1 dead, 77 hurt in La. plant explosion

GEISMAR, La. (AP) — A ground-rattling explosion Thursday at a chemical plant in Louisiana ignited a blaze that killed one person and injured dozens of others, authorities said. Witnesses described a chaotic scene of towering flames and workers scrambling over gates to escape the plant.

"There was fire in excess of 100 to 200 feet in the air," said state Sen. Troy Brown, who felt the blast at his house, less than five miles away. "It was scary to see."

A thick plume of black smoke rose from the plant after the blast even after the fire was extinguished. At a roadblock several miles away where family members waited anxiously to hear about loved ones, flames were still easily visible above the trees even hours later.

Louisiana's health department said 77 people were treated at hospitals, with 51 being released by the evening. Hospitals reported that workers mostly had burns, cardiac and respiratory issues and bruises, health department spokeswoman Christina Stephens said in a news release.

A body was found by hazardous materials crews going through the aftermath of the blast at the facility, state police Capt. Doug Cain said. Police identified the man killed as 29-year-old Zachary C. Green, of Hammond.

The company said the blast happened at 8:37 a.m. By the afternoon, all of the plant's more than 300 workers had been accounted for, Cain said. The plant, owned by The Williams Companies Inc., based in Tulsa, Okla., is in an industrial area of Geismar, a Mississippi River community about 20 miles southeast of Baton Rouge.

The Williams facility is one of scores of chemical and industrial facilities that dot the riverside between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. A few homes and four other plants are within 2 miles, said Lester Kenyon, spokesman for Ascension Parish government.

The cause was not immediately known but the FBI said terrorism was not suspected.

A contract worker, Daniel Cuthbertson, 34, described a scene of "mass hysteria" immediately after the explosion, with workers scrambling over gates to get out of the plant.

"God was with me today because I know when I looked back, I barely made it. I know somebody was hurt. There's no way everybody escaped that," Cuthbertson said while at an emergency staging area about 2 miles from the plant.

At nearby Dutchtown High School, football players were doing conditioning exercises outdoors when they heard the boom. Students were rushed inside and the school went into emergency lock-down.

"My biggest concern is that I'm hoping none of our players or students had parents who worked in that plant and were injured. That's my main thing," Benny Saia, the school's athletic director and head football coach, said in an interview later.

More than 300 people were evacuated from the site, but some stayed behind, officials said. Ten workers stayed in an explosive-proof control center as the fire raged, said state police Capt. Doug Cain. The workers performed vital tasks, including shutting valves that rendered the plant safe, he said.

Residents several miles from the plant described feeling the ground shaking.

"It felt like a three-second earthquake. It was a massive explosion," said Brown. Unsure what it was, he drove to a gas station down the street from his house and saw flames shooting up 100 to 200 feet into the air.

Officials at area hospitals said a handful of patients were in critical or serious condition, though most seemed to have minor injuries. The plant makes ethylene and propylene — highly flammable gases that are the basic building blocks in the petrochemical industry.

Early tests did not indicate dangerous levels of any chemicals around the plant after the blast, but Cain said air monitoring continued Thursday afternoon.

Cain said the fire was out, but gas was being flared — burned at the top of high chimneys — in other parts of the plant. "There is still some controlled flaring going on, so people in the area are going to see smoke," he said.

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Associated Press reporters Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge and Janet McConnaughey and Kevin McGill in New Orleans contributed to this story.

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Egypt gas pipeline to Israel hit by explosion (Reuters)

ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) – Saboteurs blew up a pipeline carrying gas from Egypt to Israel and Jordan Monday, forcing a shutdown in the flow of gas, Egyptian security sources said.

The explosion took place in the early morning at a station along the pipeline in the northern Sinai Peninsula at Bir Abd, 60 km east of the Suez Canal, the sources said.

It was the third attack since early February on the pipeline, which supplies natural gas to Israel and Jordan, local cement plants and a power station.

A security source said men with machine guns in a small truck forced guards at the station to leave, then planted explosive charges.

"We do not have sufficient information until now, but in principle the explosion happened in the same way that the two previous explosions happened," another security source told Reuters.

The natural gas company that runs the pipeline closed it down after the explosion, the source said.

Witnesses said the sound of the explosion boomed out across the desert, frightening nearby residents, and tongues of fire could be seen above the station.

Previous explosions closed on April 27 and February 5 closed the pipeline for weeks.

The pipeline is run by Gasco, Egypt's gas transport company which is a subsidiary of the national gas company EGAS.

(Reporting by Yusri Mohamed, Writing by Patrick Werr; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Explosion rocks police HQ in Nigeria

Nigerian officers inspect the site of a powerful suicide bombing at police headquarters in Abuja on Thursday.The emergency agency said it has mobilized response units The spokesman says a suicide bomber died in the blast"I saw thick black smoke," resident says

Abuja, Nigeria (CNN) -- A powerful explosion rocked police headquarters in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, a spokesman at the National Emergency Management Agency said Thursday.

No casualty figures were immediately available but several people were injured and cars in the parking lot were destroyed.

"It's serious, very serious, as so many cars are on fire," said Umar Mariga, the National Red Cross spokesman.

Yushau Shuaib, the spokesman for the emergency agency, said a suicide bomber died in the incident but few details were immediately available.

"I saw thick black smoke billowing up from the central area in Abuja," said Jo Abuku, who was driving past the area.

The agency mobilized response units to the police scene, close to the Hilton hotel in central Abuja.

It was unclear who was responsible for the blast. However, the Islamist group Boko Haram has been targeting police and the government in attacks recently.

