BEIJING — A gas leak killed 32 miners Thursday in southwest China, and three others were missing and presumed dead, a government official said.
The cause of the leak at the coal mine in Guizhou was not known, said the official with the Guizhou Provincial Coal Mine Safety Bureau.
China’s coal mines average 13 deaths a day in fires, explosions and floods, despite government efforts to improve safety. In August, 181 miners died when two mines flooded in Shandong province.
Flooding wipes out state’s agriculture
OSTUACAN, MEXICO — The floods that forced hundreds of thousands from their homes in Tabasco have also wiped out agricultural production in the Gulf Coast state, one of Mexico’s main producers of chocolate, citrus and sugar cane, officials said Thursday.
The massive flooding, now in its second week, will be Mexico’s most costly natural disaster since a hurricane devastated Cancún and Cozumel in 2005, insurers said Thursday.
“One hundred percent of all the crops and agricultural fields have been lost because of the flooding,” said Rafael Tosca, deputy director for the trade department of the Tabasco Economy Ministry.
About a third of the state’s population depends on farming or ranching to make a living.
U.N. defends peacekeepers
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI — The United Nations on Thursday defended the conduct of its peacekeepers at a storm shelter from accusations they abandoned evacuees to roving gangsters.
Haitian police, who were supposed to have taken over the shelter after U.N. troops left, said they have opened an investigation into the incident.
Displaced Haitians staying at a school under U.N. protection said peacekeepers fled with the facility’s lone generator after sundown on Nov. 2, days after Tropical Storm Noel forced thousands to seek refuge in Port-au-Prince’s seaside Cite Soleil slum.
Evacuees said gangsters then streamed into the shelter, beating them with sticks and stealing blankets and food.
Maj. Gen. Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz, U.N. military commander, on Thursday said the disturbance was a fight over food by evacuees.
Man ordered released in air traffic controller’s death
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND — Switzerland’s highest court on Thursday ordered the release of a Russian imprisoned since 2004 for killing an air traffic controller he blamed for his family’s death in a plane crash.
Vitaly Kaloyev’s sentence had been reduced to 5 1/4 years from eight years because he has served more than two- thirds of his sentence with good behavior.
Kaloyev was convicted in October 2005 in the killing of Danish-born Peter Nielsen, an air traffic controller with Swiss company Skyguide.
Nielsen was the only person on duty when a Bashkirian Airlines plane and a DHL cargo jet collided on July 1, 2002, in airspace he was responsible for over southern Germany, killing 71 people, mostly schoolchildren on a holiday trip to Spain.
Ban calls for urgent action on warming
SANTIAGO, CHILE — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called for urgent action to fight global warming and poverty during a visit to Chile on Thursday, saying climate change was one of his top priorities as head of the world body.
Ban’s comments came as Chilean President Michelle Bachelet inaugurated the Ibero-American Summit, a gathering of leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal.
Today, Ban flies to Antarctica to see the effects of global warming on glaciers. He also will visit Brazil, Spain and Tunisia.
