Nor was there enough evidence to support a charge of causing or risking a catastrophe against David Zimmerman, owner of R&D Coal, she said.

Days earlier, county Judge Charles M. Miller dismissed the risking a catastrophe charge against Steven Zimmerman.

The men were charged in April 2008 after federal investigators found "flagrant" violations of federal mining regulations led to the methane gas explosion. The investigators blamed the blast on inadequate ventilation and poor blasting practices.

But Russell, in a 52-page opinion, said prosecutors did not establish that Klinger, a miner without certification in blasting, "consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death."

In fact, Russell wrote, the only evidence she saw was that Klinger relied on Reightler "to warn of the methane levels, that Reightler had indicated no methane had been detected and that Reightler had okayed the shot." Evidence also showed Reightler decided for himself where to stand when using explosives.

Klinger still is charged with violating the state Anthracite Coal Mine Act.

Both Zimmermans still face involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and related charges. Russell wrote that prosecutors presented evidence David Zimmerman knew there was methane in the mine; that and other evidence, including that he was the mine's owner and operator, support all the charges except causing a catastrophe.

Miller said in a 13-page opinion that prosecutors presented enough evidence to support every charge against Steven Zimmerman except causing a catastrophe.

With the delays, the judges have granted motions to reschedule the trial.

Russell on Tuesday used a hearing in which David Zimmerman sought to get grand jury testimony that led to the charges as an opportunity to lecture his lawyer, Max Kramer of Philadelphia, saying he had improperly filed requests for delays in the case, and was rude to her staff.

Kramer actually withdrew the motion, conceding he had wrongly filed it in Schuylkill instead of Dauphin County, where the grand jury met before recommending the charges in April 2008. But Russell told Kramer: "I want to talk with you about moving the case along."

She said the case had been scheduled for March because the state attorney general's office, which is prosecuting the case, said its witnesses would not be available in June, the next term of court. She said Kramer's motion for a delay of the trial didn't have information such as the substance of other hearings he says conflicted with the March trial.

Moreover, she said, David Zimmerman told court personnel that Kramer hadn't told him of a hearing, and "in dealing with my staff, you're supposedly rude."

Kramer apologized, saying, "I never, ever, meant to be rude."

No new trial date has been set.

The rescue teams also brought to the surface 19 injured miners who were admitted to the Bolan Medical College Hospital for treatment.

“Some of the miners died of suffocation while the rest were burnt to death when a powerful blast caused by some poisonous gas ripped through the 1800 feet deep seam” said Dr. Abdul Wahab after examining the dead and wounded miners.

Those who lost lives in the incidents were identified as Mir Hashim, Muhammad Alam, Wali Muhammad, Nurruddin, Abdul Wahab, Roshanzada, Qudrat Gul, Muhammad Salim, Bakhti Hamid, Gul Hadi, Nasim Gul, Muhammad Hussein, Anwar and Mir Hijan. 

Out of the total dead, 12 miners are from Shangla, Swat district while the remaining two belong to Balochistan.

The coalmine was owned by Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation (PMDC).

The Mines department authorities are investigating the incident.

Critics are complaining that three measures pending in the Kentucky legislature could undo key provisions of the state's mine safety law.

One would sharply reduce inspections performed by the Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing. Another would would cut the number of medics on duty at small mines. And the other would strike a provision that requires ventilation fans to run continuously in underground mines to prevent the buildup of explosive gases.

"It this were to pass, it would be signing the death warrants of hundreds of coal miners across this state," charged United Mine Workers of America representative Steve Earle. "If they get away with this, God help the Kentucky coal miners."

Kentucky Coal Association President Bill Caylor challenged Earle's contention, saying the measures are intended to help small mining companies survive in a tough economic climate and pose no added dangers for miners.

"This is a smoke screen for the union," Caylor said. "They have no concern for safety. Their main concern is to put the small operator out of business, because it's nearly impossible to unionize a small mine."

Mine safety advocate Tony Oppegard said Kentucky's mine safety law is clearly "under attack" only two years after it was enacted.

The Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee on Wednesday approved the measure that Oppegard said would change a provision of the state's mine safety act that requires at least six state inspections per year of every coal mine.

Under the proposal, Oppegard said, mines could effectively go an entire year without a single inspection.

