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RESCUERS IN NICARAGUA rescued 20 miners overnight who had been trapped deep underground for nearly two days after a cave-in at an unlicensed gold mine, but five more workers were still missing.
“We give thanks to God our Lord and the Virgin Mary for having saved from death 20 artisanal miners,” First Lady Rosario Murillo, the presidential spokeswoman, told reporters.
Murillo said five miners had “not surfaced” and rescue crews were still working to locate them.
“Hopefully we can find them in the coming hours,” she said.
The miners were pulled out one at a time using a pulley system installed late Friday near the pit where they had been trapped.
Most younger than 30, they were “pretty tired, exhausted, dehydrated, muddy and dirty,” an AFP photographer on the scene said.
They were immediately embraced by family members, who had stayed nearby since the accident, and then taken to the nearest hospital.
Triggered by downpours
There had been 28 “guiriseros,” or informal gold miners, working in the shaft when the mouth of the mine caved in because of a landslide triggered by heavy downpours, early Thursday morning.
Two workers buried near the surface had earlier managed to dig their way out after the collapse in the remote village of El Comal in northeastern Nicaragua, according to the local disaster prevention committee.
Authorities had said earlier they were trying to confirm whether any miners had died, noting that the incident happened in a hard-to-reach area with poor communication.
A local TV station showed what appeared to be the body of a dead miner being recovered.
The accident happened at an artisanal mine near the town of Bonanza, which is perched on the side of a hill, in a region that is home to Nicaragua’s biggest gold mines.
Desperate relatives initially tried to dig through to the trapped miners before being stymied by the unstable terrain, news reports said.
Word of the collapse only emerged late on Thursday because the site is so remote, local disaster official Martha Lagos said.
Modern gold rush
Business has boomed over the past decade for Nicaragua’s “guiriseros” as the price of gold has risen from less than $400 an ounce to more than $1,200.
They descend into old shafts that have been abandoned by conventional mining companies and look for remaining gold or dig even deeper to find new veins.
But the work can be perilous.
The scene of the collapse “is very high-risk and only they know the site because as the superficial veins of gold run out, they have to dig deeper and deeper in underground tunnels,” said Lagos.
Informal gold mining is the main source of employment in Bonanza, where officials estimate there are 6,000 “guiriseros.”
Many of them have migrated there from other parts of the country in a modern-day gold rush.
Bonanza’s population has jumped in the past decade from around 8,000 people to 40,000, said Lagos.
Locals can earn $1,500 to $3,000 a month selling gold to foreign mining companies — a relative fortune in Nicaragua.
Some informal miners work independently, while others are organised into officially authorised cooperatives.
Bonanza forms one point of the Central American country’s so-called “mining triangle” in the remote Autonomous North Atlantic Region.
The latest accident comes four years after 33 workers were trapped deep inside Chile’s San Jose copper and gold mine for more than two months, a drama that captured worldwide attention.
It took rescuers 17 days to drill a small shaft to establish contact, and more than two months of painstaking effort to open a passage wide enough to pull them out one by one.
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What was she thinking about going topless – she surely should have known that his kind of thing could happen.
I know!! the cheek of her thinking she could sun bathe topless in privacy like thousands of women around the world do without peeping toms with zoom lenses taking her photo. completely her own fault.The Damn paparazzi are why I shower with Knickers on.
Well if you take your clothes off in private this is what happens!!! NEVER NEVER remove your clothing.
what about when u have a bath?
NEVER I SAID!!!!
Ha, reminds me of the outraged Sam the American Eagle routine: “All these people walking around when, under their clothes, they’re NAKED! Yes, NAKED!”
I agree Dexter, As the future Queen of England and Knowing what happened with Diana she must have realised that long lens can be used to try get pics like this. Nobody is questioning her decision to go naked or not its irrelevant. But she should have realised that some papparazzi will go to any lengths to get these pictures. She ahould have had something in front of her. a wall, a partition, a hedge, anything so that a long shot like that would have been impossible. She should have known better. These people do NOTHING all day but have an entourage follow them around like lap dogs yet not one of them had the brain to make sure she did not let herself open to this kind of exposure. She needs to wake up and it will happen again, and again, Its irrelevant what we think. The reality is there is demand in the media for all these pics and it will continue whether we like it or not and to deny this is unrealistic.
