Rescuers in India are racing against time to bring out miners trapped inside a flooded coal mine in the north-eastern state of Assam.

Three of the nine men inside were feared dead, Reuters reported, after the state government said rescue teams had spotted some bodies they have been unable to reach.

The men were trapped on Monday morning after water flooded the rat-hole mine, which is a narrow hole dug manually to extract coal.

Despite a ban on such mining in India since 2014, small illegal mines continue to be operational in Assam and other north-eastern states.

At least five people have died in a winter storm that has seized a swathe of the US in its icy grip, leading to mass school closures, travel chaos and power cuts.

Seven US states declared emergencies: Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Arkansas.

More than 2,300 flights have been cancelled, with nearly 9,000 delays also reported owing to the extreme weather caused by the polar vortex of icy cold air that usually circles the North Pole.

Over 200,000 people had no power on Monday night across states in the storm’s path, according to Poweroutage.us. Snow and sleet is forecast to continue in much of the north-eastern US on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

While the precipitation will then dissipate, cold Arctic air is expected to keep conditions icy across a chunk of the country for several more weeks.

In Washington DC – where lawmakers met on Monday to certify Donald Trump’s win in November’s election – about 5-9in (13-23cm) of snow fell, with up to a foot recorded in parts of nearby Maryland and Virginia.

In front of the Washington Monument, hundreds of local residents gathered at a local park for a snowball fight, a now 15-year-old tradition.

“Just having fun,” one local man told the BBC. “Never done a snowball fight before.”

Former US Olympic skier Clare Egan was found cross-country skiing on the National Mall, the central thoroughfare of the US capital city.  She told the Associated Press she had thought “my skiing days were maybe behind me”, after moving to the city.

Washington DC’s weather emergency is declared until the early hours of Tuesday as a result of the system, which was named Winter Storm Blair by the Weather Channel.

Children who had been due to go back to classes on Monday after the winter holiday break were instead enjoying a snow day as school districts closed from Maryland to Kansas.

Three Chinese nationals have been arrested with 12 gold bars and $800,000 (£650,000) in cash in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, officials say.

The gold and money was hidden under the seats of the vehicle they were travelling in, according to Jean Jacques Purusi, the governor of South Kivu province.

He said the operation to arrest the men had been kept secret after the recent release of another group of Chinese nationals accused of running an illegal gold mine in the area.

Eastern DR Congo has abundant reserves of gold, diamonds and the minerals used to make batteries for mobile phones and electric vehicles.

This mineral wealth has been plundered by foreign groups since the colonial era and is one of the main reasons why the region has been plagued by instability for the last 30 years.

Militia groups control many of the mines in eastern DR Congo and their leaders become wealthy by selling it to middle-men.

Purusi said some of these dealers in precious metals enjoyed good relations with influential people in the capital, Kinshasa, and this was why the mission to carry out these latest arrests had to be kept quiet.

He said they had been acting on a tip-off and that the gold and money was only found after a meticulous search of the vehicle in the Walungu area not far from the border with Rwanda.

He did not say exactly how much gold had been seized.

Last month, the governor told reporters he was shocked to hear that 17 Chinese nationals, who had been arrested on allegations they had been running an illegal gold mine, had been freed and allowed to return to China.

He said this undermined efforts to clean up DR Congo’s notoriously murky mineral sector.

They owed $10m in taxes and fines to the government, the Reuters news agency quotes him as saying.

The Chinese embassy has not commented on the allegations.

The arrests come as fighting continues to flare in the neighbouring North Kivu province, where a Rwanda backed rebel group has captured large areas of territory.

Last month, DR Congo said it was suing Apple over the use of “blood minerals”, prompting the tech giant to say it had stopped getting supplies from both DR Congo and neighbouring Rwanda.

Rwanda has denied being a conduit for the export of illegal minerals from DR Congo.

In their lawsuit, lawyers acting for the Congolese government alleged that the minerals taken from conflict areas was then “laundered through international supply chains”.

“These activities have fuelled a cycle of violence and conflict by financing militias and terrorist groups and have contributed to forced child labour and environmental devastation,” they said.

[BBC]