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BEIJING  •  Fire swept through a poultry processing plant in northeastern China on Monday, trapping workers inside a slaughterhouse with only a single open exit and killing at least 119 people in one of the country’s worst industrial disasters in years.

Survivors described panic as workers, most of them women, struggled through smoke and flames to reach doors that turned out to be locked or blocked.

One worker, Guo Yan, 39, said the emergency exit at her workstation could not be opened and she was knocked to the ground in the crush of workers searching for a way to escape.

“I could only crawl desperately forward,” Guo was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua News Agency. “I worked alongside an old lady and a young girl, but I don’t know if they survived or not.”

The accident highlights the high human costs of China’s lax industrial safety standards, which continue to plague workplaces despite recent improvements in the country’s work safety record. It also comes amid growing international concern over factory safety across Asia after the collapse in April of a garment factory in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,100 people.

Besides the dead, dozens were injured in the blaze in Jilin province’s Mishazi township, which appeared to have been sparked by three early morning explosions, Xinhua said. The provincial fire department attributed the blasts to an ammonia leak. The chemical is kept pressurized as part of the cooling system in meat processing plants.

It was one of China’s worst recent industrial disasters, with the death toll the highest since a mining cave-in in September 2008 that claimed 281 lives.

State broadcaster CCTV quoted workers as saying the fire broke out during a shift change when about 350 workers were at the plant, owned by Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry Co.

Some employees raised the alarm shortly after the shift began at 6 a.m. local time, and then the lights went out, causing panic as workers scrambled to find an exit, Wang Fengya, 44, told Xinhua.

“When I finally ran out and looked back at the plant, I saw high flames,” she said.

The fire broke out in a factory building where chickens were being dismembered, and spread rapidly, with industrial boilers exploding, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported on its microblog. Only a side door to the building was open with the rest of the exits locked, the newspaper said.

It quoted an unidentified worker as saying the fire engulfed the building in three minutes, leaving too little time for many to flee.

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Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa is demanding a meeting with his federal counterpart to break the gridlock on the funding of transit.

In the wake of federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s refusal to allow any regional increase to the 13 per cent harmonized sales tax to bankroll new public transit, Sousa said Sunday the two governments urgently need to talk.

“I am . . . writing to request a meeting with you on this critical issue as soon as possible,” the provincial treasurer wrote in a letter to Flaherty obtained by the Star.

Sousa’s missive was a response to the federal finance minister’s broadside Thursday when he warned that tinkering with the HST would contravene the 2010 tax agreement between the two levels of government.

“We did not lower the GST to have it taken away from Ontarians by the (Premier Kathleen) Wynne government with a news sales tax hike,” wrote Flaherty, referring to his cut to the federal tax from 7 per cent to 5 per cent prior to harmonization.

“As you are well aware, the Comprehensive Integrated Tax Coordination Agreement signed by the government of Ontario does not allow for the provincial component of the HST to vary between regions within the province,” the federal treasurer continued.

“Any proposal to raise the rate of the provincial component of the HST within municipal or regional boundaries would contravene the agreement,” he said, referring to Metrolinx’s recommendation last week to raise the HST locally.

“Let me be clear, our government will not accept such a proposed regional sales tax increase on the residents of the Greater Toronto/Hamilton Area,” wrote Flaherty.

But Sousa said the federal treasurer is putting the cart before the horse.

“As you are well aware, the province has not asked the federal government for any changes to the harmonized sales tax,” he wrote Sunday.

“However, since 2010, we have repeatedly requested that the federal government invest in a national transit strategy — with dedicated infrastructure dollars for the building of more transit,” said Sousa.

“This is not only an economic, social and environmental imperative, it is also an urgent obligation of national importance,” he said quick payday loan.

“Moreover, given the (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper government’s commitment to job creation through Canada’s Economic Action Plan, your government would be a natural partner in the creation of an estimated 987,700 person years of employment over the next 20 years through Metrolinx’s $50 billion Big Move projects.”

