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marigold flowers and multicolored balloons. Supporters blew conch shells, which traditionally mark the start of most Hindu rituals. As he walked toward the office, Modi was showered with rose petals.
• "This victory has created a new confidence among people," Modi said to cheering crowds. "Hundreds of thousands of BJP workers deserve credit for what we have achieved. "
• ___

• SAVASTEPE, Turkey (AP) -- Miner Erdal Bicak believes he knows why so many of his colleagues died in Turkey's worst mining disaster: company negligence.
• And he knows one other thing -- he's never going back down any mine again.
• Bicak, 24, had just ended his shift Tuesday and was making his way to the surface when managers ordered him back underground because of a problem in the Soma coal mine in western Turkey.
• "The company is guilty," Bicak told The Associated Press, adding that managers had machines that measure methane gas levels. "The new gas levels had gotten too high and they didn't tell us in time."
• The miner also said government safety inspectors never visited the lower reaches of the Soma mine and have no idea of how bad conditions get as workers trudge deeper underground.
• ___

• SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A man was charged with setting one of nearly a dozen fires that have destroyed homes and raced through nearly 20,000 acres of northern and eastern San Diego County brush land, but most of the blazes seemed to be dying down, despite the eruption of a new fire at the Camp Pendleton Marine base.
• Thousands of firefighters and fleets of water-dropping military and civilian helicopters planned fresh battles Saturday. Investigators, meanwhile, continued to seek the causes of the conflagrations that burned at least eight homes and an 18-unit condominium complex, emptied neighborhoods and spread fields of flame, smoke and ash that dirtied the air in neighboring Orange County and as far north as Los Angeles County.

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