Sixty feared dead as entire village wiped out in Papua New Guinea landslide

Sixty people are missing and feared dead after an entire village was wiped out in a landslide in the Commonwealth country of Papua New Guinea. The flimsy village homes made of palm fronds and sticks...

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High-rise buildings collapse in Rio de Janeiro

Two buildings - one nearly 20 storeys high - have collapsed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, filling streets with masonry and covering cars with debris. Officials say up to 11 people are believed to be inside the buildings and five people have been rescued. The cause of the collapse remains unclear, but witnesses spoke of an explosion and a strong smell of gas. City Mayor Eduardo Paes said that they were focusing on rescue efforts before looking into the incident's cause. According to the BBC's Paulo Cabral, rescue workers were able to pull a cleaner from inside one of the elevators in the rubble after he managed to call a friend on his mobile phone. The buildings - located near the Municipal Theatre and the headquarters of oil giant Petrobras - crushed a four-storey construction site on their way down. The area surrounding the buildings is now covered in rubble, with several cars partially covered by debris. Dozens of emergency workers...

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Batang Kali relatives edge closer to the truth about 'Britain's My Lai massacre'

Lawyers representing relatives of 24 unarmed victims who died at Batang Kali, Malaysia, in December 1948 have finally been provided with key Foreign Office correspondence about past investigations and Cabinet Office guidance on when inquiries should be held. Even Buckingham Palace has been pulled into the furore surrounding the fate of the villagers, who were rounded up on a large rubber-tapping estate in the colonial government's counter-insurgency operation against communists, known historically as the Malayan Emergency. A petition to the Queen about the deaths has been handed to the British high commissioner in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, and the royal household has replied. The palace, however, has declined to release the text of the letter. The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence have always insisted the villagers were shot while trying to escape detention. The incident has been described by some as the "British...

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