Google welcomed on Friday a ruling by Switzerland's highest court that it does not have to blur all faces and car registrations on its Street View service in the country.

The Federal Court found in favor of the Internet giant which had appealed an order by a lower court last year to ensure all people and cars pictured on Street View were unidentifiable.

The Swiss sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse landed safely in Madrid early Friday at the end of the first leg of its attempt at an intercontinental flight without using a drop of fuel.

Pilot Andre Borschberg successfully had launched the plane from an airfield in Payerne in western Switzerland at around 8:30am (0630 GMT) Thursday, bound for Rabat via Madrid, after a two-hour delay due to foggy conditions.

Up to six people are feared dead after a small plane crashed in western Switzerland on Saturday, police said.

The aircraft plunged into a field not far from houses in the village of Tatroz near Fribourg, a witness told the 20Minutes.ch website. It flew over the town twice before crashing around 3:00 pm (13:00 GMT).

Pakistan's prime minister was Thursday convicted for refusing to reopen a corruption investigation against the president, in a case that could see him thrown out of office.

The Supreme Court found Yousuf Raza Gilani guilty of contempt over his refusal to obey an order to write to the authorities in Switzerland to ask them to restart corruption cases against his ally President Asif Ali Zardari.

Special forces from Burkina Faso swept into rebel-held northern Mali on Tuesday aboard a helicopter and whisked a Swiss hostage to safety in a pre-arranged handover by Islamist rebels.

Beatrice Stockly, her face clear of the black turban the rebels had her wear, appeared tired but in high spirits on the helicopter flying her to Ouagadougou after the rebel group Ansar Dine handed her over in Timbuktu.

European countries are discriminating against Muslims for demonstrating their faith, especially in the fields of education and employment, rights group Amnesty International said Tuesday.

In a report focusing on Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland, Amnesty urged European governments to do more to challenge negative stereotypes and prejudices against Islam.

Switzerland on Monday confirmed that a female national had been kidnapped in Mali's Timbuktu, the fabled city seized by Islamists following after a coup in the west African nation.

A statement by the federal department of foreign affairs (FDFA) in Bern said that authorities were in contact with the woman's family and "were making every effort to ensure the kidnap victim is released unharmed," but did not identify her.

Belgians observed a minute of silence and church bells tolled across the grieving nation Friday as the bodies of 22 children and six adults killed in a Swiss bus crash were flown home.

In Heverlee and Lommel, the hometowns of the victims, children, parents and teachers assembled in the courtyards of their primary schools. The children released white balloons as some adults were seen sobbing in Heverlee.

A Swiss couple held captive by the Pakistani Taliban for over eight months were on Thursday recovered safely, claiming they escaped their captors in the lawless tribal belt, the army said.

Olivier David Och, 31, and Daniela Widmer, 28, were abducted at gunpoint on July 1 in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, apparently on holiday.

The coach crash in Switzerland that killed 28 people, including 22 Belgian schoolchildren, is a national tragedy, Belgium's Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo said Wednesday.

"The prime minster learned with dismay of the horrible accident that happened in Switzerland," said a statement from his office.