A pair of explosive attacks at a police station and a church in northeast Nigeria killed 11 people June 8.

Gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram attacked the Gwange police station with explosives.

The militant Islamist group has challenged Nigeria's government. It is regarded as a fringe group in northern Nigeria and is opposed by the Muslim establishment in the country.

CNN's Christian Purefoy and journalist Alkasim Abdulkadir contributed to this story.

CNN

Explosion at China iPad factory shows supply risks (AP)

BEIJING – An explosion at one of two factories that make Apple's new iPad 2 highlights the risks of a global manufacturing strategy that has cut costs but concentrates production in a few locations.

Foxconn Technology Group, the contractor that manufactures Apple's iPhones and iPads, said Friday's blast in the western city of Chengdu killed three employees and injured 15. The Taiwanese company said production was suspended but did not respond to questions Monday about how supplies of iPads might be affected.

Foxconn said the blast was caused by combustible dust in a workshop that polished products. It said operations in workshops that do similar work at its other factories in China would be suspended pending an investigation.

Estimates by industry analysts of the impact on iPad production ranged from minimal to up to 2.8 million units in lost output. That is equal to just over half the number sold in the first three months of this year but Apple says sales are so strong it already is struggling to keep up with demand.

"There probably is going to be no impact" if production resumes as expected in the next few days, said Citigroup analyst Kevin Chang in Taipei. "If this safety inspection drags on for two or three weeks, then there will be an impact on production."

Coming as global auto and electronics makers struggle with parts shortages caused by Japan's March 11 tsunami, the disaster emphasized the pitfalls for companies whose global sales depend on one or two factories.

"If you are trying to do as much as you can in one place to reduce the risks of an overextended supply chain, then you are very dependent upon the safety of those one or two factories," said David Dayton, owner of Silk Road International Inc., which manages purchasing and manufacturing in China for foreign customers.

Electronics makers such as Foxconn have flocked to China, drawn by a low-cost workforce and good infrastructure, making it the global manufacturing center for computers and consumer electronics.

All of Apple's iPads are produced at Foxconn factories in Chengdu and Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, said Chang. But he said that is not overly concentrated in an industry in which a contractor with a single factory might supply a laptop computer sold worldwide.

Foxconn, a unit of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is a leader in a contract manufacturing industry that helps global electronics brands hold down costs. Chinese factories produce 80 to 90 percent of the world's notebook computers and 50 to 60 percent of mobile phones.

Foxconn illustrates the complex web of trade and investment ties between China and Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its territory.

Taiwanese companies have invested tens of billions of dollars in the mainland, despite their government's lack of formal ties with Beijing. They make clothing, toys and other goods and are moving into higher-value electronics and computer chips.

Foxconn delivers savings for Apple, Hewlett-Packard Inc. and other customers by operating on a vast scale. It employs an estimated 1 million to 1.1 million people on the mainland in a half-dozen sprawling campuses the size of small cities.

The potential pitfalls of such massive concentration were driven home when Japan's tsunami forced thousands of factories to shut down, abruptly cutting off supplies of key auto and electronics components. Auto factories as far away as Louisiana were forced to suspend production.

Industry analysts said the shock was likely to prompt manufacturers to reconsider supply strategies that can depend on a handful of producers in distant locations.

Contract manufacturers find China so appealing that "clients really would have to pay them extra to leave China and set up production elsewhere," said Citigroup's Chang.

In China, potential supply chain problems can be traced in part to companies' decisions over the past decade to use fewer suppliers both to save money and to be able to monitor them more closely.

Customers get lower prices by placing giving more business with one company and want to watch suppliers carefully following a string of scandals over shoddy or toxic Chinese-made toothpaste, tires and other goods.

Dayton said some of his customers that buy millions of dollars worth of Chinese goods each year choose to deal with only one or two suppliers.

"The major problem is quality and consistency," he said. "If we diversify the number of factories we work with, we are just adding headaches and adding that many more opportunities to get lesser-quality products."

Demand for iPads is so strong that Apple's chief operating officer, Tim Cook, said last month the Cupertino, California-based company was working through "the mother of all backlogs" on orders.

Still, Apple's market position is so strong that it can easily ride out potential supply disruptions, said David Wolf, a technology marketing consultant in Beijing.

"A few issues on the supply chain aren't going to hurt it now," said Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia. But he said Apple could face challenges from products such as Google Inc.'s tablet computer.

"They've got competitors who are running very hard to catch up," Wolf said. "So these aren't issues today but that will not always be the case."

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Associated Press writer Debby Wu in Taipei contributed.

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A year after Deepwater Horizon explosion, 3 survivors still struggling

Three rig explosion survivors speak outSTORY HIGHLIGHTSSurvivors say the scars from the disaster have taken their lives away Medical records: Survivors have been diagnosed with multiple mental issuesOne says he wakes up screaming from nightmaresTransocean says its focus is on providing support for employees (CNN) -- For some survivors of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, escaping the inferno of the doomed rig made them feel like they'd cheated death.

But living with the scars of what they witnessed that night, and the memory of the 11 men who perished when the rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana a year ago, has in many ways taken their lives away.

"I remember feeling invincible when it first happened. I remember driving in my truck on the way home after the rig exploded and (I) pushed the gas (pedal) to the floor and never let off it," says Daniel Barron.

But the high Barron felt from surviving didn't last long.

"You have that guilty conscience of, 'Okay, I made it, that's great, but then these guys didn't.' Was there something I could have done to save more people?"

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