In a Diplomatic Limbo While Waiting to Adopt

Randy Wills received the long-awaited call from his adoption agency last Thursday: a 10-month-old girl from eastern Russia was available for adoption. He and his wife, Magdalena Kleczkowski Wills, who live in Southington, Conn., could plan to travel to Russia in two weeks.

The agency sent by e-mail a photograph of the infant, and Mr. Wills and his wife, who had undergone unsuccessful fertility treatments before pursuing the adoption, were giddy. The nursery was ready — complete with a stuffed animal named Shmuley the Monkey.

Two hours later, however, their euphoria turned to panic. Mr. Wills’s wife had seen an item on the Internet saying that an adopted Russian boy had been returned, alone, to Moscow and that the Russians were threatening to halt all American adoptions.

“Within hours, we went from utter joy to ‘Oh my God, what’s going to happen?’ ” said Mr. Wills, 36, who works for an insurance company. “It is killing us, killing us.”

The largely unfathomable decision by one woman, Torry Ann Hansen, to send her adopted son Justin back to his home country has not only touched off a diplomatic drama, it has also shaken the tight-knit community of would-be adoptive parents of Russian children, many now fearful that their own plans to adopt may have been irrevocably harmed.

Russia is the third-leading source of international adoptions for parents in the United States — with 1,586 last year, after China, with 3,001, and Ethiopia, with 2,277, according to State Department figures. An estimated 3,500 Russian children are in some stage of the adoption process with 3,000 American families, according to the Joint Council on International Children’s Services.

The reaction among prospective parents has ranged from incomprehension to rage at the woman whose actions sparked this development. Parents, including Mr. Wills, have fired off letters to the State Department and the United States Embassy in Russia, and many have weighed in on highly emotional debates on blogs and in chat rooms, their comments running the gamut from compassion for Ms. Hansen — who sent Justin back to Russia unaccompanied with a note that said the boy “is violent and has severe psychopathic issues” — to comments like “Does anybody else want to choke her?”

While the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, announced on Friday that he would propose suspending all adoptions of Russian children by Americans in response to Justin’s case, the Russian government has not yet formally put such a measure in place. Russian officials on Monday gave no indication when they might do so.

Still, it seemed likely that regional officials across Russia would slow down or even halt pending adoptions until they had more clarity on any new rules.

“If I were the agency, I would be saying to the parents: ‘Slow down. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but be prepared for some delays,’ ” said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, based in New York. “Be cautious, but not pessimistic.”

Larisa Mason, executive director of the International Assistance Group, based in Oakmont, Pa., and accredited in Russia, said that “for now, adoption continues, referrals are still coming. I cannot say what will happen tomorrow.”

Ms. Mason added: “People are extremely worried. Our phone lines are lighting up because this could jeopardize a lot of people’s adoptions.”

She said that much depended on how the United States deals with Ms. Hansen. “Russians are outraged that no charges have been filed against this woman,” she said.

The United States Embassy in Moscow announced on Monday that a delegation of high-level State Department officials would arrive in Russia for consultations with their Russian counterparts.

“We want to discuss concluding an agreement or bilateral understanding that will help us better ensure the well-being of Russian children who are adopted into the United States,” Ambassador John Beyrle said.

Shannon and Daniel Nelson of Cape Girardeau, Mo., about 100 miles southeast of St. Louis, are caught in the painful limbo. They returned last month from Russia after visiting two unrelated 3-year-old boys they are planning to adopt. A second trip is required before the adoption can be finalized. The Nelsons have been told that the agency is hopeful but that there may be problems ahead.

In Mine Safety, a Meek Watchdog

The Mine Safety and Health Administration was created almost 35 years ago, after deadly explosions at a Kentucky mine, with a mission to conduct more inspections of the nation’s mines and enforce safety standards more strictly. It was strengthened four years ago, after more disasters.

But it remains fundamentally weak in several areas, and it does not always use the powers it has.

The agency can seek to close mines that it deems unsafe and to close repeat offenders, but it rarely does so.

The fines it levies are relatively small, and many go uncollected for years. It lacks subpoena power, a basic investigatory tool. Its investigators are not technically law enforcement officers, like those at other agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.

And its criminal sanctions are weak, a result of compromises over the 1977 Mine Act that created the agency. Falsifying records is a felony, for example, while deliberate violations of safety standards that lead to deaths are misdemeanors.