True Christopher it’s not like she can’t afford the bring a good hedge with her on holidays.
The bould Kate had knickers on too Joy, they are were after her lady lumps
Now if Kate had been a Muslim there’d be riots over these photos…
Ah here, — Eddie would hardly come on and say the paper is screwed considering he works with them.
With your track record Eddie? I guess the Star is gone now.
Let’s get some quality back into Irish journalism and leave publications like the star in the gutter where it belongs
Paper should be closed down,as for Eddie Hobbs don’t start me
no it shouldnt, sure the man trying to close it down once owned a publication called Asian Babes
Enlighten us as to why it should be closed down, Raymond.
Enlighten us about Asian Babes, Gary!
That’s all very well but the “Asian Babes” had agreed to having their photographs taken. The photos of Kate were taken illegally – they are in breach of France’s very strict privacy laws – and should never have been reproduced in the Star. If Desmond does pull out the Star will lose a large amount of it’s content, though if INM keeps it open I guess they can always make it up from that other dreadful rag the Irish Independent.
Apologise and Fire the Editor! enough said! Leave the jobs alone
Please! Kate has boobs , just like every other woman! She took risks when going topless as previous photographs of her honeymoon were already leaked. So I wish the media would get over it…. There are a lot more serious stories to report on ..
I agree Mary …so fed up wit hearing about her and her boobs…
So Mary and Rhonda, it would be OK for someone to snap you and your boobs are publish them online for all to see- in a public domain. And for tthen to make money out of those boobs of yours.
You wouldnt even be the tiniest bit upset then?
Don’t miss the main issue here.
Paul of course noone should have their privacy invaded like this. But I don’t think that’s the bones of the issue. The daily star is a rag and its only use as I see it is to toilet train my dog. but that’s my opinion.
The issue here is why should Kate be treated any differently than any other of the daily stars subjects. I don’t agree with any of it, but In Ireland at least Kate Middleton is similar to other celebrities . They paper should not be shut down because of these particular pictures. The fact is its one guy who happens to own half if it all of a sudden seems to like some moral high ground (cause it might affect his wallet in the UK) and he says he’ll shut it down. if the reaction was different he’d be parading around for photo ops with o’kane..
langer
Paper should say sorry in gross error of judgement etc, a lot of jobs on the line etc and they’ll be ok I think, a joke of a newspaper tho
It’s a complete rag, always has been, worse than the Sun if that’s possible. It would be great to see it off the shelves….
We all have a choice whether to buy the Star or not. If it is still going then it must sell pretty well and meet some kind of demand.
Getting rid of it as it’s a “rag” or “tacky” won’t mean its readers will start reading the Times, the Indo or even the Journal. But it will mean lots of jobs lost and given the small size of the Irish media industry, they won’t be able to find new ones that easily.
What I think is wonderful about this episode is how it reminds us how much of the Irish media is actually British owned and how culturally confused so many are…
Sean, after 800 years………….nah, wont go there!
Its worse if you bring in the Barney and iCarly-speak of the younger age group!
Dammit, Friday was the only day i forgot to buy it. :)
The star didn’t print the pics til Saturday. Just saying ;)
What about all the actors for the problem page where will they find work keep it open
Im sure they could find room for their method acting style at Fair City.
From a purely business perspective, it doesn’t seem over the top at all. The money Desmond gets from the Irish Daily Star must be pretty farcically small-fry compared to the value of his Star/Express/OK! brand in the UK . Yet it’s demonstrated that – as he’s tied to it perception wise, but with no control – that it has the potential to cost him significant damage and lost revenue in the UK.
It’s a liability. To be honest, I’d be very surprised if the owners of the Daily Mail hadn’t spent the weekend pouring over their agreements with the Irish Daily Mail to see if they had a risk of a similar exposure to their British interests by potential Irish editorial decisions.
