Foreign News
Two dead and several missing in New Zealand landslides
Two people have died and several are feared buried after landslides in New Zealand’s North Island.
The deaths were reported at Welcome Bay, while rescue workers are still searching through rubble at a different site in a popular campground on Mount Maunganui.
There are no “signs of life”, authorities said, adding that they have a “rough idea” of how many people are missing but are waiting for an exact figure. They provided no other details except that the group includes “at least one young girl”.
The landslides were triggered by heavy rains over the last few days, which led to flooding and power outages across the North Island. One minister said the east coast resembled “a war zone”.
New Zealand is “heavy with grief” after the “profound tragedy” caused by recent weather, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on X.
Footage from the campsite on Mount Maunganui, an extinct volcano, shows a huge slip near the base of the volcanic dome, as rescuers and sniffer dogs comb through crushed caravans and flattened tents.
Authorities said that the search would continue through the night. “This is a complex and high-risk environment, and our teams are working to achieve the best possible outcome while keeping everyone safe,” said Megan Stiffler, the deputy national commander for the Urban Search and Rescue team,
The extinct volcano is a sacred Māori site and one of the most popular campgrounds in New Zealand, with a local holiday website describing it as a “slice of paradise”. But it has been repeatedly hit by landslides in recent years.
“I heard this huge tree crack and all this dirt come off, and then I looked behind me and there’s this huge landslide coming down,” Australian tourist Sonny Worrall told local broadcaster TVNZ.
“I’m still shaking from it now… I turned around and had to jump out of my seat and just run,”he added. He saw it happen while swimming in a hot pool.
Hiker Mark Tangney told the New Zealand Herald he heard people screaming from under the rubble. “So I just parked up and ran to help… We could hear people screaming: ‘Help us, help us, get us out of here’,” he said.
Those calls persisted for about half an hour and then went silent, Tangney said.
A surf club in another part of Mount Maunganui has been evacuated following fears of more landslides.
A state of emergency has been declared in the Bay of Plenty where Mount Maunganui sits, and various parts of the North Island, including Northland, Coromandel, Tairāwhiti and Hauraki.
Several areas reported their wettest days on record on Thursday. Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, for example, received three months worth of rain within a day, according to local media.
Some 8,000 people were without power as of Thursday morning, Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reported.
The wife of a man who was swept away in the Mahurangi River is holding out hope that he will survive.
“I know his personality is strong, wise,” she told RNZ, adding that he was a fisherman back home in Kiribati and knew how to swim and dive.
The man, 47, was driving to work with their nephew when the car they were in fell into the river.
He had pushed the nephew towards a branch so the nephew could hoist himself onto land; but the older man did not manage get back up himself, according to the report.
“It’s been a very big event for us as a country, really hitting almost our entire eastern seaboard of the North Island,” said Minister for Emergency Management Mark Mitchell.
“The good news is that everyone responded really quickly, and there was time to get prepared. That helps to mitigate and create a very strong response,” he told RNZ.
December to February are typically the sunnier months in New Zealand but in recent years heavy rains and storms have become more frequent.
In February 2023, parts of the island were devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle, which is to date the costliest cyclone to hit the Southern Hemisphere, with damage amounting to NZ$13.5bn ($7.9bn; £5.9bn).
This week’s flooding has added to the toll for the local communities that are still rebuilding.
[BBC]
At least 33 miners have died in a suspected carbon-monoxide leak at a lead and zinc mine in central Nigeria’s Plateau state, witnesses have told the BBC.
The tragedy is believed to have happened just before sunrise at a site outside the town of Wase run by the mining company Solid Unity Nigeria Ltd.
Toxic gas is believed to have built up underground in poorly ventilated tunnels, causing the workers to collapse just before the end of their night shift.
They were discovered by those reporting to work in the morning – more than 20 other miners were rescued and rushed to hospital for treatment.
Security personnel have sealed off the mine, which is about 200km (124 miles) south-east of the state capital of Jos, as investigations get under way to find out the cause of the leak.
State officials are yet to visit the area and response efforts have reportedly been slow because of security concerns – armed criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, have been active there in recent years.
Safiyanu Haruna, one of the miners who found the bodies at the start of his shift, told the BBC that some of the miners who were underground survived and were taken to a hospital in Wase for treatment.
According to Haruna, the incident occurred at around 06:30 local time (05:30 GMT) killing 37 miners.
He said the miners had just finished performing their early morning Muslim prayers and had returned underground to finish their shift.
