Associated Press -

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) -- Bangladesh's government plans to raise the minimum wage for garment workers after the deaths of more than 1,100 people in the collapse of a factory building focused attention on the textile industry's dismal pay and hazardous working conditions.

A new minimum wage board will issue recommendations for pay raises within three months, Textiles Minister Abdul Latif Siddiky said Sunday. The Cabinet will then decide whether to accept those proposals.

The wage board will include representatives of factory owners, workers and the government, he said.

The April 24 building collapse was one of the world's worst industrial disasters and has raised alarm about conditions in Bangladesh's powerful textile industry that supplies retailers globally.

Working conditions in the $20 billion industry are grim, a result of government corruption, desperation for jobs, and industry indifference. Minimum wages for garment workers were last raised by 80 percent to 3,000 takas ($38) a month in 2010 following protests by workers.

Rescue workers said 1,125 bodies had been recovered by late Sunday from the ruins of the fallen Rana Plaza building, which housed five garment factories employing thousands of workers. Teams were using hydraulic cranes, bulldozers, shovels and iron cutters to uncover bodies more than two weeks after the eight-story building collapsed.

"We are still removing the rubble very carefully as dead bodies are still coming up," said Maj.Moazzem Hossain, a rescue team leader.

Hossain said they are trying to identify badly decomposed bodies by their identity cards. "If we get the ID cards with the bodies then we are lucky," he said.

On Friday, the search teams received a much-needed morale boost when they found a seamstress who survived under the rubble for 17 days on dried food and bottled and rain water.

More than 2,500 survivors were rescued soon after the collapse, but until 19-year-old Reshma Begum was found the crews had gone nearly two weeks without discovering anyone alive.

Doctors said she was improving after treatment for dehydration, insomnia, stress and weakness.

The Rana Plaza owner and eight other people, including garment factory owners, have been detained in the collapse investigation. Authorities say the building owner added floors to the structure illegally and allowed the factories to install heavy equipment that the building was not designed to support.

The Textiles Ministry has also begun a series of factory inspections and has ordered about 22 closed temporarily for violating safety and working standards.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A medical student who witnessed the shooting that wounded 19 people during a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans says it was hard to tell whether the gunman was picking targets randomly or was trying to hit specific people.

Jarrat Pytell (JAHR'- rett pie-tell) said the gunman he saw pointed in a specific direction and didn't swing the gun wildly. Still, Pytell said, the man was shooting into a crowd, where multiple injuries were likely.

Pytell says he and others jumped into a roadside ditch when the shooting broke out. When it was over he helped tend to the wounded.

Police say more than one shooter may have been involved. They hope a $10,000 reward and images of a suspect posted on YouTube will lead to an arrest.

The sun unleashed a colossal Mother's Day solar flare on Sunday (May 12) in what has become the most powerful solar eruption of the year.

The giant solar flare, which registered as one of the largest eruptions the sun can unleash, peaked Sunday night at 10:17 p.m. EDT (0217 GMT) and was captured on camera by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. It sparked an hour-long high-frequency radio blackout, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center overseen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sunday's solar flare registered as an X1.7-class sun eruption — the strongest type of solar flare the sun can fire off, according to the SWPC officials. [Most Powerful Solar Storms of 2013 (Photos)]

When aimed directly at Earth, X-class solar flares can pose a risk to astronauts and satellites in orbit, as well as interfere with communications and GPS signals on the ground. They can also super-charge Earth's northern lights displays by bombarding the planet with solar particles, triggering awesome aurora light shows.

But Sunday's solar flare erupted from an active sunspot on the far side of the sun, so it was not directly facing Earth when it unleashed a wave of super-hot plasma called a coronal mass ejection (CME).

"No planets were in the line of fire," astronomer Tony Phillips wrote on his website Spaceweather.com, which tracks space weather and skywatching events. "The sunspot that produced this blast is on the far side of the sun. Soon, in a few days, it will turn toward Earth, emerging into view over the sun's eastern limb."

Phillips wrote that NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope and Deep Impact/Epoxi spacecraft may be in the line of fire of the solar flare. The flare came from a sunspot that has been active over the last week, firing off a number of medium-strength M-class solar flares as it slowly rotates into view as seen from Earth.

Sunday's sun eruption was by far the strongest solar flare of 2013 as the sun heads toward the peak o fits 11-year weather cycle later this year. Until Sunday, every solar flare this year have been M-class solar flares or weaker. An M6.5 flare was the strongest of the year before Sunday's event.

In 2012, the sun fired off a series of X-class flares, including a colossal X5.4 solar flare. An X6.9 solar flare in 2011 marked the solar storm in five years at that time.

The sun is currently in an active phase of its space weather cycle. The current cycle, called Solar Cycle 24, began in 2008 and is expected to run through 2019-2020. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is one of several spacecraft keeping constant watch on the sun to monitor its solar activity through this active phase of Solar Cycle 24.

SPACE.com will provide updates on this powerful solar flare as new details are available today.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us@Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.