April 26 Photo Brief: 27th anniversary of Chernobyl disaster, anger on streets of Bangladesh, U.S.-South Korea military exercise
The 27th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, anger on the streets of Bangladesh after building collapse, U.S.-South Korea military exercise and more in today’s daily brief.
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- Vanessa Moreno, 24, holds her two-month-old baby Makayla at Prototypes residential treatment program in Pomona, California, March 26, 2013. Prototypes is part of the Second Chance Women’s Re-entry Court program, one of the first in the U.S. to focus on women. It offers a cost-saving alternative to prison for women who plead guilty to non-violent crimes and volunteer for treatment. Of the 297 women who have been through the court since 2007, 100 have graduated, and only 35 have been returned to state prison. Picture taken March 26, 2013. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
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- European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano adjusts his space suit before taking part in a simulation exercise at the Star City cosmonaut training centre outside Moscow April 26, 2013. Parmitano is part of a three person team scheduled to launch for the International Space Station in May. (Sergei Remezov/Reuters)
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- A protester in support of dock workers kicks a defaced portrait of Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, outside his residency, in Hong Kong April 26, 2013. More than 200 dock workers have been on strike for four weeks for a pay rise at a port operated by tycoon Li Ka-shing, which has disrupted traffic in the world’s third-largest container port. (Stringer/Reuters)
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- Rescue workers look for trapped garment workers in the collapsed Rana Plaza building in Savar, 19 miles outside Dhaka April 26, 2013. Bangladesh textile workers vented their anger on Friday, burning cars and clashing with police, as the death toll passed 300 following the collapse of a building housing factories that made low-cost garments for Western brands. Miraculously, rescuers were still pulling people alive from the rubble – 72 since daybreak following 41 found in the same room overnight – two days after the eight-storey building collapsed on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka. (Andrew Biraj/Reuters)
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- Rescue workers, army personnel, police and members of media run after they heard someone shouting that a building next to Rana Plaza is collapsing during a rescue operation in Savar, 19 miles outside Dhaka April 26, 2013. The search for survivors from Bangladesh’s worst industrial accident stretched into a third day on Friday, with the death toll rising to 273 after the collapse of Rana Plaza. (Andrew Biraj/Reuters)
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- A Palestinian demonstrator from the West Bank village of Deir Jarir, northeast of Ramallah, rolls a tire near rising smoke during clashes with Israeli soldiers following a march against construction on their land by members of the Jewish settlement of Ofra on April 26, 2013. (Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images)
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- This photo taken on April 24, 2013 shows rescuers unloading relief supplies in Shuangshi township in Lushan county of Yaan, southwest China’s Sichuan province. Tens of thousands of homeless survivors of China’s devastating quake are living in makeshift tents or on the streets, facing shortages of food and supplies as well as an uncertain future. (China Out/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Honor guards lay flowers at the Chernobyl victims’ memorial in the Belarus capital Minsk on April 26, 2013. The world marked today the 27th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl nuclear pant in Ukraine. (Viktor Drachev/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Palestinian protesters are stopped by Israeli soldiers during a protest against settlement expansion on Palestinian land in the Beit Omar village, north the West Bank city of Hebron, on April 26, 2013. Israeli security forces overnight demolished two structures that Jewish settlers had erected to create a “wildcat” outpost in the occupied West Bank, a police spokesman said on April 26. (Hazem Nader/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Sun rays beam at dawn over the Plaosan Buddhist temple on April 26, 2013 located in the Klaten regency in Indonesia’s central Java province. According to historians, the ancient Buddhist temple was built around the 9th century near the renowned Hindu Prambanan temple complex in the early periods dominated by Buddhist and Hindu dynasties until Islam spread to Java island in the 15th century. (Tarkko Sudiarno/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Pussy Riot band member Nadia Tolokonnikova looks out from a holding cell during a court hearing in the town of Zubova Polyana April 26, 2013. Tolokonnikova is appealing her conviction for hooliganism motivated by religious hate for which she is serving two years in a remote penal colony. (Mikhail Voskresensky/Reuters)
