Beijing, July 31: An explosion ripped through a workers’ dormitory area and killed at least 15 people on Saturday at a coal mine in a city in northern China notorious for mining disasters.
The cause of the 2:00am blast at the Liugou mine in Linfen city in the northern province of Shanxi was still under investigation, according to work safety officials at the central and provincial level. They would not give their names, as is common among government workers in China.
The state-run Xinhua News Agency said another 20 people were injured in the explosion, citing a senior official with the mine’s owner, the Yangquan Coal Industry (Group) Co Ltd.
It was not yet clear whether the mine was licensed. China has been trying to improve the safety of its mining industry, which is by far the world’s deadliest, but an unknown number of illegal mines exist to profit off the country’s huge appetite for power.
The website of the Yangquan Coal Industry (Group) Co Ltd says the company is state-owned. Phone calls to the company rang unanswered Saturday.
The gritty city of Linfen is especially well-known for coal mine accidents. The city’s most powerful job, that of party secretary, went unfilled for more than six months in 2008 and 2009 as officials appeared to shy away.
"The most unwanted job in the Chinese Communist Party," said the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, which tracks labor issues on the mainland, when the post was finally filled. The official, XieHai, remains in the job.
His predecessor was fired after a massive landslide from an illegal mining operation submerged a village under Linfen’s oversight and killed at least 277 people in late 2008.
Linfen had nine major coal mine disasters, with more than 10 deaths each, between 2003 and 2008, the China Labour Bulletin reported last year.
Last year, accidents and blasts killed more than 2,600 coal miners throughout China.http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/latest_news.php?nid=25061
2.China: ‘Attack’ on tax office kills 4
Beijing, Jul 31: At least four people were killed and over 19 injured in an explosion at a local tax office in central China on Friday, Jul 30 afternoon.
Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday, Jul 31 that the police are suspecting that the blast at a district tax office in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, was a deliberate attack.
Quoting a statement released by the police department, the news agency said that initial investigations have showed the explosion was a planned attack.
The blast is being seen in line with the violence that has exploded in the recent past due to the public angst over various socio-economic issues including the cost of health care and the widening rich-poor gap.
http://news.oneindia.in/2010/07/31/china-attack-on-tax-office-kills-4.html
3.Floods kill 37 in China’s northeast: media
BEIJING — The death toll from floods sweeping through northeastern China has risen to 37, state media said Saturday, as the country continues to battle the worst floods in a decade.
Torrential rains in Jilin province have left a further 35 missing as more than 364,000 people were evacuated from waterlogged areas, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The weather bureau has predicted more heavy rain for the central and eastern parts of the hard-hit province, with experts warning of further flooding and landslides.
Water, electricity and telecommunications services were cut in parts of the province, while train services in the town of Kouqian were suspended after the railway station was surrounded by flood waters, previous reports said.
More than 95,500 buildings have been damaged in the floods, with 25,400 destroyed, Xinhua said.
Floods up to three metres (10 feet) deep in some places submerged factories and houses, reports said earlier this week, before the waters receded to about one metre.
Elsewhere in Jilin, hundreds of workers scrambled to recover 3,000 barrels full of explosive chemicals that were washed by flood waters into the Songhua River, a major waterway.
Water supplies to the nearby city of Jilin were temporarily cut after the incident on Wednesday, leaving 4.3 million people dependent on bottled water.
A total of 7,000 barrels were washed into the river, with 2,500 containing the chemical trimethyl chloro silicane — a highly explosive, colorless liquid — while 500 contained the compound hexamethyl disilazane, Xinhua said.
About 3,700 barrels had been recovered by Friday afternoon, the report said, but it was not clear how many of them contained the chemicals.
Jilin is the latest province to have been hit by recent deadly floods that have killed more than 300 people since July 14 and left another 300 missing, according to the latest official figures.
Until now, torrential rains have mostly hit China’s south, swelling the Yangtze River — the nation’s longest waterway — and some of its tributaries to dangerous levels.
In the far-western Xinjiang region, rescuers were trying to reach 700 residents, construction workers and tourists trapped by floods.
Floodwaters have damaged three bridges and a dozen buildings in Kuqa county in the central part of the region, with more than 13,000 people from the area preparing to reinforce dykes to contain floods.
The worst floods in a decade have left 991 dead and 558 missing since the beginning of the year and caused more than 28 billion dollars in damage, latest official figures show, and authorities have warned of more to come. www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jQmm4FYl5sT7NyuPiLPQ4CAHYwfA
