US firm averts French explosion

A threat to blow up another French factory has not been defused

A US construction equipment firm has agreed to pay extra compensation to French workers who had threatened to explode gas canisters at their plant.

Staff at JLG Industries in Tonneins, south-western France, made the threat in order to get better redundancy terms for 53 workers.

It is the third such incident in which workers have threatened violence against employers.

Elsewhere, French workers have taken managers hostage in “boss-nappings”.

The French Employment Minister, Laurent Wauquiez, described the tactics as “blackmail”.

In the JLG deal, the 53 affected workers were each guaranteed 30,000 euros (£26,000; $42,000) in severance pay.

JLG Industries is a subsidiary of the US company Oshkosh, which makes cranes and work platforms.

Meanwhile, a tense stand-off continues at the bankrupt New Fabris car plant in Chatellerault, south-west of Paris, where workers have also made a threat to blow up the factory.

They have given a 31 July deadline for Renault and Peugeot, which provided 90% of the plant’s work, to pay them 30,000 euros each.

Renault and PSA Peugeot said it was not their responsibility to pay workers.

The BBC’s Emma Jane Kirby in Paris says there is an acute sense of injustice in France at the moment, with many workers complaining that while their bosses continue to reap company benefits and bonuses, they are paying for this economic crisis with their jobs.

Australia counts heatwave deaths

Australia counts heatwave deaths

The Australian authorities fear about 20 people have died as a result of one of the worst heatwaves in 100 years to hit the south-east of the country.

Most of them were elderly people who had been struggling in the heat.

The heatwave has also caused power outages in Melbourne, Australia’s second biggest city.

Extreme temperatures of more than 40C (104F) have hit the south-eastern states of Victoria and South Australia in the past three days.

If the high temperatures continue into Sunday, it will equal the worst heatwave that south-eastern Australia has witnessed in 100 years.

Already, it has caused disruption, destruction and death.

In Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, health officials reported more than 20 sudden deaths, most of them elderly people overcome by the baking temperatures of over 40C who had suffered strokes and heart attacks.

Raging wildfires have ripped through the Gippsland region of neighbouring Victoria, and at least 10 homes have been destroyed near the rural town of Boolarra.

In Melbourne, the state capital, the heatwave has meant disruption to transportation services and power outages.

Trains have been cancelled because the rail lines have buckled in the heat.

An explosion at an electrical substation left over 300,000 homes without power.

Some traffic lights in the city have stopped working, so too the signals in parts of the rail network.

 

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Eight killed in Ukraine explosion

A gas explosion in Dnipropetrovsk last year caused many casualties

Rescue teams are working in the rubble of an apartment building in southern Ukraine, where an explosion has killed at least eight people.

Local officials in Yevpatoria, in Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, say as many as 30 other people may have been buried under the debris.

Two entrances to the five-storey building were blocked by falling concrete following the explosion.

The cause of the blast is thought to have been a gas leak.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s emergency ministry said 19 people had been rescued, with four of them being treated in hospital.

Correspondents say casualties caused by gas explosions in often crumbling apartment buildings are common occurrences in former Soviet states, particularly in the winter, when residents use more heating.

One such blast in October 2007 killed 23 residents in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk.

Blast outside Basque region court

A bomb has exploded outside a court in Spain’s north-eastern Basque region, after a warning from Eta, the armed separatist group, Spanish media report.

The small blast went off at 0115 (0015 BST) in the town of Tolosa and no injuries were reported.

The device was reportedly left in a rucksack on the steps of the court.

The attacks come at a time of increased turbulence in Basque politics after Spanish courts banned two Basque parties over their links to Eta.

Spanish public television station TVE said a man claiming to represent ETA called the Basque traffic department to warn of an imminent blast about half an hour before the explosion.

Eta’s four-decade campaign to set up an independent state straddling northern Spain and south-western France has led to more than 800 deaths.

The group resumed its campaign of violence in December 2006, following the failure of secret dialogue with Spain’s Socialist government.

Last month, eight people were arrested after a series of car bombs in northern Spain which killed a Spanish army officer and injured several others.

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Iraq suicide blast kills pilgrims

Eighteen people have died and another 75 were injured after a female suicide bomber struck in southern Iraq.

The female attacker blew herself up while among a group of Shia pilgrims in the town of Iskandariya.

One witness said women were cooking dinner and children were playing when the explosion occurred.

Thousands of pilgrims are heading to the holy city of Karbala for a major religious festival this weekend marking the birthday of the 12th Shia imam.

Ahmed al-Saadi, a 34-year-old carpenter from Baghdad’s Sadr City district, told the Associated Press news agency: “Minutes after I passed the resting spot, I heard a big explosion. I turned my head back and saw big flames.

“We rushed to the site and saw charred bodies while wounded people were crying for help. Pots and burnt prayer rugs were scattered all the place.”

Iskandariya had seen a recent decline in violence due to an influx of US troops and a Sunni backlash against al-Qaeda.

Tens of thousands of Shia pilgrims are expected to flock to Karbala this weekend.

Bomb kills two on Russian beach

A bomb explosion has killed two people on a beach in Russia’s  Black Sea resort of Sochi, police say.

Witnesses said a woman picked up a package which then blew up, killing her and a man with her. Four injured people were rushed to hospital.

The blast happened in Loo, in Sochi’s Lazarevskoye district. The exact nature of the device is not yet clear.

Sochi is one of Russia’s most popular beach resorts. It will also host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

The blast happened shortly after 1000 local time (0600 GMT). A police spokeswoman was quoted as saying there would have been more casualties if it had happened later, when the beach is more crowded.

One victim’s leg was blown off.

Local officials evacuated people from the beach after the blast and investigators are now at the scene, trying to identify the device.

Sochi lies near Abkhazia, a breakaway region in Georgia where tensions have flared up recently. The volatile North Caucasus, where separatist rebels are active, also lies just east of Sochi.