Society

Police have detained five coal mine executives after 12 people died when a gas pocket ignited in a coal mine in north China's Shanxi Province, authorities said Monday.

The accident occurred at 11:30 p.m. Sunday when 16 miners were working in a shaft in the Donggou Colliery Co., Ltd. in Jiexiu City, said a spokesman with the Shanxi Provincial Work Safety Administration.

The police did not reveal the identities of the detainees.

The mine was expanding its annual production capacity from the authorized 30 tonnes. The workers violated a safety rule that prohibited the demolition of a wall between the shaft and a disused area of the mine where the gas was accumulated in high density, the spokesman said.

The four survivors were under observation in hospital. Doctors said they were stable.

The Jiexiu city government has launched safety inspections to prevent more accidents.
 

Five miners are dead and six are missing after a gas burst at a coal mine in southwest China's Yunnan Province early Monday local authorities said.

The miners were working in a shaft of Malishu Coal Mine in Shuangbai County, Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, when the accident happened at about 1:50 a.m., said a county government official.

Rescuers arrived at the mine at 4 a.m. and five bodies had been recovered as of 11 a.m., a rescue team spokesman said.

Provincial work safety authorities are investigating the cause of the gas burst.

At least 13 people died and 19 were injured Monday in a series of rear-end collisions, involving at least 100 vehicles, on a highway in east China's Jiangxi Province.

The crashes occurred at around 6 a.m. at various sites on the Poyang Lake Bridge, part of the Jiujing Highway linking Jiujiang City to Jingdezhen City, said a Provincial Communications Department official.

A government minister who lost his job over last year's tainted baby formula scandal has been appointed deputy head of a department leading China's war on porn.

Li Changjiang, 65, former head of the top quality agency, is now vice-director of the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications.

He was in Jiangsu province for his first campaign last Thursday and Friday, said a report in Southern Metropolis Daily yesterday.

Li resigned as minister of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine days after the Sanlu milk scandal was exposed last September.

The State Council had made a statement that the quality administration had to bear "supervision responsibility for the milk food contamination".

The tainted formula killed six children and led to more than 300,000 more suffering urinary tract problems, such as kidney stones.