Australian rescuers keep eye on miners trapped by quake
Beaconsfield, Australia – They ate yogurt for breakfast Thursday and requested chicken for dinner. They slept five hours in the cold, the most yet. To keep busy, they clean each other’s scratches – all filmed round the clock.
Trapped nearly 3,000 feet underground, two Australian gold miners have been stuck for more than a week after an earthquake pinned the tiny steel cage they were working in under tons of hard rock.
By Thursday night, rescuers who have been sending them supplies including an air mattress and iPods through a narrow tube were ready to start drilling a tunnel big enough to get them out. They said Brant Webb, 37, and Todd Russell, 34, would probably be free by the weekend.
“All I can say is, they are incredible guys, they’ve got good spirits. We have a joke about some things, but we know the reality and they know the reality and they are happy to wait for the progress,” said Matthew Eastham, a paramedic at the scene.
The men have been entombed in the century-old Beaconsfield Gold Mine in Tasmania state since April 25. Fellow miner Larry Knight, 44, was killed in the quake.
Mine manager Matthew Gill told The Associated Press that teams had finished boring a narrow pilot hole to the men through 52 feet of hard rock and would use the hole to guide the drilling of a 3-foot-wide escape tunnel.
BOSTON
6 concrete suppliers held in Big Dig probe
Six men whose company supplied most of the concrete in a downtown highway tunnel project known as the Big Dig were arrested Thursday on federal charges alleging they falsified records to hide the poor quality of materials delivered for the $14.6 billion, delay- and leak-plagued construction.
The six, all current or former employees of Aggregate Industries, face a variety of charges including making false statements, mail fraud and conspiracy to defraud the government between 1996 and August 2005.
The indictment charges the men with recycling concrete that was too old and had excess water, and with double-billing for loads of concrete. The company was paid $105 million for 135,000 truckloads of concrete.
WASHINGTON
Flag desecration amendment advances
A Senate panel on Thursday advanced a proposed constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration, a measure with little chance of congressional passage but potential political impact in an election year.
Approved 6-4 by a Judiciary Committee panel on the Constitution, the amendment reads: “The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.”
The House already has passed the amendment. Just bringing up the measure scores points with conservative voters who are crucial to the Republicans’ plans to keep control of Congress in November. But the amendment faces several procedural and constitutional hurdles.
JAKARTA, Indonesia
Ex-dictator Suharto hospitalized briefly
Former Indonesian dictator Suharto was hospitalized Thursday with internal bleeding but was released several hours later, a presidential doctor said.
Brig. Gen. Marjo Subiandono said Suharto, 84, was in stable condition.
Suharto was a general who rose to power by crushing Indonesia’s communist movement. He ruled the world’s fourth-most-populous nation for 32 years with a tough hand, only to be chased from office in 1998 by street protests. Two years later, he was indicted for allegedly embezzling $600 million.
SANTA APOLONIA, Guatemala
Mob burns robbery suspects to death
A mob burned to death three alleged robbers in western Guatemala on Thursday, the second such grisly vigilante attack in this Central American country in less than a month.
“The residents took justice into their own hands, and lynched two people,” said local police officer Gabriel Catun. “A police officer tried to intervene, but they told him they would lynch us, too, if we tried to stop it.”
Villagers in Santa Apolonia, 35 miles northwest of the capital, Guatemala City, caught two suspects they claimed were robbing a bus late Wednesday, and identified a third man who allegedly was waiting for the two alleged robbers in a car nearby.
The mob held a mock trial, took the victims to a local soccer field early Thursday, then beat them, placed car tires around them and set them on fire, apparently while they were still conscious.
KATMANDU, Nepal
Maoist rebels agree to join peace talks
Maoist rebels agreed Thursday to peace talks with Nepal’s government, saying the protests that forced King Gyanendra to restore democracy have created a “historic movement.”
The new Cabinet on Wednesday urged the rebels to return to the negotiating table, matching their three-month cease-fire declaration in the decade-old insurgency that has killed 13,000.
In addition, the Cabinet said terrorism charges against the rebels are being dropped.
