EU considers action, Pope weighs in, after Bangladesh disaster

By Ruma Paul

DHAKA (Reuters) - The European Union is considering trade action against Bangladesh, which has preferential access to EU markets for its garments, to pressure Dhaka to improve safety standards after a building collapse killed more than 400 factory workers.

Pope Francis condemned the conditions of workers who died in the disaster as "slave labor", while in Dhaka several thousand workers rallied to mark Labour Day, some calling for capital punishment for those responsible for the tragedy.

"The owner of the building ... should be hanged to death and compensation should be given to the injured and those who died," said labor leader Moshrefa Mishu. "A healthy and safe atmosphere should be made in the factories."

Duty-free access offered by Western countries and low wages have helped turn Bangladesh's garment exports into a $19 billion a year industry, with 60 percent of clothes going to Europe.

Any action by the EU on Bangladesh's duty-free and quota-free access would require the agreement of all member states and could take more than a year to implement.

"The European Union calls upon the Bangladeshi authorities to act immediately to ensure that factories across the country comply with international labor standards ...," the 27-nation bloc said in a statement issued by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht.

In the United States, prominent Democrats Sander Levin and George Miller wrote a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to facilitate the development of a concrete plan of action to address the range of issues relating to working conditions and worker rights in the garment sector in Bangladesh.

The death toll from the collapse last week of the illegally built Rana Plaza in Dhaka's commercial suburb of Savar rose to 411 on Wednesday, and about 40 unidentified victims were buried. One woman at the cemetery collapsed into tears when she recognized the body of her sister by her dress.

"SHOT ACROSS THE BOWS"

With local anger growing over the country's worst industrial accident, a delegation from the International Labour Organisation met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka to offer support and press for action to prevent any more such incidents.

The EU had already urged Bangladesh to adhere to ILO standards in January after two earlier factory fires, including one last November in which 112 people died.

A European Union official said the latest EU statement, issued late on Tuesday, was "a shot across the bows". "We want to turn up the diplomatic heat on them and get them to sit down and discuss this with us." [ID:nL6N0DI0QH]

About 3.6 million people work in Bangladesh's garment industry, making it the world's second-largest apparel exporter behind China. The industry employs mostly women, some of whom earn as little as $38 a month.

The Bangladeshi prime minister warned factory owners they would have to take care of their workers. "You will have to ensure workers' fair wages, allowances and other rights ... you must look after their workplace safety if you want to do business," she told a discussion forum.

Pope Francis added to pressure for change in his toughest remarks on workers' rights since his election on March 13, an indication he plans to make social justice a plank of his pontificate.

"Living on 38 euros ($50) a month - that was the pay of these people who died. That is called slave labor," Francis said in a private impromptu sermon at his personal morning Mass in his residence, Vatican Radio reported.

There were about 3,000 people inside the complex, which was built on a swamp, when it collapsed. About 2,500 people have been rescued, many injured, but many remain unaccounted for.

"Why are they taking so much time to pull out bodies?" asked a grief-stricken father who, like many others, has been waiting on the streets near the collapsed factory, hoping for information about his son.

Police said DNA samples of the bodies buried on Wednesday had been preserved, so tests could be done if relatives came forward later.

The building's owner Mohammed Sohel Rana and his father, Abdul Khalek, are among eight people arrested so far, and police are seeking a fifth factory boss, Spanish citizen David Mayor, although it was unclear whether he was in Bangladesh at the time of the accident.

EU IS BIGGEST MARKET

The factory collapse was the third deadly incident in six months to raise questions about worker safety and labor conditions in the poor South Asian country, which relies on garments for 80 percent of its exports. Clothes made in five factories inside the Rana Plaza building were produced for retailers in Europe and Canada.

In the year to June 2012, Bangladesh's garment exports to the EU rose to $11.37 billion from $10.52 billion a year earlier, according to Bangladesh's commerce ministry. Germany is the main EU market at $3.4 billion, followed by the UK at $2.13 billion, Spain at $1.71 billion and France at $1.27 billion.

Bangladesh's next biggest garment export market is the United States, which accounts for 23 percent, or $4.53 billion.

"The EU is presently considering appropriate action, including through the Generalised System of Preferences - through which Bangladesh currently receives duty-free and quota-free access to the EU market," Ashton and de Gucht said.

"The sheer scale of this disaster and the alleged criminality around the building's construction is finally becoming clear to the world."

The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), an umbrella organization that brings NGOs, unions and brands together to try to improve working conditions, said retailers, major brands and the suppliers who own the factories would have to contribute towards factory inspections.

