Seventy miners who were trapped deep underground on Sunday after a fire in a Saskatchewan potash mine are safe and sound, a mine spokesman said. All of the trapped miners, who took refuge in special safety rooms inside the mine, should be able to emerge once the smoke has cleared, the Mosaic Company mine's spokesman told Canadian television. Rescue workers who went down found 30 of the miners in one of the refuge stations, he said. "In those refuge stations, the workers can seal themselves in with enough oxygen and food and water to be comfortable for the next 36 hours at least," he said.
■ Nigeria
Oil workers released
Separatist militants freed four Western oil workers yesterday, after holding them hostage in the swamps of the Niger Delta for almost three weeks, officials said. The men -- an American, a Briton, a Bulgarian and a Honduran -- have been handed over to the Bayelsa State government, spokesman Welson Ekiyor said by telephone from the state capital Yenagoa. "They've been released. They're with the governor right now. They're very OK," Ekiyor said. The British embassy and the oil giant Shell said they were checking the report. The men were seized on Jan. 11.
■ Italy
Berlusconi rules out sex
Premier Silvio Berlusconi has promised to lower taxes and raise pensions. Now he has pledged not to have sex until April 9 elections, Il Giornale reported on Sunday. The conservative Milan daily owned by Paolo Berlusconi, the premier's brother, reported that the no-sex vow was made during a campaign rally in Cagliari, Sardinia, on Saturday with a popular TV preacher and his followers. The priest praised the premier for what he described as a defense of family values and promised that his followers would support the conservative leader because "if the left wins it will be the moral end for this country." Berlusconi thanked the priest, and then told him: "I will try to meet your expectations, and I promise from now on, two-and-a half months of absolute sexual abstinence, until April 9,'' Il Giornale reported.
■ United Kingdom
Scientist killed in Oxford
Detectives questioned a man on Sunday over the murder of a scientist who was found stabbed 49 times and strangled with her own sweater at her apartment in Oxford. There was no sign that the apartment of Barbara Waldron-Johnston, an expert in cot death, had been broken into, suggesting she may have opened the door to her killer. Waldron-Johnston, 55, had not been sexually assaulted. She had returned to the UK four months ago after working for 23 years in New Zealand, and settled back in Oxford, where she had studied. Police broke into her apartment last Thursday after her parents said they had not heard from her for several days.
■ Romania
Dog bite kills Japanese
A Japanese man bled to death after being bitten in downtown Bucharest by a stray dog on Sunday, TV reports said on Sunday. The dog bit a vital leg artery in the 68-year-old as he stepped out of his car to enter his home. He managed to ask a guard to call an ambulance before he died. Pathologists found three bite wounds. There are more than 200,000 stray dogs in the Romanian capital, according to official estimates.
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