It’s not often you get a happy disaster story. But on Sunday – two weeks after their mineshaft in northern Chile caved in – all 33 miners acknowledged they were alive.

Trapped after rocks blocked their exit, they managed to live in a shelter 700 metres (2,300 feet) underground.

But rather than bring them straight out, rescuers now say they won’t be able to get them out until Christmas, posing a serious challenge ahead for the miners.

The accident

Over the past month, Pakistan has experienced its worst flooding on record. A fifth of the country is under water.

The world has responded with aid but it has been slow and minimal. And although they have their reasons, it could make the battle against the Taliban a lot more difficult.

The flood

The heavy rain began in late July in the northern province of Khyber Paktunkhwa. From there water surged down the Indus River to Punjab and Sindh provinces, where heavy rain had also fallen.

For the best part of a century, the Anglo-Saxons have been the world’s dominant ethnic group. Together they produce a third of the world’s total economic output.

But these five countries of English origin – America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – may have collectively peaked.

As the world goes through a power shift, the Anglo-Saxons – as they’re colloquially known – may have to accept a less dominant future economically, politically, militarily, culturally (including on the sports field) and even morally.

Billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates have earned worldwide praise for their decision to use a large portion of their wealth to fund the world’s largest private charitable foundation.

We're constantly bombarded with negative stories of new diseases and dangers that we often forget to acknowledge the positive progress being made.

So here’s a look at some good news in the development of global health.

The Millennium Development Goals

Ten years ago, 189 country leaders met to adopt the UN Millennium Declaration and establish ten Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with targets set for 2015.

Here's the good news – in terms of the health-related MDGs, they’re doing an okay job.

Haiti’s devastating magnitude 7 earthquake on January 12 was a brutal blow to the Western hemisphere’s poorest country.

220,000 people died, 300,000 were injured, and 300,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. Including government buildings, schools, hospitals and other key infrastructure, the total damage is estimated to be US$7.8 billion.

Saturday 10 July was the 25th anniversary of the 1985 sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior by French Secret Service agents in Auckland, New Zealand.

But while the ship’s captain Peter Willcox attended an anniversary ceremony in Poland to mark the building of a new Rainbow Warrior, the bigger story still lingers.

What Greenpeace was protesting against all those years ago was French nuclear testing in the Pacific. This has stopped, but the deadly after-effects that they predicted remain.

The sinking

Appeals for donations seem to come from every direction these days – in an email, a knock at the door or a collector on the street.

The cause might be starving children in Africa, human rights abuses in China or rehabilitating prostitutes in India.

World Vision, Oxfam and Amnesty International are just a few non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating internationally.

Other big players that may sound familiar are Greenpeace, Save the Children and the French-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).

Today France’s parliament begins its controversial debate on whether to ban the burqa.

It’s a debate that is raging across several European parliaments, exposing society’s true values over women’s rights, religious freedoms and equality.

The principle question being asked is whether the burqa and its Arabian equivalent the niqab is a symbol of religious expression or repression of women?

The burqa is an outer garment worn by some Islamic women to cover their face and body in public.

‘Witness protection’ is where governments relocate and provide new identities to a witness and their family in exchange for testimony.

It’s done because the prosecutors believe that without being protected, the witness would be at severe risk of intimidation or even death at the hands of those being prosecuted.

But the process has many flaws, both in the rich and poor world.

Witness protection in America