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- Guards parade on April 5, 2013 in Zakouma National Park, 800 kms east of N’Djamena in Chad. Ninety percent of the elephants of the park have been poached in the last decade. Since 2011, the new direction of the park has taken the military way to protect them. (Jean Liou/AFP/Getty Images)
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- A man throws a can at anti-riot policemen clashing with demonstrators trying to besiege the Spain’s parliament (Las Cortes) during an anti-government demonstration in Madrid on April 25, 2013. A thousand of people, mostly youths, gathered today evening near the Spanish parliament in Madrid in response to a call by a hardline protest movement for demonstrators to “Besiege Congress” indefinitely to force the government to quit. (Dani Pozo/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Doves are released by family at the conclusion of the funeral mass for former teacher Sal Castro at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels in Los Angeles on Thursday April 25, 2013. Sal Castro was one of the leaders of the 1968 Chicano student walkouts, a protest for better schools that is considered the start of the Chicano movement. (Al Seib/AFP/Getty Images)
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- A masked staff member of a poultry market sorts out ducks in Taipei on April 26, 2013. Asian countries on April 25 urged renewed vigilance against a spread of H7N9 bird flu after Taiwan reported a case of the deadly strain, the world’s first outside mainland China. (Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images)
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- A Hindu devotee (C) has his body pierced during a Hindu festival in Yangon on 25th April 2013. Although only an estimated two per cent of Myanmar’s population practice Hinduism in this majority Buddhist country, most of them being Myanmar Indians, Hindu influences can be found in the Myanmar language, culture and the architecture of cities such as Bagan. (Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty Images)
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- A South Korean Marine takes position during a joint landing operation by U.S. and South Korean Marines in Pohang, 270 kms southeast of Seoul, on April 26, 2013. The U.S. and South Korea staged a military landing exercise as the Korean peninsula was already engulfed in a cycle of escalating tensions triggered by the North Korea’s nuclear test in February. (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Cubs of Tia, a lioness, huddle close together in their enclosure in the Emmen Zoo in Emmen, The Netherlands, on April 26, 2013. The four cubs were born on April 7. (Catrinus Van der Veen/AFP/Getty Images)
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- A Yorkshire Terrier named Hope shows off her uni-wheel attached to a doggie vest in Longmont, Colorado April 21, 2013. Hope is missing one limb and is able to walk with the wheel attachment. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)
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- Naki’o, a mixed-breed dog with four prosthetic devices, goes for a run in Colorado Springs April 12, 2013. Naki’o lost all four feet to frostbite when he was abandoned as a puppy in a foreclosed home. Picture taken April 12, 2013. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)
Anger on streets as Bangladesh building toll passes 300
Ruma Paul and Serajul Quadir | Reuters
8:45 a.m. EDT, April 26, 2013
DHAKA (Reuters) – Bangladesh textile workers vented their anger on Friday, burning cars and clashing with police, as the death toll passed 300 following the collapse of a building housing factories that made low-cost garments for Western brands.
Miraculously rescuers were still pulling people alive from the rubble – 72 since daybreak following 41 found in the same room overnight – two days after the eight-storey building collapsed on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka.
But there were fears that hundreds of people were still trapped in the wreckage of the building, which officials said had been built illegally without the correct building permits.
“Some people are still alive under the rubble and we are hoping to rescue them,” said deputy fire services director Mizanur Rahman.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said she had ordered the arrest of the owners of the building and of the five factories that occupied it.
Army spokesman Shahinur Islam said the death toll had reached 304 and H. T. Imam, an adviser to the prime minister, said it could exceed 350.
Anger over the working conditions of Bangladesh’s 3.6 million garment workers, the overwhelming majority of them women, has grown steadily since the disaster, with thousands taking to the streets to protest on Friday.
