Bay Area casino project scrapped
San Pablo, Calif. An American Indian tribe has shelved plans to build an expanded casino with 2,500 slot machines in the San Francisco Bay area after state lawmakers said it would be too big.
The Lytton Band of Pomo Indians said in a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dated Thursday that they did not think the Legislature would have approved the project.
Instead, the tribe will renovate and install hundreds of new games – but not slot machines – at its existing 70,000-square-foot cardroom called Casino San Pablo. Without slot machines, the state has no regulatory power over the facility and the tribe avoids sharing revenue.
An accord last year between the tribe and Schwarzenegger envisioned a Las Vegas-style casino covering four acres.
Government backers disrupt Cuba protest
Havana With shouts of “Viva Fidel,” female government supporters interrupted a weekly silent protest by wives of political prisoners held after Sunday church services.
The standoff after Palm Sunday Mass at a Havana church appeared peaceful, but tensions ran high, prompting neighbors to leave their homes and cars to slow down for a better look.
It was the first such confrontation since the wives began the weekly protest shortly after the government crackdown in the spring of 2003 that put 75 activists behind bars. Cuba accused the dissidents of working with the United States to undermine Fidel Castro’s government – a charge the activists and Washington denied.
Over the last year, the dissidents’ wives, known as the “Ladies in White,” have become increasingly bold, staging candlelight vigils and public protests – practically unheard of in communist Cuba.
China mine rescue retrieves 60 bodies
Beijing Rescue workers in northern China have recovered 60 bodies and were searching for nine others after an explosion tore through a coal mine, the government said Sunday.
The blast occurred Saturday at Xishui Colliery in Shuozhou, in a major coal-mining area in Shanxi province. Police have detained four coal mine owners, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Xinhua reported that 60 bodies were found by Sunday evening. Nineteen of the dead miners had been working in a neighboring mine and were trapped when the wall where they were working collapsed from the explosion.
China’s coal mines are the world’s deadliest, with thousands of people dying every year in explosions, floods and cave-ins.
Investigators have often blamed owner indifference to safety rules or a lack of required safety equipment.
Japan remembers cult’s sarin attack
Tokyo Government officials and survivors on Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of a Japanese doomsday cult’s nerve gas attack on a Tokyo subway, offering silent prayers and laying flowers at a station for the victims.
At 8 a.m., about 25 officials bowed to observe a moment of silence at a subway station near Japan’s government offices district – one of the Aum Shinrikyo cult’s targets. They doffed their caps, prayed and left bouquets at a temporary altar for the 12 people killed and 5,000 others hospitalized in the attack.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and other government officials later visited the station to pray before the altar.
On March 20, 1995, five members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult punctured plastic bags filled with sarin nerve gas during morning rush hour.
The attack shattered the country’s image as a low-crime haven, prompted a police crackdown on the cult, and led to tougher measures at railway stations and airports.