Death toll up to 16 in plant explosion

The death toll in a chemical plant explosion in eastern China has risen to 16, with 24 workers hospitalized with injuries, a state-run newspaper said Monday.

The explosion on Friday razed the two-story chemical explosives factory owned by the Dun’an Chemical Group Co., Ltd. in Anhui province, the third major industrial disaster to strike in a week.

On Saturday, the government had said the explosion killed 14.

Ten bodies recovered were identified as workers but the other six were burned beyond recognition, the China Daily newspaper said Monday. It was not immediately clear how many people were working at the time of the explosion.

Some 24 workers were receiving treatment at local hospitals, the newspaper said.

An initial investigation found that there were at least 4 tons of explosives in the workshop and the blast was likely triggered during powder mixing, it said.

FRIGATE BAY, St. Kitts

Whaling decree narrowly approved

A slim majority of nations on the International Whaling Commission voted Sunday in support of a resumption of commercial whaling, but pro-whaling nations still lack the numbers needed to overturn a 20-year-old ban.

The resolution, approved 33-32 with one abstention, declares that the moratorium on commercial whaling was meant to be temporary and is no longer needed.

But to reverse the ban imposed in 1986, another vote supported by 75 percent of the 70 IWC members would be required.

The IWC meeting on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts erupted in shouting and finger-pointing after the vote on the resolution authored by six Caribbean nations and backed by the major pro-whaling nations Norway, Iceland, Japan and Russia. The United States voted against the symbolic measure.

Still it was not immediately clear what impact the vote would have.

BARCELONA, Spain

Catalonia gets increased powers

The wealthy semi- autonomous Catalonia region gained sweeping new powers to run its own affairs Sunday, as voters overwhelmingly approved a blueprint that some fear could leave Spain’s government cash-strapped and powerless.

Nearly three out of four voters said yes to the plan, known here as the statute, in a binding referendum that culminated more than two years of heated debate.

At stake in the voting in this region, which considers itself a nation within a nation, were a much bigger slice of tax revenues collected in Catalonia, a say in the appointment of judges and prosecutors to courts run from Madrid and, critically, an indirect proclamation of Catalonia as a “nation.”

The referendum is binding and the results are final because the blueprint has already been passed by the Spanish parliament.