Thousands take to streets day after building collapse leaves at least 161 dead, as hunt for survivors continues.
Last Modified: 25 Apr 2013 08:46
Thousands of garment factory workers have protested in the capital, Dhaka, over the death of more than 150 workers in building collapse, as rescuers continued to hunt for survivors, local media have reported.
Al Jazeera’s special correspondent, whom we are not naming for security reasons, said on Thursday that thousands of protestors took to the streets of Dhaka with sticks in their hands chanting slogans such as "we want execution of the garment factory owners".
The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association building office has been attacked, our correspondent said.
Workers have blocked road and indulged in vandalism at some places, the Daily Star newspaper reported.
The protests come a day after a garment factory collapsed killing at least 161 and there are fears the death toll might go up, even as criticism mounted of foreign firms that source cheap clothes from the country.
Chen Guangcheng's family says harassment in China has intensified
Activist's brother says wife faces indictment and house has been pelted with dead chickens and bricks
The brother of a blind activist whose escape from house arrest last year infuriated Chinese authorities has said harassment of his family has intensified with his wife facing possible indictment and his home being pelted with dead chickens, bricks and stones.
Chen Guangcheng slipped out of his closely guarded farmhouse last April and fled to the US embassy in Beijing, setting off a diplomatic crisis with the United States. Chinese authorities later allowed him to go to the US, where he continues to draw attention to the intimidation of his relatives back home.
His brother, Chen Guangfu, said Yinan county prosecutors had questioned his wife, Ren Zongju, 59, on Wednesday for an hour and a half and then notified her that they planned to indict her on the charge of harbouring a suspect.
Letter from Europe: Austerity is fast becoming a dirty word
Policy response EU bigwigs have pinned their hopes to is under pressure
Crushing unemployment figures and persistently stagnant GDP data are putting Europe’s policy response under the spotlight. Austerity – technically, an economic policy response whereby governments reduce their budget deficit through a combination of spending cuts and tax rises – is first in the firing line, as ordinary Europeans begin to lose patience with a policy that many believe has yet to yield benefits.
NORTH KOREA
South Korea demands talks to reopen Kaesong factory zone
South Korea has demanded formal talks with the North over the resumption of suspended operations at the jointly-run Kaesong factory park. Seoul warned that a refusal by Pyongyang would result in a "grave" response.
South Korea said on Thursday it had proposed formal talks for work to be restarted at the factory zone, adding that the North should respond by Friday.
"We officially propose talks between government authorities," the South's Unification Ministry Spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said at a press briefing.
New UN peacekeeping force for Mali expected to be voted in
The UN Security Council is expected to approve a peacekeeping force for Mali to help restore democracy and stabilise the northern half of the country.
The new force is expected to stabilise the northern half of Mali, which was controlled by Islamist jihadists until a France-led military operation ousted them three months ago.
The council is expected to vote on Thursday morning on a resolution that would authorise a UN force comprising of 11 200 military personnel and 1 440 international police. The UN peacekeepers would take over from a 6 000-member Africa-led mission on July 1, although the deployment date would subject to review.
Mali fell into turmoil after a March 2012 coup created a security vacuum that allowed secular Tuareg rebels to take over half of the north as a new homeland. Months later, the rebels were kicked out by Islamic jihadists who imposed strict Shariah law in the north.
Is Mexico's economy more a fiesta or a siesta?
A new year and a new government, and already the way the world views the Mexican economy has improved. But there are two sides to the coin when it comes to the country's promise.
China, India, and Brazil are out. Mexico is in – at least according to international observers who have been cooing over Mexico's rise in recent months.
With a new year and a new government, the way the world views Mexico has already changed dramatically. Mexico has enviable economic stability and a forecast for growth, improved social mobility, and an emerging middle class, Mexico is competing with Brazil to become the economic darling of Latin America and is challenging China in manufacturing prowess. The drug war rages on in many regions, but optimism for Mexico’s future is trumping the dark prognoses of the recent past.
But is all the optimism for Mexico’s future warranted?
Slick al Qaeda online magazine aims to train a generation of killers
By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News It is as slickly designed as any magazine you would find at the supermarket checkout line, or in the seat pocket in front of you on an airplane. It even has snappy cover headlines — teasing articles like “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”
And now Inspire, the recruitment magazine of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, probably has its next cover story: It allegedly helped inspire the two brothers accused of bombing the Boston Marathon.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the hospitalized suspect in the marathon attack, has told federal investigators that the brothers got information on building bombs from Inspire, law enforcement officials told NBC News.
NATO
Kerry urges NATO to deter Syrian chemicals threat
NATO members have been urged to draw up a contingency plan in the event of chemical weapons being used in Syria. US Secretary of State John Kerry made the appeal after fresh allegations of their use surfaced.
