Beijing, November 28
At least 106 workers were killed and 79 trapped underground after a major explosion in a state-run coal mine in Harbin, capital of northeast China’s Heilongjiang province, officials said today.

Rescuers have so far saved 74 miners while 79 are still trapped underground, head of the National Bureau of Production Safety Supervision and Administration Li Yizhong said while urging emergency workers to “spare no efforts to save the trapped miners.”

Altogether, 221 miners were working underground when the blast occurred last night at Dongfeng Coal Mine run by a mining conglomerate of four state-owned major coal businesses in the province.

A 269-member rescue team has gone all out to search for the miners trapped beneath the coal mine shaft after the blast. Of the 74 rescued miners, 52 have been brought out of the mine in Harbin city, just recovering from an over four-day water supply shutdown following a toxic chemical spill in a river running through it.

Investigators said the tragedy was caused by coal-dust explosion, which knocked out all ventilation systems in the pit. The main ventilation system resumed operation this morning.

China, the world’s largest coal producer, has witnessed a series of major coal mine accidents this year. Officials often blame the growing number of accidents to lax safety standards in illegally run mines, especially in the far-flung countryside.

Harbin is just limping back to normal after a serious industrial pollution hit the Songhua river, the main source of water supply to the city of nearly four million people.

An industrial accident in neighbouring Jilin province on November 13 spilled toxic chemicals into the river, forcing suspension of water supplies to Harbin from last Wednesday. The supply was resumed only last evening. — PTI

Baghdad, November 28
A defiant Saddam Hussein today exchanged angry words with the presiding judge and launched a tirade against “invaders” of Iraq as his trial reopened after a five-week adjournment.

Saddam, who has pleaded not guilty to charges, including murder and torture that carry the death penalty, was dressed in a white shirt, a western suit and sported a neatly trimmed beard as he arrived in the high-security courthouse.

The deposed dictator kept up the combative manner he adopted at the first hearing in October, complaining to judge Rizkar Mohammed Amin that he had been forced to walk the stairs into the courtroom as the lift was broken.

He then lambasted the court for apparently confiscating his pen and paper, saying: “How can a defendant defend himself if they take even his papers and pen?” The Judge promised the paper and pen would be returned later.

Saddam did not shy away from an angry tirade against the court’s US guards. “Please judge, I don’t want you to tell them, order them. You are Iraqi, you have sovereignty, they are in your country, they are foreigners, they are invaders.”

The court had ordered an adjournment after the trial’s dramatic opening on October 19 when Saddam and seven co-defendants were first hauled into the dock on charges including murder and torture over a 1982 Shiite massacre.

Since the trial opening, two lawyers acting for Saddam’s co-defendants have been murdered. On Saturday, the Iraqi police announced they had uncovered an Al-Qaida plot to assassinate the court’s top investigative judge.

The police said it had arrested 12 members of a cell linked to the Iraqi branch of Al-Qaida in the northern city of Kirkuk who had confessed to a plot to kill judge Raed-al-Juhi. — AFP

"Look, it has arrived. We sit under a naked sky and we shrink at night. We have nothing between us and the snow", said Abdul Kareem Imanullah, pointing at the white powdered mountain peaks of the Himalayas in the Jhelum Valley.

For Mr Imanullah, his fellow villagers from remote mountain communities and the 3.5 million people made homeless by the earthquake in Kashmir, the first snowfalls and sub-zero temperatures at night signify the danger of yet more illness and death.

Mr Imanullah's village of Rinja is among 13 mountain communities made up of more than 20,000 people, that is inaccessible by road, and soon the snow will prevent helicopters from landing to distribute aid.

The earthquake of October 8 levelled entire towns. In some of these, six weeks on, the survivors have yet to recover the bodies of the dead from under the rubble. And those survivors who have received some aid are living in tents, although hundreds of the women and children are now fighting respiratory illnesses, diarrhoea and scabies.

Aid agencies have warned of the devastation that the winter could bring and many predict that the death toll will be significantly higher than the 73,000 thought to have perished during the quake, before the year is out.

Deteriorating weather conditions across the region are hampering access to remote regions for road or helicopter aid distributions.

The depth of snow will climb to about 20ft by mid-winter in some areas of the Jhelum and Neelum valleys, giving those who have not received winterised tents or tarpaulin very little chance of survival.

The first child is reported to have died of pneumonia in Rinja and many more who have been injured or left homeless in the disaster are feared to face the same fate before long.

Some of those who have been displaced have set up unofficial "tents villages" that are not overseen by aid agencies or the army, and are overcrowded with highly unsanitary living conditions.

— By arrangement with The Independent

London, November 28
A London-based NRI businessman plans to donate a fully-equipped mobile breast cancer screening unit to the state of Punjab in Amritsar on December 18, to help detect early stages of the disease.

Thanks to support from UK donors, the mobile unit will provide mammograms and ultrasounds and go from village to village in the state.

Paul Chawla, Chairman and founder of the Roko Cancer Appeal, said in a statement last night that according to estimates, about 80,000 women develop the disease in India every year.

“There is a wall of silence surrounding breast cancer not just in India but here too in the UK. Women in some of our own communities are shying away from talking about an illness which can only be treated through honesty and open dialogue and this is in a society where breast cancer enjoys huge government, public and media support.

“In India, the contrast is more marked so it is our aim that with the use of the screening unit, women will be encouraged to put their health first.” — PTI