In brief: Chain-reaction blasts kill 89 in India

NEW DELHI – At least 89 people were killed at a restaurant in central India on Saturday when a cooking gas cylinder exploded and triggered a second blast of mine detonators stored illegally nearby, police said.

The restaurant, located next to the main bus station in the town of Petlawad in Madhya Pradesh state, was crowded with people having breakfast when the blasts occurred. Petlawad is about 600 miles south of New Delhi.

The blasts destroyed the building where the restaurant was located and an adjacent building, and flattened motorbikes outside the restaurant, said Mewa Lal Gond, a police inspector in the mining district of Jhabua, where Petlawad is located.

Rescue workers extricated 89 bodies from under a huge heap of rubble, Gond said. Most of those killed in the explosions were poor laborers.

Deadly crane fall blamed on winds

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – High winds were to blame for the toppling of a massive crane that smashed into Mecca’s Grand Mosque and killed at least 107 people ahead of the start of the annual hajj pilgrimage, the head of Saudi Arabia’s civil defense directorate said Saturday.

The disaster during a violent thunderstorm that roared through Islam’s holiest city late Friday afternoon was the deadliest incident in years surrounding the hajj, which gets fully underway later this month.

The director general of civil defense, Suleiman bin Abdullah al-Amro, told satellite broadcaster Al-Arabiya that the unusually powerful winds that toppled the crane also tore down trees and signs as a storm whipped through the area.

At least 238 people were injured, according to civil defense figures.

Authorities did not provide details on the victims’ nationalities, but it was likely that the tragedy will touch several countries.

Films from Americas take Venice honors

VENICE, Italy – Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas’ powerful Caracas-set drama “From Afar” won the Venice Film Festival’s top Golden Lion prize Saturday, as filmmakers from the Americas beat established European directors for the main trophies.

The runner-up Grand Jury Prize went to an American film, Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s inventive, animated “Anomalisa.” And Pablo Trapero’s “El Clan” (”The Clan”), an Argentine true-crime thriller that has broken box-office records in its homeland, took the Silver Lion for best direction.

“From Afar” – “Desde Alla” in Spanish – is Vigas’ first fiction feature, and charts the unexpected relationship between a middle-aged, middle-class man and a violent street youth. Quietly but powerfully, the film maps the currents of sex, money and violence beneath the surface of Venezuelan society.

Vigas dedicated his prize to his country, which is experiencing political and economic turbulence.

“We are having some problems, but we are very positive,” he said. “We are an amazing nation.”

The director said movies could help Latin America “learn from the mistakes of the past.”

A jury led by Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron chose winners from among 21 movies competing at the 72nd annual festival – an edition where war, crime and other woes of the world dominated onscreen.

Director Jonathan Demme, jury president for the festival’s Horizons competition for emerging talents, said many of the films gave “horrifying glimpses of how hard it is to stay alive in the world today.”