State Sen. Tom Jensen, chairman of the natural resources committee, said Wednesday the measure still would require inspectors to visit mines six times a year, but the visits could involve other activities like mine rescue training.

"We think you can do both at the same time," Jensen said Wednesday. "I don't see it as being that harmful."

Oppegard, a Lexington attorney who formerly worked for state and federal mine regulatory agencies, said the measure "guts" the state's mine safety law by removing one of its most important provisions.

Earle joined Oppegard in Frankfort on Wednesday to rail against changes to the state's mine safety law, which was enacted following a series of underground disasters.

In all, 16 miners were killed on the job in Kentucky in 2006. Five of the deaths were from a single Harlan County underground mine explosion. Nationwide, 73 miners were killed on the job that year, including 12 in a methane explosion at the Sago Mine in West Virginia.

Congress and coal state legislatures reacted by revamping mine safety laws in 2007.

Earle said he fears the coal industry now is pressing lawmakers to undo certain provisions of those laws.

"That is so absolutely false," Caylor said. "It's utterly ridiculous."

A measure sponsored by Jensen would lift a requirement that ventilation fans be kept running continuously, a provision included in the 2007 mine safety reforms. Such fans keep air flowing through underground mines to prevent methane gas from accumulating to explosive levels.

The proposal passed the Senate last month 37-0 and is awaiting in the House along with another controversial proposal sponsored by state Rep. Keith Hall, D-Phelps. That measure calls for reducing the number of medics required at small mines from two to one. It has been approved by a House committee and is awaiting a vote on the House floor.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, said Wednesday he's not sure when the medic proposal will be called for a floor vote. Hall said he doesn't intend to push for a vote until after he has discussed the measure with opponents, including the United Mine Workers.

Earle called on Gov. Steve Beshear to intervene on behalf of miners and ask lawmakers to shelve the proposals, or, if they were to pass, to veto them.

"Gov. Beshear promised us when he was campaigning that he was committed to make sure that our coal miners have a safe place to work," Earle said. "We want him to step up to the plate."

Beshear spokesman Jay Blanton said the governor is indeed committed to mine safety and is monitoring the situation in the legislature.

The measures are Senate Bill 64, Senate Bill 170, House Bill 119.

ANKARA, Turkey: A local official says a methane gas explosion injured nine workers in a coal mine in western Turkey.

Ibrahim Kucuk, local governor of the western town of Dursunbey, says the miners sustained severe burns during Thursday's gas explosion at some 280 meters (900 feet) below the surface at a mine shaft in Dursunbey in the province of Balikesir.

Kucuk says all miners have been evacuated and hospitalized.

Accidents in Turkey's mines are not uncommon due to safety violations, outdated equipment and high concentrations of methane gas.

Shijiazhuang (Xinhua): Twelve miners were trapped after explosions in two shafts in a coal mine in north China's Hebei Province Friday, according to the local government.

Police had detained the head of the Jinming Coal Mine and an unspecified number of other administration staff of the mine in Wu'an City, said a statement from the city government.

Blasts ripped through the two shafts at about 6 a.m., trapping 12 miners who were carrying out maintenance work.

The mine has legal production permits, but its operation was suspended pending a national restructuring of small coal mine companies.

No more information was available.

A worker at a lignite mine in DeSoto Parish was killed today in an accident involving a piece of equipment.

The accident happened at midmorning at the Dolet Hills mine east of Mansfield.

DeSoto Parish sheriff's deputies were investigating the cause of the accident. Preliminary indications were that the victim was run over by the piece of equipment.

The name of the victim was not immediately released.

FRANKFORT, Ky. - A bill skewered by critics as an attempt to sharply reduce state inspections of coal mines hit an unexpected snag in the Kentucky Senate.

Senate leaders on Thursday sent the measure back to the chamber's Natural Resources and Energy Committee, just a day after the proposal cleared the panel.

"We're going to see if there are some other options," said Sen. Tom Jensen, the committee chairman. "It's gotten such negative publicity."

The proposal was among three bills that drew blistering criticism Wednesday from mine-safety advocates who contended the measures would undo key provisions of the state's mine safety law.

Another of the bills would cut the number of medics on duty at small mines. The other would strike a provision that requires ventilation fans to run continuously in underground mines to prevent the buildup of explosive gases.

United Mine Workers of America representative Steve Earle said in an interview that he was encouraged the bill dealing with inspections was put in reverse Thursday.