After an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, W.Va., killed 29 miners last Monday — including four whose bodies were discovered late Friday — in the nation’s worst mining disaster in four decades, evidence quickly surfaced that the mine had been cited for hundreds of violations over the last year, including many serious ones.

Federal mining officials said Friday that they believed the mine’s safety record was poor enough to declare that it had a “pattern of violations,” which would have allowed them to increase oversight and to shut the mine down every time a significant violation was found.

But their hands were tied, they said, because Upper Big Branch, like many mines, had contested many of its violations — a tactic that helps mine owners fend off fines and delay additional scrutiny.

The total fines the Massey Energy Company, which owns the Upper Big Branch mine, paid for infractions there in the last year, $168,393 in all, is just the latest example of what former regulators, inspectors and miners say is an agency that lacks muscle — a testament to the industry’s political clout and the practical limits of enforcement.

Fatalities among miners have been steadily dropping for years. But inspectors, regulators and miners said the deaths at Upper Big Branch showed that enforcement of safety laws remained weak.

“Every place I’ve ever worked, safety has been a distant second to production,” said Billy Brannon, 30, of Harlan, Ky., who has been a miner for nine years. “If you take 30 minutes out of the day doing it right, that takes a lot out of the tonnage of the mine.”

Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis, who oversees the mine safety agency, said in an interview that she was concerned about weaknesses in its oversight powers.

“We know that there are some areas of the law that probably could be strengthened, and so we’re going to be reviewing those areas — for example, looking at powers to subpoena,” she said. “We don’t have the authority to shut down a mine as easily and as quickly as the public might think, and I think those are the loopholes that we want to close.”

In the Bush administration, a number of officials from the mining industry were appointed to senior positions at the mine safety agency. The agency made a priority of winning voluntary compliance from the industry, which prompted critics to accuse officials of not taking enforcement seriously enough.

After a series of deadly fires in 2006, Congress passed a tougher mining law, and the agency stiffened its fines and began using some powers more aggressively. When President Obama took office, he named Joseph A. Main, a former safety official with the United Mine Workers of America, to lead the agency. Last year, mine experts said, there seemed to be greater enforcement and more citations.

But even the new fines remain so low that they are mere rounding errors on the bottom lines of the big energy companies that own mines. And the industry has hobbled enforcement by challenging so many violations.

Since 2005, the number of cases pending appeal before the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, which reviews challenges, has jumped to 16,000 from 1,500. Federal officials estimated that the backlog of challenged cases was holding up enforcement actions against 48 mines, which employ about 6,000 miners nationwide, including Upper Big Branch.

An analysis of federal records by The New York Times shows that of the $123.4 million in major fines levied against the industry by the agency since 2005, only 8 percent — or $10.2 million — has been collected partly because mine owners began challenging fines more routinely when the agency threatened to increase enforcement for repeat offenders.

Between the industry’s success in challenging enforcement actions and the mine safety agency’s reluctance to flex all of its powers, problem mines are almost never cited for having “a pattern of violations,” which would allow stricter oversight.

Although the agency has had the power to cite mines for such patterns since 1977, it rarely if ever used it until 2007. Since then, it has warned at least 69 mines that they could be cited for a pattern, but has then allowed almost all to escape the added oversight as long as they reduce — not necessarily eliminate — violations in a three-month review period.

So far the agency has cited only one mine for such a pattern; it is in court trying to cite another. Officials said they do close down sections of mines to fix serious violations, but they rarely use the added powers they have had for more than 30 years.

The cause of the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine is still under investigation. Massey defended its safety record last week, even as federal officials said the mine’s record of some of the most serious violations was well above the national average. And the industry is warning against a rush to impose tougher enforcement.

Bruce H. Watzman, senior vice president of the National Mining Association, the industry’s main lobbying group, said the industry was deeply committed to worker safety, estimating that it had spent more than $800 million since 2006 to enhance safety measures nationwide. He cautioned against quick adoption of new regulations, which might add cost, without addressing what actually caused the explosion at Upper Big Branch.

“It is understandable there is additional scrutiny and that some will call for immediate action,” Mr. Watzman said. “But we need good, complete answers as to what happened. And those are not necessarily quick answers.”

Enforcement at the mines themselves carries a separate set of challenges.

On the narrow and isolated highways of Appalachia’s coal region, the white S.U.V.s of federal inspectors are easy to spot. Coal truck drivers sometimes use CB radios to tell mine operators that the inspectors are on their way.

