NEWS,27.01.2013

Brazil Nightclub Fire Kills At Least 230 People

Flames raced through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing more than 230 people as panicked partygoers gasped for breath in the smoke-filled air, stampeding toward a single exit partially blocked by those already dead. It appeared to be the world's deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.Witnesses said a flare or firework lit by band members may have started the blaze in Santa Maria, a major university city of about 225,000 people.Television images showed smoke pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who had attended a university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at windows and walls to free those trapped inside.Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city's fire department, told the O Globo newspaper that firefighters had a hard time getting inside the club because "there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance."Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms."There was so much smoke and fire, it was complete panic, and it took a long time for people to get out, there were so many dead," survivor Luana Santos Silva told the Globo TV network.The fire spread so fast inside the packed club that firefighters and ambulances could do little to stop it, Silva said.Another survivor, Michele Pereira, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when members of the band lit flares that started the conflagration."The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward," she said. "At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread."Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2:15 a.m. "and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning""It might have happened because of the Sputnik, the machine we use to create a luminous effect with sparks. It's harmless, we never had any trouble with it."When the fire started, a guard passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it but it wasn't working"He confirmed that accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely.Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by telephone that the toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized victim. Officials counted 232 bodies that had been brought for identification to a gymnasium in Santa Maria, which is located at the southern tip of Brazil, near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.An earlier count put the number of dead at 245.Federal Health Minister Alexandre Padhilha told a news conference that most of the 117 people treated in hospitals had been poisoned by gases they breathed during the fire. Only a few suffered serious burns, he said.Brazil President Dilma Roussef arrived to visit the injured after cutting short her trip to a Latin American-European summit in Chile."It is a tragedy for all of us," Roussef said.Most of the dead apparently suffocated, according to Dr. Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a professor at the medical school of the Federal University of Santa Maria who went to the city's Caridade Hospital to help victims.Beltrame said he was told the club had been filled far beyond its capacity during a party for students at the university's agronomy department.Survivors, police and firefighters gave the same account of a band member setting the ceiling's soundproofing ablaze, he said."Large amounts of toxic smoke quickly filled the room, and I would say that at least 90 percent of the victims died of asphyxiation," Beltrame told The Associated Press by telephone."The toxic smoke made people lose their sense of direction so they were unable to find their way to the exit. At least 50 bodies were found inside a bathroom. Apparently they confused the bathroom door with the exit door."In the hospital, the doctor "saw desperate friends and relatives walking and running down the corridors looking for information," he said, calling it "one of the saddest scenes I have ever witnessed."Rodrigo Moura, identified by the newspaper Diario de Santa Maria as a security guard at the club, said it was at its maximum capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000, and partygoers were pushing and shoving to escape.Santa Maria Mayor Cezar Schirmer declared a 30-day mourning period, and Tarso Genro, the governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, said officials were investigating the cause of the disaster.The blaze was the deadliest in Brazil since at least 1961, when a fire that swept through a circus killed 503 people in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro.Sunday's fire also appeared to be the worst at a nightclub since December 2000, when a welding accident reportedly set off a fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.In 2004, at least 194 people died in a fire at an overcrowded nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Seven members of a band were sentenced to prison for starting the flames.Several years later, in December 2009, a blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, killed 152 people after an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with branches.Similar circumstances led to a 2003 nightclub fire that killed 100 people in the United States. Pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling of a Rhode Island music venue.The band performing in Santa Maria, Gurizada Fandangueira, plays a driving mixture of local Brazilian country music styles. Guitarist Martin told Radio Gaucha the musicians are already seeing hostile messages."People on the social networks are saying we have to pay for what happened," he said. "I'm afraid there could be retaliation".

 

Bangladesh factory fire concerns groups

International labour rights groups called on Sunday for global clothing retailers to ensure adequate safety measures for garment workers in Bangladesh after a blaze killed seven employees at a small factory.Saturday's fire gutted Smart Exports Garment Ltd, just two months after Bangladesh's worst ever factory blaze killed 112 workers and injured 150 at Tazreen Fashions Ltd, a multi-storey garment workshop in Dhaka's Ashulia suburb.In a joint statement issued after the latest blaze, three organisations asked retailers and brands to sign a fire safety agreement with Bangladesh."After more than two decades of the apparel industry knowing about the risks to these workers, nothing substantial has changed," the executive director of the International Labour Rights Forum, Judy Gearhart, said in the statement."Brands still keep their audit results secret. They still walk away when it suits them and trade unions are still marginalised, weakening workers' ability to speak up when they are at risk," she added. The Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) also signed the statement.Another rights group, the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights (ILGHR), said on its website it had gained access to the gutted factory and found seven women workers had been crushed to death as employees tried to escape the fire.Firefighters and police said the cause of the latest blaze was not yet known. Survivors said it could have been caused by an electrical short circuit at the factory on the upper floor of a two-storey building in the crowded Mohammadpur area.Kalpona Akter, Executive Director of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity told Reuters that two garment factories had subcontracted orders to the factory's owner, Smart Export Garments Ltd. She said the company was not a member of the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association and had no license from fire prevention or labour bodies.An official report into the Tazreen blaze in November concluded it was the result of both sabotage and negligence. Bangladesh has about 4 500 garment factories and is the world's biggest exporter of clothing after China. Clothing makes up 80% of its $24bn annual exports.

