
At least 21 killed in crash in Mexico, official says
MEXICO CITY — At least 21 people have been killed in a road accident in central Mexico, according to a local official.
The three-vehicle crash happened on the highway between Cuacnopalan and Oaxaca in Puebla state on Wednesday morning, said Samuel Aguilar Pala, a local government official.
Pala said 18 people died at the scene and another three died later in hospital.
Several others were injured and are receiving medical attention, he wrote on X.
According to local media, the crash involved a tanker truck, a bus and a van.
Mexican newspaper La Jornada reports that the crash took place when a cement truck attempted to overtake a van.
When crossing into the opposite lane, the truck hit a bus and then collided with a transport van head-on before tumbling into the ravine below and bursting into flames, La Jornada said.
Video shared by a local journalist on social media shows a large cloud of dark smoke rising from the ravine and a long portion of road railing torn away. This video has not been verified by the BBC.
There have been several severe accidents on highways in Mexico in recent years.
In February, dozens of people died in a bus crash in Tabasco in southern Mexico. — BBC

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Saudi Gazette
15-05-2025
- Saudi Gazette
At least 21 killed in crash in Mexico, official says
MEXICO CITY — At least 21 people have been killed in a road accident in central Mexico, according to a local official. The three-vehicle crash happened on the highway between Cuacnopalan and Oaxaca in Puebla state on Wednesday morning, said Samuel Aguilar Pala, a local government official. Pala said 18 people died at the scene and another three died later in hospital. Several others were injured and are receiving medical attention, he wrote on X. According to local media, the crash involved a tanker truck, a bus and a van. Mexican newspaper La Jornada reports that the crash took place when a cement truck attempted to overtake a van. When crossing into the opposite lane, the truck hit a bus and then collided with a transport van head-on before tumbling into the ravine below and bursting into flames, La Jornada said. Video shared by a local journalist on social media shows a large cloud of dark smoke rising from the ravine and a long portion of road railing torn away. This video has not been verified by the BBC. There have been several severe accidents on highways in Mexico in recent years. In February, dozens of people died in a bus crash in Tabasco in southern Mexico. — BBC


Saudi Gazette
04-04-2025
- Saudi Gazette
Canadian workers on edge as car plant hits pause over US tariffs
ONTARIO — Fear and anxiety are running high in Windsor, Ontario, after carmaker Stellantis announced it will temporarily shut down its assembly plant in the Canadian border city next week as a result of US President Donald Trump's car tariffs. Derek Gungle, who is among the 4,500 people employed at the plant, says the temporary pause in operations was "kind of expected". Still, he tells the BBC he worries about what's to come. It is a feeling that is echoed across Windsor, the heart of Canada's automobile sector and just a bridge away from the US state of Michigan. For decades, the two regions worked together across the shared US-Canada border to build some of North America's most popular cars, like the Ford F-150. Those working in Windsor's auto sector who spoke to the BBC on Thursday say they are worried about the days ahead now that the US has implemented a 25% tariff on all "foreign-made" vehicles. For Canada, that tariff will be reduced by half for cars that are made with 50% US-made components or more. "It's absolutely terrifying," says Christina, who has worked at the Ford plant in Windsor for 25 years. She says she fears her plant will also shut down like Stellantis. She has four children – one of whom is in university. Her youngest is 12. "I would like them to have a good life too," Christina says as tears well up in her eyes. Responding to this building anxiety among Canadians, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada will hit back with its own tariffs. Like the US, Canada will slap a 25% tariff on American-made cars sold in Canada. Vehicles that were produced in compliance with the existing North American free trade agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico, will face lower taxes, with the tariff applying only to the non-Canadian components of the car. Unlike the US, Canada will not be applying its tariffs on automotive parts. "The government will be responding by matching the US approach," the prime minister told reporters on Thursday. The Canadian government will also work to exempt auto producers from these tariffs if they choose to maintain their production and investment in Canada, Carney said. On the campaign trail, federal leaders of Canada's major parties proposed their own solutions. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre called for the removal of federal tax on new Canadian-made cars, which he argued would increase demand for them, while New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh proposed the idea of selling "Victory Bonds" to Canadians to build up Canada's economy amid the ongoing trade dispute with the US. North America's car manufacturing sector is highly integrated, with a car crossing the US-Canada-Mexico borders multiple times before it is assembled and ready to be sold. For example, some Ford F-150s have engines that are built in Canada with electronic parts manufactured in Mexico, and are then assembled in either Michigan or Missouri. Stellantis' shutdown announcement on Thursday affects workers in all three countries. Not only did the company halt operations at its long-standing Windsor plant (what used to be the Chrysler plant) for two weeks, it also paused production at its Toluca, Mexico, plant for one month and laid off 900 workers in the US. For Canada, the price is steep. The country sells almost all of its produced cars — 93% — to the US market, amounting to around 1.6 million vehicles. The car parts it manufactures for vehicles assembled south of the border are also now subject to a 25% US tariff. Car prices going up for consumers is a likely outcome, says Mahmood Nanji, a former associate deputy minister at the Ontario Ministry of Finance. Even with a lower 12.5% tariff applied on Canadian-made cars with US parts, Nanji predicts that it would add about $8,000 (£6,110) to the price of a Chevrolet Silverado. "Dealers are going to have a hard time selling those vehicles, and consequently, demand may very well slow down," he says, adding that this would have significant impacts on both sides of the US-Canada border. The tariffs will also be an "administrative nightmare", says Nanji, as companies and border security officials try to work out how these tariffs will be applied in North America's enmeshed auto sector. Auto workers in Windsor, like Chad Lawton, say they hope these levies are temporary and that Canada and the US could negotiate a deal, "so we don't end up in a situation that's going to lead to mass layoffs". But Lawton says he also believes that Canada must stand up for itself, and that it "cannot just concede and roll over and allow it to happen". — BBC


