoroughfare aims to cut travel times, ease roadway traffic and reduce the air pollution spewed from trucks traveling between Europe's north and south. Set to open for commercial service in December, the two-way tunnel can handle up to 260 freight trains and 65 passenger trains per day.

Swiss planners have dreamt of such a tunnel for decades, and Gotthard's 17 years of construction don't include the many years spent to scope out suitable paths. Switzerland pulled out all the stops for Wednesday's inauguration. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Francois Hollande of France and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi all came to southern Switzerland for an upbeat, glitzy celebration featuring musical bands, dancers and even a theme song for the tunnel.

Under purple neon lights, performers dressed in orange miners' suits and protective helmets danced atop a moving rail car, while others in skimpy outfits feigned wrestling and trapeze artists hung from chains or ropes.

The tunnel runs between the German-speaking Swiss town of Erstfeld in the north to the Italian-speaking town of Bodio in the south, cutting through central Switzerland. The tunnel journey takes about 20 minutes for passenger trains.

Split-screen TV images Wednesday showed two trains in opposite directions entering and leaving the tunnel entrances nearly simultaneously. The project, funded in part by Swiss taxpayers and fees on trucks, received financial support and industrial know-how from around the European Union. Although Switzerland isn't one of the bloc's 28 members, the EU railway network gets a big boost from this shortcut through the Alps, notably on the route from Germany to Italy.

"The new tunnel fits into the European railway freight corridor, which links Rotterdam and Genoa" — key ports in the Netherlands and Italy, said Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann. "Aside from saving time, more merchandise can be carried through the Alps."

A test run by the EU leaders on Wednesday turned into a sort of mini-summit beneath real Alpine summits: Merkel, Renzi, Hollande and Schneider-Ammann sat face-to-face for a ride in first class through the tunnel. A band played Rossini's "William Tell Overture" after they arrived.

Merkel said it was a "wonderful feeling" to be on the train. Though "more than 2,000 meters of rocks" were above, she said she felt a "feeling of security, because I believe in the security of the Swiss civil engineers."

She congratulated the punctual Swiss and noted how costs were kept within targets. "That's something Germany still needs to strive for," she added Hollande, host of the U.N. climate change summit held in Paris last year, pointed to the tunnel's environmental benefits.

"You have created a great European infrastructure," Hollande said at the tunnel's southern exit. "It will be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, redirect traffic from the road to rail and move passengers and goods faster."

He also used the chance to remind Britons of the unity that the tunnel under the English Channel has brought between Britain and the continent — comments that came just weeks before Britons vote June 23 on whether to stay in the EU or leave.

"More than 20 years ago, a construction was completed between France and the United Kingdom: The Channel Tunnel," Hollande said. "Since then, we are united like never before, and I hope the British remember that when the time comes."

Renzi echoed that connective symbolism, despite the current discord in the EU over how to best handle a surge of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. "At a time when some are thinking about building walls ... today Switzerland gives us a beautiful signal about building a tunnel, connecting, and making chances for meeting," Renzi said.

Swiss forces took no chances with security for the inauguration. Almost 2,000 additional Swiss troops were called, helicopters buzzed overhead and air space restrictions were put over the tunnel area.

Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.

Polish justice minister revives Polanski extradition drive

May 31, 2016

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's justice minister on Tuesday revived an effort to have filmmaker Roman Polanski extradited to the U.S., where he is wanted in a nearly 40-year-old case involving sex with a minor.

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro's office said he asked Poland's Supreme Court to annul a ruling in October by a court in Krakow which found that Polish law forbids Polanski's extradition. In November, prosecutors said they found no grounds to challenge the decision.

Ziobro took office late last year, after the ruling, as part of a new conservative government. The minister, who is also the country's chief prosecutor, argues that celebrity status is shielding Oscar-winning director Polanski in Poland, where he grew up and which he often visits.

The Krakow court's decision was at odds with a Polish-U.S. extradition agreement, Ziobro's office argued in a statement. It said that, "according to the extradition agreement, the defendant should be handed over to the United States."

The director pleaded guilty in 1977 to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot in Los Angeles. In a deal with the judge, he served 42 days in prison, but then fled the U.S. fearing the judge would have him imprisoned again for much longer.