Convenience store clerks have been known to call in warnings when inspectors stop in to buy coffee. And once the inspectors arrive, operators can employ a variety of delaying tactics so they can clean up glaring violations.

“It’s always been a game of cat and mouse,” said Maurice Mullins, who worked as a federal mine inspector for 32 years before retiring in 2003.

Another recently retired inspector and one who still works for the agency also spoke about their experiences last week, along with several miners.

They said that many mines routinely violate safety rules, but they also faulted regulators for decades of timid enforcement.

“It’s always been my opinion that M.S.H.A. doesn’t use the powers it has,” said an inspector with more than 20 years of experience who did not want his name used because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

Miners say that despite ubiquitous “safety first” slogans, they face relentless pressure to run more coal, as production is called.

“These big mine companies push the envelope to the breaking point,” said Mark Gray, a 51-year-old miner from Harlan.

Making routine methane checks, hanging ventilation curtains and shoveling dangerous accumulations of coal dust — all required under federal rules — take time away from production.

In most mines, foremen are judged almost exclusively by the productivity of their crew, said Mr. Brannon, the 30-year-old miner from Kentucky. “I’ve worked for bosses that wanted it done right, and most of the time they didn’t boss for too long,” he added.

The industry, with its powerful lobby in Washington, has not been shy about fighting additional regulations.

In 2007, the year after a series of fatal accidents that were attributed in part to the failures of seals designed to keep explosive methane gas from seeping between work areas in the mines, federal officials considered imposing a rule requiring mine owners to replace or retrofit all seals, to better protect the estimated 30,000 miners nationwide.

But at a hearing that year, Bill K. Caylor, then president of the Kentucky Coal Association, accused the government of reacting hysterically to the accidents.

“Did you know that 750 people die each year in the U.S. from eating bad or ruined potato salad?” he told federal regulators. “Do you think we could get some new laws put on the books to control these deaths?”

He urged regulators to ignore pleas from the widows of victims who were pressing them to mandate that new seals be installed in mines nationwide.

“The cost of installing the new approved seals will put a lot of smaller operators out of business,” he told regulators, urging them to require the new seals only when old ones were replaced.

When the final rule came out in 2008, the regulators sided with Mr. Caylor.

Spending by the coal industry in Washington has surged in recent years, with the tab for its more than 100 lobbyists — almost all representing mine owners — jumping to $14 million, from less than $2.5 million in 2003.

Much of that is driven by industry opposition to new restrictions that could be imposed as part of an effort to combat climate change. But industry lobbyists have also looked for ways to limit or block new safety measures, like legislation adopted by the House in 2008 that would add new safety provisions, including tougher standards to contain explosions or fires inside mines.

The National Mining Association warned that the proposed law would “choke off investment in domestic mineral operations, causing whole industries and thousands of high-paying jobs to move offshore.”

The legislation, which would have given subpoena power to investigators, died in the Senate.

Bill Banig, a former miner and now a lobbyist for the United Mine Workers of America, said he feels outgunned when he goes to Capitol Hill because there are dozens of industry lobbyists.

Mr. Watzman, the lobbyist, blamed poorly trained inspectors — faulty training was recently cited by the Labor Department’s inspector general — and regulators who are less willing to negotiate settlements for the growing backlog of appeals.

Massey appealed at least 37 of the 50 citations for serious violations that it received last year. Industrywide, mine owners now contest two-thirds of all fines.

Mr. Main, the assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health, said he had planned, before the Upper Big Branch explosion, to announce initiatives to expedite the review of challenges made by companies with high numbers of serious violations.

Last Monday morning, a federal inspector visited the Upper Big Branch mine. He looked over its books, “discussed black lung and handed out stickers,” according to handwritten notes.

He made an “imminent danger” run in the mine, checked for dust collection and inspected the toilet, the notes say. He checked the conveyer belt and the roof, and took air readings in two locations that showed no methane.

The inspector then issued two citations, for an improperly insulated spliced electrical cable and for the lack of an updated map of escape routes in one section of the mine. Then he left.

That afternoon, the mine blew up.

Consumers in U.S. Face the End of an Era of Cheap Credit

Even as prospects for the American economy brighten, consumers are about to face a new financial burden: a sustained period of rising interest ratesThat, economists say, is the inevitable outcome of the nation’s ballooning debt and the renewed prospect of inflation as the economy recovers from the depths of the recentrecession.