A provision of Kentucky's mine safety law, passed two years ago, requires at least six state inspections per year of every coal mine. Some critics claimed that under the proposal, mines could effectively go an entire year without a single inspection.

"To roll back that legislation now would increase the risk to miners' lives," Earle said Thursday. "You would think state government would be doing all it could to beef up mine safety."

Jensen has said the measure still would require inspectors to visit mines six times a year, but the visits could involve other activities like mine rescue training.

The mine safety law was enacted following a series of underground disasters.

In all, 16 miners were killed on the job in Kentucky in 2006. Five of the deaths were from a single Harlan County underground mine explosion. Nationwide, 73 miners were killed on the job that year, including 12 in a methane explosion at the Sago Mine in West Virginia.

Jensen said the bill was meant to give the state Energy and Environment Cabinet more flexibility to handle mine inspections during a time of extremely tight budgets.

"Quite frankly, the cabinet doesn't have the resources to comply with existing law, and we don't have any way to come up with the money," said Jensen, R-London.

Dick Brown, a spokesman for the Energy and Environment Cabinet, said the agency is committed to getting all the mine inspection jobs filled. The cabinet is closing in on filling all the jobs, and is confident it will meet first-quarter goals for mine inspections, Brown said.

Jensen said the bill faced a "tough vote" in the Senate.

Republican Sen. Brandon Smith of Hazard, who represents a coal mining district, said he didn't have problems with the bill, and said he hadn't heard backlash from miners in his area.

But Democratic Sen. Walter Blevins said he had problems with the bill.

"It's a very dangerous job, and I think less inspections would probably make it even more dangerous," he said.

Two miners were dead and another two were still missing after explosions ripped through a coal mine in north China's Hebei Province, local rescue officials said early Saturday.

The accident took place at about 6 a.m. at two shafts of the Jinming Coal Mine in Wu'an City when 28 miners were working underground, the rescue headquarters said after further verification.

Fourteen miners managed to get out themselves and another 10 were rescued on Friday evening, rescuers said.

More than 200 rescuers were working in turns to break through the collapsed tunnel to search for the missing workers.

The mine has legal production permits, but its operation was suspended pending a restructuring of small coal mine companies.

State police say 41-year-old Richard Custer, of Eighty-Four, died Monday morning at the Poland Mine near Dunkard Creek in Dunkard Township, Greene County.

Police say Custer was on the scissors lift when a fork lift somehow tipped it over, throwing him to the ground.

Custer worked for T.P. Electric Inc., of Greensburg, where an employee says the company is investigating but otherwise not commenting Tuesday.

Custer died at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va. The Monongalia County Medical Examiner in West Virginia is investigating.

_______________________________
U. S. Mine Rescue Association
http://www.usmra.com

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. mining equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Tuesday its largest customers are looking for a return to growth in the mining industry in the next 18 months and view the price of copper as a key indicator of a turnaround.

U.S. copper futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange's COMEX division have risen from $1.38 per lb at the start of 2009 to current levels above $1.65 a lb.

When copper sinks below $1.10 a lb, more miners shut some operations completely, and copper at $1.40 serves as a break-even level for many producers.

"It's really the copper price that we watch," Chris Curfman, president of Caterpillar's global mining division, told the Reuters Global Mining and Steel Summit. "At $2.00 (a lb), I'd go on a camping trip. But it's got to get up to $1.80. Once I see that level I'll feel really comfortable."

Curfman said Caterpillar is close enough to the big copper producers to see at what price level they would become active again, and $1.60 a lb seemed a threshold prompting some miners to put idle equipment back to work.

"When copper went to $1.65 (per lb) last week, (Freeport's) Baghdad copper mine put their trucks, which were parked, back in the dirt." He said copper at $1.65 "isn't all bad, depending on the ore quality."

While some mining customers seem convinced that copper will slide as low as 90 cents, Curfman thinks demand from China and other infrastructure-building countries will keep the price from falling much further than its recent four-year low around $1.27 a lb.

"If you talk to the copper producers, they think that because of China and India and the urbanization process, copper is going to come back. It's just a matter of how quickly," he said.

Given the rapid downturn in metals mining recently, the Peoria, Illinois-based heavy equipment manufacturer was hit with an onslaught of delays and cancellations.

Though he declined to put a number on cancellations, Curfman said they were substantial in North America and Australia as well as emerging markets where greenfield projects were not being funded over the next year to 18 months.

