Tag: Children

Watch: Video of trapped children after being discovered alive in a cave in Thailand

    Twelve boys and their football coach trapped in a flooded Thai cave for nine days were found alive late Monday, sparking elation after days of painstaking searching by specialist divers through muddy waters and winding tunnels. There had been no contact with the boys, aged between 11 and 16, since they went missing with their 25-year-old coach last Saturday. The massive rescue effort had for days been hampered by heavy rains that flooded […]

Agonizing rescue ahead for Thai boys trapped in cave as nation rejoices

  by Jenny Vaughan/ Sippachai Kunnuwong Agence France Presse MAE SAI, Thailand (AFP) — Rescuers braced for a long and difficult evacuation for 13 members of a Thai youth football team found alive in a cave nine days after they went missing, as food and medicine was shuttled to them through muddy waters on Tuesday. The 12 young boys and their football coach were discovered rake thin and hungry on a mound of mud surrounded […]

Updated: Thai cave boys to get 4 months’ food, and diving training

MAE SAI, Thailand (AFP) — Twelve boys and their football coach found alive in a Thai cave will be supplied with four months’ worth of food and get diving training, the military said, as focus shifted to the tricky task of evacuating the group from the complex underground system. The boys aged between 11 and 16, were discovered with their 25-year-old coach late Monday, rake thin but alive, huddled on a ledge deep inside a flooded […]

Thai boys found alive after nine days trapped in cave

by Sippachai Kunnuwong © Agence France-Presse MAE SAI, Thailand (AFP) – Twelve boys and their football coach trapped in a flooded Thai cave for nine days were found alive late Monday after a painstaking search by specialist divers who finally discovered the emaciated group on a mud embankment. There had been no contact with the boys, aged between 11 and 16, since they went missing with their 25-year-old coach on June 23. The massive international […]

Thai divers advance as cave search for lost boys gains ground

Rescue divers inched closer to a spot in a flooded cave where 12 boys and their football coach have been missing for more than a week after days of bad weather beset the grueling search. The children, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old assistant coach have not been heard from since they ventured into the recesses of the Tham Luang cave in northern Thailand on Saturday and were blocked by heavy rains. But the […]

Foreign divers, soldiers join rescue for Thai children trapped in cave

  by Sippachai Kunnuwong / with Jenny Vaughan in Bangkok © Agence France-Presse MAE SAI, Thailand (AFP) — A team of US military personnel and British divers joined rescue efforts at a flooded cave in northern Thailand where 12 children and their football coach have been trapped for five days as heavy overnight rains hampered the search. Flood waters seeped into a second chamber of the Tham Luang cave and forced some of the rescue divers […]

US states sue Washington over immigrant separation

LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) — Several US states are suing the Trump administration over its “zero tolerance” policy that led to thousands of migrant children being split from their families on the US border with Mexico. Although President Donald Trump reversed course, signing an executive order on Wednesday to end the practice following domestic and international outrage, Washington State on Thursday said it will lead a coalition of states legally challenging “the policy of forced […]

New group hopes to end Catholic church child abuse

  GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Child abuse victims and human rights activists from 15 countries on Thursday launched a new pressure group to campaign against abuse by Catholic clerics. “The church has got away with crime for too long”, said Peter Saunders, a British survivor of abuse, announcing the creation of the Ending Clerical Abuse (ECA) group at a press conference in Geneva. “ECA stands to compel the Roman catholic church to end clerical abuse, […]

US police arrest 11 men on child pornography charges

MIAMI, United States (AFP) — Eleven Florida men, including employees of Disney and Legoland and a volunteer for the Boy Scouts, have been arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography, police said Tuesday. A total of 660 charges have so far been brought against the 11 suspects in the operation, dubbed “Guardians of Innocence II” by the police department of Polk County in central Florida and conducted across the month of May. Sheriff Grady […]

1.2 billion children threatened by war, poverty, discrimination: study

  LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — More than half of the world’s children are threatened by conflict, poverty or sexual discrimination, Save the Children said in a report published on Wednesday. Entitled “Many Faces of Exclusion”, the study ranked 175 countries in terms of the threat of child labor, exclusion from education, child marriage, and early pregnancy. It found that 1.2 billion children worldwide were at risk from at least one of the three main […]

Bishop steps down from anti-sex abuse board in Chile

by Miguel Sanchez Agence France-Presse SANTIAGO, Chile (AFP) —  Chile’s Catholic church took another blow on Saturday as the bishop leading the charge against sex abuse stepped down following more allegations of misconduct by priests. Rancagua Bishop Alejandro Goic presented his resignation as head of the Bishops’ Conference sex abuse prevention board, the latest episode in a Chilean abuse scandal which has rocked Pope Francis’s papacy. The church accepted Goic’s immediate resignation from the board […]

All Chilean bishops quit over child abuse scandal: spokesman

  VATICAN CITY (AFP) — Thirty-four Chilean bishops announced their resignation Friday over a child sex abuse scandal within the Church in Chile after three days of intense meetings with Pope Francis at the Vatican. “We, all the bishops present in Rome, have tendered our resignation to the Holy Father so that he may decide freely for each of us,” the bishops said in a statement read out by a spokesman at the Vatican. “We […]