Rescuers in Laos have found five villagers alive inside a flooded cave after they were trapped for a week following heavy rain and landslides.

Two other villagers who were with them are missing, Laotian and Thai rescue teams involved in the operation said.

The seven were part of a group of villagers from the central province of Xaysomboun who had gone into the cave on Wednesday last week in search of gold deposits and wildlife, but could not get out as the cave’s entrance was blocked.

Footage shared by the rescuers showed cave divers crawling through narrow, muddy passageways that were almost completely flooded.

Bounkham Luanglath of the Laotian organisation Rescue Volunteer for People told the Associated Press the search for the missing would continue.

“I’m still shaking,” he said in a voice message. “Our team made it happen.”

The cave system, which extends deep underground, is also extremely narrow, with some chambers measuring only about 50cm (20in) wide, rescuers say.

“We’ve found five people alive and all safe,” Rescue Volunteer for People said in a social media post.

“There are still two people we are searching for.”

Thai rescuer Kengkach Bangkawong said on Facebook that the villagers had been found at 16:30 local time (09:30 GMT).

Specialist rescue diver Mikko Paasi from Finland said earlier on Wednesday that rescuers needed to “navigate hundreds of metres of constant restrictions, flood waters, collapse hazards and high risk of contaminated air quality” inside the cave, which he called an “abandoned gold mine”.

He estimated the seven people were trapped around 300m (984ft) from the exit.

The villagers entered the cave, about 120km (75 miles) north of the capital Vientiane, last Wednesday, state media said.

“The area is not owned by anybody,” Laotian rescuer Baeng, who requested one name be used for security reasons, told AFP news agency. “Locals usually go there to dig holes and look for food.”

Kengkach was part of the team that helped bring 12 young Thai boys and their football coach to safety after they were trapped for two weeks inside a flooded cave underneath a mountain in Thailand’s Chiang Rai province in 2018.

The extraordinary rescue involved more than 10,000 experts from around the world and drew intense global attention.

Several films and documentaries have been made based on it, including the feature film Thirteen Lives and the documentary The Rescue.

[BBC]

Multiple people have been killed and injured and some are still missing after a major chemical explosion at a paper mill in Washington, authorities said.

The explosion occurred at 07:15 PDT (15:15 GMT) at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging facility in Longview, 130 miles (210km) south of Seattle.

Investigators said in a news conference on Tuesday that 10 people have been injured and transported to hospital. Officials have not yet said how many people have died or are unaccounted for.

The explosion occurred due a “rupture of a tank containing white liquor”, the company said in a statement. White liquor is a highly corrosive chemical used in the paper-making process.

Cowlitz Fire and Rescue Chief Scott Goldstein said there are an “unknown number of fatalities at this moment,” adding that officials have “confirmed that there are fatalities, but the exact number is undetermined”.

Nine of the people injured are employees at the factory, and one is a firefighter, Goldstein said. Their injuries range from “critical severe to minor”, and include burn and inhalation injuries. The company statement said there were “multiple critical injuries”.

The tank that ruptured holds about 80,000 gallons (300,000 litres), he said, and it was roughly 60% full when the explosion occurred.

The scene is stable, the chief said, but the public should stay away from the area as firefighting efforts continue. He said the fire does not pose any threat to the larger community.

“The scene remains in the recovery phase as emergency responders continue operations,” the Longview Fire Department said in a statement.

“No identifying information regarding injured or deceased individuals will be released at this time pending notification of family members.”

White liquor is an alkaline chemical containing sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide.

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson said state ecology workers have been sent to the site to assist local officials.

“I’m deeply saddened to hear that there have been fatalities,” Ferguson said in a statement.

“My thoughts are with the workers and their families, and with the first responders.”

According to local media, the Nippon Dynawave Packaging facility was also the scene of a major fire in July 2023, when piles of wood at the site burned for days.

The plant makes tissues, printer paper, cups, plates, cartons, and other goods, according to CBS, the BBC’s US partner. It employees 1,000 people, according to the Washington State Department of Ecology.

[BBC]

A school assistant was to go on trial in Paris on Tuesday accused of sexual mistreatment of young children in his care.

It is the latest case in a year-long scandal that has shaken the school system in the French capital, where some 15,000 such assistants – known as animateurs – are employed as non-teaching staff.

Currently enquiries are under way at nearly 100 Paris crèches, kindergartens and junior schools where animateurs have been accused of inappropriate, aggressive or sexualised behaviour.

Trials in three other cases are to take place over the summer, and a verdict is due in a fourth which was held earlier this month. More are likely to follow.

Last week police detained 16 people after a swoop at three schools in the 7th arrondissement or district. Three people were subsequently charged with sexually inappropriate behaviour to children.

Tuesday’s case centres on the Alphonse Baudin junior school in the 11th arrondissement, where the animateur is accused of sexualised touching with five children.

One man told the BBC that in April 2025 he had already spotted unusual signs in his four-year-old daughter when another parent reported that their child had been molested.

“My wife took our daughter into the garden and asked her if she had been touched in after-school time, and she said ‘Yes, David touches me and gives me cuddles.’

“My wife said, ‘Show me’, and my daughter started stroking her back in a bizarre way. That’s when we knew something was wrong.”

The scandal has created a climate of mistrust and fear among parents of young children in Paris, many of whom accuse the City Hall – which employs the animateurs – of failing initially to take the complaints seriously.

According to after-school association SOS-Périscolaire, the main problem has been the low quality of animateurs, who are poorly paid and at most need only a basic certificate in child management to get a job. Sometimes the pressure to recruit is so great that even that requirement is waived.

Elisabeth Guthmann, who founded the association in 2021, said it was in response to the growing number of stories circulating among parents about teasing, taunting and other types of low-level abuse by animateurs.

She cited a case of four animateurs at a junior school in the 16th arrondissement who “set up a fight-club with the other children standing around shouting ‘Hit him!'”.

The new mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, has vowed to reform the recruitment system with €20m (£17.2m) for training and monitoring. He also said animateurs would be automatically suspended after a single complaint had been lodged. Since the start of the year nearly 80 have been suspended.

[BBC]