Miners trapped after cave-in

Nineteen people have been pulled to safety after a mine collapsed after a quake in Poland. Above, rescuers search for miners in China, which is frequently hit by deadly mine accidents. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

NINETEEN copper miners in Poland have been rescued after being trapped underground for more than seven hours by a cave-in caused by an earthquake.

The workers crawled their way to the surface of the Rudna copper mine, the deepest in Europe, after rescuers used excavators to clear rocks that had buried them almost a kilometre below ground, said operator KGHM.

Twenty-three miners initially managed to escape after the 10-second quake in Poland's southwestern mining belt late on Tuesday caused the ceiling of one section of the mine to collapse, spokeswoman Anna Osadczuk told AFP.

Two of the 42 miners on duty were taken to hospital with minor injuries, she said.

Rescue workers "used excavators to remove the rock until they saw an opening, through which they were able to communicate with the trapped miners," Ms Osadczuk said, adding that the 19 had been caught about 960 metres below the surface.

"The rescue workers were crawling up to the opening on their knees."

One miner was taken to hospital with bruises, while another received stitches to his head and spoke of spinal pain, she said.

"It was a very dramatic night, but luckily the day began with good news," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters in Warsaw.

KGHM chief executive Herbert Wirth said luck played a part in the survival of the miners.

"They were at the front, which was well ventilated and they did not run out of fresh air. That all led to such a positive outcome," Mr Wirth said, quoted by Polish news agency PAP.

Rudna, which has been open since 1969, churns out about 12.3 million tonnes of ore a year.

KGHM, which is 31 per cent state-owned, is the only copper producer in Poland, operating three mines in the southwest of the country.

It was also the world's top silver producer in 2011, according to the latest World Silver Survey.

Poland has a large number of mines, many of which are located in the industrialised Silesia region, which is rich in mineral and natural resources.

In 2006, a gas explosion at a coal mine in the region claimed 23 lives.

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Law reform package passes NSW Parliament

LAW reforms aimed at making criminal trials more efficient have passed through NSW Parliament.

In a statement, the government said the reform package, which passed parliament on Wednesday night, was a key part of its fight against organised crime.

The first tranche of the reforms allows juries to draw adverse inferences from silence in certain circumstances, according to the statement from Police Minister Michael Gallacher and Attorney General Greg Smith.

The second part mandates that both sides in criminal trials must follow a timetable for disclosing material before trials begin.

The legislation was opposed by Labor and the Greens.

Mr Smith said a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights found "similar laws in the UK were consistent with the right to a fair trial".

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3000 Afghan troops, police killed in year

ALMOST 3,000 Afghan police and soldiers have been killed in the past 12 months, nearly the same as the number of NATO deaths in Afghanistan in the past 11 years of war, Kabul says.

In statistics marking the end of the lunar year in Afghanistan, the interior and defence ministries said 2,983 security personnel - 1,800 police and 1,183 soldiers - lost their lives from March 2012 to March 2013.

According to the independent website, icasualties.org, 3,270 coalition troops, including 2,190 Americans, have died since the invasion started in late 2001.

Afghan police and soldiers have been set up and trained by NATO to take on increasing responsibility for security as NATO combat troops gradually withdraw from the country by the end of 2014.

Today numbered at 330,000 and due to reach a target of 352,000, they have been increasingly targeted by Taliban insurgents fighting to evict the Western-backed administration in Kabul.

"It is a pity but understandable why we have witnessed such a huge loss of life and increase in ANSF (Afghan security force) casualties since they started taking responsibility from international troops," said analyst Jawed Kohistani.

"Given the fact that there has not been any effective strategy from the Afghan defence or interior ministries to deal with Taliban guerilla warfare tactics, we can expect more loss of life."

In 2012, 402 NATO members died in Afghanistan, the lowest number since 2008.

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Cyprus fails to win Russia's help

DEBT-HIT Cyprus is scrambling to draw up a Plan B to secure an EU bailout after MPs rejected an unprecedented bank deposit levy, while also seeking to limit the amount of money leaving the island.