The shift is sure to come as a shock to consumers whose spending habits were shaped by a historic 30-year decline in the cost of borrowing.

“Americans have assumed the roller coaster goes one way,” said Bill Gross, whose investment firm, Pimco, has taken part in a broad sell-off of government debt, which has pushed up interest rates. “It’s been a great thrill as rates descended, but now we face an extended climb.”

The impact of higher rates is likely to be felt first in the housing market, which has only recently begun to rebound from a deep slump. The rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage has risen half a point since December, hitting 5.31 last week, the highest level since last summer.

Along with the sell-off in bonds, the Federal Reserve has halted its emergency $1.25 trillion program to buy mortgage debt, placing even more upward pressure on rates.

“Mortgage rates are unlikely to go lower than they are now, and if they go higher, we’re likely to see a reversal of the gains in the housing market,” said Christopher J. Mayer, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School. “It’s a really big risk.”

Each increase of 1 percentage point in rates adds as much as 19 percent to the total cost of a home, according to Mr. Mayer.

The Mortgage Bankers Association expects the rise to continue, with the 30-year mortgage rate going to 5.5 percent by late summer and as high as 6 percent by the end of the year.

Another area in which higher rates are likely to affect consumers is credit card use. And last week, the Federal Reserve reported that the average interest rate on credit cards reached 14.26 percent in February, the highest since 2001. That is up from 12.03 percent when rates bottomed in the fourth quarter of 2008 — a jump that amounts to about $200 a year in additional interest payments for the typical American household.

With losses from credit card defaults rising and with capital to back credit cards harder to come by, issuers are likely to increase rates to 16 or 17 percent by the fall, according to Dennis Moroney, a research director at the TowerGroup, a financial research company.

“The banks don’t have a lot of pricing options,” Mr. Moroney said. “They’re targeting people who carry a balance from month to month.”

Similarly, many car loans have already become significantly more expensive, with rates at auto finance companies rising to 4.72 percent in February from 3.26 percent in December, according to the Federal Reserve.

Washington, too, is expecting to have to pay more to borrow the money it needs for programs. The Office of Management and Budget expects the rate on the benchmark 10-year United States Treasury note to remain close to 3.9 percent for the rest of the year, but then rise to 4.5 percent in 2011 and 5 percent in 2012.

The run-up in rates is quickening as investors steer more of their money away from bonds and as Washington unplugs the economic life support programs that kept rates low through the financial crisis. Mortgage rates and car loans are linked to the yield on long-term bonds.

Besides the inflation fears set off by the strengthening economy, Mr. Gross said he was also wary of Treasury bonds because he feared the burgeoning supply of new debt issued to finance the government’s huge budget deficits would overwhelm demand, driving interest rates higher.

Nine months ago, United States government debt accounted for half of the assets in Mr. Gross’s flagship fund, Pimco Total Return. That has shrunk to 30 percent now — the lowest ever in the fund’s 23-year history — as Mr. Gross has sold American bonds in favor of debt from Europe, particularly Germany, as well as from developing countries like Brazil.

Last week, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note briefly crossed the psychologically important threshold of 4 percent, as the Treasury auctioned off $82 billion in new debt. That is nearly twice as much as the government paid in the fall of 2008, when investors sought out ultrasafe assets like Treasury securities after the collapse ofLehman Brothers and the beginning of the credit crisis.

Though still very low by historical standards, the rise of bond yields since then is reversing a decline that began in 1981, when 10-year note yields reached nearly 16 percent.

From that peak, steadily dropping interest rates have fed a three-decade lending boom, during which American consumers borrowed more and more but managed to hold down the portion of their income devoted to paying off loans.

Indeed, total household debt is now nine times what it was in 1981 — rising twice as fast as disposable income over the same period — yet the portion of disposable income that goes toward covering that debt has budged only slightly, increasing to 12.6 percent from 10.7 percent.

Household debt has been dropping for the last two years as recession-battered consumers cut back on borrowing, but at $13.5 trillion, it still exceeds disposable income by $2.5 trillion.

The long decline in rates also helped prop up the stock market; lower rates for investments like bonds make stocks more attractive.

That tailwind, which prevented even worse economic pain during the recession, has ceased, according to interviews with economists, analysts and money managers.

“We’ve had almost a 30-year rally,” said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor’s. “That’s come to an end.”

Just as significant as the bottom-line impact will be the psychological fallout from not being able to buy more while paying less — an unusual state of affairs that made consumer spending the most important measure of economic health.

