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Two doctors have volunteered to stay with children trapped in a Thai cave for four months if floodwaters cut them off and make rescue attempts impossible, it has emerged. A football coach and 12 'rake thin' young players remain trapped in the Thamg Luang cave network in the country's north as experts desperately try to come up with a plan to rescue them. There are fears fresh rainfall over the next few days could add to flooding in the caves - meaning the boys, who cannot swim, may have to wait until the end of monsoon season in October before...

A top Thai official said Tuesday that heavy rains forecast for the coming days could worsen floods in the mountain cave where 12 boys and their soccer coach were located after being missing for more than a week, forcing authorities to speed up their extraction. ... Officials said Tuesday that the boys, aged 11-16, and their 25-year-old coach were mostly in stable medical condition and have received high-protein liquid food. Interior Minister Anupong Paojinda, a member of the country's ruling military junta, said Tuesday that the boys may need to swim out using diving equipment ahead of bad weather forecast...

On 23 June, 12 boys and their coach went to explore a cave after football practice in northern Thailand. Nine days later, all 13 have been found alive.

China and Australia have joined the search for 12 boys missing in a Thai cave, as divers on Sunday closed in on the spot where they believe the teens are sheltering. The international rescue operation -- which includes over 1,000 people from Thai emergency services, the US Military and British cave experts -- has been ramping up its efforts since the boys and their 25-year-old soccer coach disappeared during an outing in the caves in northern Thailand eight days ago. Divers are now closing in on the spot where they believe the missing boys are sheltering in the Tham Luang...

The frantic efforts to rescue a dozen boys and their soccer coach after a heavy rainstorm flooded the entrance to a popular cave in Thailand were complicated Tuesday by muddy floodwaters as Thai Navy SEAL divers entered the muddy chambers, according to a top official. Rain has continued to fall in the area, which has stymied attempts to pump out water from the cave area. The cave complex extends several miles and has wide chambers and narrow passageways with rocky outcrops and changes in elevation. Still, officials have said they are hopeful the boys found a safe space away from...

In May, Williamson County Engineer Terron Evertson said it will take at least 200 trucks of concrete to fill the cave. Tim Kelley, who lives near Cambira Cavern, told CBS Austin he is looking forward to the cave being filled in. His driveway access has been blocked for months, making mundane tasks like grocery shopping a hassle. Although the County says the caves do not pose a risk to homeowners nearby, Kelley said the unknown still makes him a bit uneasy. "Even if there is a 5% chance (the cave) goes under my house, that's still a big deal to...

"Yesterday was another of my many cave adventures, but different than most. Instead of exploring and mapping newly discovered or out-of-the-way remote cave passages, I participated in a project of the Central Arizona Grotto (a chapter of the National Speleological Society and located in Phoenix) to remove years of graffiti from Peppersauce Cave. (Near Oracle, Arizona)Peppersauce has become what cavers call a “sacrificial cave.” It is open and ungated, relatively easy to traverse, and very well known throughout the state. Thus, many inexperienced people go there to see it, most of whom no little about caving, the ethics of protecting...

Residents in a Williamson County neighborhood woke up Thursday morning to find a 20-foot-deep hole outside. Neighbors reported hearing what they thought was thunder at around 3 a.m. Thursday, then they called the utility district because the water went out. Ten homes in the area of Woods of Brushy Creek subdivision are without water due to a broken water line in the 8400 block of Cambria Drive, which is north of State Highway 45. Brushy Creek MUD says the roof of a cave collapsed at the intersection of Cambria Drive and Ephraim Road. The collapse broke the water line, which...

Nick Cave, the dark poet of rock, on Sunday accused the anti-Israel boycott movement of trying to bully musicians and said he was taking a “principled stand” by performing in the country. The Australian artist, known for music that can be both melancholic and uplifting, is popular in Israel and is set to perform a pair of nearly sold-out shows. At a news conference, Cave spoke about the pressure on artists by the international movement that seeks to ostracize Israel by lobbying corporations, performers and academic institutions to sever ties with the Jewish state. He said record producer Brian Eno...

Japan's lunar orbiter discovers 50km cave beneath surface Underground chamber can potentially provide shelter for astronauts KENTARO IWAMOTO, Nikkei staff writer TOKYO -- Data from a lunar orbiter has confirmed a cave beneath the surface of the moon that could be used as an exploration base, providing shelter for astronauts and instruments, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said Wednesday. The lunar orbiter Kaguya, also known as Selene, discovered the tube-shaped, 50km cave by using its radar sounder system that examines underground structures. The cave was found at an area with a set of volcanic domes known as the...

