Miner

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Sago Mine survivor Randal McCloy Jr. appears to be awakening from his coma, and his improving condition may allow him to be transferred to a rehabilitation center within a few weeks, doctors said yesterday. McCloy, 26, has been breathing on his own for days and is opening his eyes, said Dr. Julian Bailes of West Virginia University's Ruby Memorial Hospital, adding that McCloy "has purposeful movement" and "is responding to his family in slight ways. " McCloy has been unconscious since he was pulled from the mine more than 41 hours after an explosion Jan. 2 that led to the deaths...

Sixty-five miners are awaiting rescue underground at a platinum mine on Tuesday after conveyor equipment collapsed in southern Zimbabwe. National Mine Workers Union head Shadreck Pelewelo said that 20 miners were rescued after the incident which caused a fire at the Mimosa platinum mine about 400 kilometers (248 miles) southwest of the capital, Harare. Mining company Implats said in a statement that the fire has been contained. Pelewelo told The Associated Press that rescue efforts were "going on well so far" and there were no fatalities.

MEMPHIS — For rescued Chilean miner Edison Pena, New York comes first. Next are Graceland and Las Vegas. Pena is set to arrive in New York today to attend Sunday’s New York City Marathon after officials invited him. Word is the triathlete wants to run it. The 34-year-old Pena’s trip to New York also will include a scheduled appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman,’’ televised tonight. But the star treatment won’t end there. Yesterday, Elvis Presley Enterprises said Pena accepted an invitation to Graceland, set for Jan. 6 to Jan. 9, which coincides with the...

Country music legend Loretta Lynn is three years older than she has led people to believe, an age change that undermines the story she told of being married at 13 in "Coal Miner's Daughter," documents obtained by The Associated Press show. Lynn's birth certificate on file at the state Office of Vital Statistics in Frankfort, Ky., shows that Loretta Webb was born on April 14, 1932, in Johnson County, Kentucky. That makes her 80 years old, not 77. Also on file is her marriage license and two affidavits from her mother, Clara Marie Ramey, and S.W. Ward Jr., who was not related to...

COPIAPO, Chile — It is the nightmare scenario: The earth shifts just as a miner is being pulled to safety, jamming his escape capsule somewhere between the surface and the underground cavern where 33 men have waited for two months to be rescued. A partial collapse in the shaft carved through nearly a half-mile of rock could trap the man in a spot where even the most powerful drills could not free him. With the rescue drill likely to reach the men by tomorrow, Chile’s government is planning to guard against such a disaster by inserting steel pipe that can withstand tons of pressure into the...

BOISE, Idaho — An Idaho miner trapped underground nine days ago was most likely buried when the collapse occurred and is presumed to be dead, mining company officials said yesterday. Hecla Mining Company president Phil Baker said that after days of an around-the-clock rescue effort, officials now believe Larry Marek, 53, did not survive the collapse inside the Lucky Friday Mine on April 15. “We now believe that Larry was under the fall of ground when it occurred,’’ Baker said in a video posted on Hecla’s website.

SPOKANE, Wash. — A tiny camera inserted into open space behind tons of collapsed rock and debris has so far found no sign of a missing silver miner in Idaho, a spokeswoman for the mining company said yesterday. The camera is designed to work in plumbing pipes and is not capable of immediately giving a large-scale view of the open space, said Melanie Hennessey of Hecla Mining Co. “It will take a bit of time to get an understanding of the area,’’’ she said. The camera, inserted through a 180-foot-long hole completed on Tuesday, provides images from such a...

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- A suicide bomber detonated his explosives vest in a hallway of the Bolivian Congress yesterday, killing himself and wounding two police, authorities said. State-run television said the two officers had died. The disgruntled miner demanding early retirement benefits made his way to a first-floor section of the building, away from the congressional chambers, Police Chief Guido Arandia said. The man set off the explosives after security agents cleared the area as police were negotiating with him, Arandia said.

CONAKRY, Guinea -- There's lucky: Finding a diamond when you're a miner sweating it out in the west African forests of Guinea. And there's too lucky: finding a 182-carat stone, that everyone -- starting with the government of Guinea -- wants a piece of. Result: the stone -- four times the size of the famous Hope diamond -- was tucked away yesterday deep in the vaults of Guinea's Central Bank , no pictures, please. And the 25-year-old miner who found it, if not exactly in hiding, was making himself scarce.