Sousa, who represents Mississauga South, and Flaherty, representing Whitby-Oshawa, are well-versed on the commuting challenges that grip Greater Toronto. They are both GO train riders who regularly hear about traffic headaches from their neighbours and constituents.

Still, the provincial Liberals and the federal Conservatives appear to be on a political collision course over new taxes to fund transit infrastructure.

Both parties dominate the GTHA electorally and each wants to be seen as a champion for the region.

To Sousa, that means Ottawa has to step up.

“Unfortunately, your government’s current investment in transit through the Building Canada Fund provides only four per cent of the necessary funding needed to address the transit and transportation deficit in the GTHA,” he told Flaherty.

“Congestion is also a significant challenge for businesses. The Toronto Region Board of Trade states that all levels of government must be involved, including a more prominent role by the federal government.”

Indeed, board president Carol Wilding, who estimates congestion costs the region’s economy $6 billion a year, also wants to sit down with Flaherty to discuss the matter.

But embattled Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, a close Flaherty friend and political ally, said on Twitter Sunday that “Kathleen Wynne’s Metrolinx plan takes the easy way out — passing the burden onto taxpayer.”

Ford, under fire over a video that appears to show him smoking crack cocaine and making racist and homophobic slurs, opposes any new taxes to pay for transit.

A 1 per cent increase to the HST is the linchpin of Metrolinx’s transit investment strategy designed to raise $2 billion annually to fund 13 big-ticket transit projects.

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A chalk message in a child’s messy printing is scrawled on the sidewalk outside the home in Burlington where Chris Snowball lived.

“Snowball residence!” the pink printing reads. A happy face and an arrow point to the home where Snowball, one of the paramedics who was killed in the ORNGE helicopter crash on Thursday, lived with his wife and three children.

As Snowball’s family paced outside the home, his wife, Allie Scott, said she can’t believe her partner of almost 22 years is gone.

“ORNGE called me at 3:30 in the morning, to tell me they lost contact,” she said, admitting she thought it was something minor.

“Then they called me at 7:30 this morning. They said there were no survivors. All four crew members did not survive,” the 36-year-old daycare worker said, her voice breaking.

Scott said she will always remember Snowball as a fantastic father who loved fishing, nature, his children and his comfortable jeans and raggedy sweatshirts.

Chris Snowball’s 60-year-old father, John Snowball, said his son was supposed to celebrate his 39th birthday next week.

“He was the most responsible kid I’ve ever known,” he said, adding that he was often away when Chris was growing up because he was a railway engineer, and Chris would keep the house running, even as a child.

“Kids should be playing outside and what not, but not Chris. He was always helping his mother and taking care of his brother,” he said.

At a very early age, Chris decided he wanted to be a paramedic, his father said, and he became more passionate about the work as he went to school at Niagara College. He got his first job in Cape Breton Island and came back to Burlington a few years ago to be closer to his family.

He said he just talked to his son on Thursday evening on Facebook.

“He said he was bored on his late night shift and I said I had to go because I had to work early in the morning. He said ‘I love ya’ and I said I loved him, too,” he said.

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The St. Louis region’s job market continued its long, slow, recovery in April.

New figures out today from the Labor Department show that the region’s unemployment rate held steady, at 7.4 percent, after seasonal adjustments were taken into account. 

The number of people on payrolls in the metro area grew by 4,700, to 1,305,500, the most since March 2009.

That combination - flat unemployment with job growth - suggests that at least some workers are re-entering the labor force after years on the sidelines. But it also suggests that the recovery still isn’t fast enough to help many of the long-term unemployed.

The unemployment rate - defined as the share of people who are looking for work but can’t find it - has held steady at 7.4 percent for three months now and has hovered in the mid-to-low 7 percent range for about a year business cards design. That’s better than the 10-plus percent seen in the depths of the recession but still abnormally  high by historic standards.

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Meanwhile payroll employment - the number of people working for companies in metro St. Louis - bounced back after a sizable drop in April and is now at its highest level in four years. April marked the seventh straight month above the benchmark of 1.3 million jobs.