The Plateau state government has issued a statement saying that according to its preliminary investigation 33 miners were killed in a blast at the mine – but workers at the scene say this is not the case.
“It was carbon-monoxide gas that leaked and killed them,” Haruna said.
“There was no rescue for them at the time because those who were coming for the morning shift had yet to arrive,” he said.
“It is sad to lose 37 miners who were struggling to make ends meet. We’re disturbed by the incident.”
The victims, believed to be men aged between 20 and 40, were buried shortly afterwards in accordance with local tradition, another local resident told the BBC.
The news has devastated the mainly Muslim community.
Mining disasters occur relatively frequently in Nigeria.
Less than two years ago, dozens of gold miners died after being trapped underground when a pit collapsed in neighbouring Niger state.
Officials believe that incident was caused by torrential rains which had softened the soil.
The tragedy is likely to renew concerns over safety standards in Nigeria’s mining sector.
[BBC]
More than a year after a 33-year-old woman froze to death on Austria’s highest mountain, her boyfriend goes on trial on Thursday accused of gross negligent manslaughter.
Kerstin G died of hypothermia on a mountain climbing trip to the Grossglockner that went horribly wrong. Her boyfriend is accused of leaving her unprotected and exhausted close to the summit in stormy conditions in the early hours of 19 January 2025, while he went to get help.
The trial has sparked interest and debate, not just in Austria but in mountain climbing communities far beyond its borders.
Prosecutors say that, as the more experienced climber, the man on trial was “the responsible guide for the tour” and failed to turn back or call for support in time to help his girlfriend.
Identified by Austrian media as Thomas P, he denies the charges and his lawyer, Karl Jelinek, has described the woman’s death as “a tragic accident.”
The tragedy unfolded after the couple began their climb of the 3,798m (12,460ft) Grossglockner.
Prosecutors accuse Thomas P of making mistakes from the outset and have published a list of 9 errors.
At stake is the question of when personal judgement and risk-taking become a matter of criminal liability. If the climber is found guilty it could mean “a paradigm shift for mountain sports”, says Austria’s Der Standard newspaper.
Key to the case is the charge by state prosecutors in Innsbruck that he was to be considered the “responsible guide for the tour”, as “unlike his girlfriend, he was already very experienced in high-altitude Alpine tours and had planned the tour”.
[BBC]
Six Russian and four Belarusian athletes will compete under their nations’ flags at the upcoming Winter Paralympics.
In September, the International Paralympic Committee lifted its ban on athletes from the two countries competing at the Games.
Both countries were suspended from Paralympic competition after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Belarus a close ally of Russia. A partial ban – allowing athletes to compete as neutrals – was introduced in 2023.
However, the four individual governing bodies in charge of the six sports contested at the Paralympics decided to keep their bans in place.
In December, Russia and Belarus won an appeal against FIS – the governing body for skiing and snowboarding – at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas), permitting them to compete and accumulate ranking points.
The IPC confirmed to BBC Sport that the 10 athletes have been awarded bipartite commission invitations to compete in Para-alpine skiing, Para-cross country skiing and Para-snowboarding at the Milan-Cortina Games.
“The IPC can confirm that NPC Russia has been awarded a total of six slots: two in Para-alpine skiing (one male, one female), two in Para-cross country skiing (one male, one female), and two in Para-snowboard (both male),” it said in a statement.
“NPC Belarus has been awarded four slots in total, all in cross-country skiing (one male and three female).”
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said it was “completely the wrong decision”.
“Allowing athletes from Russia and Belarus to compete under their own flags while the brutal invasion of Ukraine continues sends a terrible message,” Nandy wrote on X.
“The International Paralympic Committee should reconsider this decision urgently.”
Bipartite commission invites are granted to individual athletes, rather than their international federation, and allow the participation of top athletes “who may not have had the opportunity to qualify through other methods due to extraordinary circumstances”, among other factors.
Ukraine has also been awarded bipartite slots in three sports.
It will mark the first time a Russian flag has been flown at a Paralympic Games since the Sochi 2014 Games, firstly due to the country’s state-sponsored doping programme, before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Russian news agency TASS reports that among the athletes set to compete are Aleksey Bugaev, a three-time Paralympic champion in alpine skiing, and cross-country skiers Ivan Golubkov and Anastasiia Bagiian – both are World Championship medallists.
All three returned to competition in January, and both Bugaev and Bagiian have since won World Cup titles.
The Milan-Cortina Winter Paralympics will take place from 6-15 March.
[BBC]
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