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ASHBURTON GUARDIAN, Monday, November 26, 2012
WORLD
www.guardianONLINE.co.nz
Factory blaze kills 104 By Shafiq Alam More than 100 workers have been killed in a fierce blaze which tore through a garment factory in Bangladesh, forcing people to leap from high windows to escape choking smoke and flames. Firefighters battled for several hours to control the fire, which broke out in the ground-floor warehouse of the nine-storey factory, 30 kilometres north of the capital Dhaka yesterday. Survivors told how panicked staff, mostly women, desperately tried to escape the blazing building, which made clothes for international brands including Dutch chain C&A and the Hong Kongbased Li & Fung company. “There were more than 1000 workers trapped in the factory,” one worker who gave her name only as Romesa, 42, told local media from her hospital bed. “I jumped from a window on the fourth floor and found myself on the third-storey roof of another building. Several people fell out of the window and died.” The operations director of the fire brigade, Major Mahbub, who uses one name, told AFP that the death toll had been lowered to 104 from 121. “There was some double count-
ing as different fire teams were working on different floors,” he said. “But now we have a total of 104 dead bodies including several who jumped to their deaths. Most bodies were found on the second floor. Most died of suffocation.” The owner of the Tazreen factory, Delwar Hossain, told AFP that the cause of the fire was not yet known but he denied his premises were unsafe. “It is a huge loss for my staff and my factory. This is the first time we have ever had a fire at one of my seven factories,” he said. The cause was not immediately known but fires as a result of short circuits and shoddy electrical wiring are common in Bangladeshi garment factories, which use cheap labour to produce clothes shipped to Western countries. Such tragedies are not confined to Bangladesh. A blaze in a Pakistan garment factory fire in September killed 289 workers and injured 110 more. Of the workers who were injured, dozens suffered disabling injuries and about 2000 other workers have lost their livelihoods. Two of the three Pakistan factory’s owners are facing murder charges and have been sent to jail on remand. - AFP
Worldwide bid to crack pigeon code By Tim Moynihan
ap photo
Firefighters battle a fire at a garment factory in the Savar neighbourhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh, yesterday.
People from around the world are coming forward to try to crack a World War Two message found on the leg of a dead pigeon – but it remains a mystery. The code, hand-written on a small sheet of paper headed “Pigeon Service”, was found in a small red canister attached to the bird’s skeleton up a chimney at a house in Bletchingley, Surrey. Experts from UK intelligence agency GCHQ have said the message, which has 27 five-letter code groups, is impossible to crack without its codebook. They were also left stumped by missing details, such as the date of the message and the identities of the sender, “Sjt W Stot”, and the recipient, “X02”. “We have had about 50 people getting in touch since our request for help was published yesterday, mainly by email but also some phone calls,” a spokesman said yesterday. “They have been of varying ages, from school kids to people who were alive in the war. There have been men and women, and not just from the UK – from Holland and the USA too. “They’re approaching it from different angles, but no one has come through with a solution, saying this is what it definitely means, so the quest continues.
Dallas star Larry Hagman dies in Texas By Lynn Elber JR Ewing was a business cheat, faithless husband and bottomless well of corruption. Yet with his sparkling grin, Larry Hagman masterfully created the charmingly loathsome oil baron — and coaxed forth a Texassize gusher of ratings — on television’s long-running and hugely successful soap, Dallas. Although he first gained fame as nice guy Air Force Major Tony Nelson on the fluffy 1965-70 NBC comedy I Dream of Jeannie, Hagman earned his greatest stardom with JR. The CBS serial drama about the Ewing family and those in their orbit aired from April 1978 to May 1991, and broke viewing records with its “Who shot JR?” 1980 cliffhanger that left unclear if Hagman’s character was dead. The actor, who returned as JR in a new edition of Dallas this year, had a long history of health problems and died on Saturday (NZ time) due to complications from his battle with cancer, his family said. “Larry was back in his beloved hometown of Dallas, re-enacting the iconic role he loved the most. Larry’s family and closest friends had joined him in Dallas for the Thanksgiving holiday,” the family said in a statement.