“We’ve gotten spoiled by the idea that interest rates will stay in the low single-digits forever,” said Jim Caron, an interest rate strategist with Morgan Stanley. “We’ve also had a generation of consumers and investors get used to low rates.”

For young home buyers today considering 30-year mortgages with a rate of just over 5 percent, it might be hard to conceive of a time like October 1981, when mortgage rates peaked at 18.2 percent. That meant monthly payments of $1,523 then compared with $556 now for a $100,000 loan.

No one expects rates to return to anything resembling 1981 levels. Still, for much of Wall Street, the question is not whether rates will go up, but rather by how much.

Some firms, like Morgan Stanley, are predicting that rates could rise by a percentage point and a half by the end of the year. Others, like JPMorgan Chase are forecasting a more modest half-point jump.

But the consensus is clear, according to Terrence M. Belton, global head of fixed-income strategy for J. P. Morgan Securities. “Everyone knows that rates will eventually go higher,” he said.

U.S. Court Curbs F.C.C. Authority on Web Traffic

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that regulators had limited power over Web traffic under current law. The decision will allow Internet service companies to block or slow specific sites and charge video sites like YouTube to deliver their content faster to users.

The court decision was a setback to efforts by the Federal Communications Commission to require companies to give Web users equal access to all content, even if some of that content is clogging the network.

The court ruling, which came afterComcast asserted that it had the right to slow its cable customers’ access to a file-sharing service called BitTorrent, could prompt efforts in Congress to change the law in order to give the F.C.C. explicit authority to regulate Internet service.

That could prove difficult politically, however, since some conservative Republicans philosophically oppose giving the agency more power, on the grounds that Internet providers should be able to decide what services they offer and at what price.

More broadly, the ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit could raise obstacles to the Obama administration’s effort to increase Americans’ access to high-speed Internet networks.

For example, the national broadband plan released by the administration last month proposed to shift billions of dollars in money from a fund to provide phone service in rural areas to one that helps pay for Internet access in those areas. Legal observers said the court decision suggested that the F.C.C. did not have the authority to make that switch.

The F.C.C. will now have to reconsider its strategy for mandating “net neutrality,” the principle that all Internet content should be treated equally by network providers. One option would be to reclassify broadband service as a sort of basic utility subject to strict regulation, like telephone service. Telephone companies and broadband providers have already indicated that they would vigorously oppose such a move.

The appeals court’s 3-0 decision, which was written by one of the court’s more liberal members, Judge David S. Tatel, focused on the narrow issue of whether the F.C.C. had authority to regulate Comcast’s network management practices.

But it was a clear victory for those who favor limiting the F.C.C.’s regulation of the Internet, said Phil Kerpen, a vice president at Americans for Prosperity, a group that advocates limited government. “The F.C.C. has no legal basis for imposing its dystopian regulatory vision under the net neutrality banner,” he said.

As a practical matter, the court ruling will not have any immediate impact on Internet users, since Comcast and other large Internet providers are not currently restricting specific types of Web content and have no plans to do so.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, had a muted reaction to its victory. The company said it was gratified by the court’s decision but added that it had changed the management policies that led it to restrict access to BitTorrent, a service used to exchange a range of large data files, from pirated movies to complex software programs.

“Comcast remains committed to the F.C.C.’s existing open Internet principles, and we will continue to work constructively with this F.C.C. as it determines how best to increase broadband adoption and preserve an open and vibrant Internet,” Comcast said in a statement.

The company is currently seeking federal approval for its proposed acquisition of a majority stake in NBC Universal, the parent of the NBC broadcast network and a cadre of popular cable channels. Some members of Congress and consumer groups have opposed the merger, saying that it would enable Comcast to favor its own cable channels and discriminate against those owned by competitors — something the company has said it does not intend to do.

After the ruling on Tuesday, consumer advocates voiced similar concerns about Comcast’s potential power over the Internet, saying that the company could, for example, give priority to transmission of video services of NBC channels and restrict those owned by a competitor like CBS.

“Internet users now have no cop on the beat,” said Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press, a nonprofit organization that supported the F.C.C. in the case.

Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the F.C.C., had said previously that if the agency lost the Comcast case, he would seek to find other legal authority to implement consumer protections over Internet service. In a statement, the F.C.C. said it remained “firmly committed to promoting an open Internet.”

While the court decision invalidated its current approach to that goal, the agency said, “the court in no way disagreed with the importance of providing a free and open Internet, nor did it close the door to other methods for achieving this important end.”

