Rescue workers and search dogs are gingerly moving through a dangerously unstable building in New Orleans that partially collapsed over the weekend, VOA news <a href="https://www.voanews.com/usa/dangerous-search-1-missing-after-hotel-collapse">reports</a>. 



They were looking Monday for the only person still unaccounted for following Saturday&#8217;s disaster at a hotel under construction at the edge of the French Quarter. Two people died in the collapse. More than 20 were hurt. Mayor LaToya Cantrell says one remains hospitalized. &nbsp; Fire Chief Tim McConnell says engineers are in the structure to looking for ways to stabilize it. A huge crane at the site also must be stabilized. &nbsp; Two major thoroughfares near the French Quarter and the main business district remain closed. &nbsp; The cause of the collapse is under investigation. Officials said the last inspection of record at the site was Sept. 24.

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Dangerous Search on For 1 Missing After Hotel Collapse

Dozens of children are believed trapped inside a collapsed building in Lagos, Nigeria, where hundreds of onlookers gathered to watch a massive rescue attempt, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/nigerian-schoolchildren-trapped-in-collapsed-building/4827426.html">VOA</a> reports.
It is unclear how many people are inside the ruins of the three-story building that collapsed about 10 a.m. local time Wednesday. Onlookers said a school with about 100 students was located on the building&#8217;s top floor.
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Several children are believed to have been rescued from the debris. Ambulances, fire trucks, and heavy building equipment were standing by to help with the search-and-rescue effort.
There was no word on how many adults were in the building when it fell.
The building is on the Ita-faji area of Lagos island, the oldest part of the city.
Building collapses are not uncommon in Nigeria. In 2016, more than 100 people died when a church collapsed in southeastern Nigeria. A five-story building in Lagos collapsed that year as well, killing at least 30 people.

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Nigerian Schoolchildren Trapped in Collapsed Building

A university building partly collapsed on Saturday in the Russian city of St Petersburg, trapping people under debris, but emergency services reported no casualties, Russian news agencies reported.
Around two dozen people were trapped in the building of the University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics in the center of Russia’s second biggest city, the agencies said.
The roof and several floors of the building collapsed during renovation work. TASS news agency said that acting St Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov had gone to the scene, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-building-collapse/university-building-partly-collapses-in-st-petersburg-russian-agencies-idUSKCN1Q50J3?il=0">Reuters</a> reports.

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University building partly collapses in St. Petersburg

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Vale SA, the world&#8217;s largest iron ore miner, knew last year that the dam in Brazil that collapsed in January and killed at least 165 people had a heightened risk of rupturing, according to an internal document seen by Reuters on Monday, VOA news <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/report-vale-knew-deadly-dam-had-heightened-risk-of-collapse-/4782830.html">reports</a>.
The report, dated Oct. 3, 2018, shows that Vale classified Dam 1 at the Crrego do Feijo mine in Brumadinho as being two times more likely to fail than the maximum level of risk tolerated under the company&#8217;s own dam safety policy.
Vale did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It has previously cited an independent audit last year declaring the dam safe and said that equipment showed the structure was stable just weeks before the collapse.
First evidence of concern
The previously unreported document is the first evidence that Vale itself was concerned about the safety of the dam. It raises questions as to why the audit around the same time guaranteed the dam&#8217;s stability and why the miner did not take precautions, such as moving a company canteen that was just downhill from the structure.
U.S.-listed shares of Vale extended losses following the Reuters story, dropping as much as 2.6 percent to $11.10.
The company has lost a quarter of its market capitalization — or nearly $19 billion — since the Jan. 25 dam collapse, Brazil&#8217;s most deadly mining accident.
The disaster in the mineral-rich state of Minas Gerais was the second major collapse of a mining dam in the region in about three years.
&#8216;Attention zone&#8217;
Entitled &#8220;Geotechnical Risk Management Results,&#8221; Vale&#8217;s internal October report placed the Brumadinho dam within an &#8220;attention zone,&#8221; saying that &#8220;all prevention and mitigation controls&#8221; should be applied.
A failure could cost the company $1.5 billion and had the potential to kill more than a hundred people, the report said.
The dam was marked for decommissioning.
Nine other dams in Brazil, out of 57 that were studied, were also placed in the &#8220;attention zone,&#8221; according to the report.
A separate Vale report dated Nov. 15, 2017, also seen by Reuters, states that any structure with an annual chance of failure above 1 in 10,000 should be brought to the attention of the chief executive and the board.
The dam&#8217;s annual chance of collapse was registered as 1 in 5,000, or twice the tolerable &#8220;maximum level of individual risk,&#8221; according to the report.
&#8220;That&#8217;s not good in my book, especially if you consider that these are meant to be long-term structures,&#8221; said David Chambers, a geophysicist at the Center for Science in Public Participation and a specialist in tailings dams.
Reuters was unable to confirm whether the board or CEO Fabio Schwartzman were made aware of the risk associated with the dam.
Vale has consistently said the collapsed dam was declared sound by an independent auditor in September.
The audit by Germany-based TV SD, which was seen by Reuters, said the dam adhered to the minimum legal requirements for stability but it raised a number of concerns, particularly about the dam&#8217;s drainage and monitoring systems.
The auditor made 17 recommendations to improve the dam&#8217;s safety.
Vale said the recommendations were routine and that the company attended to them all.
Its internal report identified static liquefaction and internal erosion as the most likely causes of a potential failure at the dam in Brumadinho.
&#8216;Liquefaction&#8217; to blame?
It is still not known what was behind the collapse, but a state environmental official told Reuters this month that all evidence pointed to liquefaction.
Liquefaction is a process whereby a solid material such as sand loses strength and stiffness and behaves more like a liquid. It was the cause of the 2015 dam collapse, at a nearby mine co-owned by Vale, which resulted in Brazil&#8217;s worst-ever environmental disaster.
&#8220;We used to say these kinds of mining incidents were acts of God, but now &#8230; we consider them failures in engineering,&#8221; said Dermot Ross-Brown, a mining industry engineer who teaches at the Colorado School of Mines.
Vale has said it will invest some $400 million from 2020 to reduce its reliance on tailings dams, which store muddy detritus from mining.
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Report: Vale Knew Deadly Dam Had Heightened Risk of Collapse

