INTERNATIONAL
School collapses after heavy rains, killing 13 students
Associated Press
ABUJA, Nigeria - A mud-walled school collapsed in the northern city of Kano yesterday after a heavy rain, killing 13 children and injuring 21 others, police said.
The students were apparently preparing for a morning Arabic lesson at the Muslim school when a wall gave way, police commissioner Yakubu Bello Uba said.
Eleven children were crushed to death and two others died later of their injuries, police said. Local residents rushed the injured to the hospital. No further details were immediately available.
Heavy rains have pounded parts of northern Nigeria for the past month, bursting dams and river banks, and killing an unknown number of people.
STATES
GM settles suits charging race, sex harassment
Associated Press
DETROIT - General Motors agreed yesterday to pay $1.25 million to 16 employees at a New Jersey assembly plant who sued the automaker over alleged racial and sexual harassment.
Under a consent decree, GM denied any wrongdoing as it agreed to strengthen its complaint procedures.
"In some instances a small number of employees were subjected to unacceptable behavior which was not representative of the environment employees there enjoy," spokesman Tom Wickham said.
Two supervisors were removed once the allegations of inappropriate contact were revealed, he said.
The employees are from the Linden, N.J., plant, where 35 percent of the 2,453 hourly and salaried workers are minorities, Wickham said.
The plaintiffs cited one instance in which a hangman's noose was left over a table in a lunchroom used mainly by black employees.
The automaker is required to tell federal authorities for two years about employee complaints of racial or sexual harassment, any instances of retaliation and how GM handled the complaints.
STATES
Explosion at Pennsylvania dynamite plant injures three
Associated Press
MOSCOW, Pa. - An explosion ignited a series of fires yesterday at a plant that makes dynamite and fireworks, and at least one worker was missing.
Roughly 200 residents within a one-mile radius were evacuated and could be out of their homes through today.
One worker with critical burns was taken to a hospital in Allentown, said Jerry Gaughan, emergency services director for Lackawanna County. Two others were treated for minor burns.
Rescuers called off the search for the missing worker a few hours after the explosion.
"There's still fire, several fires, and it's not safe to go in there. Based on information from the owners, there's approximately 10,000 pounds of black powder that they're worried about up there," Gaughan said.
The fires could take several days to burn out, he said.
The first explosion occurred at 7:35 a.m. in a black powder storage facility owned by J & J Pyrotechnics Mfg. A woman who answered the phone at the company said no one was available to comment.
State officials identified the company owner as John Ianarone. There is no telephone listing for him in the Scranton area.
Gaughan said Ianarone was at the site at the time of the first explosion and helped pull the critically injured burn victim from the powder storage area, which he described as a shallow bunker.