The concept of equal access for all Internet content is one that people who favor some degree of F.C.C. regulation say is necessary not only to protect consumers but also to foster innovation and investment in technology.

“You can’t have innovation if all the big companies get the fast lane,” said Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, which advocates for consumer rights on digital issues. “Look at Google, eBay, Yahoo — none of those companies would have survived if 15 years ago we had a fast lane and a slow lane on the Internet.”

The court’s ruling could potentially affect content providers like Google, which owns YouTube, a popular video-sharing service. Content providers fear that Internet service companies will ask them to pay a fee to ensure delivery of material like high-definition video that takes up a lot of network capacity.

Google declined to comment directly on the ruling but pointed to the Open Internet Coalition, of which it is a member. The coalition’s executive director, Markham Erickson, said the decision “creates a dangerous situation, one where the health and openness of the Internet is being held hostage by the behavior of the major telco and cable providers.”

Sam Feder, a lawyer who formerly served as general counsel for the F.C.C., said that the court’s decision “is the worst of all worlds for the F.C.C.” He said the opinion was written narrowly enough that it was unlikely to be successfully appealed, while also raising enough possibilities of other ways that the F.C.C. could accomplish the same goals that it was unlikely to inspire Congressional action to give the agency specific regulatory authority over the Internet.

Under the Bush administration, the F.C.C. largely deregulated Internet service. But in 2008, the final year of the administration, the agency decided to impose the net neutrality order on Comcast. Under President Obama, the F.C.C. has broadened that initiative, seeking to craft rules governing the entire industry.

Tuesday’s ruling was the latest in a string of court decisions that rebuffed efforts by the F.C.C. to expand its regulatory authority, noted Eli M. Noam, a professor of finance and economics at the Columbia University graduate business school and the director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information.

“The F.C.C. is going to have to be more careful in how it proceeds,” he said, suggesting that the agency would have to structure policy decisions that were more broadly acceptable to the major telecommunications industry players in order to give them some legitimacy.

Andrew M. Odlyzko, a professor at the University of Minnesota who has served as director of the university’s Digital Technology Center, said that while some service providers might jump at the opportunity to establish toll roads for broadband, the biggest companies, including Comcast and Verizon, have said they do not intend to do so.

At Least 7 Die in West Virginia Coal Mine Explosion

At least seven miners were killed and nearly 20 were unaccounted for after an explosion ripped through a coal mine on Monday in West Virginia, state emergency officials said.

The explosion occurred at about 3 p.m. at the Upper Big Branch mine, 30 miles south of Charleston, in Raleigh County.

The mine, which employs about 200, is owned by the Virginia-based Massey Energy Company and operated by Performance Coal Company.

“All we know now is, this is an awful disaster,” Representative Nick J. Rahall II said as he arrived at the mine site, which is in his district. “This is the second major disaster at a Massey site in recent years, and something needs to be done.“

In a statement, Massey said mine rescue teams and state and federal officials were responding to the explosion.

Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, said that the mine was nonunion but that the union had dispatched a team to advise on the rescue and to help the families of the trapped or dead miners.

Michael Mayhorn, emergency dispatcher for Boone County, said that that at least 20 ambulances and three helicopters had been dispatched from nearby counties, and that the state medical examiner was heading to the scene. At least one miner was evacuated by helicopter, he said.

Dennis O’Dell, an official with the union who was in contact with state and federal safety officials, said the current theory was that the explosion might have been caused by a buildup of methane gas in a sealed-off section of the mine. A similar type of explosion occurred in the 2006 Sago mining disaster, which left 12 miners dead after trapping them underground for nearly two days.

Federal records indicate that the Upper Big Branch mine has recorded an injury rate worse than the national average for similar operations for at least six of the past 10 years. The records also show hat the mine had 458 violations in 2009, with a total of $897,325 in safety fines penalties assessed against it last year. It has paid $168,393 in safety penalties.

A conveyor belt at the Aracoma Alma Mine No. 1 at Melville in Logan County, W.Va., caught fire and two miners were killed in 2006.

Mr. O’Dell said some officials believed the ignition source for the explosion might have been a device that carries mine personnel to and from the work area. It may have been moving near the sealed section of the mine at the time of the blast, he said.

Ellen Smith, the editor of Mine Safety and Health News, said the mine was the site of two fatalities in the previous 10 years.