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Turkeys president was among hundreds of mourners who attended the funeral Saturday for nine members of a family killed in the apartment building collapse in Istanbul as the overall death toll increased to 17, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/turkey-leader-attends-funeral-visits-building-collapse-site/4779831.html">VOA</a> reports.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other officials joined the funeral prayers for the Alemdar family following the presidents first visit to the site of Wednesdays tragedy. Five other members of the Alemdar family, including two children, remain hospitalized.
The cause of Wednesdays collapse is under investigation but officials have said the top three floors of the eight-story building in the Kartal district were built illegally.
In this area, we have faced a very serious problem with illegal businesses like this done to make more money, Erdogan told reporters outside a hospital.
Thirteen people remain hospitalized with seven of them in serious condition.
Erdogan said there were many lessons to learn, and the government would take steps in a determined way after investigators complete their work. Earlier, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca increased the death toll to 17.
Friends and relatives waited near the wreckage for news of their missing loved ones as emergency teams, aided by sniffer dogs, worked around the clock to reach possible survivors.
Officials havent disclosed how many people are still unaccounted for. The building had 14 apartments with 43 registered residents.
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Turkey Leader Attends Funeral, Visits Building Collapse Site

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The death toll from the collapse of an eight-story building in Istanbul rose to six on Thursday, while 13 others were wounded, the governor of Turkish city said, VOA News <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/turkey-istanbul-building-collapse/4776817.html">reports</a>.
The residential building, in the Kartal district on the Asian side of the city, collapsed on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear why the building had collapsed.
Istanbul Governor Ali Yerlikaya told reporters at the site that the death toll in the incident had risen to six after three more people were pulled out of the rubble. He said 13 others were wounded, two of which were in critical condition.
There were 43 people registered in 14 apartments at the address, but the top three floors of the building had been built illegally, the governor said on Wednesday. He said there was a textile workshop operating without a license at the entrance.
Initial footage from the incident showed people being pulled out of the rubble as crowds surrounded the site. Roads leading to the building were blocked by vehicles and crowds.
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6 Dead in Istanbul Building Collapse, Governor Says

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The death toll from Friday&#8217;s dam collapse in southeastern Brazil rose to 58 Sunday &#8212; a number sure to climb with at least 300 people feared buried under tons of mud, VOA news <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/brazil-natural-disaster/4761534.html">reports</a>.
Rescue operations were briefly halted Sunday as officials feared a breach in another dam in the city of Brumadinho. Residents were told to get ready to evacuate before that dam was found to be secure.
The dam owned by Brazil&#8217;s Vale mining company collapsed Friday, sending water and mud over hundreds of mine workers enjoying a lunch break.
Brazilian judicial authorities have frozen some $3 billion of global mining giant Vale&#8217;s assets since Friday. The company has also been hit with multiple fines as it comes under scrutiny for regulatory violations and pollution in the wake of the disaster.
The accident recalls a similar disaster in 2015, when another mining dam broke in the same state of Minas Gerais, killing 19 people. That dam was also administrated by Vale, along with Australian mining company BHP Billiton. The 2015 dam collapse released millions of tons of toxic iron waste along hundreds of kilometers, causing what is considered Brazil&#8217;s worst-ever environmental disaster.
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58 Dead, 300 Missing In Brazil Dam Disaster

