Sydney  - An Australian fire brigade Tuesday told a Swiss woman who paid for a new fire engine her generosity had failed to save her beachfront home in the Queensland town of Deepwater.

Annemarie Geckeler, 75, bought the Deepwater fire brigade a new fire engine in 2001.

But the fire brigade arrived too late to save her multi-million-dollar home at the weekend.

Geckeler was not home when the fire started.

Wengen, Switzerland  - It must be rather elevating for the train driver since the Wengenalp (WAB) rack railway from Lauterbrunnen to Wengen, central Switzerland, is uphill nearly all the way.

Travellers can gaze out over sparkling, snow-covered roofs and pine trees, and as if to underscore the picture-postcard nature of this wintry scene in the Bernese Oberland, a brook alongside the tracks babbles into the valley below.

Geneva  - The Swiss seem to enjoy trains more than other nations, with the average resident travelling around 2,103 kilometres annually, the Information Service for Public Transport said putting the confederation at the top of the global list.

The Japanese came second with residents averaging 1,976 kilometres by train in 2007, though they did make the most trips with 70 a year, compared to 47 for the Swiss.

Geneva - Chiefs of several leading international companies launched a call on YouTube Monday, asking for the public to submit ideas on how to combat corruption.

Executives appearing on the video streaming Website - including Alan Boeckmann of the Fluor Corporation, Peter Bakker of the Dutch delivery company TNT and Samuel DiPiazza, CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers - said over 1 trillion dollars were lost annually to corruption.

They said, in a short clip just over a minute in length, that bribes hindered workers' ability to get jobs and patients' access to basic medical care.

Geneva  - The unique giant particle accelerator along the French-Swiss border, which scientists hope will give clues as to the nature of matter itself, will be functioning again by the summer of 2009, its operators said Friday.

The machine, known as the Large Hadron Collider, was turned off in September following a malfunction which caused damage to integral parts just about a week after the first experiment. It has since been turned off.

The LHC, operated by European Organization for Nuclear Research - known by its French acronym CERN- is run on a budget of some 10 billion Swiss francs (8.17 billion dollars), making it one of the most expensive science experiments.

London, December 5 : Swiss company Logitech has revealed that its factory in Suzhou, western China, has produced its one-billionth computer mouse.

The company has made this revelation at a time when analysts claim that the mouse will not exist for longer.

"It''s rare in human history that a billionth of anything has been shipped by one company," the BBC quoted Logitech''s general manager Rory Dooley as saying.

"Look at any other industry and it has never happened. This is a significant milestone," he added.