IN BRIEF (Page 8)

India

Defect ignored before boiler blast

A probe into the boiler explosion at a government-run coal-fired power plant in India's Uttar Pradesh state has revealed that engineers were aware of a problem in the boiler unit and were working to fix it, but still they didn't shut it down. Meanwhile, the death toll has risen to 30. "With the recovery of more charred bodies and a few critically injured, the death toll now stands at 30," a top official said on Friday.