A spike in the price of onions has led to the ouster of governments in Indian elections in the past. Now, prices of the staple have collapsed, and many impoverished farmers are saying they will make Prime Minister Narendra Modi pay in next year’s general election, VOA news <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/modi-likely-to-pay-at-polls-for-collapse-of-onion-potato-prices/4719456.html">reports</a>.
Steep drops in recent weeks in the prices of onions and potatoes, both staple foods for India’s 1.3 billion people, have badly hit the rural economy in large states.
In interviews with dozens of farmers last week, Reuters reporters found resentment welling against Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for not helping support incomes in the countryside, where a majority of the population lives.
“Whatever they do in the coming months, I will vote against the BJP. I won’t repeat the 2014 mistake,” said Madhukar Nagare, an onion grower from Nashik in Maharashtra state, referring to his backing the BJP at the last general election.
Onion prices foretell government’s fate
In the 1998 state elections, a sharp spike in onion prices led to the fall of the BJP government in the capital New Delhi.
In the 1980 general election, sky-high onion prices helped former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi dislodge a coalition government that had included politicians who later formed the BJP.
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</div><figcaption>A farmer sits on a tractor trolley after auctioning his onions at Lasalgaon market in Nashik in the western state of Maharashtra, India, Dec. 19, 2018.</figcaption></figure>
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​Price falls for farmers, not consumers
In recent weeks, loss-stricken farmers have staged protests, blocked highways and dumped onions on the road after prices plunged to as low as one rupee (1.4 U.S. cents) per kg for a crop that costs about 8 rupees a kg to produce.
But because of large cuts taken by middlemen, consumers have not benefited from the low prices.
In Maharashtra, the top onion producing state, farm prices have fallen 83 percent, dragged down by surplus supplies from the previous season’s crop and lower export orders from the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
And in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, which was crucial in Modi’s election win in 2014, there is a similar problem with low potato prices.
Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh are both dominated by rural voters and together send 128 lawmakers to the 545-member lower house of parliament. It means that big losses in these two states could either see Modi lose the next election, which is due by May or his party be forced to form a coalition government.
Farmers say shortcomings in a government crop support program, and weak overseas demand have combined to produce the current glut of onions. And as prices have plunged, fertilizer and crop nutrient costs have risen, thanks in part to a weak rupee.
Perhaps most important of all, the BJP came into office in 2014 determined to shift away from subsidies. That may have been fine when crop prices were relatively high, but as they crashed it has exposed the party in farm areas.
The prime minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
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</div><figcaption>FILE- Laborers lift a sack of potatoes to load onto a supply truck at a wholesale market in Kolkata, India, Oct. 14, 2016.</figcaption></figure>
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​Not ‘good days’
Many farmers blame Modi for not fixing a price protection program that barely covers 7 percent of India’s 263 million farmers, leaving most growers at the mercy of middlemen.
They also criticize him for not setting up more food processing and cold storage facilities, which would allow them to store their crops without having to sell immediately after the harvest.
“Expecting good days, as promised by Modi, we voted for the BJP, but now we are going through the worst phase,” onion farmer Madhav Pawase said, pointing to his rotting crop stocked in a temporary shed in Hivargaon village, about 230 km (140 miles) northeast of Mumbai, India’s financial hub.
“I’ve spent more than 80,000 rupees to produce 15 tons of onions from my two acres of land, but I won’t recover more than 3,000 rupees at the current market price,” he said.
Some farmers have decided to let onions rot in the field, saying that harvesting and transporting the produce to wholesale markets would only add to their losses.
Congress party wins
The BJP was defeated by the opposition Congress party in three major states in local elections this month because of rural anger, and Modi’s government is under pressure to come up with measures to placate farmers.
Congress wrote off farmers’ loans in the three states that it won and has demanded the federal government do the same across the country.
Although the BJP has so far not commented on the issue of farm loan waivers, Rajiv Kumar, the head of government think-tank NITI Aayog, has said that writing off debt is not the solution for the farm sector.
Syed Zafar Islam, a spokesman for the BJP, said the government had initiated a number of steps to help farmers get remunerative prices, including a project to electronically provide farmers with real-time market prices and help them directly sell to buyers, eliminating middlemen.
“It’s an ongoing process and the results will not just start reflecting in four years,” he said.
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</div><figcaption>FILE &#8211; A vendor exchanges money with a customer at a shop selling garlic, onions and potatoes at a wholesale market in Mumbai, April 28, 2011. India&#8217;s farmers are suffering low prices for potatoes and onions, but middle men and consumers are unaffected.</figcaption></figure>
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​Potato prices down, too
In Mujahidpur village of Uttar Pradesh, India’s biggest potato growing state, farmers lamented that prices have dropped by 86 percent to 2,500 rupees a ton.
“I lost my entire investment of 100,000 rupees to grow potatoes on one hectare,” said Gopi Chand, 55, sitting next to bright yellow mustard fields.
He said he and some other farmers in the area had dumped potatoes in favor of growing mustard. Farmers in the two states also complained of rising operating costs.
Prices of crop nutrient diammonium phosphate, popularly called DAP, have gone up by 400 rupees to 1,450 rupees for a bag of 50 kg, said Babloo Singh in Mujahidpur village. DAP rates have gone up because of higher overseas prices and India’s weaker currency.
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​Cold storage needed
“Higher input costs and record low potato prices have left us in deep debt,” said Singh. “The situation would have been different had there been more cold storage facilities and food processing plants in our state.”
The crash in vegetable prices hasn’t helped consumers either thanks to the chain of middlemen.
In Lasalgaon, the country’s largest onion trading hub, most farmers are selling their produce at 2 rupees a kg. But consumers in Mumbai are still shelling out 20 rupees. Between Lasalgaon and Mumbai, a distance of 220 km (135 miles), traders say onions pass through at least four layers of middlemen, adding a hefty margin at every stage.

