112 killed in fire at Bangladesh garment factory

Associated Press/Hasan Raza - Bangladeshi firefighters battle a fire at a garment factory in the Savar neighborhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh, late Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012. At least 112 people were killed in a fire

Bangladeshis and firefighters battle a fire at a garment factory in the Savar neighborhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh, late Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012. An official said firefighters have recovered more than 100 bodies after a fire raced through the multi-story garment factory just outside Bangladesh's capital. (AP Photo/Polash Khan)

Bangladeshi women react at the scene of a fire at a garment factory in the Savar neighborhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh, late Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012. At least 112 people were killed in a fire that raced through the multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, an official said Sunday. (AP Photo/Hasan Raza)

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — At least 112 people were killed in a fire that raced through a multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, an official said Sunday.

The blaze broke out at the seven-story factory operated by Tazreen Fashions late Saturday. By Sunday morning, firefighters had recovered 100 bodies, fire department Operations Director Maj.Mohammad Mahbub told The Associated Press.

He said another 12 people who had suffered injuries after jumping from the building to escape the fire later died at hospitals. The death toll could rise as the search for victims was continuing, he said.

Local media reported that up to 124 people were killed in the fire. The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear, and authorities have ordered an investigation.

Bangladesh has some 4,000 garment factories, many without proper safety measures. The country annually earns about $20 billion from exports of garment products, mainly to the United States and Europe.

Relatives of the factory workers were frantically looking for their loved ones. Sabina Yasmine said she saw the body of her daughter-in-law, who died in the fire, but had no trace of her son, who also worked at the factory.

"Oh, Allah, where's my soul? Where's my son?" wailed Yasmine, who works at another factory in the area. "I want the factory owner to be hanged. For him, many have died, many have gone."

Mahbub said firefighters recovered 69 bodies from the second floor of the factory alone. He said most of the victims had been trapped inside the factory, located just outside of Dhaka, with no emergency exits leading outside the building.

Many workers who had taken shelter on the roof of the factory were rescued, but firefighters were unable to save those who were trapped inside, Mahbub said.

He said the fire broke out on the ground floor, which was used as a warehouse, and spread quickly to the upper floors.

"The factory had three staircases, and all of them were down through the ground floor," Mahbub said. "So the workers could not come out when the fire engulfed the building."

"Had there been at least one emergency exit through outside the factory, the casualties would have been much lower," he said.

Many of the victims were burned beyond recognition. The recovered bodies were kept in rows on the premise of a nearby school.

Army soldiers and paramilitary border guards were deployed to help police keep the situation under control as thousands of onlookers and anxious relatives of the factory workers gathered at the scene, Mahbub said. He would not say how many people were still missing.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed shock at the loss of so many lives in the blaze and asked authorities to conduct thorough search-and-rescue operations.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said it would stand by the victims' families.

Bangladesh's garment factories make clothes for brands including Wal-Mart, JC Penney, H&M, Marks & Spencer, Carrefour and Tesco.

Separately, a flyover under construction fell onto a busy market, leaving at least 14 people dead including three construction workers in southeastern city of Chittagong, an official said Sunday.

Local fire official Abdul Mannan said the concrete structure collapsed on Saturday night, and authorities recovered the bodies by Sunday morning from under the debris in the second-largest city after Dhaka.

Treetop tents, tear gas: French protest turns ugly

A protester confronts French riot police during the evacuation of protsetors on land that will become the new airport in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, western France Saturday Nov. 24, 2012. The protestors are opposing the building of a new airport there. In a muddy, rainy standoff starting early Friday, protesters responded to police attempts to remove them by hurling sticks, stones and gasoline bombs. For two weeks, protesters have illegally occupied the site of the planned Notre-Dame-Des-Landes airport set to start operating in 2017. (AP Photo/ Laetitia Notarianni)

PARIS (AP) — Protesters squatting in treetop tents and makeshift shelters are battling French riot police trying to expel them from the site of a planned airport in western France.

Officers hurled tear gas projectiles and protesters responded with gas bombs and stones, as the two sides went head to head for a second day over a project that critics say will destroy woodland and cause pollution.

Eight people were arrested Saturday and three were hurt in the fighting, according to the Sipa news agency.

The issue has split the Socialist-led government of Prime MinisterJean-Marc Ayrault, which includes some Green Party members. Ayrault is the longtime mayor of the nearby city of Nantes and has championed the airport plan.