According to UNESCO, the Cave of the Patriarchs - an ancient Jewish site - is a Palestinian "heritage site" to be operated by convicted terrorist and Hevron Mayor...

Scientists have extracted long-dormant microbes from inside the famous giant crystals of the Naica mountain caves in Mexico - and revived them. The organisms were likely to have been encased in the striking shafts of gypsum at least 10,000 years ago, and possibly up to 50,000 years ago. It is another demonstration of the ability of life to adapt and cope in the most hostile of environments. "Other people have made longer-term claims for the antiquity of organisms that were still alive, but in this case these organisms are all very extraordinary - they are not very closely related to...

WASHINGTON – First Lady Michelle Obama told Oprah Winfrey that she and Barack are “regular folks” who don’t want to "waste our talents just making money for ourselves.”She said President Obama “hasn’t changed” because he is “an authentic man” who is going to leave the White House as the same person.“So I want to know, what are those days when you just say, mmm, mmm, mmm — look at me in the White House,” Winfrey asked Obama at the White House’s United State of Women Summit in Washington.“There are so — yeah, just sitting up here, mmm, mmm, mmm. There...

This image released by the Diputacion Floral de Bizkaia on Friday May 27, 2016, shows a cave drawing. Spanish archaeologists say they have discovered an exceptional set of Paleolithic-era cave drawings that could rank among the best in a country that already boasts some of the world's most important cave art. Chief site archaeologist Diego Garate said Friday that an estimated 70 drawings were found on ledges 300 meters (1,000 feet) underground in the Atxurra cave, Berriatua, in the northern Basque region. He described the site as being in "the Champions' League" of cave art, among the top 10 sites...

HORSE CAVE, Ky. (AP) -- Authorities say rising water from heavy rains has trapped 19 people in a Kentucky cave. Horse Cave Fire Chief Donnie Parker says Thursday that two tour groups are trapped in Hidden River Cave in south-central Kentucky. Parker says two local police officers who tried to rescue the tourists are among those still inside. He says the tour groups have been in the cave for several hours.

To the casual observer, it would seem that gay rights falls neatly on the political spectrum. Democrats champion bills that aim to protect LGBT people from discrimination, and Republicans increasingly propose and pass ones aimed to protect the religiously devout. But there's growing evidence that Republicans in Congress and across the country are sidestepping the more controversial religious protection and bathroom bills and, in some cases, embracing LGBT non-discrimination laws instead.... And more broadly, Republicans in Congress, Southern-state governors and a business community that usually aligns with the GOP seem to be eschewing some of the more controversial religious freedom...

Prehistoric cave occupants paid attention to cave wall morphology and touch when creating hand stencils. Human occupants of two caves in Northern Spain put some thought into where they placed their hand stencils on cave walls as much as 37,000 years ago, during Palaeolithic times. The topography and physical characteristics of the walls in the low light conditions of the caves seem to have mattered to them, suggest a team of researchers... What they found was a pattern that indicated selection or attention to certain types of natural cave wall features for placement of the stencils. "In total 80% of...

BENSON — Kartchner Caverns State Park has been voted the best cave in the nation as part of the 2016 USA Today 10 Best Readers’ Choice Awards. Twenty of the country’s top caves were nominated for the distinction. According to a USA Today press release, “Kartchner Caverns’ supporters quickly rallied to take the number one spot, holding there for the majority of the contest,” with voting lasting several weeks. Along with Kartchner Caverns, the Readers’ Choice top five caves include: Niagara Cave in Harmony, Minn., with a passage sculptured from an underground spring one mile beneath the earth’s surface; Fantastic...

Stone Age artists were painting red disks, handprints, clublike symbols and geometric patterns on European cave walls long before previously thought, in some cases more than 40,000 years ago, scientists reported Thursday, after completing more reliable dating tests that raised a possibility that Neanderthals were the artists. A more likely situation, the researchers said, is that the art -- 50 samples from 11 caves in northwestern Spain-- was created by anatomically modern humans fairly soon after their arrival in Europe. The findings seem to put an exclamation point to a run of recent discoveries: direct evidence from fossils that Homo...

Last Update: Thursday, September 1, 2005. 3:29pm (AEST) A reconstruction of the face of a young female Neanderthal who lived about 35,000 years ago in France. (AFP) Modern humans, Neanderthals shared earth for 1,000 years New evidence has emerged that Neanderthals co-existed with anatomically modern humans for at least 1,000 years in central France.The finding suggests Neanderthals came to a tragic and lingering end.Few chapters in the rise of Homo sapiens, as modern mankind is known, have triggered as much debate as the fate of the Neanderthals.Smaller and squatter than Homo sapiens but with larger brains, Neanderthals lived in Europe,...