Larry Hagman The 81-year-old actor was surrounded by friends and family before he passed peacefully, “just as he’d wished for,” the statement said. Linda Gray, his on-screen wife and later ex-wife in the original series and the sequel, was among those with Hagman in his final moments
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in a Dallas hospital, said her publicist, Jeffrey Lane. “He brought joy to everyone he knew. He was creative, generous, funny, loving and talented, and I will miss him enormously. He was an original and lived life to the fullest,” the actress said. Years before Dallas, Hagman had gained TV fame on I Dream of Jeannie, in which he played an astronaut whose life is disrupted when he finds a comely genie, portrayed by Barbara Eden, and
takes her home to live with him. Hagman also starred in two short-lived sitcoms, The Good Life (NBC, 1971-72) and Here We Go Again (ABC, 1973). His film work included well-regarded performances in The Group, ’Harry and Tonto and Primary Colors. But it was Hagman’s masterful portrayal of JR that brought him the most fame. And the “Who shot JR?” story twist fueled international speculation and millions of dollars in betting-parlor wagers. It also helped give the series a place in ratings history. When the answer was revealed in a November 1980 episode, an average 41 million US viewers tuned in to make Dallas one of the most-watched entertainment shows of all time, trailing only the MASH finale in 1983 with 50 million viewers. It was JR’s sister-in-law, Kristin (Mary Crosby) who plugged him — he had made her pregnant, then threatened to frame her as a prostitute unless she left town — but others had equal motivation. Hagman played Ewing as a bottomless well of corruption with a charming grin: a business cheat and a faithless husband who tried to get his alcoholic wife, Sue Ellen (Gray), institutionalised. “I know what I want on JR’s tombstone,” Hagman said in 1988. “It should say: ‘Here lies upright citizen JR Ewing. This is the only deal he ever lost.’” On Saturday, Victoria Principal, who co-starred in the original series, recalled Hagman as “bigger than life, on-screen and off. He is unforgettable, and irreplaceable, to millions of fans around the world, and in the hearts of each of us,
who was lucky enough to know and love him.” The Fort Worth, Texas, native was the son of singer-actress Mary Martin, who starred in such classics as South Pacific and Peter Pan. Martin was still in her teens when he was born in 1931 during her marriage to attorney Ben Hagman. As a youngster, Hagman gained a reputation for mischief-making as he was bumped from one private school to another. He made a stab at New York theatre in the early 1950s, then served in the Air Force from 1952-56 in England. While there, he met and married young Swedish designer Maj Axelsson. The couple had two children, Preston and Heidi, and were longtime residents of the Malibu beach colony that is home to many celebrities. Hagman was diagnosed in 1992 with cirrhosis of the liver and acknowledged that he had drank heavily for years. In 1995, a malignant tumour was discovered on his liver and he underwent a transplant. After his transplant, he became an advocate for organ donation and volunteered at a hospital to help frightened patients. “I counsel, encourage, meet them when they come in for their operations, and after,” he said in 1996. “I try to offer some solace, like ‘Don’t be afraid, it will be a little uncomfortable for a brief time, but you’ll be OK.’ “ He also was an anti-smoking activist who took part in “Great American Smoke-Out” campaigns. Funeral plans had not been announced as of yesterday. - AP
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It’s still early days,” the spokesman said. Historians believe the bird may have been dispatched from Nazi-occupied France on June 6 1944, during the D-Day invasions. Because of Churchill’s radio blackout, homing pigeons were taken on the mission and released by allied forces to inform military chiefs in England how it was going. Unlike other carrier pigeon messages, though, the one found by David Martin as he ripped out a fireplace while renovating his home is written entirely in code. World War Two experts suspect the bird was destined for the top secret Bletchley Park, which is just 80 miles from Martin’s home. During the war, codebreakers worked there around the clock in top secret – deciphering Nazi codes including Enigma. Military pigeons were dropped behind enemy lines from bombers, whereupon resistance fighters picked them up, before releasing them homeward bound with top secret messages. It is thought the destination X02 may have been Bomber Command. Bletchingley is just five miles from Field Marshal Montgomery’s secret Reigate HQ, where Operation Overlord, the name given to the D-Day landings, was planned. - PA
• Overpass collapses At least 13 people have been killed and dozens are feared missing after an overpass under construction collapsed in Bangladesh’s southeastern port city of Chittagong. “So far 13 dead bodies have been recovered,” sub-inspector Mohammad Alauddin told AFP, adding that military rescue teams had been called in to help with the search for victims. The number of missing could not immediately be confirmed but police constable Shakakhawat Hossain told AFP from the scene that dozens could be trapped under the debris. - AFP
• Editor resigns over photos The editor of the Irish Daily Star newspaper has resigned in the wake of the controversial publication of topless photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge. Michael O’Kane had been suspended from his role in September while an internal investigation was carried out into the tabloid’s decision to rerun pictures of Kate and Prince William sunbathing on a private holiday in France. Media tycoon Richard Desmond, whose Northern and Shell group coowns the newspaper with the Irish-based Independent News and Media, had threatened to shut the Dublin operation down. In a statement, the Irish Daily Star said: as a result of the publication on September 15, “issues arose with the shareholders of Independent Star Limited”. “Having considered those issues in tandem with Mr O’Kane, it is Mr O’Kane’s decision to resign as editor of the Irish Daily Star, effective immediately,” it said. - PA
• Fifty Shades a party game An Australian-owned and operated global games and media company has signed a deal to produce a party game based on the best-selling book Fifty Shades of Grey. The game has been approved by author E L James and will be available in Australia, Canada, the UK, the US and New Zealand on December 14, Imagination announced yesterday. “We are delighted to be partnering with E L James on this project,” Imagination’s CEO Shane Yeend said. “The Fifty Shades books are a bona fide cultural phenomenon, and they offer an exciting new play pattern for our range of party games that allows everyone to finally reveal their Inner Goddess,” Yeend said. Fifty Shades of Grey has sold more than 1.28 million copies in combined physical and e-book formats in Australia, and more than 50 million copies worldwide. - AAP
• Gangnam breaks record Psy’s Gangnam Style has became YouTube’s most-watched video of all time, registering more than 803 million views to overtake Justin Bieber’s Baby. The 34-year-old South Korean rapper has rocketed to fame since his Gangnam Style video – in which he performs his now famous horse-riding dance – became a worldwide hit following its release in July. Earlier this month the song ousted Jennifer Lopez’s dance hit On the Floor from second place on YouTube, and on Saturday it overtook Bieber’s hit. In the evening, it had racked up 803,761,928 views against 803,658,345 for Baby. - AFP
• Heavy shelling in Syria Heavy shelling by government forces have targeted schools scattered across rebel-held areas along the outskirts of Damascus, activists say, as state media reported that the schools were being used as barracks for insurgents. “Dozens of schools were targeted by government forces since Friday night, in the areas of Tadamoon, Azamiyeh al-Sham and Zabandani,” activist Haytham al-Abdallah told DPA. Abdallah said the troops’ shelling is aimed at destroying education and health facilities in rebel-held areas across Syria. The news agency SANA rebuffed rebel claims and said schools in some areas near Damascus were being transformed into “barracks for terrorists to launch attacks and prepare car bombs to target the innocent Syrian people”. Elsewhere, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy fighting in the northern provinces. - DPA