"Bangladeshi companies who supply to our retailers need to be pricing in operating a decent factory, a safe factory and paying proper wages," ETI director Peter McAllister told Reuters.

"And then the retail world needs to recognize that the real cost of having sustainable businesses are going to be higher," he said, adding that he thought retailers would accept slightly higher prices if all outlets agreed to the changes.

Following a private emergency meeting of Canadian retailers, the Retail Council of Canada said on Tuesday it would develop a new set of guidelines. That meeting brought together retailers including Loblaw, Sears Canada Inc and Wal-Mart Canada, to discuss how to deal with the tragedy.

Loblaw Executive Chairman Galen Weston said the company would take further action "to address the situation" following the collapse of the building, where some of its "Joe Fresh" garments were made, although he did not offer specifics.

Representatives of some 45 companies, including Gap Inc, H&M, J.C. Penney, Nike Inc, Wal-Mart, Britain's Primark, Marks & Spencer and Tesco, and Li & Fung, met officials from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association in Dhaka this week to discuss worker and plant safety.

Primark and Loblaw have promised to compensate the families of garment workers killed while making their clothes.

(Reporting by Susan Taylor, Neha Alawadhi, Serajul Quadir and Ruma Paul; Writing by Paul Tait and Michael Perry; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Andrew Hay and Neil Fullick)

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'Gang of 8' senators see Border Patrol in action

Four of the U.S. senators leading the charge on immigration reform got more than they expected today when they came to Nogales, Ariz., to check on border security.

Just a few steps away from where they stood with Customs and Border Patrol officials, the problem facing the nation unfolded before their eyes: A young woman was sprinting her way out of Mexico, then climbing a security fence, only to be caught by the border patrol within seconds.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., soon tweeted about the event, saying: "Just witnessed a woman successfully climb an 18-ft bollard fence a few yards from us in Nogales. And Border Patrol successfully apprehended her, but incident is another reminder that threats to our border security are real."

Arizona's Senate delegation, McCain and Sen. Jeff Flake, both Republicans, hosted Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., for a tour along the border in Nogales, part of the Tucson sector. All four senators are members of the so-called "Gang of Eight" that is working on a solution to the nation's immigration issues.

ABC News was at the scene of the apprehension exclusively and later asked the senators from out of state what they thought of the experience.

"Well, I'd have to know all the details there to give you a judgment," Schumer said. "One of the things we learned is that a lot of people cross the border are doing it for drug purposes, too. But I don't know what happened in this situation."

The incident was "surprising" to Bennet.

"I just have never seen it before," he said.

For McCain, the incident was all-too-normal.

"One of the sad things about all of this is that most of those people who jump over the fence are doing that because they want a better life," he said at the news conference following the tour. "And I understand that. So we separate the drug cartels from individuals or somebody trying to cross over so they improve their lives."

The Border Patrol has more agents than ever, nearly 22,000, with 651 miles of fence along the 1,969-mile-long border.

Technology assists the boots on the ground, with 125 airplanes and six drones patrolling the Mexican frontier all working together to make crossing the border illegally more difficult than ever.

In fact, apprehensions like the ones the senators saw today are down 78 percent from their peak in 2000.

President Obama, in interviews with ABC News' partner, Univision, said today he thinks the border is secure enough to begin the reforms that would bring the 11 million undocumented immigrants out of the shadows.

"It's never going to be 110-percent perfect, but what we can do is to continue to improve it and, at the same time, provide a clear pathway for those who are already here and who've invested their lives here," the president said.

RELATED: President Obama Expects Immigration Bill in April

Counter to stereotype, six of the nation's 10 safest cities are on or near the border. El Paso, Texas, which sits just a few miles from Juarez, Mexico, has the lowest crime rate in the nation three years running.

El Paso Mayor John Cook said it's time to start immigration reform now "because [the] border is secure."

RELATED: 'Gang of Eight' to Tour Arizona-Mexico Border

"For the most part, people who come into the United States don't want to get in trouble. They don't want to commit crimes," he said. "They just want to make a living. I call them economic refugees [because] they just came to try to secure the American dream and a better life for their families, not to commit crimes."

Back in Arizona, McCain was in his home state to convince skeptics from his base that border security is improving. He gave this qualified endorsement.

"With the proper use of technology, with the proper coordination between different agencies, [I believe] that we will be able to say that we have a degree of border security that would allow people to move forward to a path of citizenship," McCain said.

The senators said they hope to have an agreement on an immigration reform bill soon.

"We hope to have a bill agreed to and done the day we come back," Schumer said.