In an early setback, however, Finance Minister Michalis Sarris failed to reach progress after two rounds of talks in Moscow on assistance from Russia, one of the key planks of Plan B.

And in Brussels, the European Commission warned any new bailout must guarantee the island's debt burden is sustainable - a signal it expects Cyprus to meet a key condition of raising 5.8 billion euros ($A7.26 billion) from its own resources.

With the banking sector at a standstill and fears growing of a forced eurozone exit, President Nicos Anastasiades huddled with leaders of political parties and financial experts, trying to formulate an alternative plan that would help Cyprus confront its worst crisis since the 1974 Turkish invasion.

Anastasiades was later on Wednesday to preside over a cabinet meeting to discuss the latest developments, the presidency said.

Options being considered by the authorities, local media reported, included raising money from domestic sources including provident funds, and restructuring the teetering banking sector to reduce its debt exposure.

State radio said the Cypriot authorities were also working on bills, that would need to be passed by parliament, to restrict the outflow of cash from the island once the banks reopen.

The legislation would also split the sector into "good banks" and "bad banks", it said.

Commentators said the legislation would need to be in place before banks, which have been closed since the weekend to prevent a run on accounts, reopen their doors.

Although no official announcement has been made, few expect banks to reopen before next Tuesday, after a scheduled bank holiday on Monday.

While money is still available from ATM cash points, the dwindling liquidity in the market has seen fuel stations close their credit card facilities and many stores refusing to accept cheques.

Amid all the uncertainty, the head of the powerful Orthodox Church in Cyprus, Archbishop Chrysostomos II, offered to help by putting church assets at the government's disposal.

The church is the largest landowner on the island and also has stakes in businesses including the country's Hellenic Bank, with total assets estimated to run into tens of millions of euros.

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19 miners rescued after cave-in in Poland

NINETEEN copper miners in Poland have been rescued after being trapped underground for more than seven hours by a cave-in caused by an earthquake.

The workers crawled their way to the surface of the Rudna copper mine, the deepest in Europe, after rescuers used excavators to clear rocks that had buried them almost a kilometre below ground, said operator KGHM.

Twenty-three miners initially managed to escape after the 10-second quake in Poland's southwestern mining belt late on Tuesday caused the ceiling of one section of the mine to collapse, spokeswoman Anna Osadczuk told AFP.

Two of the 42 miners on duty were taken to hospital with minor injuries, she said.

Rescue workers "used excavators to remove the rock until they saw an opening, through which they were able to communicate with the trapped miners," Osadczuk said, adding that the 19 had been caught about 960 metres below the surface.

"The rescue workers were crawling up to the opening on their knees."

One miner was taken to hospital with bruises, while another received stitches to his head and spoke of spinal pain, she said.

"It was a very dramatic night, but luckily the day began with good news," Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters in Warsaw.

KGHM chief executive Herbert Wirth said luck played a part in the survival of the miners.

"They were at the front, which was well ventilated and they did not run out of fresh air. That all led to such a positive outcome," Wirth said, quoted by Polish news agency PAP.

Rudna, which has been open since 1969, churns out about 12.3 million tonnes of ore a year.

KGHM, which is 31 per cent state-owned, is the only copper producer in Poland, operating three mines in the southwest of the country.

It was also the world's top silver producer in 2011, according to the latest World Silver Survey.

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Pope promises 'respect' for all religions

POPE Francis has promised "friendship and respect" for all faiths at a meeting with representatives of major world religions in the Vatican in which he said he felt "close" to non-believers.

The Roman Catholic Church would "promote friendship and respect between men and women of different religions," the Pope said, a day after his formal inauguration in St Peter's Square.

"We can do a lot for the good of people who are poor, who are weak, who suffer ... and to promote reconciliation and peace," the Pope told other Christian leaders and representatives of Buddhism, Islam and Judaism in an ornate Vatican hall.

Latin America's first pontiff said all religions should be united against "one of the most dangerous pitfalls of our time - reducing human beings to what they produce and what they consume.

