Factory sorry for sludge deaths

Factory sorry for sludge deaths

KOLONTAR, Hungary

The owners of the metals plant whose reservoir burst, flooding several towns in western Hungary with caustic red sludge, expressed their condolences Sunday to the families of the seven people killed, as well as to those injured — and said they were sorry for not having done so sooner. MAL Rt., which owns the alumina plant in Ajka, also said it was willing to pay compensation “in proportion to its responsibility” for the damage caused by the deluge.

Tense hours ahead for Chilean miners

SAN JOSE MINE, Chile

A smooth-walled path to daylight awaited 33 trapped miners Sunday as they entered the tense final hours of a two-month odyssey christened in the terror of collapsing rock deep under a Chilean mountain. With the eyes of the world on Chile’s no-expense-spared effort to ensure all the men emerge unharmed, the miners’ physical and mental health was being fastidiously monitored. Precautions were taken against all manner of complications — aspirin to prevent blood clots, a special drink to settle the stomach, video monitors to watch for panic attacks.

GOP hopeful makes anti-gay remarks

NEW YORK

New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino has told Orthodox Jewish leaders that there’s “nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual.” Paladino made the comments while speaking with a group of conservatives at a synagogue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in New York City.

8 gang suspects arraigned in NYC

NEW YORK

Eight gang suspects arrested in the torture of two teenage boys and a man in an anti-gay attack were arraigned Sunday on hate-crime charges, standing in a courtroom with their heads down and their hands cuffed behind them as their relatives wept. At the hearing, Assistant District Attorney Theresa Gottlieb said that during the Oct. 3 attack each victim was asked before being beaten, “Is it true that you’re a fag?”

Toxic coal sludge still in Ky. town

LOUISVILLE, Ky.

In parts of eastern Kentucky, the pictures coming out of Hungary of the red sludge that roared from a factory’s reservoir, downstream into the Danube River, are all too reminiscent of what happened a decade ago this week. A layer of dark goo still sits under a creekbed on Glenn Cornette’s land, the leftovers from when a coal company’s sprawling slurry pond burst, blackening 100 miles of waterways and polluting the water supply of more than a dozen communities before the stuff reached the Ohio River.

Bond exec sees economic risks

WASHINGTON

After averting a severe depression two years ago, industrial nations risk losing the recovery, the chief executive of the world’s largest bond investor says. Mohamed El-Erian, head of Pacific Management Investment Co., or Pimco, says if these nations are not careful, they risk slipping into a lost decade of low growth, high unemployment and welfare destruction.

Venezuela takes over 2 more companies

CARACAS, Venezuela

President Hugo Chavez announced the expropriation of two more companies Sunday, the latest among hundreds of enterprises taken over in the socialist leader’s campaign to make Venezuela less capitalistic. On his weekly television and radio show, Chavez said the “forced acquisition” of Industrias Venoco CA, a maker of lubricants, would take effect when the decree is published in the Official Gazette. He also said the government was taking over a fertilizer producer, Sociedades Mercantiles Fertilizantes Nitrogenados de Oriente.

Associated Press