The U.S. has been seeking to bring Polanski back and put him before a court. Last year, the Krakow judge ruling on the case found that Polanski served his punishment in confinement in the U.S., and later for 10 months — partly under house arrest — in Switzerland in 2009-2010 when the U.S. unsuccessfully sought his extradition there.

He argued that U.S. judges and prosecutors in the case violated legal procedures, broke the plea bargain in 1977, denied Polanski the right to proper defense and appeared biased. Jan Olszewski, Polanski's lawyer in Krakow, where the filmmaker has an apartment, told The Associated Press he had contacted the director about Ziobro's decision, which "we had been expecting."

"The court's verdict stands and Mr. Polanski is a free man," he said. "But I cannot exclude that this situation will affect his decisions as to visiting Poland." Paris-born Polanski, 83, has Polish and French citizenship. He lives in Paris but often visits Poland, where he is popular and is preparing to make a film.

Polanski's artistic output is deeply admired in Poland, where he spent his World War II childhood and later went into filmmaking. His mother died at the Auschwitz death camp. The filmmaker's movements are restricted by an Interpol warrant in effect in 188 countries, but he has avoided extradition by traveling only between France, Poland and Switzerland, which in 2011 rejected a U.S. request to extradite Polanski. Ziobro's move could now make Poland a risky destination for him.

Polanski won an Academy Award for best director for his 2002 film "The Pianist," which he filmed in Warsaw, and was nominated for his 1970s movies "Chinatown" and "Tess."

Polish Church leader appeals for end to political conflict

May 27, 2016

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The head of Poland's influential Catholic Church Episcopate has appealed for an end to a political conflict that has divided the nation and strained foreign ties. Poles are divided over the deep changes that the conservative Law and Justice party has been introducing ever since it won presidential and parliamentary elections last year. Some of the moves, like new legislation regulating the Constitutional Tribunal and more government control of state media, have drawn massive street protests and international censure. The European Union has urged Poland to find a solution soon, and a senior EU leader, Frans Timmermans pledged all necessary support, during his visit to Warsaw Tuesday. But no real steps have been taken to end the conflict, with the government and the opposition sticking to their positions. In opinion polls, Law and Justice is well ahead of any opposition party.

Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki said that the "state of tension" in Poland calls for a "national reconciliation." The remarks, made during Thursday's Corpus Christi procession in the western city of Poznan, were posted on the Episcopate's website on Friday.

"More often than not, social peace calls for mutual concessions, that are sometimes difficult and even painful," Gadecki said. "But the alternative is a senseless life in constant conflict that paralyzes social and public life."

The Church's opinion matters to the ruling party that promotes Catholic values and considers the Church a moral authority. The party largely owes its electoral victory to the Church which more or less directly supported its candidates across the nation.

Strikes test relevance of France's leading militant union

May 31, 2016

NOTRE-DAME-DE-GRAVENCHON, France (AP) — Outside Gate A of the ExxonMobil oil refinery, the strike was fizzling. Few had walked off the job. The complex was humming. As members of hard-left General Confederation of Labor gathered for a meeting, the event was crashed by counter-demonstrators.

"I want to be able to work," said Corinne Cavaille, 43, one of the 50-odd people who'd come to voice their opposition to the union, known by its French acronym CGT. Within an hour, the strike was off.

Despite all the disruption of this month's revolt against French labor reforms — fuel shortages, blocked bridges and street protests — there are signs that France's unions are losing power to mobilize workers. Some employees want less confrontational tactics, others worry about scaring away foreign employers.

For the CGT, the most militant of the two leading unions, it means that the fight against the government is also becoming a fight for relevance. "It's been about 20 years since unions have forced a government to back down," said Stephane Sirot, a historian of the French labor movement at the University of Cergy-Pontoise. "If the movement finishes once more in failure, it might make further mobilization more complicated."

May's fight is centered on the Socialist government's slate of proposals aimed at loosening restrictions on working hours, layoffs and compensation — all in the hope of bringing extra flexibility to France's arthritic job market.

Talk to anyone in Le Havre, an industrial town ringed by container ports and oil refineries which have been wracked by industrial action, and you'd get any number of reasons for the anger that's disrupted the country: record arms sales to foreign governments, clampdowns on civil liberties and an overall sense that France's ruling Socialists have betrayed their base.

