"4 admit to China’s bribery charges" by Washington Post | March 23, 2010
BEIJING — Four businessmen — one Australian and three Chinese — pleaded guilty yesterday to accepting bribes in a case that has highlighted the perils of doing business in China.
Lawyers and an Australian consular official told reporters that the Australian, Stern Hu, along with three colleagues at the Australian mining giant
Related: Around Asia: In a Land Down Under
The case against Hu comes at a time of heightened tensions between China and the Western business community that for decades has been key to China’s development, bringing in technology, management practices, and billions in investment, helping to transform China into an exporting powerhouse.
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"Rio Tinto workers sentenced in bribery case" by Associated Press | March 30, 2010
SHANGHAI — Unexpectedly strong jail sentences of seven to 14 years for four
Related: Looting Means a Lopping in China
Looks like they got lucky.
Authorities are taking a sterner stance toward foreign companies caught violating the country’s often selectively enforced corruption code....
As if the U.S. and its mouthpiece MSM had any standing to criticize.
Rio Tinto, based in London and Melbourne, is a key industry negotiator in price talks with China’s state-owned steel mills, and the arrests of its employees in August were initially thought linked to Beijing’s anger over high prices it paid for iron ore — a key commodity for China’s booming economy. That belief was shaken last week after the four pleaded guilty to taking bribes from steel mills trying to get preferential access to ore supplies.
Australia said Hu’s sentence wouldn’t affect ties with China, but some specialists said the secrecy of parts of the trial underlined worries companies have about doing business in a country where legal proceedings are often opaque.Doesn't seem to matter to companies doing business here.
XIANGNING, China — Rescuers pumped water from a flooded mine where time is running out for 153 trapped workers. Their efforts stretched into a second day, with no communication from those stuck deep....
Officials have yet to declare the cause of the accident but said the flood at the state-owned Wangjialing coal mine may have started Sunday afternoon when workers dug into a network of old, water-filled shafts. Such derelict tunnels are posing new risks to miners across China even as the country improves safety in its notoriously hazardous mines, where accidents kill thousands each year....
Liu Dezheng, a chief engineer with the work safety bureau in northern China’s Shanxi Province, warned any rescue was still days away. State television said the workers were trapped in nine different places in the mine. Authorities were not only worried about the flood. Gases from the abandoned shafts may have flowed into the mine, bringing new dangers.
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And if you were hoping for a follow-up on the web you were out of luck.
Printed photo only:
"IN CHINA, TRAPPED MINERS' FAMILIES HOLD OUT HOPE -- A relative of one of the 153 workers trapped in a mine in Shanxi Province was carried from the site of the flooding accident yesterday as rescuers carried on their search. The workers became trapped Sunday when an unfinished coal mine was flooded in what could be the worst disaster to hit the industry in recent years. Yesterday, some of the workers relatives clashed with mine officials over the pace of the rescue."
And before the MSM returns to that coal mine:
BEIJING — A gas explosion at a mine in central China killed 12 workers and trapped 32 underground, state media said yesterday, the second major mine disaster in the country this week.
Fifty miners were able to escape after the Wednesday evening blast, which was caused by an underground gas leak, the Xinhua News Agency said, citing in Henan Province’s governor, Guo Gengmao. It is possible the trapped miners survived the explosion, he was cited as saying.
Related: Around New England: Terrorists Attack Connecticut Gas Plant
Globe Leaking Gas in Connecticut
Around New England: Globe Cuts the Connecticut Cheese
Around New England: Something Stinks in the State of Connecticut
Around New England: Silent Gas Under the Sheets in Connecticut
Gee, that investigation sure is taking forever.
About 100 rescue workers were trying to reached the trapped workers at the privately owned Guomin Mining Co. coal pit in Yichuan County of Luoyang City, Xinhua said. The mine had been under renovation. Mine boss Wang Guozheng has disappeared, and authorities ordered his assets frozen, Xinhua said. Yichuan County Chief Wu Ligang and three other county officials were fired.
News of the explosion was released as rescue work continued at a mine in northern China’s Shanxi Province, four days after 153 workers were trapped when water flooded the shaft where they were working. The flood at the Wangjialing mine started when workers digging tunnels broke through into an old shaft filled with water, a government safety body said, accusing mine officials of ignoring safety rules and danger warnings in a rush to open the mine.
Happens over here, too.
There has been no contact with the trapped miners, but authorities are holding out hope that some could be alive. China’s coal mines are the world’s deadliest, despite a multiyear government effort to reduce fatalities. Most accidents are blamed on failure to follow safety rules or lack of required ventilation, fire-control, and equipment.
Accidents killed 2,631 coal miners in China last year, down from 6,995 deaths in 2002, the most dangerous year on record, according to the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety.
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Also see: The Boston Globe's Invisible Ink: Chinese Cave-In
"Rescuers thwarted at flooded mine
XIANGNING, China — Dozens of Chinese miners were pulled out alive today after being trapped for more than a week in a flooded coal mine, sparking cheers among the hundreds of rescue workers who had raced to save them and almost given up hope.
A live state television broadcast counted off the number of survivors — up to 55 at press time — as miners wrapped in blankets were hurried to ambulances that sped to nearby hospitals.
State television said rescuers were preparing to pull as many as 70 to 80 miners out of the mine in northern Shanxi Province, though conditions underground remained complicated. A total of 153 workers had been trapped since March 28....
China’s coal mines are the world’s deadliest. Accidents killed 2,631 coal miners in China last year, down from 6,995 deaths in 2002, the most dangerous year on record, according to the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety....
Yeah, I already knew that! Nothing from Henan Province, huh?
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