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BEIJING: An explosion at a coal mine in northeast China early Saturday killed 31 workers and left 82 trapped, state-run China television 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. The previous toll given by TV channel was 15 dead and 114 trapped. The mine is owned by the Heilongjiang Longmay Mining Holding Group, based in provincial capital Harbin. State-run news agency said vice premier Zhang Dejiang was going to the scene of the incident to direct rescue operations. President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao had given instructions on the rescue work. According to the company's website, in 2009 it was ranked 12th out of the top 100 Chinese mining companies and seventh in terms of production vol...

Saturday, November 21, 2009 JOHANNESBURG: South African President Jacob Zuma met the Miss World contestants at the Presidential Guesthouse in Pretoria.The women are in South Africa preparing for the pageant, which takes place in Johannesburg next month.A jovial Zuma was all smiles as he welcomed the 112 contestants together with the reigning Miss World to South Africa.He said the Miss World pageant played an important role in promoting peace, love and prosperity because the women were world ambassadors.

Saturday, November 21, 2009 PARIS: The first Air France A380 super jumbo reached New York with 380 passengers who had bid a total $450,000 in a charity auction organized by the airline.The airline said in a statement that the money will go to the Air France Foundation, which helps children in difficulty. Nearly 90% of the bidders were French, the airline said.Air France is the first European owner of Airbus's biggest plane, which it will fly with 538 seats and is already flown by Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Australia's Qantas.An A380 costs $327 million at catalog prices, more than four times the cost of a single-aisle A320. Airlines often negotiate substantial discounts to the list price.Air France will start full service with the plane on Nov. 23, with daily flights between Paris and New York, and later to Johannesburg.Airbus has taken 200 orders from 16 customers for the A380, of which it has delivered 20.

Saturday, November 21, 2009 SYDNEY: "Catastrophic" alerts have been issued in Australia after record-breaking temperatures and wild lightning storms sparked more than 100 fires across the country, officials said Saturday.The unseasonably hot and dry weather combined with strong winds have led to blazes breaking out in the country's south eastern states. In New South Wales (NSW) a total fire ban preventing people from doing such things as burning rubbish or having barbecues -- was issued, while the Blue Mountains National Park was closed Saturday. And in Tasmania, Australia's southernmost island state, three homes were razed Friday at Dolphin Sands, a beachside town. More than 60 fresh blazes were sparked by the lightning storms, which mostly hit New South Wales, while the states of Victoria South Australia were also affected.

Saturday, November 21, 2009 ZURICH: A team of scientists in Switzerland have restarted the world's largest sub-atomic particle collider for the first time since the nearly $10bn machine suffered a massive malfunction last year.Scientists switched on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the Swiss-French border on Friday after 14 months of repairs, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) said.The LHC aims to resolve some of the greatest questions surrounding fundamental matter, such as how particles acquire mass and how they were forged in the big bang that created the universe some 13.7bn years ago.Scientists hope sub-atomic particles flung around the 27km of tunnel will collide at close to the speed of light.A spokesman for the organisation said scientists hope to have beams circulating by early Saturday.The machine circulated its first beams on September 10, 2008, but it was shut down days later because of a fault in the cooling system.

Saturday, November 21, 2009 NEW DELHI: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been chosen for the prestigious Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development this year for her "outstanding contribution to the promotion of democracy and pluralism".This was decided by an international jury chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today, the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust said.62-year-old Hasina has been chosen for her "outstanding contribution to the promotion of democracy and pluralism, her determined drive to alleviate poverty and secure social and economic justice for her people through inclusive and sustainable development and her consistent commitment to peace", it said.After her re-election in December last year, Hasina embarked on her "Vision 2021", aimed at transforming Bangladesh into a middle-income country by 2021, by eliminating poverty and inequity, the Trust said.

Saturday, November 21, 2009 MOGADISHU: A judge for an Islamic militant group in Somalia says a 20-year-old girl has been stoned to death and her boyfriend given 100 lashes for having an affair.Sheikh Ibrahim Abdirahman, the judge for the group al-Shabab, says the woman was killed Tuesday in front of a crowd of some 200 people near the town of Wajid.Abdirahman says the 20-year-old woman had an affair with a 29-year-old unmarried man and gave birth to a stillborn child.The militants that control much of southern Somalia and have links to al-Qaida have instituted a conservative reading of Islam's Sharia law.The stoning death was at least the fourth for adultery in Somalia over the last year. It was the second time a female has been killed.

Friday, November 20, 2009 AHMEDABAD: India’s star batsman Sachin Tendudlkar though set many records in cricket world but today he has made a unique world record becoming the first batsman to score 30,000 runs in Test and One-day International cricket.He crossed this milestone on the fifth and last day of the first Test against Sri Lanka at Ahmedabad.Tendulkar made debut in both Test and ODI cricket in 1989 and since then he has become a pillar of Indian batting.He holds the records of scoring the most hundreds in both forms of cricket – 43 in Test and 45 in One-day International.He also made the most runs in both Test and ODI cricket – 17,178 and 12,877 runs, respectively. Thus he has reached the milestone of overall runs of 30,000 runs.The batsman close to him is Australia’s captain Ricky Ponting who has so far made more than 24,000 runs in international cricket.