"I very much appreciate your presence and I see in it a sign of mutual respect and of co-operation for the common good of humanity," he said.

This was particularly important in a world of "divisions, confrontations and rivalries," he said.

Francis also told Jewish leaders he wanted to continue "a fraternal dialogue" that began with the reformist Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, which removed the notion of any Jewish blame for Jesus Christ's death in Catholic doctrine.

The 76-year-old Pope also said he felt "close" to those people who "do not recognise themselves in any faith but are in a search for truth, for goodness and for beauty, which is God."

The reference echoed a "silent blessing" Francis made on Saturday to non-believers at a meeting with journalists from around the world.

"You are all children of God," he said on Saturday.

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Britain sticks to austerity path in budget

BRITAIN will stick firmly to a barrage of austerity measures, finance minister George Osborne has insisted in a budget that also slashes economic growth forecasts, while offering plans to boost the weak economy as the eurozone crisis reignites.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne, who is facing calls from within his own Conservative party to reduce deep cuts to state spending in a bid to fuel growth, told parliament Britain "must hold to the right track."

"We are slowly but surely fixing our country's economic problems," Osborne said, as he unveiled a series of measure aimed at boosting growth, including far-reaching infrastructure projects, while insisting Britain was set to escape a new recession.

"We have now cut the (inherited) deficit, not by a quarter but by a third," the chancellor said as he outlined his tax and spending plans for 2013-14.

"Despite the progress we have made there is much more to do and today I am going to level with people... It is taking longer than anyone hoped, but we must hold to the right track."

Osborne was referring to his so-called Plan A - backed by Prime Minister David Cameron - to drive down a record budget deficit inherited from the previous Labour administration in 2010.

Osborne's insistence on driving down state borrowing comes despite the chancellor announcing that the government was halving its economic growth forecast for 2013.

Gross domestic product (GDP) was expected to grow by just 0.6 per cent this year compared with a previous forecast of 1.2 per cent, according to estimates issued by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) on Wednesday.

Economic growth guidance for 2014 was also cut to 1.8 per cent from the previous estimate of 2.0 per cent that was given in December.

The OBR meanwhile hiked its forecasts for government borrowing, stating it would stand at STG108 billion ($A158.38 billion) in the year to April 2014 from a previous estimate of STG99.3 billion.

Osborne said that the problems in eurozone member Cyprus, where savers are threatened with helping to fund an international bailout, "are further evidence that the crisis is not over and the situation remains very worrying".

He said Britain was on course to avoid sinking into its third recession since the 2008 global financial crisis, despite its economy contracting 0.3 per cent in the final three months of 2012.

And in a boost to the construction industry, he added that infrastructure plans would be backed by STG3.0 billion a year from 2015-2016 - to ensure that the "economic arteries of every part of this country" could benefit.

Meanwhile, the level at which workers would begin to pay income tax was set to rise to STG10,000 from next year.

The opposition Labour party was in no mood to applaud these advances, however, while tens of thousands of civil servants were Wednesday holding a 24-hour strike in a row over pay and other working conditions.

"Under this government, the bad news doesn't stop," Labour leader Ed Miliband told MPs in his response to the budget.

"Wait for tomorrow, the chancellor says, and I will be vindicated. But with this chancellor, tomorrow never comes ... it's a downgraded budget from a downgraded chancellor."

Moody's cut Britain's cherished triple-A rating last month.

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PM to apologise to forced adoption victims

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard will offer a national apology to victims of past forced adoption practices on Thursday.

Between the 1950s and 1970s an estimated 150,000 unwed Australian mothers had their babies forcibly adopted under a practice sanctioned by governments, churches, hospitals, charities and bureaucrats.

Some women were tricked into signing adoption papers, drugged and physically shackled to hospital beds.

Ms Gillard will offer the apology on Thursday in the Great Hall of Parliament House.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott will also make a speech.

The House of Representatives and the Senate will move motions of apology following the event.

All state and territory governments have apologised to victims apart from the Northern Territory, which will do so soon.

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