Egypt's Mursi must scrap "dictatorial" decree: ElBaradei

CAIRO (Reuters) - Prominent opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said on Saturday there could be no dialogue with Egypt's president until he scrapped a "dictatorial" decree that he said gave the Islamist leader Mohamed Mursi the powers of a pharaoh.

The presidential decree issued on Thursday by Mursi, elected in June with the Muslim Brotherhood behind him, expanded his powers and caused fury amongst his opponents, prompting violent clashes in central Cairo and other cities on Friday.

Judges, angry at steps seen as undermining the judiciary, threatened to strike if it were not revoked and the opposition has called for more protests, with one planned for Tuesday.

"There is no room for dialogue when a dictator imposes the most oppressive, abhorrent measures and then says 'let us split the difference'," ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in an interview with Reuters and The Associated Press.

ElBaradei, who had earlier in the day met opposition leaders and said he expected to be coordinator of a new National Salvation Front, said Mursi's decree threatened Egypt's troubled transition and action was needed to stop a "cycle of violence".

"How are we going to do that? I do not see any other way other than through Mr Mursi rescinding his dictatorial declaration," the 70-year-old former U.N. diplomat said, adding the decree created a "new pharaoh".

ElBaradei had met other opposition figures, such as former presidential candidates leftist Hamdeen Sabahy and Amr Moussa, the former Arab League chief. A third presidential candidate, Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, sent a representative.

"We will have to continue to escalate our level of expressing resistance, peaceful disobedience," ElBaradei said, adding the aim was to show the depth of opposition.

NO WARNING

The former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Mursi's moves had galvanised the liberal and other opposition camps to unite. Till now they have proved disparate forces, overwhelmed by the Brotherhood's organisational skills.

ElBaradei said he had met Mursi last week to discuss Egypt's political process, similar to talks the Islamist leader has held with other political leaders. But ElBaradei said he was given no "whiff" that a major decree was coming.

"You assume that if ... the president is going to take sweeping measures grabbing all powers that he will at least consult before," ElBaradei said. "There was no consultation at all. That doesn't show the best of ... intentions or good will."

In his decree, Mursi put all his decisions beyond legal challenge as long as there is no parliament, sacked the unpopular general prosecutor and opened the door to retrials for the already jailed oustedPresident Hosni Mubarak and his aides.

"I am waiting to see, I hope soon, a very strong statement of condemnation by the U.S., by Europe and by everybody who really cares about human dignity," ElBaradei said, speaking from his elegant villa on the outskirts of Cairo.

ElBaradei returned home to Egypt in 2010 as one of its best-known Egyptians on the world stage. He was a vocal opponent of Mubarak and then, after his overthrow, of the army council that took charge during a 16-month transition.

But ElBaradei disappointed many Egyptians for backing out of the presidential race. Pinning hopes on him to lead Egypt through its troubles, they said he spent too much time abroad.

"People still believe in the sense of a 'savior,' you know, somebody who is able to single-handedly save them," he said, but added that Egyptians should no longer rely on a "single person" to resolve all their problems.

ElBaradei said he had long argued for a constitution first before elections to prevent the trouble the nation now faced, adding he was right not to take part in a "farcical" election for president when there was no constitution or job description.

Drafting a new constitution has hit gridlock with Islamists and their supporters on one hand and liberals and others on the other at loggerheads over the role of Islam. Liberals have quit and demanded the Islamist-dominated assembly be disbanded.

One of Mursi's measures in his decree was to immunize the assembly against any legal challenge and extend its life by two months, meaning it will not complete its job till February, delaying elections to a new parliament.

The founder of the Dostour (Constitution) Party, popular with many revolutionary youths, said: "We were paying the price of a completely convoluted, completely illogical transition."

(Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Alison Williams and Jon Hemming)

Iraqi Kurds send more troops into standoff with Iraq army

ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's Kurdish region has sent reinforcements to a disputed area where its troops are involved in a standoff with the Iraqi army, a senior Kurdish military official said, despite calls on both sides for dialogue to calm the situation.

The second military buildup this year illustrates how far relations between Baghdad's central government, led by Shi'ite Muslim Arabs, and ethnic Kurds have deteriorated, testing Iraq's federal cohesion nearly a year after U.S. troops left.

Baghdad and Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region earlier this week began sending troops to an area over which they both claim jurisdiction, raising tensions in a long-running feud over land and oil rights.