Still, the St. Louis region has struggled to grow back what was lost in 2009, and payroll employment remains 60,000 jobs - 4.4 percent - below its pre-recession peak.

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One of the men in a controversial photo of Mayor Rob Ford and homicide victim Anthony Smith was injured in the same shooting that claimed Smith’s life, the Star has learned.

Muhammad Khattak, a 19-year-old living in north Etobicoke, was hit in the arm and back the same night Smith was killed two months ago outside a King St. nightclub.

A photo of Ford arm in arm with three young men was given to the Star by a man who later showed this paper a cellphone video of Ford smoking from what appears to be a crack pipe.

Two sources, one with the Toronto police and another involved in politics, tell the Star homicide detectives are now investigating whether that phone originally belonged to 21-year-old Smith. (There is no indication Khattak or the third young man is involved in either the video or the drug trade.)

Homicide detectives did not return calls.

Khattak’s mother, who identified herself as Zen, said she asked Khattak what he was doing in the nighttime photo, in which Ford is casually dressed and Smith is apparently drinking.

“He said: ‘Was I drinking? Was I smoking? Did you see anything with me?’ ” she said.

Zen said Khattak told her everybody wanted to take photos with the mayor. He would not give her any more details about the night.

The Star was contacted about the footage four days after Smith’s death.

Khattak’s mother said she has no idea how her son or Smith ended up involved in a shooting.

“I’m still shocked. This kid was a very good kid too,” she said, gesturing to Smith’s photo, her eyes puffy and pink.

“My son, I know him, he’s a very innocent kid. They’re friends. They’re having fun, whatever they’re doing outside. But I know them — they are nice kids. They are very nice.”

She said the duo have been friends since they were as young as 10. They used to play on the same basketball team.

“It’s not safe, Toronto,” she said.

Khattak recently left his family home to avoid attention generated by the photo’s publication.

A Facebook profile under one of his nicknames is peppered with photos of Smith and tributes to the young man.

“RIP Big Bro,” reads a caption on one photo, posted April 7, of a man wearing jeans and a dark hooded sweatshirt who appears to be Smith. “Forever In My Heart Mourn Till We Join You General. . . ”

Another photo shows a tribute spray-painted at the centre of a community basketball court in Dixon Park. “R.I.P. RONDO,” it reads.

Rondo was one of Smith’s nicknames.

The two men were shot outside Loki Lounge nightclub on King St. W. near Portland St., sometime after 2:30 a.m. on March 28.

Nisar Hashimi, 23, turned himself in April 4 after he was named a suspect. He has been charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder in the death of Smith and shooting of Khattak.

During a recent visit to the Toronto jail, a reporter was told by Hashimi he had never heard of or seen Smith until he was charged in his murder.

“I’m innocent,” he said. “I don’t know these guys. . . . I don’t know why I’m here.”

Hashimi said all he knows about Smith is what he has read in the newspaper since the drug allegations about Ford have surfaced.

Two weeks ago, the Star revealed that two reporters had viewed a 90-second cellphone video that appears to show the mayor smoking crack cocaine. A group of Somali-Canadian drug dealers who claim to have sold the drug to Ford on numerous occasions, offered to sell the video to the Star for $100,000. They also approached the American gossip website, Gawker. Its editor, John Cook, also viewed and wrote about the video.

Ford dismissed the stories as “ridiculous” the day after both ran, but it took a week before he issued a full denial. On his Sunday radio show, when a female caller asked him to explain the photo, Ford said he takes photos with “everybody.”

“That’s very sad, that she’s a racist,” the mayor said afterward, referring to the fact that the three men in the photo are all minorities.

Both the Star and Gawker declined to pay for the footage. After the contents of the video were made public, the dealers raised their price to $200,000. Gawker launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise the money. It met its goal just hours ahead of deadline.

Neither the Star nor Gawker has been in touch with the men selling the video for a week. A broker who is acting on their behalf is still in touch and says the dealers are “laying low.”