Kerry said on Tuesday that NATO should make plans about what it would do if the use of chemical weapons in Syria was proven.
"We should also carefully and collectively consider how NATO is prepared to respond to protect its members from a Syrian threat, including any potential chemical weapons threat," said Kerry, speaking in Brussels at his first NATO summit.
Order Amid Chaos: Syrian City Embodies Absurdity of Civil War
By Christoph Reuter
The city of Zabadani is full of surprises. Rebels have established a city council, a prison and court system, a financial office and even a Facebook page. And their efforts are not unusual: Locally operating rebel governments are springing up across the country, becoming an important new force in the Syrian civil war.
With just one hour to go before daybreak, the city emerges from between the mountain slopes. The sentry gives a hand signal and the rebels' couriers suddenly freeze. All that can be heard is the sound of exhausted breathing and a pebble rolling down the hill. The first man in the group surveys the landscape with night-vision goggles and speaks quietly into his radio set. "Everything quiet?" The answer crackles back that yes, everything's quiet, none of the enemy guards has stirred from their position. The army of dictator Bashar Assad can listen in on their radio communications, but they can't locate the devices. Another hand signal and the rebels gradually continue their descent into the valley, toward Zabadani.
Rising dissent fractures one-party state
April 24, 2013 - 2:43PM
Thomas Fuller
Vietnam's ruling party faces twin perils of stalled economic reform and its inability to open political space to an increasingly well-informed population.
Ho Chi Minh City: His bookshelves are filled with the collected works of Marx, Engels and Ho Chi Minh, the hallmarks of a loyal career in the Communist Party, but Nguyen Phuoc Tuong, 77, says he is no longer a believer. A former adviser to two prime ministers, Mr Tuong, like so many people in Vietnam today, is speaking out forcefully against the government.
"Our system now is the totalitarian rule of one party," he said in an interview at his apartment on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. "I come from within the system – I understand all its flaws, all its shortcomings, all its degradation," he said. "If the system is not fixed, it will collapse on its own."
Dissent is flourishing, but at the same time, so is repression.
Morocco Islamists warn of 'explosion' amongst youth
Sapa-AFP | 24 April, 2013 07:02 Academic Carlyle Thayer
Morocco's main Islamist opposition group said the country is run by a shadow government and warned dire social and economic conditions could cause an "explosion" among disaffected youths.
Fathallah Arsalane, spokesman for Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan (AWI) - or Charity and Justice - told AFP in an interview that his movement aspires to play a political role in Morocco where the group is banned but tolerated.
"We believe in democracy and we believe that we could become a political party but the government does not allow it," said Arsalane.
FBI Most Wanted caught in Nicaragua: What draws US pedophiles to the region?
Stigmatized in the US, some registered sex offenders like Eric Toth decide to move abroad to start fresh in a foreign country – and Central America is becoming a popular spot.
After nearly five years of living on the lam, accused pedophile Eric Justin Toth, a 31-year-old former school teacher sought for his alleged production and possession of child pornography inWashington, D.C. and Maryland, was running out of places to hide in the United States.
Mr. Toth, who is described by the FBI as an intelligent and charming individual who mastered the art of blending in wherever he hid, was chased through seven states across the US before finally giving law authorities the shake in 2009. The FBI eventually put Toth on their list of Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives last year.
Yes, the government of Lil Kim the dictator has demanded that the world declare them a moron state. What else could they possibly want than to been seen as the government with its head so far up its ass that the flow of oxygen has been cut-off. How is it that Lil Kim needs to join weight watchers while the majority of North Korea's citizens are starving. Because he wants North Korea to be declared a moron state.
SEOUL/GENEVA (Reuters) -North Koreainsisted on Tuesday that it be recognized as anuclear weapons state, a demand theUnited Statespromptly dismissed as "neither realistic nor acceptable".
After weeks of tension on the Korean peninsula, including North Korean threats of nuclear war, the North has in recent days begun to at least talk about dialogue in response to calls for talks from both the United States and South Korea.
The North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper rejected as unacceptable the U.S. and South Korean condition that it agree to dismantle itsnuclear weapons and suspend missile launches before talks can begin.
"If the DPRK sits at a table with the U.S., it has to be a dialogue between nuclear weapons states, not one side forcing the other to dismantle nuclear weapons," the newspaper said, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Anger, frustration over rapes in India: 'Mindset hasn't changed'
By Madison Park, CNN
April 23, 2013 -- Updated 0421 GMT (1221 HKT)
(CNN) -- Four months after a vicious gang rape left a 23-year-old physiotherapy student dead and triggered a national outcry over the treatment of women, more protests ignited in New Delhi after another brutal rape -- this time the victim was a five-year-old girl.
