QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Taken control of all the floors.We’re not here to feed the attackers with pastries but to finish and punish them.” Kenya’s Police Inspector General David Kimaiyo, on Twitter Article, this page
Garment factories pelted in pay protest
DHAKA, Bangladesh - Thousands of garment workers seeking to more than double their monthly pay to $104 clashed with police on Dhaka’s outskirts Monday, forcing about 400 factories that supply companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to close.
The workers, demonstrating for a third day, pelted factories with bricks and blocked a highway, Abdus Salam Murshedy, president of the Exporters Association of Bangladesh, said by phone. Television images showed police using tear gas on workers, some of whom set fire to a factory warehouse.
The second-lowest wages in Asia after Myanmar, which used to be Burma, has helped spawn Bangladesh’s $19 billion manufacturing industry that supplies global retailers with cheap clothes.
Hennes & Mauritz, Europe’s second-biggest clothing retailer, on Monday said it backed the workers’ pursuit of increased compensation.
“We strongly support the workers demand for higher wages,” H&M spokesman Andrea Roos said by email.
Another funeral bombing kills 14 in Iraq
BAGHDAD - A double bomb attack on Sunni mourners in Baghdad killed 14 people Monday, the third day in a row in which funerals have been attacked amid a wave of bloodshed across Iraq, officials said.
Police say back-to-back blasts tore through a tent set up for the funeral of one of four people killed two days before when gunmen shot up a store selling liquor in the Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah. A security official said another 35 were wounded.
The Azamiyah shooting was believed to be carried out by hard-line Sunni militants, who are most likely to attack liquor stores in Sunni areas.
Monday’s attack came only one day after a deadly suicide bombing on another Sunni funeral in Baghdad that left 16 dead. On Saturday, a double suicide attack on a Shiite funeral killed 72 mourners.
Attacks on Shiite civilian targets - including funerals - are a hallmark of al-Qaida’s Iraq branch. But it was not clear whether the two attacks on Sunnis were also the work of al-Qaida, which has been known to target Sunni rivals, or part of a growing number of apparent reprisal attacks by Shiites.
German chancellor works on alliance
BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel approached her Social Democratic opponents as she began the search for a third-term coalition partner to leverage the biggest electoral victory in 23 years.
Merkel opened the jockeying saying Monday she had “initial contact” with Social Democratic Chairman Sigmar Gabriel. She also allowed for negotiations with the smaller Greens Party, which said it was ready to deal for a share of power in Europe’s biggest economy.
“We are now open to talks,” Merkel, 59, told reporters Monday at the Berlin headquarters of her Christian Democratic Union party. “Germany needs a stable government.”
The chancellor, who has dominated the response to Europe’s debt crisis, heads into coalition-building with a strengthened hand after Sunday’s election gave her the biggest tally in any federal vote since Helmut Kohl’s post-reunification victory of 1990. After campaigning on the economy and her handling of the euro-area crisis, she said three times at Monday’s news conference that she won’t change course on European policy.
Death toll from storms in Asia hits 47
MANILA, Philippines - Torrential monsoon rains hit the northwestern Philippines on Monday, triggering landslides and killing 20 people in areas already weakened by a powerful typhoon, and raising the death toll to 47 from storms across Asia.
Philippine officials said soldiers and villagers also were searching for at least seven people missing in mountainside villages hit by the landslides Monday in the province of Zambales.
Subic Mayor Jeffrey Khonghun said 15 bodies were dug out in two landslide-hit villages in his town. Five people also died in landslides in two other towns in Zambales, according to army officials and police.
Two people also drowned when a passenger boat capsized in northeastern Aurora province in the Philippines.
In China, where Typhoon Usagi struck after raking the northern Philippines, officials said the storm killed 25 people in the southern province of Guangdong, 13 of them in the city of Shanwei where it struck the coast late Sunday.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 09/24/2013