Beijing—An explosion
at a coal mine in northeast China early Saturday
killed 31 workers and left 82 trapped, state-run
China Central Television (CCTV) said, the latest
deadly incident to hit the industry. The blast
happened at 2:30 am (1830 GMT Friday) at a mine
in Heilongjiang province, according to a
statement issued by the State Administration of
Work Safety. A total of 528 miners were working
in the pit, near Hegang City, when the blast
occurred, the state administration said.
Bogota—Colombia
warned its forces were on “maximum alert” and
were prepared to defend against any attack, amid
rising tensions with neighboring Venezuela.
Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva issued
the warning after a meeting of the country’s
national security council in Arauca, a city on
the eastern border with Venezuela.
United
Nations—UNICEF urged the world to help the one
billion children still deprived of food,
shelter, clean water or health care and the
hundreds of millions more threatened by violence
two decades after the UN adopted a treaty
guaranteeing children’s rights. The UN
children’s agency issued a report on the
challenges ahead and the accomplishments since
the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention
on the Rights of the Child in 1989.
Manik Farm—Sri Lanka will
release next month the remaining 136,000 Tamil
refugees still in the squalid and overrun
government camps where they’ve been detained
since the country’s civil war ended six months
ago, a top official said Saturday. Some 300,000
war refugees were forced into the camps after
fleeing the final months of the government’s
decades-long war with the separatist Tamil Tiger
rebels, which ended in May.
A POLITICAL leader’s decision not to seek
re-election usually triggers fervent discussion
about potential heirs. Yet, President Mahmoud
Abbas’s withdrawal from the presidential
election scheduled for January 24, 2010, has
produced nothing of the kind in Palestine-not
because of a dearth of leadership or a
reluctance to mention possible successors, but
because the presidency of the Palestinian
Authority has become irrelevant.