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Modi Likely to Pay at Polls for Collapse of Onion, Potato Prices

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The United Nations secretary-general flew back to global climate talks in Poland Wednesday to appeal to countries to reach an agreement, as some observers feared the meeting might end without a deal, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/un-chief-returns-as-climate-talks-teeter-closer-to-collapse/4697262.html">VOA news reports.</a>
U.N. chief Antonio Guterres opened the talks last week, telling leaders to take the threat of global warming seriously and calling it &#8220;the most important issue we face.&#8221;
But as the two-week meeting shifted from the technical to political phase, with ministers taking over negotiations, campaign groups warned of the risks of failure in Katowice.
Harjeet Singh of ActionAid International said the main holdouts were the United States, Australia and Japan, while the European Union was &#8220;a mere spectator.&#8221;
&#8220;A new leadership must step up,&#8221; said Vanessa Perez-Cirera of the environmental group WWF. &#8220;We cannot afford to lose one of the twelve years we have remaining.&#8221;
She was referring to a recent scientific report by a U.N.-backed panel that suggested average global warming can only be halted at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) if urgent action is taken by 2030, including a dramatic reduction in use of fossil fuels.
Endorsing the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change became a crunch issue over the weekend, with the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait opposing the move.
Jean-Pascal Ypersele, a former deputy chair of the panel, said whether or not countries believe the conclusions of the report was irrelevant because the science was clear.
&#8220;Nobody, even the so-called superpowers, can negotiate with the laws of physics,&#8221; he said.
Ypersele called for the 1.5-degree target — already mentioned in the 2015 Paris accord — to be recognized in the final text.
&#8220;It&#8217;s a question of survival for a large part of humanity, and many other species,&#8221; he said.
Poland, which is chairing the talks, was expected to circulate a condensed draft text Wednesday running to about 100 pages, down from about 300 at the start of the talks.
The Dec. 2-14 meeting is supposed to finalize the rules that signatories of the Paris accord need to follow when it comes to reporting their greenhouse gas emissions and efforts to reduce them.
Li Shuo, a climate expert at Greenpeace, warned that the current text was riddled with loopholes. &#8220;A Swiss cheese rulebook is unacceptable,&#8221; he said.
Poor countries also want assurances on financial support to tackle climate change.
A third objective of the talks is getting governments to make a firm commit to raising ambitions in the coming two years, albeit without any precise figures.
One issue that has risen to the fore at the talks is the proposal by Poland for countries to back the idea of a &#8220;just transition&#8221; for workers in fossil fuel industries facing closure from emissions-curbing measures.
Germany&#8217;s environment minister, Svenja Schulze, told reporters that her country is committed to phasing out the use of coal, though the exact deadline has yet to be determined.
But in a nod to the recent protests in France over fuel prices, Schulze warned against governments forcing through measures, saying they would lose public support &#8220;faster than you can spell climate protection, and then people pull on yellow vests.&#8221;
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UN Chief Returns as Climate Talks Teeter Closer to Collapse

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The catastrophic collapse of a dam in southern Laos has displaced thousands and left scores dead with the toll expected to climb. The disaster is so severe it has prompted to the Laos government to halt the approval of new dams until a thorough review of its existing projects in conducted. David Boyle reports from Attapeu province.
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Survivors Recount Horror of Dam Collapse