An explosion inside a confectionery factory in Mexico’s border city of Ciudad Juarez has left one person dead and at least 40 injured, with several workers missing.

AS IF the effort to rescue 65 trapped coal miners wasn’t hampered enough by toxic gas and walls of debris, a local power outage early yesterday briefly shut down a ventilation system.

AMERICAN and Canadian troops yesterday rushed to a town left completely submerged by flooding and where health officials feared 1,000 people could be dead in that town alone.

Haitians turned to US-led troops and international agencies for help as the death toll climbed to about 900 following floods that ravaged Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Hundreds more were missing and presumed dead.