For France's biggest militant union, it's also a way to keep its sway over the country's politics. "The CGT is losing steam," said Denis Jamet, a 65-year-old retiree making his way through Le Havre's unusually quiet city center Wednesday. "They're trying to stay relevant."

Only about 8 to 11 percent of the workforce in France is unionized. But their influence reaches beyond that, mainly through workplace elections of union representatives and the ability to negotiate industry-wide deals on behalf of non-unionized members. The recent ferment has a lot do with those elections, whose results are due in 2017, according to Dominique Andolfatto, a professor of political science at the University of Burgundy. The CGT, a union closely associated with the French Communist Party and the events of May 1968 — when the French government was nearly brought to its knees by a massive strike — is on the defensive in the face of gains by more dovish unions like French Confederation of Labor, known by its French acronym CFDT.

"These blockages are a sign of strength, but one can also argue that they're a sign of weakness," said Andolfatto. "If they were really that powerful they would do classic strikes, or massive protests. But they're having trouble mobilizing that many people."

Last week's debate outside the ExxonMobil gave some hint as to how globalization weighs against 1968-style action, even in a country with relatively modest levels of foreign direct investment. As strikers and counterdemonstrators hashed it out, one non-striker warned that "this refinery belongs to people in the United States. ... If we show this image, foreign companies are going to leave."

Another, who gave his name only as Denis, took the microphone to warn that the number of French refineries had fallen from 12 to only eight in the past decade. "If you block the refinery every time you have a grievance how many more are going to be left?" he said.

The CGT and its allies have had more success elsewhere. Le Havre's oil terminal, responsible for 40 percent of France's oil imports, has been either completely or partially closed by strike action since last week. On Thursday, at least 10,000 people, led by striking dock workers and the CGT, descended on Le Havre's City Hall with a percussion band, powerful fireworks and paint bombs, decorating the grey, 1950s building with red-blue-and-yellow splatters.

"We're going back to '68," said Yamina Berriouche, a 46-year-old protester who struggled to make herself heard over the drums and the explosions. "People are angry." Union-watchers say the fight between the CGT and the government is too close to call. On the one hand President Francois Hollande and his combative Prime Minister Manuel Valls are both unpopular and their reforms have divided the Socialist party. On the other hand, the more conciliatory CFDT has backed the reforms and many French people — like the Le Havre brasserie owner who said he'd like to go on strike against the strikers — are losing patience with the CGT and its mustachioed leader, Philippe Martinez.

Both sides have hinted at compromise in recent days as France's attention turns to the European Championship soccer tournament. "Martinez is a big soccer fan," said Andolfatto, the academic. "He doesn't want to screw up the Euros."

If Hollande and Valls fold, it will leave the Socialist Party hobbling into next year's presidential election, when it will be challenged by the right-wing Republicans and the far-right National Front. But if the CGT fails to win the withdrawal of the reforms, it risks accelerating its slide into second place behind its CFDT rival and "consolidating a more practical-minded unionism," according to Andolfatto.

He was quick to caution that still wouldn't mean the disappearance of France's notorious strikes. "There's a kind of revolutionary passion in France," said Andolfatto. "That won't be eradicated right away."

Heavy rain drenches swaths of France, disrupts French Open

May 31, 2016

PARIS (AP) — Heavy rain drenched parts of France on Tuesday, prompting flood warnings near the English Channel, causing more delays at the French Open and soaking tourists in Paris. Floods or heavy rain were forecast for about a quarter of the country Tuesday, from Normandy in the west to Burgundy southeast of Paris.

Rescue workers evacuated homes or ordered people to higher floors in the Pas-de-Calais region in the far north as rivers rose more than a meter (3 feet) in some spots, according to local authorities. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve urged people to exercise the "greatest caution." He said rescue services were deployed 4,500 times overnight and Tuesday morning to help people affected by rising water. No casualties were reported.

The national meteorological service, Meteo France, warned of possible exceptionally dangerous floods in the Loiret region, south of Paris. France has seen rain and storms now for several days. During a sudden storm Saturday, a lightning bolt struck a children's birthday party at a Paris park. Five of the 11 people hit remained hospitalized Tuesday.