But he said Caterpillar has several thousand delayed customer orders. Where possible, customers opted to delay rather than cancel for fear of losing their place in the queue when the industry does turns around.

"It's simply a delay, because a lot of people think this thing is going to bounce right back up," Curfman said.

With mine plans running 10 to 20 years, some of Caterpillar's largest customers, like BHP Billiton (BHP.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (BLT.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Newmont Mining (NEM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), are expecting 18-month delays on some mine projects and remain optimistic longer-term.

"We are seeing some cancellations. We are seeing a clump of orders still being sat on by most of our big alliances. They are reluctant to cancel for fear of losing their position on the order board, which are out 2010, 2011, 2012," he said.

"We're still negotiating with the big guys and still doing deals, but for delayed activity." 

Still other customers are adding new orders, mostly among gold miners in Latin American, he said.

Mine safety advocates say three bills under consideration in the state general assembly would reduce safety in the mines if they became law.

WYMT has learned that the amendments may not make it much further.

The three pieces of legislation are basically designed to loosen requirements put in place in the 2007 mine safety law.

This comes after much criticism and it appears that the bills are dead.

Critics say Senate Bill 170 would eliminate the requirement of six full-fledged state inspections each year. They say Senate Bill 64 and House Bill 119 could save coal operators money, but they would make conditions more dangerous for miners.

“These really weren't economic issues, they were safety issues, that agreed of operators not wanting to comply,” Tony Oppegard said.

The Governor's office told several mine safety leaders Tuesday that all three bills were effectively dead, and even if they would get to his desk, the Governor would veto them.

“Everybody's got concerns on both sides of these issues, so I think we're going to take our time, and make sure whatever is done, we need for it to benefit the industry in terms of the economy, but also, it's got to be safe for our miners,” Governor Steve Beshear said.

Lawmakers ran out of time to come up with a compromise on any of the mine safety amendments, including senate bill 170.
“The coal operators just didn't want that degree of scrutiny. That was a very important bill to get defeated, and it was a great victory for coal miners,” Oppegard said.

It was a victory for mine safety advocates, statewide.

WYMT’s Jeff Allen talked to one coal operator who says he has been following these bills, and he says while they do not affect his larger mining operation, he worries what the affect of them not passing could have on the smaller mining operations.

LANZHOU, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Six people were killed after a gas blast hit a colliery in northwest China's Gansu Province Thursday, according to the local government.

Rescuers found the bodies of the six miners at about 5 p.m. after more than ten hours' searching.

A gas blast ripped through a pit of Tanshanling Coal Mine in Tianzhu Tibet Autonomous County at about 5 a.m., when 25 miners were checking the shaft. Nineteen escaped by 5:49 a.m. but six were trapped.

The mine was operated by Longde Coal Industry Co. Ltd., which produces about 60,000 tonnes of coal a year. The mine was under maintenance and repair approved last month by the local authority, according to Wang Shengfu, publicity officer of the county government.

The governments of Tianzhu and Wuwei city, which oversee the county, have ordered all coal mines to suspend production for safety overhauls.

There has been another death at a BHP Billiton mine site in Western Australia's Pilbara region.

A 45 year-old man, from New South Wales, died in hospital early this morning as a result of injuries he received in an accident at the company's operations at Newman.

BHP Billiton says he was an employee of John Holland Construction.

It is the fifth death at a BHP Pilbara mine site in the past eight months.

In February, a worker was killed when he was hit by a train on the company's Tabba line, 74 kilometres south of Port Hedland.

That death is still being investigated by the Department of Mines and Petroleum.

Yandi deaths

A 29 year-old man and a 19-year-old man were killed in separate accidents at the company's Yandi mine, in the Pilbara, in August and September last year

And a 52-year-old man was killed at Port Hedland in July, 2008.

Some of those killed were contractors working at BHP Billiton's mine sites.

The death of a worker last month prompted the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union to accuse BHP of losing touch with the safety of workers on the ground.

The accident happened at about 7:30 a.m. Friday in the Lianfa Coal Mine in Qinglong County, Qianxinan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, where 23 miners were working in the shaft.

Thirteen managed to escape. Rescuers found six bodies, but are still searching for the remaining four, said an official with the Guizhou provincial administrative bureau of work safety.

The cause of the accident is under investigation.