Both McCain and Schumer recognized that compromise was key.

"With this legislation, no one will be totally happy because we are having to make compromises, and that's what makes for good legislation, is compromise that brings everybody together," McCain said.

They added that the reforms cannot be passed piecemeal and will need to be passed as a complete unit.

The four senators who did not make the tour hope to make one in the near future. They already had plans for the recess when it was organized.

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Supreme Court agrees to hear Michigan affirmative action case

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider a Michigan law that bans affirmative action in public college admissions.

The consideration of race in the admissions process, aimed at correcting past racial discrimination, is deeply unpopular in conservative circles.

In November, a sharply divided 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati found that the 2006 state constitutional amendment banning the practice, approved by voters in Michigan, imposed burdens on racial minorities in violation of the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection. The state challenged the ruling in the Supreme Court.

The Michigan law bans preferential treatment toward any candidates in public university admissions.

The high court is simultaneously considering a case on whether colleges and universities can continue to give special preference to minority candidates in admissions policies, in a case involving the University of Texas. A ruling in that case, Fisher v. University of Texas, is expected imminently and will come no later than the end of June.

That the court agreed to hear the Michigan case before deciding the Texas case is unusual. The court's normal practice is to wait until it has issued a ruling before agreeing to hear another case on a related issue. This may mean that the court is struggling to decide the Texas case, or that the ruling could be coming as soon as this week.

A district court judge upheld the state law in the Michigan case, but a three-judge panel of the appeals court struck it down in 2011. The full appeals court reheard the case the following year and struck the law down on a 8-7 vote.

The majority of the appeals court said the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment does more than guarantee equal treatment under the law. It also prevents laws from being passed that change the political process to impose extra burdens on minorities, the court said.

"ON ITS HEAD"

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican, wrote in the state's brief seeking the high court's review that the appeals court had adopted a theory that has been rejected by other courts in striking down a law that 58 percent of voters approved.

"Entrance to our great colleges and universities must be based upon merit, and I remain optimistic moving forward in our fight for equality, fairness and rule of law at our nation's highest court," Schuette added.

The challengers to the law are split into two groups.

One group, including the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, said it wanted the Supreme Court to hear the case even though the group won at the appeals court level. The issue is one of "surpassing national importance" that warrants the Supreme Court's attention, attorney George Washington wrote in a court filing.

In a statement, Washington said the law's supporters "are creating a new form of separate and unequal in a nation that will soon be majority minority," a reference to the growth in the United States of the minority population.

The other group, consisting of prospective college students, said there was no need for the justices to review the case because the 6th Circuit had applied court precedents correctly. Their attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.

In Monday's brief order announcing that the Supreme Court will hear the Michigan case, the court noted that Justice Elena Kagan is recused, meaning there is a possibility of a 4-4 split. Kagan is a former solicitor general under President Barack Obama.

Oral argument and a decision are expected in the court's next term, which runs from October 2013 to June 2014.

The case is Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-682.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Howard Goller and Christopher Wilson)

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Biden says Chicago vote a sign that voters want action on guns

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gun control supporter's victory in a Chicago Democratic congressional primary election is a sign that voters want tougher gun laws and are turning against the powerful gun lobby, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Wednesday.

Robin Kelly, a former Illinois state representative, won the election Tuesday to run for the U.S. House seat of former Representative Jesse Jackson Jr.

It was the first U.S. electoral test since gun control rose to the top of the political agenda after a gunman killed 26 people at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December.

"For the first time since Newtown, voters sent a clear unequivocal signal," Biden told a group of state attorney generals, who were meeting in Washington.

Kelly beat Debbie Halvorson, a former congresswoman who was rated highly by the National Rifle Association, a prominent gun-rights group. Halvorson opposed a U.S. ban on military-style assault weapons.

"The voters sent a message last night, not just to the NRA, but to the politicians all around the country. There will be a moral price as well as a political price to be paid for inaction," Biden said.

Biden made his comments on a day when the Senate Judiciary Committee was holding a hearing on reviving a 1994 ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004, one of several measures he and Obama recommended lawmakers pursue.

Democrats in the Senate have split the proposals into four bills in an effort to get at least some of the less controversial measures - such as expanded background checks for gun buyers - passed into law.

The split is an implicit acknowledgement by Democrats that a ban on military-style "assault" weapons is unlikely to clear Congress.

Biden devoted very little time in his 45-minute speech to the proposed ban, spending more time discussing less-controversial measures such as improved background checks for people who want to buy guns, and an increase in mental health research and services.

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Cynthia Osterman)

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