All matches at the French Open were cancelled Monday, the first all-day shutdown in 16 years. Matches got underway on Tuesday, but play was soon disrupted again by rain. Canadian tourist Helene Gazaille, who was visiting Paris to celebrate her 50th birthday, was determined to have a good trip even if that meant stuffing plastic bags into her sneakers in the morning and using a hair dryer to dry them out at night.

Others like Tang Jiru, a 26-year-old Chinese groom-to-be, looked on the bright side of the gray weather. Posing for photos with his fiancee in the Trocadero's Warsaw fountains, across from the Eiffel Tower, he said he was pleased despite — or maybe even because of — the driving rain.

"The weather, it's like blue. Blue means romantic," he said, his white tie-tuxedo-and-waistcoat combo becoming increasingly wet as his 27-year-old bride-to-be, Liu Yuan Yuan, smiled in her rain-sodden wedding dress.

"Every time you take a photo, it's a sunny day. But it's a rainy day, (so) oh it's special!" said Tang, who is getting married in September in Shanghai but had flown to Paris for the express purpose of taking romantic photos.

Raphael Satter in Paris contributed to this report.

German, French leaders mark 100 years since Battle of Verdun

May 29, 2016

VERDUN, France (AP) — In solemn ceremonies Sunday in the forests of eastern France, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel marked 100 years since the Battle of Verdun, determined to show that, despite the bloodbath of World War I, their countries' improbable friendship is now a source of hope for today's fractured Europe.

The 10-month battle at Verdun — the longest in World War I — killed 163,000 French and 143,000 German soldiers and wounded hundreds of thousands of others. Between February and December 1916, an estimated 60 million shells were fired in the battle. One out of four didn't explode. The front line villages destroyed in the fighting were never rebuilt. The battlefield zone still holds millions of unexploded shells, making the area so dangerous that housing and farming are still forbidden.

With no survivors left to remember, Sunday's commemorations were focused on educating youth about the horrors and consequences of the war. Some 4,000 French and German children were taking part in the day's events, which conclude at a mass grave where, in 1984, then-French President Francois Mitterrand took then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's hand in a breakthrough moment of friendship and trust by longtime enemy nations.

"Verdun is the more than the name of your town — Verdun is also one of the most terrible battles humanity has experienced," Merkel said in a speech at city hall, calling Hollande's invitation to join the centenary "a great honor."

"We are all called upon to keep awake the memory (of Verdun) in the future, because only those who know the past can draw lessons from it," the German leader said. Hollande praised the city of Verdun as "the capital of peace."

"Verdun is a city that represents — at the same time — the worst, where Europe got lost, and the best, a city being able to commit and unite for peace and French-German friendship," he said. Merkel said the commemorations show "how good relations between Germany and France are today" and the achievements of European unity.

"In a world with global challenges, it is important to keep developing this Europe," she said in a weekly address Saturday, expressing hope that Britain would not vote to leave the European Union in a June 23 referendum.

Amid rising support for far right parties and divisions among European countries over how to handle refugees, Hollande said he wants to work alongside Merkel to "relaunch the European ideal." "We must take action ... at a moment when Europe is affected by the disease of populism," he told France Culture radio this week. He also noted the threat from violent extremism, saying the EU "must protect the people," especially against "terrorism."

Hollande and Merkel spent the entire day together. In the morning, he welcomed his German counterpart under heavy rain at the German cemetery of Consenvoye, near Verdun, where 11,148 German soldiers are buried. They laid a wreath, accompanied by four German and French children, and walked side by side for few minutes in the cemetery, sharing an umbrella.

After lunch, they were visiting the newly renovated Verdun Memorial. The museum, which reopened in February, immerses visitors in the "hell of Verdun" through soldiers' belongings, documents and photos, and from its new rooftop, they can observe the battlefield.

"The visit follows the steps of the soldiers. First reaching the front, moving into shell holes, fighting, surviving on the front line, the daily life," said historian Antoine Prost. Verdun has become a common place of remembrance because "it's a place of massive death equivalent for the French and the Germans," Prost added.

The main ceremony will take place in the afternoon at the Douaumont Ossuary, a memorial to 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers. The ceremony conceived by German filmmaker Volker Schloendorff will include children re-enacting battlefield scenes to the sound of drums amid thousands of white crosses marking the graves.