HANOI (AFP) -- Vietnam on Tuesday mobilized soldiers and engineering experts to try free a 10-year-old boy trapped in a buried hollow concrete pillar on a construction site. Rescuers hope to raise the pillar from its 35-metre-deep (115-feet) hole and cut the boy, named Thai Ly Hao Nam, out -- though after three days trapped inside, it is not clear whether he is still alive. The youngster fell into the 25-centimetre (12-inch) wide shaft of the pillar, sunk as part of a new bridge in Mekong delta province of Dong Thap, on Saturday, apparently while looking for scrap metal. A wider 19-metre-long metal pipe has been lowered around the concrete tube in which Nam is trapped to allow them to remove mud from around the pillar and try to lift it out. Rescuers were softening and removing mud and water to reduce pressure around the pillar before bringing it up -- most likely later on Tuesday evening. Around 100 soldiers and professional equipment have been deployed at the site, which has been sealed off from the public while the rescue effort goes on.

 

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BRESCIA, Italy (Reuters) -- An Italian court on Tuesday postponed for a second time a hearing on whether to hand over to Belgium a woman suspected of involvement in a Qatar graft scandal that has rocked the European Parliament. An appeals court in the northern city of Brescia originally delayed a decision last month on whether to extradite Silvia Panzeri after her lawyers said the request should be rejected because of overcrowding in Belgian jails. The judges asked for information from Belgium on its prison system but at a reconvened hearing on Tuesday they said they had not yet received the necessary guidance and pushed back the session until Jan. 16. Panzeri, 38, is the daughter of former EU lawmaker Pier Antonio Panzeri, who is believed by Brussels prosecutors to be one of the main players in the alleged corruption. He has denied any wrongdoing. The same court, with a different set of judges, has already cleared the transfer to Brussels of Maria Dolores Colleoni, the wife of Pier Antonio and mother of Silvia. Colleoni is still in Italy, however, because her lawyers filed an appeal against her transfer with Italy’s highest appeals court which is expected to decide in the coming days.

 

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PARIS (Reuters) -- French energy suppliers are not doing enough to help the country’s bakeries cope with soaring energy bills, said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Tuesday, who added he would meet energy firms later in the day to discuss the matter. Earlier in the day, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had confirmed plans to help French bakers cope with rising energy bills, allowing them to spread the payment of their taxes over time and possibly “the payment of their energy bills for the first months of the year.”

 

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PRAGUE (Reuters) -- Czech authorities are preparing to destroy up to 220,000 hens on a poultry farm in the west of the country after bird flu was discovered there last week, in the biggest outbreak to date. Bird flu was reported last Friday at the farm located 150 km (90 miles) west from Prague, which can house up to 750,000 chickens, after an increase of deaths in one of three halls there. The Czech Republic’s State Veterinary Administration (SVS) said on Tuesday that since checks revealed the infection only in one of the halls, the majority of the flock could be spared.  “The whole (population of the) hall will have to be culled,” said Petr Majer, SVS spokesman.

 

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MEXICO CITY (AFP) -- Seven people were killed in northern Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez during a police operation to recapture prisoners who escaped after an attack at their facility, state authorities announced. Gunmen attacked the border city’s state prison on Sunday at dawn, leaving nearly 20 people dead and allowing the prisoners, which include a gang leader, to flee. Monday’s deaths -- two agents from the state prosecutor’s office and five alleged criminals -- took the total fatalities related to the attack to 26, according to a statement from the Chihuahua Public Security Department. Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval had earlier told reporters that ten guards, seven prisoners and two attackers had died in Sunday’s assault on the prison, which has been attributed to drug traffickers. Fourteen inmates and a guard were injured and five attackers were captured, Sandoval said.

 

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OUAGADOUGOU (AFP) -- Twenty-eight bodies were found in northwest Burkina Faso at the weekend, the government said, as rights campaigners blamed a volunteer militia created to support the army’s battle against takfiris. Preliminary reports “indicate 28 people killed,” a government statement said, adding that an investigation had been opened in order to shed “full light” on what had happened, and urging calm.  But a rights group called the Collective of Communities against Impunity and Stigmatisation (CISC) pointed the finger at the Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland (VDP) -- a civilian auxiliary force that supports the military in its seven-year-old fight against jihadists. “Armed civilians claiming to be” VDP have been “freely carrying out organized looting and abuses targeting civilian populations on the basis of appearance and stigmatization,” the CISC said.