Police have detained eight people in east China's Shandong Province in connection with a coal mine fire that has trapped 28 miners for more than two weeks, local authorities said Saturday. A total of 91 people were working underground in the Fangbei Coal Mine in the province's city of Zaozhuang on July 6 when an air compression device located in a parking lot 255 meters underground caught fire.

The State Council, China's Cabinet, has approved the arrest of two senior executives responsible for a gas leak that killed 37 people in Yuzhou of central Henan Province in October 2010.

Rescuers were racing against time on Saturday to reach 40 miners buried underground in two separate coal mine disasters which have already killed three people in south China. Work crew operated at least 17 pumps at Niupeng Mine in rural Guizhou Province to release water from the flooded mine before rescuers could be sent down the pit.

Coal export tax rate would be expected to surge from the current 15 percent to 20 percent in a bid to restrict export of the fossil fuel, the Vietnam Ministry of Finance (VMF) said on Tuesday. VMF's proposal was made after the Vietnam Coal and Mineral Industries Group (Vinacomin) imported 9,500 tons of low-quality coal from Indonesia to supply power thermo-electric plants in Vietnam, making the country to become a coal importer for the first time.