The world in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“These international, Western brands have a lot of responsibility for these fire issues.”

Kalpona Akter, the executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, who said she found clothing labels for a variety of global retailers in the ruins of a deadly factory fire in the country Article, this page

Carter returns to Haiti to build houses

LEOGANE, Haiti - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Monday urged donors to honor the billion-dollar pledges they made to help Haiti rebuild after its devastating 2010 earthquake.

Carter made the call for greater humanitarian aid to Haiti on the first day of a week-long effort to build 100 homes with about 600 volunteers from Habitat for Humanity.

It was the second time in the past year that Carter, 88, and his wife, Rosalynn, have gone to help people displaced at the epicenter of the disaster.

Donor nations and institutions promised $4.46 billion to help Haiti after the quake. But only a little more than half of that money has been released, according to the U.N. Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti.

The reasons for the delays vary, ranging from economic problems back home to a wait-and-see approach until the Haiti’s government gets settled.

Toronto mayor removed from office

TORONTO - The mayor of Canada’s largest city was ordered out of office Monday after a judge found he had flouted conflict of interest rules for refusing to repay funds he solicited for his high school football team using city letterhead when he was a councilman.

Mayor Rob Ford blamed “the left wing politics” for the ruling and said he would appeal.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland said Ford showed “willful blindness” to the law and said he cannot claim that it was an error in judgment made in good faith.

At issue was Ford’s participation in a City Council vote on repaying money he had solicited for his football program. Ford is a volunteer coach of a high school team.

The judge said Ford showed a “stubborn sense of entitlement” and a “dismissive and confrontational attitude” toward the city’s integrity commissioner.

Will retire from politics, Barak says

JERUSALEM - Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced Monday that he would soon “leave political life,” after a half-century career in the military and government that included two years as prime minister.

Though he had formed a close partnership with the conservative prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, particularly on the Iranian nuclear threat, Barak was a longtime leader of the liberal Labor Party, and now heads the tiny Independence faction.

Polls have suggested for months that Independence might not win enough votes for even a single seat in the Parliament, so some observers saw Barak’s decision as a way to avoid such an embarrassment.

He did not address the question of whether he would accept what is known as a “personal appointment” to serve a new government as defense minister despite sitting out the elections.

Fire at German workshop kills 14

BERLIN - Fourteen people were killed and eight injured Monday when a fire broke out at a workshop for disabled people in Germany’s Black Forest region, authorities said. Scores had to be rescued from the building as it quickly filled with smoke.

More than 100 firefighters were deployed to battle the blaze, which began at the complex in Titisee-Neustadt early in the afternoon, said Markus Straub, a spokesman for local firefighters.

Ambulances raced to the scene as smoke poured from the windows of the modern, three-story center in one of the country’s deadliest blazes in recent memory.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known, police and firefighters said.

The center usually has around 120 people at any one time, said Mirko Steffl, a police spokesman in the nearby city of Freiburg.

It was not immediately clear how many people had to be rescued, but by late afternoon workers had determined that no one else remained trapped in the building, he said.

The center employs people with mental or physical disabilities in a variety of jobs, including metalwork, woodwork and electrical installation, and it is run by the Catholic Church’s Caritas organization.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 11/27/2012

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