Saudi Gazette
25-03-2025
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Millions of UK tires meant for recycling sent to furnaces in India
LONDON — Millions of tires being sent from the UK to India for recycling are actually being "cooked" in makeshift furnaces causing serious health problems and huge environmental damage, the BBC has discovered. The majority of the UK's exported waste tires are sold into the Indian black market, and this is well known within the industry, BBC File on 4 Investigates has been told. "I don't imagine there's anybody in the industry that doesn't know it's happening," says Elliot Mason, owner of one of the biggest tire recycling plants in the UK. Campaigners and many of those in the industry — including the Tire Recovery Association (TRA) — say the government knows the UK is one of the worst offenders for exporting waste tires for use in this way. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has told us it has strict controls on exporting waste tires, including unlimited fines and jail time. When drivers get their tires changed, garages charge a small recycling fee — it can vary, but it is normally about £3-6 for each end-of-life should guarantee that they are recycled — either in the UK or abroad — at facilities like Elliot Mason's Rubber World, in Rushden, facility has repurposed tires into tiny rubber crumbs since 1996. Rubber crumb is often used as flooring for equestrian centers and children's is a sunny day and Elliott Mason, who has short fair hair smiles in the foreground, wearing a grey zipped jumper. Behind him is a large pile of waste tires and trees line the UK ends up with about 50 million waste tires (nearly 700,000 tonnes) in need of recycling every year and around half of those are exported to India — according to official figures — where they should end up in recycling tires leave the UK they are compressed into huge rubber cubes known as "bales"."The pretense is that baled tires are being sent to India and then shredded and granulated in a factory very similar to ours," explains some 70% of tires imported by India from the UK and the rest of the world end up in makeshift industrial plants, where they are subjected to what amounts to an extreme form of cooking, the TRA an oxygen-free environment, in temperatures of about 500C, a process known as pyrolysis takes place. Steel and small amounts of oil are extracted, as well as carbon black — a powder or pellet that can be used in various pyrolysis plants — often in rural backwaters — are akin to homemade pressure cookers and produce dangerous gasses and tires are ending up in these Indian pyrolysis plants, despite legitimate official paperwork stating they are headed for legal Indian recycling with SourceMaterial — a non-profit journalism group — we wanted to follow the long journey UK tires make. Trackers were hidden in shipments of tires to India by an industry shipments went on an eight-week journey and eventually arrived in an Indian port, before being driven 800 miles cross-country, to a cluster of soot-covered compounds beside a small footage, taken in India and shared with the BBC, showed the tires reaching a compound — where thousands were waiting to be thrown into huge furnaces to undergo File on 4 Investigates approached one of the companies operating in the compound. It confirmed it was processing some imported tires but said what it was doing wasn't dangerous or are up to 2,000 pyrolysis plants in India, an environmental lawyer in India told the BBC. Some are licensed by the authorities but around half are unlicensed and therefore illegal, he a different cluster of makeshift plants in Wada, just outside Mumbai, a team from BBC Indian Languages saw soot, dying vegetation and polluted waterways around the sites. Villagers complained of persistent coughs and eye problems."We want these companies moved from our village," one witness told us, "otherwise we will not be able to breathe freely."Scientists at Imperial College London told the BBC plant workers continually exposed to the atmospheric pollutants produced by pyrolysis, were at risk of respiratory, cardiovascular and neurological diseases and certain types of the site the BBC visited in Wada, two women and two children were killed in January when there was an explosion at one of the plants. It had been processing European-sourced BBC approached the owners of the plant where the explosion happened but they haven't the blast, a public meeting was held and a minister for the district of Wada promised that the local government would take action. Seven pyrolysis plants have since been shut down by the Indian government has also been approached for UK businesses will bale tires and send them to India because it is more profitable and investing in shredding machinery is expensive, according to he says he isn't prepared to do this himself because he has a duty of care to make sure his company's waste is going to the right place — and it is very difficult to track where tire bales end businesses, like Rubber World, have tightly regulated environmental permits and are inspected regularly. But smaller operators can apply for an exemption and trade and lawfully export more is called a T8 exemption and allows these businesses to store and process up to 40 tonnes of car tires a many traders told the BBC that they exported volumes of tires in excess of the permitted limit, meaning they would have been exporting more tires than they BBC was tipped off about several of these companies and teamed up with an industry insider who posed as a broker with a contract to sell waste tires to of the six dealers we contacted said they processed large numbers of waste told us he had exported 10 shipping containers that week — about 250 tonnes of tires, more than five times his permitted dealer first showed us paperwork which suggested his tires were baled and sent to India for recycling which would have been allowed — but he then admitted he knew they were going to India for pyrolysis. The Indian government has made it illegal for imported tires to be used for pyrolysis."There are plenty of companies [that do it]... 90% of English people [are] doing this business," he told us, adding that he cannot control what happens when tires arrive in we asked if he had concerns about the health of those people living and working near the pyrolysis plants he responded: "These issues are international. Brother, we can't do anything... I'm not a health minister."Defra told the BBC that the UK government is considering reforms on waste exemptions."This government is committed to transitioning to a circular economy, moving to a future where we keep our resources in use for longer while protecting our natural environment," a spokesperson 2021, Australia banned exports of baled tires after auditors checked to see where they were really ending up. Lina Goodman, the CEO of Tyre Stewardship Australia, told the BBC that "100% of the material was not going to the destinations that were on the paperwork".Fighting Dirty founder Georgia Elliott-Smith says sending tires from the UK to India for pyrolysis is a "massive unrecognized problem" that the UK government should deal with. She wants tires redefined as "hazardous waste". — BBC