On July 19, 2003, an electrician, Rodney Alan Scurlock, 27, was fatally electrocuted while repairing a shuttle car trailing cable, she said.

On March 29, 2001, Ms. Smith said, Herbert J. Meadows, 48, a continuous mining machine operator, was struck by falling rock on a retreat pillar mining section. He died of his injuries two days later, she said.

Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, away on vacation in Florida, was preparing to return to the state, said his spokesman Matt Turner.

More than 100,000 coal miners have been killed in accidents in the United States since 1900, but the number of fatalities has fallen sharply in recent decades, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. As late as the 1940s, it was not unusual to have more than 1,000 mining deaths a year; in 2009 there were 35 mining deaths, according the agency.

But mining remains dangerous work, as the disasters that seem to befall small Appalachian towns every few years attest. And there are persistent alarms raised about mines using antiquated safety equipment, lax enforcement and a culture that discourages safety complaints.

In 2006, West Virginia was the site of another mining calamity when 12 miners at the Sago Mine were killed by an explosion in an abandoned section of the mine. State officials said they believed those miners could have survived the blast if the seals cordoning off the area where it occurred had been properly installed.

In 2001, an explosion at Blue Creek Mine No. 5 in Brookwood, Ala. claimed the lives of 13 workers. And in 1984, 27 workers were killed when a faulty air compressor ignited a fire at the Wilberg mine near Orangeville, Utah.

Federal regulations passed after the Sago disaster increased the monitoring of air quality in active and sealed sections of the mines to avoid methane build up. The new regulations also required mine operators to install stronger barriers between active and non-active sections of mines.

Mr. O’Dell said federal and state regulators would be immediately checking to see how well the mine complied with those and other new safety regulations

Easter Bombings Kill 22 in Baghdad

The Iraqi capital echoed with explosions on Easter Sunday, with three suicide car bombings killing 22 or more people. Other bombs and rockets went off at widely scattered locations, paralyzing traffic and disrupting communications throughout the city.

An official in the Ministry of Interior said there were three suicide bombers who targeted the Iranian embassy as well as the residences of the Egyptian chargé d’affaires and the German ambassador, all in Mansour and nearby on the western side of the city; he said that early reports were of 20 dead and 45 wounded in the three bombings.

Separately, a police official in Kerrada, a neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, said that a fourth suicide bomber had targeted the Iraqi intelligence agency’s offices but that police shot the driver before he could detonate his bomb. Bomb disposal experts were working to defuse it hours later, he said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with their agencies’ policies.

Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, spokesman for the Baghdad Operations Command, said that early and incomplete reports were that 17 were killed and 140 wounded, including both civilians and members of the security services. The car bombers, he said, were also wearing suicide vests when they launched their attacks. He speculated that the Mar Yosif Chaldean Catholic church in the Mansour area may have been one of the intended targets.

A spokeswoman for the church, Ann Sami Matloub, said that the church was packed with worshipers at the time but was not damaged by the blast. She said that the explosion was so close that Easter services had to be suspended for a short time until parishioners could compose themselves.

General Atta was critical of local news coverage of the bombings. “Some of the media had information even before we did, which means they had connections with the terrorists,” he charged during an interview on state-owned Iraqiya television.

A press release from the Baghdad Operations Command, which is in charge of security in the capital, said that the other explosions Sunday morning had included four improvised explosive devices, which killed no one. In addition, the command said, “two terrorists were killed and another one wounded” when the car bomb they were rigging in the Sadiya neighborhood in southern Baghdad exploded prematurely Sunday.

Without giving details, the command said it had arrested those responsible for launching rockets into the Jadriyah neighborhood of the city.

It was the first major suicide bomb spree in Baghdad since January, when three downtown hotels were bombed, killing 41 people. On Friday night, gunmen wearing army uniforms and posing as American soldiers killed 25 people, most of them members of the Awakening or Sons of Iraq groups or the Iraqi security services, in a village on the outskirts of Baghdad.

In addition, a series of rockets were fired into the Green Zone on Saturday night, but there were no reports of injuries.

IPad first buyers

Thousands of people emerged from stores across the United States on Saturday clutching newly purchased iPads, the tabletlike computer that's Apple's most-awaited product since the first iPhone launched three years ago.

Some buyers said they wanted a lightweight computer they could carry around easily or use from their couch, while others were diehard Apple fans who said they were eager to possess the company's latest gadget -- even if they're not sure what they'll use it for.