Sounds like he just found a good excuse to shut the paper. It will not be missed.
What a joke! The paper screwed up and deserve what they get. But in a less selfish world…. The person who made the decison to publish the picture would apologize and resign from their job…. However…. This is Ireand….. No one resigns from jobs for poor judgement or errors nor are individuals held accountable.
Your comment is the only one that gave a proper overview, they were on a private holiday, can no one have privacy these days, once again great reply
Rabbitte gives us his thumbs up to “more tits on Irish newspapers please”. As if we haven’t enough of that already. Up with that sort of thing
And he has given the OK for some to make money from pictures taken without the owners consent.
Rabbitte is wrong on so many levels.
Sack the editor then and leave the other staff in place. Feckin eegit O’Kane – got it all wrong, misread the decency of most of the Irish public.
While I agree with everything you have said Paul, Kate needs to cop on.
She is one of the most famous women in the world and she went topless on a balcony. The lowlife who took the pic was on a public road. You’d nearly think it was done on purpose.
Rabbitte backs up tabloid in the hope they call the hounds off his Labour Party before the next election
that doesnt look right either …i give up
O’Kane got it so wrong. Totally misjudged the Irish public and showed himself up as a misogynist. Stupid man to say that it was no different than photos of Lady Gaga etc. I am fairly certain that Lady Gaga wouldn’t have been too pleased if it had been sneaky photos of her sunbathing either
I am sure she knew very well that she would be seen. Anyway whats all the fuss for? Prince Harry showed off a lot more with less fuss.
Ahh come on. She knew they were there. We’re lucky it wasn’t Camilla
Of course she knew they were there, she was born with them. As for your knowing….shame on you!
haven’t you more important issues to sort rabbite like broadband rollout?get the finger out and stop worrying about tabloid rubbish
jail the person that took the photographs and the editors of the newspapers that publish them. They knowing took and paid for illegal photographs for greed. Would you like it if someone took an intimate photograph of any of your family and saw it in the newspapers the next day?? Bet you wouldn’t, so what’s the difference here? everyone deserves the right to privacy.
It is pure elitism, The end of the day Kate is apparently going to be the future queen of England. Never seen pictures of Diana like that published in the papers. They are no different to any other celebrity in this country. No one objects when snaps of celebrities appear without consent in those rags. As for Desmond chasing his knighthood, and runs an empire built on sleaze and the degradation of women. The hypocrisy of all this stinks and how it has got so much media attention in the wake of tragedies in the north and the ten year old in Co. Offaly leaves a lot to be desired.
Looks like Labour Government has succeeded in insulting another sovereign state – first the Vatican, now the UK. Would have thought we could do with all the friends we could get, at the momemt! … Parcochial, inappropriate and short-sighted response from Pat Rabbitte.
Perhaps Rabbite will include the Star in the licence fee?
give all the profits for that day to charity, paper is shown no profit to be made in cheap sleaze and charitys win..
When are the press going to realise that everyone is entitled to their privacy when they are “not on duty”. Yes, they are public property when they are working on state business or other public duties, but outside “work” they should be left alone, rather than be preyed on by vultures!
“Irish Daily Star editor Michael O’Kane said he believed the images to be tasteful, and pointed out that the photos of Middleton – who, he said, would never be Queen of Ireland – had not appeared in the edition of the paper circulated in Northern Ireland.”
Ah but in Ireland it’s ok to invade one’s privacy but not in the North? Disgusting.
Northern & Shell has previously been the UK publisher of the adult magazines Penthouse and Asian Babes among others. hypocrisy?? No, I enjoy this stuff, the models volunteer and are highly paid. But publishing semi-naked pictures without permission is the same as sticking a hidden camera up someone skirt.
You disgust me.
I prefer the club orange ads!!
sorry charities
Surely there are more important issues that could be getting covered by the media than some posh bints less than impressive boobage, bread and circuses
The porn merchant is a social climber currying favour with the English Establishment in the hope of a knighthood.
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