Word: coal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When Xu Mingxiu woke on the morning of July 8, she found her home in western China's Sichuan province surrounded by menacing red floodwaters. She rushed outside, bought some coal, and returned shortly before electricity and water were cut off. As the waters rose, 40-year-old Xu and her family huddled on the top floor of their house. Outside boats weaved between building tops; window frames floated in the water. For days they lived on corn stew cooked over a coal fire. "I got more and more scared," she says. "Qu county floods every year. But this...
...Some good news came Wednesday when 69 coal miners were rescued after being trapped underground by floodwaters that poured into an abandoned shaft. They had spent more than three days underground, nourished only by milk poured through a ventilation hole and drunk out of upturned helmets, the Beijing News reported. Elsewhere, the outlook remains grim, with more than a week of heavy rain expected in several parts of the country...
Organized labor often complains of its treatment at the hands of corporate America, but its accusations pale in comparison to those made recently by the widows of Colombian mine workers in an Alabama courtroom. During a two-week trial, a Birmingham jury weighed charges that the local Drummond Coal Company bore responsibility for the murders of three union leaders who represented workers at its Colombian mine - the world's largest open pit mine. The widows lost their suit last week. But the case, and issues at the heart of it, are far from resolved: an appeal is all but certain...
...facts of the Drummond case as outlined in the complaint are disturbing enough. For months union leaders pleaded with company executives for more security against lawless right-wing paramilitaries operating in the northern Cesar province, where the 25,000-acre mine - from which Drummond exports 25 million tons of coal a year, with an estimated value of $700 million - is located. One key request that was refused was to allow workers to sleep on the premises. Once outside company property, miners were vulnerable to the paramilitaries, who are believed responsible for most of the 900 extra-judicial killings taking place...
...that this fight has become personal - in part, it's a story of people who feel deeply wronged by powerful outsiders. Elsie Gray, who had driven two hours from her home to stand in the rain for the victims' rally, is one of the aggrieved. Her son, a former coal miner, is serving a 15-year prison sentence after being caught with two OxyContin pills and 2.4 grams of cocaine. She was angered that the fines were mostly going to state and federal Medicaid fraud or other health programs, not specifically to rehab programs. And now she feels like these...