1 of 20. Paramedics wheel an injured person to a helicopter at the parking lot of the state-run oil company Pemex after an explosion in Mexico City January 31, 2013.

MEXICO CITY | Fri Feb 1, 2013 5:50am EST

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Emergency services worked into the early hours of Friday to find people trapped in rubble under state oil company Pemex's headquarters in Mexico City after an explosion that killed at least 25 people and injured more than 100.

Scenes of confusion and chaos at the downtown tower dealt yet another blow to Pemex's image as Mexico's new president courts outside investment for the 75-year-old monopoly.

Search and rescue workers picked through debris, and investigators sifted through shattered glass and concrete at the bottom of the building to try to find what caused the blast. It was not clear how many might still be trapped inside.

Pemex, a symbol of Mexican self-sufficiency as well as a byword in Mexico for security glitches, oil theft and frequent accidents, has been hamstrung by inefficiency, union corruption and a series of safety failures costing hundreds of lives.

Thursday's blast at the more than 50-storey skyscraper that houses administrative offices followed a September fire at a Pemex gas facility near the northern city of Reynosa which killed 30 people. More than 300 were killed when a Pemex natural gas plant on the outskirts of Mexico City blew up in 1984.

Eight years later, about 200 people were killed and 1,500 injured after a series of underground gas explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico's second biggest city. An official investigation found Pemex was partly to blame.

Pemex initially flagged Thursday's incident as a problem with its electricity supply and then said there had been an explosion. But it did not give a cause for the blast.

A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a preliminary line of inquiry suggested a gas boiler had blown up in a Pemex building just to the side of the main tower. However, he stressed nothing had been determined for sure.

Others at the scene said gas may have caused the blast.

Not long after the blast, President Enrique Pena Nieto was at the scene, vowing to discover how it happened.

"We will work exhaustively to investigate exactly what took place, and if there are people responsible, to apply the force of the law on them," he told reporters before going to visit survivors in hospital.

Shortly after midnight, at least 46 victims were still being treated in hospital, the company said.

Pemex said the blast would not affect operations, but concern in the government was evident as top military officials, the attorney general and the energy minister joined Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong for a late news conference.

"I have issued instructions to the relevant authorities to convene national and international experts to help in the investigations," Osorio Chong said. He later noted that the number of casualties could still climb.

Whatever caused it, the deaths and destruction will put the spotlight back on safety at Pemex, which only a couple of hours before the explosion had issued a statement on Twitter saying the company had managed to improve its record on accidents.

Nieto has said he is giving top priority to reforming the company this year, though he has yet to reveal details of the plan, which already faces opposition from the left.

Both Pena Nieto and his finance minister were this week at pains to stress the company will not be privatized.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

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A boat fishes for sharks off the beach at Boucan Canot on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, September 27, 2011.

ORLANDO, Florida | Thu Aug 9, 2012 11:27am EDT

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Survivors of shark attacks - now trying to save the animals that took their limbs and, in some cases, nearly their lives - want U.S. restaurant-goers to know they may be eating a threatened species in their shark fin soup.

Out of 32 samples taken across the country of the Chinese delicacy with identifiable shark DNA, 26 bowls, or 81 percent, contained fins from sharks listed as endangered, vulnerable or near threatened, according to a report released on Thursday by the Pew Environment Group.

The study was based on tests of the soup in 14 U.S. cities, and shark attack survivors collected the soup samples.

The survivors hope the study will help convince the public that the ultimate price of shark fin soup is more than the typical $100 listed on menus.

Nearly one-third of shark species are in danger of extinction, and up to 73 million sharks are killed each year for their fins, Pew said.

President Barack Obama signed a law last year to tighten a ban on the practice of removing sharks' fins and throwing the fish back into the ocean to die. Fins also can come from legal, regulated fishing.

"What better voice is there than ours?" said Mike Coots, 32, of Kauai, Hawaii, a surfer whose right leg was ripped off by a tiger shark in 1997.

The survivors group has lobbied Congress to close loopholes in the shark fin ban. It also works through the United Nations to encourage the establishment of shark sanctuaries around the world.

Their efforts began after Debbie Salamone, a competitive ballroom dancer, had her Achilles tendon severed by a shark off Florida's coast in 2004.

The shark encounter eventually lead her to refocus her life's work on protecting the animals from extinction and recruiting other shark attack survivors around the globe to help with her mission.

"Most of us have forgiven," said Salamone, 46, who is now a Pew spokeswoman. "If you care about the ocean, you need to care about sharks."

SECRET SOUP SAMPLES

For the shark fin soup study, shark attack survivors fanned out to a total of 51 restaurants in New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Las Vegas, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, the Washington, D.C., area, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando in Florida, and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Krishna Thompson, 46, whose leg was stripped to bone by a shark during a 2001 wedding anniversary trip to the Bahamas and later amputated, said he collected soup samples from six or seven different restaurants in New York.

"I would always take the soup to go," Thompson said.

Once outside the restaurants, Thompson said he would label the soup containers for submission to DNA testers at Stony Brook University.

"Hating sharks helps no one," said Thompson, who nearly died from blood loss and organ shutdown after his shark attack.

The most egregious soup sample, from a restaurant in Boston, contained the endangered scalloped hammerhead shark, according to the report.

DNA from sharks listed as vulnerable was found in seven soup samples from Orlando, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Albuquerque.

Another 18 soup samples contained shark considered near threatened, according to the findings.

The remaining samples contained shark meat that could not be specifically identified due to the quality of the DNA or the lack of useable DNA. In three cases, the only identifiable meat came from chicken or other fish, according to the report.

John Breall, a San Francisco lawyer who represents Asian-American restaurateurs, importers and civic leaders, is fighting a new California ban on the possession or sale of fins, which he calls "anti-Chinese." Breall told Reuters he was surprised by the Pew group's findings.

"There are major shark fisheries on the east and west coasts, sustainable fisheries, and these supply the vast majority of shark meat and shark fins," Breall said.

Breall said most of the shark from the sustainable fisheries is spiny dogfish, which "are reproducing at a huge rate." The Pew study lists spiny dogfish as vulnerable.

(Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Vicki Allen)

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