Davos warns on global economic crisis

The world's political and business elite headed home on Sunday from this year's Davos forum with warnings that while the worst of the financial crisis seems over there is still much to be done.International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde said in the closing moments of the annual gathering in the snowy Swiss ski resort on Saturday that she recommended the "do not relax principle" for the coming year.Where for the two previous years a sense of crisis had hung over the World Economic Forum, the mood was sunnier at the 2013 edition as speaker after speaker said they were now cautiously optimistic."I feel the circumstances in which I'm addressing you today are very different than 12 months ago," said Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti in his opening speech, following a torrid year dominated by the euro crisis.European central banker Mario Draghi meanwhile hailed 2012 as the year that the troubled single currency was "relaunched", even as others were hailing him as the man who had saved the eurozone from catastrophe.The Chinese economy's slowdown seemed less serious than a year ago to the participants while the step back from the fiscal cliff in the United States also eased minds.But as the 2 500 world leaders, financial officials, tycoons and journalists departed the picture-postcard Alpine resort, they may have felt a chill that was not just down to the subzero temperatures.Lagarde said the IMF's forecast of a "very fragile and timid recovery for 2013" was based on "eurozone leaders, the US authorities on the other hand and the Japanese authorities making the right decisions".She added: "And that's what I mean by 'do not relax' because some good policy decisions have been made in various parts of the world. In 2013, they have to keep the momentum."The head of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Angel Gurria, warned meanwhile that countries had exhausted most room for manoeuvre in terms of fiscal and monetary policy."We should be very worried because the lack of room for some of the more traditional tools has gone and we are left with very few of these tools," he said.As in previous years the Davos forum was partly hijacked by external events, particularly after British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to hold a referendum on European Union membership by the end of 2017.The move threatened to cause a stir, with Cameron's European counterparts worried about the effect the uncertainty would have on the euro's already fragile recovery, but they left any rows for another day.The turmoil in the Arab world also took centre stage for a time as officials including Jordan's King Abdullah II urged "desperately needed" action over Syria's civil war, though none came.Amid the cocktail parties and lavish luncheons at Davos this year there was sometimes a "mood of complacency", said Axel Weber, the chairman of Swiss bank UBS and former head of Germany's Bundesbank."My biggest fear is that 2013 could be a replay of 2012, another lost year," he said. "We shouldn't be complacent, we haven't really fundamentally improved that much."Many were still worried by the euro. The Deloitte financial group's global chief executive Barry Salzberg told AFP he was "reasonably comfortable, with one exception - and that is what's the impact on the US from Europe."Other officials expressed fears that governments would increasingly lean on central banks, which have often been the heroes of the fragile global recovery in the past two years, instead of taking action themselves.But in many ways it was business as usual at Davos, with world leaders huddling in private and corporate deals sewn up on the sidelines, such as a $10bn shale gas deal between Ukraine and oil giant Royal Dutch Shell.Even a noisy protest on Sunday by three topless, pink-flare-waving women from a Ukrainian feminist group failed to shock - they had targeted Davos the previous year too.

Gun control: Listen more, Obama says

President Barack Obama urged gun control advocates to listen to views of rural Americans who use guns for hunting and said bridging a cultural divide in attitudes to gun ownership would be critical to his administration's push to curb gun violence. "If you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were 10, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of your family's traditions, you can see why you'd be pretty protective of that," Obama said in an interview with The New Republic magazine published on Sunday.Obama made gun control a top priority for his second term after 20 children and six adults were killed by a gunman at a school in Newtown, Connecticut in December. Obama spoke with The New Republic on 16 January, the same day he announced he would put the full weight of his office behind urging Congress to approve an assault weapons ban and background checks for all gun buyers."Part of being able to move this forward is understanding the reality of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas," Obama said."So it's trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months...and that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes," he said.Vice President Joe Biden is leading the White House effort to talk to Americans about gun control proposals and galvanise public support to pressure Congress to act. e addressed the issue in Virginia on Friday. Gun ownership rights are enshrined in the US Constitution and past efforts to restrict gun ownership have been blocked by gun owners, the National Rifle Association and their supporters in Congress.