"I don't know what it is -- I just think it's going to be something that's really cool," said Mark Bowling outside an Apple store at Lenox Square mall in Atlanta, Georgia. "I can't figure out how to use it if I don't have one."

Anecdotal reports suggested strong initial consumer interest in the device, which went on sale Saturday morning. At Apple's flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York, hundreds of shoppers -- many of whom had camped out overnight -- were in line when the doors opened at 9 a.m.

Employees at an Apple store at 14th Street and Ninth Avenue in New York told shoppers they expected to be sold out of iPads by the end of the day,  an employee said the store still was selling iPads shortly before 7 p.m., though he declined to elaborate about the store's supply.

Without citing figures, employees at other Apple stores across the country said Saturday afternoon and evening that they still had iPads to sell. One worker at a store on Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, said it had just a limited stock of 16-gigabyte iPads left late in the afternoon, but it still had a pretty good number of 32- and 64-gigabyte iPads.

Calls to Apple officials from CNN had not been returned by Saturday evening.

Lines of more than 100 people were reported Saturday morning outside Apple stores in Miami, Florida, and Atlanta. Rain failed to keep away a crowd of umbrella-wielding iPad buyers outside an Apple store in Chicago, Illinois.

"I'm really excited. I've been craving this for a long time," said a young man who was the first to buy an iPad at an Apple store in Miami Beach, Florida. The man, who gave his name to Miami's WPLG-TV as Frank Gonzalez, held his iPad box over his head triumphantly as other shoppers cheered.

A cross between a netbook and a smartphone, the iPad is a lightweight, portable computer with a glass multitouch screen that wirelessly surfs the Web, displays photos and videos, runs apps and plays games and movies, among other potential uses.

"I've been waiting for this form factor for a long time," said computer programmer Robert Wojciechowski, 31, outside the Lenox SquareApple store in Atlanta.

"I think it fills a gap between the desktop, the laptop and the phone," he said. "It's the appliance that I've wanted on my coffee table."

Other buyers said they were excited about the iPad's potential as an electronic reader whose 9-inch color screen will show e-books plus newspaper and magazine articles.

Mary Inman, 58, said she will take the device on vacations to Mexico instead of lugging five or six books. Inman, waiting outside the Lenox Square store, said she grew jealous of her husband and daughter, both of whom own e-readers.

A self-confessed Apple fanatic, Inman said she already owns two iPods, an iPhone, an iMac, a MacBook and an Apple TV console. "I'm one of those," she said.

"[The iPad] is perfect for reading digital comics," Crosland, 40. "I tried to use it on the phone, and it didn't give you that same feel. ... Comic books are designed for a large format, so you can appreciate the art and read it. It's difficult to do on a small device."

He said the iPad's touchscreen keyboard doesn't feel natural to him, so he'll need some time to get used to it. But Crosland, who also owns a MacBook, said iPad's portability will be a key feature. Because it is smaller than his 5-pound MacBook, he said, the 1.5-pound iPad will be great for reading or watching video on a plane and doing anything that won't require heavy-duty work.

Prices for the iPad range from $499 to $829, depending on storage space and whether the device works with a Wi-Fi connection only or with Wi-Fi and AT&T's wireless 3G network.

The iPads that went on sale Saturday at Apple's 200-plus retail stores in the United States, at Best Buy stores and through iTunes, Apple's online store, were Wi-Fi-enabled models. iPads that also work over 3G networks will go on sale in late April, Apple has said.

Saturday's launch was in the U.S. only. All models of the iPad will go on sale in late April in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Anticipation for the iPad's release has been building since Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the device in San Francisco, California, in January.

A cross between a netbook and a smartphone, the iPad is a lightweight, portable computer with a glass multitouch screen that wirelessly surfs the Web, displays photos and videos, runs apps and plays games and movies, among other potential uses.

"I've been waiting for this form factor for a long time," said computer programmer Robert Wojciechowski, 31, outside the Lenox SquareApple store in Atlanta.

"I think it fills a gap between the desktop, the laptop and the phone," he said. "It's the appliance that I've wanted on my coffee table."

Other buyers said they were excited about the iPad's potential as an electronic reader whose 9-inch color screen will show e-books plus newspaper and magazine articles.

Mary Inman, 58, said she will take the device on vacations to Mexico instead of lugging five or six books. Inman, waiting outside the Lenox Square store, said she grew jealous of her husband and daughter, both of whom own e-readers.