Shell Canada reports hazardous materials leak in Corunna refinery

(Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc's Shell Canada issued an alert for a hazardous materials leak at its 75,000 barrel-per-day Corunna refinery in Sarnia, Ontario, according to a notice on Sarnia-Lambton Network Alert System on Friday morning.

"The site emergency warning system has been activated and Shell personnel are responding. The wind is from the Southeast at 8 km per hour," the notice said.

Three workers at the refinery were sent to hospital Friday morning following a hydrogen sulfide leak, The Sarnia Observer said in a report.

A reaction triggered the leak just before 8.a.m. (local time) while an exchanger was being cleaned as part of the refinery's ongoing turnaround operations, the report quoted plant spokesperson Kristina Zimmer as saying.

Shell was not immediately available to comment.

A Chemical Valley Emergency Control Organization (CVECO) Code 8 was issued and was still in place, the report added.

(Reporting by Shruti Chaturvedi and Nallur Sethuraman in Bangalore; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Chris Reese)

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Zimbabwe PM's party reports increase in violence

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — The party of Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said Tuesday that violence against its supporters is increasing as political tensions rise before upcoming elections.

The Movement for Democratic Change party said an arson attack on the home of an election candidate in eastern Zimbabwe killed the politician's 12-year-old son. The attack was one of 120 incidents of violence recorded so far this year, said the third ranked MDC official, Finance Minister Tendai Biti.

The candidate's house has suffered nine attacks surrounding previous elections and the last violent and disputed elections in 2008. The child's burial is to be on Thursday.

Biti said his party was "enraged at the increase in politically motived violence throughout the country" that he blamed on a faction of President Robert Mugabe's party.

Biti accused Mugabe's ZANU PF party of attempting to once again instill fear in the electorate.

"ZANU PF intends to harvest fear in the 2013 elections," he said.

He also alleged that Mugabe's security services have crafted a strategy of intimidation, arrests and possible assassination attempts against leaders of the former opposition in a shaky coalition government with Mugabe.

Voters go to the polls March 16 in a referendum on a new constitution, followed by parliamentary and presidential elections slated around July to end the coalition brokered by regional mediators after the troubled 2008 vote.

No arrests have been made in the death of the 12-year-old. Party officials said it took seven hours for police to reach the scene of the fire in the Headlands district, 140 kilometers (90 miles) east of Harare, on Saturday.

Mugabe's party, blamed along with loyalist police and military for much of the political violence surrounding elections over the last decade, has denied the involvement of its supporters in the fire at Headlands, a stronghold of a staunch veteran Mugabe ally, Didymus Mutasa.

The United States embassy in Harare immediately called for urgent and impartial investigations into the alleged arson attack.

"Respect for the law and apolitical policing are essential for creating conditions for credible and non-violent Zimbabwe elections this year," it said in a statement.

Both Mugabe and Tsvangirai have repeatedly called for violence-free elections.

Human rights monitors of an independent group, Heal Zimbabwe Trust, said authorities on Tuesday attempted to stop mourners and sympathizers gathering at the scene of the fire.

Tsvangirai party activist and aspiring lawmaker Shepherd Maisiri, the father of the dead child, said communities were fast losing confidence in the calls for peace by political leaders, according to the trust's information bulletin on Tuesday.

The trust quoted Maisiri telling its monitors: " I am told I must trust Robert Mugabe that elections are going to be peaceful. Well, this is proving false. My son is dead before we even get to the referendum. What more will happen as we approach highly contested elections?"

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network also reported Tuesday its observers noted the re-emergence of feared pro-Mugabe youth militia groups in several parts of the country.

It reported "instability and political tension" across the nation.

"Observers continue to report the presence of intolerance and a generalized lack of freedom of association and expression," the group said.

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Guatemala: Probing reports drug lord may be dead

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemalan authorities are mobilizing security forces to scour a remote, rural area where residents reported a gunbattle between drug gangs and said one of the dead resembled Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

But officials stressed late Thursday that they had not yet found any bodies or even confirmed a shootout happened.

Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla told The Associated Press that police and soldiers would begin searching on foot and in the air at first light Friday, looking for the scene of the reported gunfight in Peten province near the border with Mexico.

Authorities initially said Thursday night that they were investigating whether Guzman was one of at least two men killed in the remote area, but hours later backtracked and said they had only received reports of a battle from local people.

Government spokesman Francisco Cuevas first told Guatevision Television that two drug gangs had clashed in Peten, an area that has seen an increase in drug violence and that at least two men had died in the shootout.

"We have to wait for all the technical information in order to determine if, in fact, one of the dead is of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman," Cuevas said.

Later, Cuevas told Mexico's Televisa network that authorities hadn't yet found a body or the scene where reports said a shootout took place.

He never said what led officials to think that one of the dead men might be Guzman.

But Interior Department spokeswoman Carla Herrera told The Associated Press that one of the victims physically resembled the drug lord. She said officials had asked the Mexican government to send Guzman's fingerprints to compare them to the man found inside a vehicle and to send investigators.

However, Herrera's boss, Lopez Bonilla, told the AP that it was residents of the town of San Francisco who had told officials of a gunbattle and reported that one of the people killed looked like Guzman.

"The fact is we don't have any of this information confirmed," Lopez Bonilla said.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said late Thursday that he had no information on the case.

"I don't have any information that can confirm that," he told reporters.

Peten province is an isolated area of jungle and ranches where 27 ranch workers were massacred in 2011 by the Zetas drug gang, a top rival for Guzman's Sinaloa drug cartel.

Guzman, who has been in hiding since escaping from a Mexican prison in a laundry cart in 2001, is one of the world's most dangerous and most wanted fugitives.

He's also one of the richest: Forbes magazine has estimated his fortune at $1 billion.

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