DHAKA: The death toll from last week's collapse of a garment factory complex in Bangladesh passed 500 Friday as the country's prime minister said Western retailers had to share some of the blame for the tragedy.With bulldozers now clawing away at the mountain of rubble at the site of last Wednesday's disaster, the number of bodies being recovered from the country's deadliest industrial disaster has been increasing sharply....
BRUSSELS: Europe needs to come up with a plan within weeks to end the nightmare of mounting youth unemployment, Italy's new premier Enrico Letta and European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said Thursday.Winding up his first European tour since being sworn in on Sunday, Letta urged the European Union to offer concrete measures to its recession-hit citizens and jobless youths in order to revive hope in the EU's future....
HANOI: From factory fires to slave labour, the growth of mass manufacturing in Southeast Asia has not been problem-free, but after shedding its sweatshop reputation the region could have lessons for Bangladesh.Last week's building collapse near Dhaka that left 550 dead or missing has unleashed global concern about conditions in the factories that produce fast fashion -- cheap, catwalk-inspired clothes -- for top global brands....
THE HAGUE: Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander became Europe's youngest monarch on Tuesday after his mother, Queen Beatrix, abdicated and his country hailed the avowedly 21st-century king with a massive, orange-hued party."I Queen Beatrix... abdicate in favour of my son Willem-Alexander," the act said, as read out before the signing that was broadcast live from the Amsterdam palace....
ROME: Italy's new prime minister will face an early test of his mission to reverse Europe's austerity course Tuesday as he meets German Chancellor Angela Merkel after vowing to stop a policy he says is killing his country.Enrico Letta's first official trip abroad comes a day after the new PM said his coalition government would act fast to reverse austerity, in a hard-hitting inaugural speech watched...
DHAKA: Thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers walked out of their factories Monday, demanding the death penalty for the owner of a tower block that collapsed and killed at least 381 of their colleagues.Managers at all of the country's 4,500 garment factories had given workers an unscheduled two days holiday over the weekend in the hope that anger over last Wednesday's disaster at the Rana Plaza would subside....
SAVAR (Bangladesh): Survivors cried out to rescuers Thursday from the rubble of a block of garment factories in Bangladesh that collapsed killing 175 people, sparking criticism of their Western clients.As the plaintive appeals from the site of Bangladesh's worst industrial disaster filtered through the concrete, relatives desperate for news of their loved ones descended on the scene clutching their photographs....
MANILA: Human trafficking syndicates are growing and becoming more organised helped by technology, Southeast Asian law-enforcement experts heard Thursday as they sought ways to tackle the issue together.Experts from the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations met here to try to work out either a binding convention on human trafficking or a less stringent regional plan of action to enable ASEAN to act in unison....
RAWALPINDI: Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday appeared before an anti-terrorism court for the first time over the murder of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.Musharraf was driven to the court here, the headquarters of the army he once led, from his plush villa on the edge of Islamabad where he is serving a two-week arrest order for other charges dating back to his 1999-2008 rule....
LUSHAN: Clogged roads, debris and landslides impeded rescuers Monday as they battled to find survivors of a powerful earthquake in mountainous southwest China that has left at least 188 dead.Huge boulders blocked rescue vehicles along roads leading to some of the worst-hit areas, and some areas were only accessible by foot along broken passes through the rough terrain....