The annual Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato, Mexico, is a cultural free-for-all, with concerts, plays, and productions of all sorts spinning in grand halls and seething side streets. In the midst of it all, a young boy, an unsolicited guide, told a timeless legend: On a back-alley staircase, Carlos, a poor miner, courted Anna, a rich girl. "The saying goes," the boy explained, "that couples who do not kiss on the third step, painted red, will have seven years bad luck.

A Chinese coal miner has been rescued after being trapped underground for 17 days by an underground flood that killed at least 10 others. State television and the official Xinhua News Agency say rescuers brought 39-year-old Si Li out of the Junyuan No. 2 Coal Mine in the northeastern city of Hegang on Saturday. The reports Sunday said he was hospitalized in stable condition. Xinhua said 28 miners were in the mine when it flooded May 2. Ten died, three are still missing and the rest escaped as the water rose or were rescued shortly after the disaster.

Peabody Energy Corp. said Thursday that its first-quarter profit slipped on weaker U.S. coal demand for electricity generation because of a mild winter and utility switchovers to cheaper natural gas. But its January-March earnings still beat Wall Street's expectations and its shares rose about 7 percent. Peabody, the world's biggest private-sector coal company, said its net income attributable to common shareholders was $172.7 million, or 63 cents per share, over the first three months of this year, down from $176.6 million, or 65 cents, a year earlier.

JOHN SUNUNU'S plea on behalf of coal miners is sincere but wrongheaded. A look at coal's full life-cycle reveals a trail of tears, from the dangers it brings the miners to the communities in Appalachia where mountaintop coal removal has lead to alarming rates of cancer, respiratory and heart disease, and birth defects. Saving coal mining jobs is akin to saving the jobs of cigarette makers. We must find healthier jobs for miners. When we do, we'll all breathe easier. Aaron Bernstein Associate director, Center for Health and the Global Environment Harvard...

Peruvian authorities say nine trapped miners are being supplied with sports drinks, soup and food while police, firefighters and other workers work to free them. Police chief Jose Saavedra in southern Peru's Ica region says the bottled items are being pushed to the miners through a hose. Saavedra says the men have been trapped in a horizontal mining shaft that collapsed Thursday not very deep under the surface. He says the miners are behind debris about six meters (20 feet)

ECONOMISTS CALL it the "resource curse. " Poor countries with precious metals are often dragged into war over them. For more than a decade, unscrupulous militias in the Democratic Republic of Congo have fought for control over the eastern part of the country, where the earth is rich with tantalum and tungsten - rare metals that are used in cell phones, electronics, and laptop computers. In an effort to stop the militias, who have kept countless people in virtual slavery in the mines, a growing movement in the United States has been pushing companies to publicly...

Next time you are in a restaurant where the wine list is taken a bit seriously, eavesdrop on what the sommelier has to say as she moves from table to table. The word you'll hear over and over is "minerality" - or one of its numerous equivalents: granite, limestone, tufa, slate, shale, schist. It's as if American taste and sophistication grew up overnight. It's not just about fruit anymore. This is wonderful news for diners, because fruit-driven wines, though often gratifying sipped on their own, have always been problematic to pair with food, and it is a grand turn of events for the wine...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Nearly a year after the disaster, state investigators have concluded that the Sago Mine explosion that left 12 miners dead was caused by a lightning bolt that ignited methane gas underground, a union official said. The mine's owner, International Coal Group Inc., ICG, has argued since March that lightning was to blame for the Jan. 2 blast, a theory critics of the company have disputed. The report is to be released Monday, but United Mine Workers officials who helped in the investigation have been briefed on it, Dennis O'Dell, the union's health...

In his relentless campaign to build the reputation of California wine, Robert Mondavi liked to set Napa Valley against Europe in comparative tastings. According to witnesses, he would badger guests into conceding that while European wine was often good - California wines were "just a bit fruitier" -- and, by implication, just a bit better. Influencing Americans to privilege fruit above all else gave Mondavi an edge since the ripeness that came naturally in California was hard to replicate in most of Europe.

HUDSON, N.Y. - Roger J. Miner, a federal appeals court judge in Manhattan for nearly three decades who was among final candidates President Reagan considered for the Supreme Court, died Saturday. He was 77. Paul Silver, a federal prosecutor who once clerked for Judge Miner, said he died of heart failure at his Hudson home. "He was an incredibly brilliant man," said Silver, who was a law clerk for Judge Miner from 1982 to 1984. "He was totally devoted to the law as much as he was to his family and friends.