GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The cruise ship Costa Concordia, which crashed into rocks Friday 13 February off the Italian coast, remains the scene of painstaking searches for survivors, with Manrico Gianpetroni, chief purser, brought out alive and suffering from a broken leg, and a Korean couple on their honeymoon brought out dazed. Checks have now made it possible to ascertain that 17 people remain missing, fewer than earlier thought, but at least five people died, with two bodies found Sunday afternoon, and 70 were injured in the accident to the luxury liner that had 4,000 people on board.

Reuters cites Italian police as saying that “the captain of the luxury 114,500-tonne ship, Francesco Schettino, was under arrest and accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship.”

Links to other sites: BBC, CNN, La Stampa (It), Le Monde (Fr)

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – World headlines include the following, over the weekend:

• Clocks go back in the US, a week after Europe moves from summer to winter time – NPR
• Chinese mine workers, some 200-strong, pulled out 45 miners Saturday who had been trapped for more than 48 hours after an explosion – CBS, Xinhua
• Pakistan charges 7 in Bhutto death in 2007 – Aljazeera, Reuters Canada
• Syria: 553 of some 15,000 prisoners released, but 20 killed Friday – Aljazeera, Xinhuanet
• Colombia: Farc leader Alfonso Cano killed, but now what? – CS Monitor, Guardian, Jakarta Post

Four of the 33 miners trapped since 5 August reached the surface by early Wednesday 13 October their time, pulled up in a capsule to a cheering crowd. The other 30 will now be rescued in small teams. Live streaming coverage is provided in English by the BBC and CNN. Their recovery period may be long, but the state of health of the first miners out appears to be relatively very good: they are walking, and talking and look fit. The miner were trapped when a section of the San Jose mines in the Atacama desert collapsed. All but one are Chilean, and the other is Bolivian.

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - An 18-year-old Spanish youth who went missing Sunday afternoon in heavy fog while snowboarding in the French Alps  has been found alive.  The young man was near the resort of Deux-Alpes (map), at an altitude of 3,200 metres, when he became lost in bad weather, which then prevented search parties from finding him. His life is not in danger, say French authorities, although he was suffering from hypothermia and appeared to have given up on being found when skies cleared long enough for a helicopter patrol to find him at 1,275 metres, only 500 metres from the road, as the crow flies.

Rescuers are calling it a miracle, that he managed to get down some 2,000 metres of untraced mountain without any avalanches or cliffs.

Links to other sites: TF1 (Fre), 20 Minutes (Fre)