Robyn Doolittle can be reached on her cellphone, 647-404-4740, or by email rdoolittle@thestar.ca

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NAIROBI, KENYA—Michael Adebolajo, one of the suspects in last week’s savage killing of a British soldier on a London street, was arrested in Kenya in 2010 while apparently preparing to train and fight with Al Qaeda-linked Somali militants, a Kenyan anti-terrorism police official said Sunday.

Adebolajo was then handed over to British authorities and deported, another Kenyan official said.

The information surfaced as London’s Metropolitan Police said officers had arrested another man suspected of conspiring to murder 25-year-old soldier Lee Rigby. Police did not provide details about the man, saying only he is 22.

The latest arrest followed the detainment in London late Saturday of three other suspects, aged 21 to 28.

Rigby, who had served in Afghanistan, was run over and stabbed with knives in the Woolwich area in southeast London on Wednesday afternoon as he was walking near his barracks.

Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, are the main suspects in the killing and remained under armed guard in separate London hospitals after police shot them at the scene.

In 2010, Adebolajo was arrested with five others near Kenya’s border with Somalia, said Boniface Mwaniki, head of Kenya’s anti-terrorism police unit. Police believed Adebolajo was going to work with Somali militant group Al Shabab.

Mwaniki said Adebolajo was deported after the 2010 arrest. A government spokesman said he had been arrested under a different name and taken to court before being handed to British authorities.

“Kenya’s government arrested Michael Olemindis Ndemolajo. We handed him to British security agents in Kenya and he seems to have found his way to London and mutated to Michael Adebolajo,” spokesman Muthui Kariuki said. “The Kenyan government cannot be held responsible for what happened to him after we handed him to British authorities.”

Kariuki said Adebolajo was travelling on a British passport, but he could not confirm if it was authentic.

When asked whether British security agents and embassy officials handled Adebolajo in Kenya, a Foreign Office spokeswoman declined to comment, only saying in a statement: “We can confirm a British national was arrested in Kenya in 2010 guaranteed personal loan approval. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office provided consular assistance as normal for British nationals.”

On Sunday, Rigby’s grieving family visited the scene of his murder, pausing for a few moments in reflection and laying flowers to join the hundreds of floral tributes already left at the nearby Woolwich Barracks by well-wishers.

The soldier’s gruesome murder has horrified Britain, partly because it was captured by witnesses’ cellphones. A video picked up by British media showed one of the suspects, with bloodied hands, making political statements and warning of more violence as the soldier lay on the ground behind him.

Muslim leaders have identified the man in the video as Adebolajo, an Islam convert who allegedly used to join in London demonstrations organized by British radical group al-Muhajiroun. The group catapulted to notoriety after the Sept. 11 attacks by organizing an event to celebrate the airplane hijackers. It was banned in Britain in 2010.

Abu Nusaybah, a friend of Adebolajo’s, said in a BBC interview last week that Adebolajo became withdrawn after he allegedly suffered abuse by Kenyan security forces during interrogation in prison there.

On Sunday, anti-terrorism head Mwaniki rejected those allegations. He said there were no indications of torture or abuse at the time, but the unit would further investigate.

Mwaniki said dozens of foreign youth are arrested every year attempting to cross the Kenyan border to join Al Shabab, which claims to be fighting a jihad or holy war against the Somali government and African Union forces.

Al Shabab controlled Mogadishu from roughly 2007 to 2011. The group still dominates most of south central Somalia but has seen its territory reduced after military pushes by African Union and Somali forces.

British officials said Sunday they are also setting up a new terrorism task force to tackle radical preachers and extremism.

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An improving labor market rather than accelerating inflation made the Federal Reserve decide to end its last three episodes of easy monetary policy. It may be about to happen again, says Barclays Plc strategist Barry Knapp.

He looked back to May 1983, February 1994 and the February-to-August period of 2004 to see what prompted the U.S. central bank to tighten policy, which former Fed chief William McChesney Martin likened to taking away the punch bowl just as the party gets going.

In all three cases, inflation measures were generally falling. It was employment, the other part of the Fed

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Some of the country’s largest retailers, including Target Corp. and Macy’s Inc., on Thursday filed a lawsuit against MasterCard and Visa, rejecting a settlement reached last year over alleged fee-fixing.