Two men have been arrested in the case. Authorities say the girl was abducted, locked in a house and raped repeatedly. She was found semiconscious three days later and doctors removed foreign objects from her genitals, including candle pieces and a small bottle.
"In a capital city, we cannot provide protection to a young girl," said Bhagyashri Dengle, the executive director of Plan India, an organization that works to help underprivileged children.
The girl's family said that police officers had tried to bribe them to keep quiet about the case.
Liu Xia appears in public
Wife of jailed Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo is normally under house arrest but is allowed out for trial of brother
Liu Xia – who has herself been kept under strict house arrest – smiled and blew kisses to foreign diplomats and media outside the trial of her brother Liu Hui, 43.
Prosecutors accuse Liu Hui and his business partner of fraud over a property dispute that has already been resolved, but the defendants and supporters say they believe the case is politically motivated
Liu Xia shouted: "I'm not free – tell everybody I'm not free," as she glimpsed the crowd outside the courthouse in Huairou, a diplomat said.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Japanese lawmakers visit controversial war shrine en masse
More than 160 Japanese lawmakers have visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which commemorates the country's war dead, including convicted war criminals. The shrine visit has raised tensions with China and South Korea.
Tuesday's trip en masse by parliamentarians to the war shrine came on the heels of a weekend visit by Japanese cabinet ministers, sparking ire in China and South Korea. Both Beijing and Seoul view the shrine as a symbol of Tokyo's aggression during the Second World War.
The Yasukuni Shrine commemorates Japan's 2.5 million war dead, including 14 high-ranking officials convicted as war criminals by the Allies. Although the visit to the shrine by Japanese officials is an annual event to mark the spring festival, more than twice as many lawmakers visited this year compared to last, according to Reuters news agency.
The Kremlin's Specter: Will Oligarch Khodorkovsky Be Released?
By Matthias Schepp
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man and Putin's strongest adversary, could soon be released from prison. Can the polarizing oil tycoon reinvigorate a beleagered opposition?
Standing in the midst of wool socks from Armenia and hats from Turkey, Anna, the street market vendor, lowers her voice. At the onset of winter, the heat remained off for many weeks in the city's apartments -- the fault, she says, of "this oligarch who has fallen upon us like a meteorite from the sky."
Anna hates Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Before his arrest he was Russia's richest man, while she still remains so poor that she has to supplement her meager monthly pension of less than €100 ($130) by selling cheap clothing.
Hezbollah pulls Lebanon further into Syrian war
April 23, 2013 - 12:44PM
Donna Abu-Nasr and Nicole Gaouette
BEIRUT:Hezbollah has a "national and moral" duty to defend Lebanese border villages from the Syrian rebels following the Beirut government's failure to do so, one of its leaders says.
Nabil Qawooq's remarks were reported a day after the Shiite border town of Hermel in Lebanon's north-east came under rocket fire from Syria. Seven 107-millimetre rockets landed in Hermel and villages around it without causing casualties, the Lebanese Army said in a statement on Sunday.
Are we expected to leave our people in the border villages subject to murder, abduction, slaughter and displacement?
Nabil Qawooq, Hezbollah
Before the attack, residents in the nearby village of al-Qasr received text messages warning that the Free Syria Army, which is fighting to unseat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, would bombard the two communities, the Daily Star reported. Hezbollah backs the Assad government.
Nigeria fighting 'kills scores' in Baga
Intense fighting between the military and Islamist militants in northern Nigeria is reported to have killed at least 185 people, however the army has disputed this figure.
Rocket-propelled grenades and heavy gunfire bombarded the remote town of Baga near the border with Chad for hours on Friday evening, officials say.
Some 40% of the town was destroyed by fire, one rescue worker said.
Nigeria faces a long-running insurgency in its predominantly Muslim north.
The Boko Haram insurgency has left thousands of people dead since 2009.
The nationalist Ganbare Nippon (“Stand Firm, Japan”) group said the flotilla of 10 boats would sail around the rocky East China Sea islets to survey fishing grounds, and that it did not plan to land there.
(With their heads firmly placed where the sun never shines)
It gave the same assurances when it sponsored a similar trip last August, during which about 10 activists landed on one of the islets, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.
“This is all about asserting our ownership of the islands, going there to conduct a fishing survey to prove that Japanese fishermen can indeed make a living there,” said group leader Satoru Mizushima.
“With all the provocations coming from China, we’ve adopted the policy that we will not land on the islands before the upper house elections (expected in July), to avoid making the diplomatic situation worse.”
