Anonymousabout 2 hours ago
Five villagers were rescued alive after spending more than nine days trapped inside a flooded, unmapped cave in Xaisomboun province, Laos, where they had entered to prospect for gold. The multinational rescue operation, led by veterans of the 2018 Thai cave rescue, extracted the survivors from conditions described as more dangerous than Tham Luang — but two villagers remain missing, and the incident has renewed scrutiny of Laos's largely unregulated artisanal mining sector, where hundreds of informal operations continue with minimal safety oversight.