A larger group of 19 trade associations and retail companies originally filed suit against the card processing companies in 2005, claiming that they conspired to fix the fees they charge stores for handling payments made with credit cards.

A $7.2 billion settlement was reached in July, but some of the retailers rejected it, partially because it includes a provision barring retailers from filing future lawsuits over swipe fees. Some retailers also have argued that the settlement amount was far less than what they deserved and might have won at trial.

Earlier this week, the National Retail Federation, which represents more than 9,000 retailers across the country, urged its members to reject the settlement, in part, because of the provision barring future lawsuits.

The retailers involved in the new lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, also include TJX Cos payday loans., Office Depot Inc., Kohl’s Corp., Abercrombie & Fitch Co. and several others.

Visa spokesman Will Valentine declined comment, while MasterCard spokesman Jim Issokson would only say that his company remains confident that the settlement will ultimately be approved.

Trish Wexler, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Payments Coalition, which counts the companies among its members, said the lawsuit didn’t come as a surprise and was the next natural step for retailers opting out of the settlement.

Other retailers have until Tuesday to opt out of the agreement so they can pursue their own legal action. Retailers who do not opt out by the deadline will automatically be considered to have accepted the settlement.

In afternoon trading, Visa Inc. shares fell $2.13 to $178.01, while MasterCard Inc. shares fell $7.89 to $568.82.

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United Airlines is getting its 787s back in the air.

The planes are flying again after being grounded for four months because of smoldering batteries on 787s owned by other airlines. The incidents included an emergency landing of one plane, and a fire on another. Federal authorities lifted the grounding order on April 19 but it has taken Boeing, which makes the plane, and the airlines a few more weeks to fix most of them.

The incidents never caused any serious injuries. But the January grounding embarrassed Boeing and disrupted schedules at the eight airlines that were flying the planes. The company had delivered 50 of the planes worldwide.

United is the only U.S. airline currently flying the 787. The grounding forced it to delay planned international flights and reduced first-quarter earnings by $11 million. Other airlines, including Japan Airlines and South America’s LATAM Airlines Group, also said profit took a hit. LATAM said it still had to make payments on the plane and pay for crews and maintenance. It expects to resume flying soon.

United’s first 787 flight is scheduled for an 11 a.m. Monday from Houston to Chicago.

Passengers didn’t appear to be too worried. “We saw strong demand for the flight from the first weekend it opened for sale,” said United spokeswoman Christen David.

United is planning to use 787s on shorter domestic flights before resuming international flights on June 10 with new Denver-to-Tokyo service as well as temporary Houston-to-London flights. It’s adding flights to Tokyo, Shanghai, and Lagos, Nigeria, in August.

Those long international flights are the main reason the 787 exists. Its medium size and fuel efficiency are a good fit for long routes. Starting with shorter domestic flights “will give us a period to ramp up full 787 operations,” David said.

United Continental Holdings Inc. now has six 787s. United has said it expects to have four fixed by Monday, with the other two getting their batteries modified in coming days.

The 787 uses more electricity than any other jet. And it makes more use of lithium-ion batteries than other jets to provide power for things like flight controls and a backup generator when its engines are shut down. Each 787 has two of the batteries.

Boeing Co. never did figure out the root cause of the battery incidents. Instead, it redesigned the battery and its charger. The idea was to eliminate all of the possible causes, 787 chief engineer Mike Sinnett said in an online chat on Thursday where he and a Boeing test pilot took questions about the plane.

The changes include more heat insulation between each cell and charging the battery to a lower maximum voltage.

Ethiopian Airlines resumed flying 787s on April 27, and Air India and Qatar have also restarted flights. All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines have both said they expect to restart 787 flights on June 1.

Boeing said that as of Sunday, 45 planes have gotten the battery fix out of 50 that were in service when they were grounded. It said it will finish the modifications by the end of May.

Boeing never stopped making 787s, but deliveries were halted. They resumed last week, and Boeing has since delivered two planes, both with the new battery system.

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