More Kurdish troops and tanks were mobilised on Saturday and headed towards the disputed areas, the deputy minister for Kurdish military affairs said late on Saturday, adding that they would hold their positions unless Iraqi forces made a move.

"If they overstep the line, we will strike them," Anwar Haji Osman said.

The Iraqi army and Kurdish troops have previously come close to confrontation only to pull back at the last moment, flexing their muscles but lacking any real appetite for a fight.

Iraq's speaker of parliament, who visited Kurdish President Massoud Barzani on Friday, said "significant progress" had been made towards defusing the standoff and that a meeting between military leaders from both sides would be held on Monday in the Defence Ministry in Baghdad.

Washington intervened to end a similar standoff in August and is again in contact with Iraqi and Kurdish officials to ease tension mounting over the formation of a new command center for Iraqi forces to operate in the disputed areas.

Kurds say the Dijla Operations Command is a threat to them and an attempt by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to seize control over the oil rich territories along the internal border that demarcates the Kurdish region from the rest of Iraq.

Maliki says the Dijla Operations Command is necessary to keep order in one of the most volatile parts of the country.

Barzani on Saturday turned down an invitation from Shi'ite cleric and lawmaker Moqtada al-Sadr to meet with Maliki to discuss the situation.

In a statement posted on the Kurdistan regional government's website, Barzani's spokesman said he had refused because the matter was not personal, but rather a result of Maliki's "constant non-commitment to the constitution".

The latest flare-up began one week ago when Iraqi troops went after a fuel smuggler who had taken refuge in the office of a Kurdish political party in Tuz Khurmato, 170 km (106 miles) north of the capital, sparking a clash with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in which one passerby was killed.

Maliki has sparred more aggressively with Barzani since the withdrawal last year of U.S. troops who had served as a buffer between the federal Baghdad government and Kurdistan.

(Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Paul Simao)

New corruption scandal rocks Brazilian government

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, moving quickly to nip a new scandal in the bud, ordered the dismissal on Saturday of government officials allegedly involved in a bribery ring, including the country's deputy attorney general.

Federal police raided government offices in Brasilia and Sao Paulo on Friday and arrested six people for running an influence peddling ring that sold government approvals to businessmen in return for bribes.

Among those under investigation are the former personal secretary of ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Rosemary de Noronha, who has headed the regional office of the presidency in Sao Paulo since 2005.

The bribery scandal erupted on the heels of Brazil's biggest political corruption trial that sentenced some of Lula's closest aides to prison terms for buying support in Congress for his minority Workers' Party government after taking office in 2003.

Rousseff, Lula's chosen successor, was not affected by the vote-buying scandal and she has built on his popularity by gaining a reputation for not tolerating corruption. But the ruling Workers' Party was rocked by the scandal which tarnished Lula's legacy even though he was not implicated.

The new corruption case could further hurt the standing of Lula, who remains Brazil's most influential politician.

Friday's arrests included two brothers who were recommended for positions in the federal government by Lula's former secretary, Noronha: Paulo Rodrigues Vieira, director of the National Water Agency and Rubens Carlos Vieira, director for airport infrastructure at Brazil's Civil Aviation Agency.

Police accused the brothers of recruiting second-tier government employees who would be open to bribery, while a third brother also under arrest, Marcelo Rodrigues Vieira, contacted businessmen willing to pay for false or speeded-up approvals.

Police have been investigating the bribery ring since 2010 when an official in the government accounting office who was offered $150,000 for a favorable report got cold feet, returned the money he had been paid and blew the whistle.

Early on Friday, police seized computers and data from the Brasilia office of Deputy Attorney General Jose Weber de Holanda Alves, who has been dismissed and is under investigation along with a dozen other people, including a former senator.

"By presidential decision, all the government employees under investigation by the Federal Police will be dismissed or fired from their positions," a statement form Rousseff's office said. She ordered all agencies mentioned in the police probe to open internal investigations.

Police are investigating possible bribery cases at several other federal agencies, including the Ministry of Education.

While Noronha served as chief of staff of the president's regional office in Sao Paulo, Rousseff had inherited her as a Lula appointee.

Veja news magazine reported that Noronha, who was very close to Lula and traveled with him abroad when he was president, received bribes for influence peddling that included a luxury cruise trip and plastic surgery.

(Additional reporting by Ana Flor and Jefferson Ribeiro; Editing by Sandra Maler)