Japan blasts longest land tunnel
The last metre of bedrock was blasted away on Sunday
Construction engineers in Japan have broken through to make the world's longest land tunnel, as part of an extension to a high-speed rail network.
The tunnel, under a mountain in the north, is 26.5 km (16.5 miles) long.
The tunnel is unlikely to hold the record for long as two longer tunnels are due for completion in Spain and Switzerland over the next two years.
Critics say the tunnel, which costs more than $600m (£313m), will not be financially viable.
The northern regions around the new link are only lightly populated.
The BBC's Jonathan Head in Tokyo says Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has made curbing the country's addiction to concrete one of his central policy objectives.
But government borrowing has actually increased over the past four years - partly because tax revenues have been falling as the workforce shrinks and partly as a result of the back-log of high-cost infrastructure projects approved many years before.
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