About 2,350 people have been rescued, at least half of them injured, from the remains of the building in the commercial suburb of Savar, about 30 km (20 miles) from Dhaka.
An industry official has said 3,122 people, most of them female garment workers, had been in the Rana Plaza building despite warnings that it was structurally unsafe.
WRONG PERMIT, ILLEGAL FLOORS
Emdadul Islam, chief engineer of state run Capital Development Authority (CDA), said that the owner of the building had not received the proper building consent, obtaining a permit for a five-storey building from the local municipality, which did not have the authority to grant it.
“Only CDA can give such approval,” he said. “We are trying to get the original design from the municipality, but since the concerned official is in hiding we cannot get it readily.”
Furthermore, another three storeys had been added illegally, he said. “Savar is not an industrial zone, and for that no factory can be housed in Rana Plaza,” Islam told Reuters.
Bangladesh is the second-largest exporter of garments in the world but many factories remained closed for a second day on Friday, with garment workers protesting against poor conditions and demanding the owners of the building and the factories it housed face harsh punishment.
Police and witnesses said protesters set fire to a number of vehicles and damaged other garment factories.
Dhaka District police chief Habibur Rahman identified the owner of the Rana Plaza building as Mohammed Sohel Rana, a leader of the ruling Awami League’s youth front.
Imam, the prime minister’s adviser, said Rana had “vanished into thin air”.
“People are asking for his head, which is quite natural. This time we are not going to spare anybody,” Imam said.
STRING OF FATAL INCIDENTS
Wednesday’s collapse was the third major industrial incident in five months in Bangladesh. In November, a fire at the Tazreen Fashion factory on the outskirts of Dhaka killed 112 people.
“This incident is devastating for us as we haven’t recovered from the shock of Tazreen fire yet,” said Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, who visited the site on Friday.
Such incidents have raised serious questions about worker safety and low wages in Bangladesh and could taint the poor South Asian country’s reputation as a producer of low-cost products and services.
North American and European chains, including British retailer Primark and Canada’s Loblaw, said they were supplied by factories in the Rana Plaza building.
Mohammad Atiqul Islam, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), said the proprietors of the five factories inside the building had ignored the association’s warning not to open on Wednesday after cracks had been seen in the building the day before.
“We asked not to open the factories and told them we will send our engineer, and until you get the green signal don’t open the factories,” Islam told Reuters.
“But, unfortunately, they violated our instructions,” he said. A bank in the building did close on Wednesday after the warning.
PRAYERS, MOURNING
Savar residents and rescuers dropped bottled water and food on Thursday night to people who called out from between floors. Nearby, relatives identified their dead among dozens of corpses wrapped in cloth on the veranda of a school.
Special prayers were offered for the dead, injured and missing at mosques, temples and pagodas across Bangladesh on Friday.
Ten labor groups called for a strike on Sunday by workers at garment factories across the country.
Sixty percent of Bangladesh’s garment exports go to Europe. The United States takes 23 percent and Canada takes 5 percent.
Primark and Loblaw, as well as PWT, a Danish company whose Texman brand clothes were also made in factories at Rana Plaza, operate under codes of conduct aimed at ensuring products are made in good working conditions.
The largest factory, New Wave Style, which listed many European and North American retailers as its customers, occupied the sixth and seventh floors, documents seen by Reuters showed.
(Additional reporting by Anis Ahmed in Dhaka, John Chalmers in New Delhi, Jessica Wohl and Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Chicago, Solarina Ho in Toronto, Robert Hertz in Madrid and Mette Kronholm Fraende in Copenhagen; Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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vickie
Apr 27, 2013 @ 11:13:09
Why can’t I share a single photo with Facebook and other social media sites? Whenever I try what is displayed is the home page of the daily blog post. If it’s a rights issue with the original publisher why can’t we be directed to that page (e.g. Reuters) to either share or purchase a photo? To be honest I don’t look at this site as much as I could for this reason. I and many of my friends are photo enthusiasts and we like to share pictures that interest us. Darkroom makes it too darn hard.