BRUSSELS: The European Commission said Saturday it had given 30 million euros in humanitarian aid to help the most needy in Pakistan, including those hit by flooding that has killed at least 800 people.

“The European Commission has adopted a 30-million-euro (39-million-dollar) humanitarian aid decision to assist the most vulnerable people in Pakistan in urgent need of help,” it said in a statement.

“Pakistan has been hit by terrible floods and more rain is forecast. Our thoughts are with those affected by them,” Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva was quoted as saying.

“I am pleased that our decision to provide new humanitarian funding for the most vulnerable people in Pakistan will also be able to benefit the people, who have suffered from this disaster.”

The floods and landslides have destroyed hundreds of homes and vast swathes of farmland in the northwest and Pakistani Kashmir, with the main highway to China reportedly cut and communities isolated.

The United Nations has said almost a million people had been affected by the flooding. -AFP

DHAKA: At least 100 people were injured when garment workers attacked factories and vehicles in Bangladesh on Saturday in a second day of protests to demand higher wages, police and witnesses said.

Police fired rubber bullets and used teargas and batons against workers blocking roads in the capital Dhaka’s suburbs.

This week the government set the minimum monthly wage to 3,000 taka ($43). Workers are demanding 5,000 taka.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina made a plea for calm.

“Who will benefit if the (garment) industry is destroyed? The workers should not involve themselves in any activity that might put their own source of bread at risk,” Hasina’s press secretary, Abul Kalam Azad, quoted her as saying.

The garment industry is Bangladesh’s second biggest employer after agriculture, and accounts for more than 80 percent of the impoverished country’s annual export earnings of $16 billion.

Saturday’s protests started in Ashulia, an industrial area 30 km (19 miles) north of the capital.

“Several policemen were also injured, as they clashed with workers, trying to dispel attacks on their vans,” a local newspaper reporter at the scene told Reuters.

The workers beat and seriously injured a cameraman working for a local television channel when he tried to film them. They also damaged and looted machines and ready-to-wear garments from a number of factories, witnesses said.

Police have so far detained 25 people.

Protesters also blocked a road at Fatulla, 16 km east of Dhaka, and more than 50 people were hurt in clashes with police.

BLAME

Protest leaders blamed police for sparking violence by assaulting workers during peaceful rallies.

Begum Khaleda Zia, former prime minister and chief of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, speaking at a party meeting blamed “wrong government policies for the ongoing anarchy in the garment sector”.
Leaders of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) demanded order be restored and threatened to close down factories if vandalism continues.

“We will be compelled to close down factories if government fails to give us protection,” BGMEA vice president Faruque Hassan told Reuters. He said criminals disguised as workers had looted factories and wayside shops during the clashes.

BGMEA represents some 4,500 garment factories, that employ more 3.5 million workers, mostly women.

Bangladesh-based factories make garments for international brands such JC Penney, Wal-Mart, H&M, Kohl's, Marks & Spencer, Zara and Carrefour. – Reuters

BAGHDAD: Iraqi soldiers arrested two suspected insurgents behind a brazen series of attacks in Baghdad this week that killed 16 people and wounded 14 others, a security official said on Saturday.

The pair were arrested as a result of security camera footage that showed insurgents setting alight three dead soldiers and planting Al-Qaeda’s flag, a defence ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The private surveillance tape was taken from a shop in the predominantly Sunni area of Adhamiyah where the attack, which also involved homemade bombs being placed on routes to the scene of the fire, took place on Thursday.

“The private security camera recorded the entire operation and shows the gunmen attack an army checkpoint, plant bombs and burn dead bodies,” the official said.

According to the official, the videotape shows the gunmen killing the soldiers after a 10-minute gun battle, pouring oil over their bodies and setting them on fire.

“Then, they put bombs on the roads leading to the scene, and planted the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq (Al-Qaeda’s front group) near the dead bodies before fleeing,” the official said.

He said two people including a lawyer had been arrested as a result of the footage of the attacks, which occurred within 15 minutes of each other.

In addition to the original killing of the soldiers, three homemade bomb attacks on different routes to the scene of the shooting killed 13 more people, including three soldiers and three policemen, and wounded 14, among them seven police and two civil defence members, the interior ministry said.

Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim Atta said “large numbers of weapons and explosions were found within the last 24 hours” in raids as part of an investigation into the attack.

“A number of suspects and wanted persons have been arrested after the terrorist attack in Adhamiyah,” he said.

US and Iraqi officials have warned of the dangers of an upsurge in violence as negotiations on forming a new governing coalition drag on, more than four months after the country held a parliamentary election. – AFP

RHINEBECK: After an intensely secretive build-up, Chelsea Clinton and her hedge fund manager beau were to marry on Saturday at a star-studded wedding outside New York.

Former Democratic president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were to attend their daughter’s big day in Rhinebeck, a quaint rural retreat for New York’s elite.

Other details were kept secret right to the eve of the nuptials in an extraordinary effort to ensure privacy for Chelsea, 30, and husband-to-be Marc Mezvinsky, 32.

The news blackout has fed a media frenzy, with news teams flooding Rhinebeck to cover what’s variously been dubbed the wedding of the decade, century, millennium, or just plain royal.

Ceremonies were set to take place at the grandiose Astor Courts house in a wooded area near Rhinebeck. Paparazzi sneaked pictures over the last few days of tents being erected on the grounds next to the elegant white building.

Astor Courts, a Beaux Arts pavilion that sits on 50 acres (20 hectares) of land. It was commissioned more than 100 years ago by John Jacob Astor IV, who died on the Titanic, and was designed by Stanford White, architect to the 19th-century robber barons.

Security tightened rapidly as Saturday approached and the airspace over Astor Courts was declared a no-fly zone. Local road access was also due to be restricted.

The New York Daily News reports that at the Beekman Arms Hotel, which calls itself the oldest inn in America and is expected to house many of the A-list guests, employees have been barred from even uttering the name “Clinton” under threat of firing.

Locals were on the lookout for celebrities among the expected 400 to 500 wedding guests.

Bill Clinton, looking trim after having been instructed by his daughter to lose weight, arrived in Rhinebeck and briefly met crowds Friday, offering warm words for his future son-in-law.

“I admire him. Hillary feels the same way,” he said.

Guests were given strict instructions not to disclose their invitations and were only told in the final run-up where to go.

According to unconfirmed media reports they were to include TV chat show queen Oprah Winfrey, Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg and possibly also former British prime minister John Major.
President Barack Obama won’t be there – he says he wasn’t actually invited and that in any case two presidents would be one too many at a wedding.

As secret as the guest list were details of the party itself, leaving the public to grasp at rumors and leaks.

Estimates by wedding planners have put the likely cost of the bash at anything between three and five million dollars.

NBC television reported that just the air-conditioned tents will cost 600,000 dollars and the flowers – arranged by florist-to-the-stars Jeff Leatham – half a million dollars.

The sumptuous and exclusive occasion has raised eyebrows in some quarters at a time when Obama and the Democrats are under populist attack ahead of Congressional midterm elections and the economy continues to struggle.

“This is out of control,” Boston Globe columnist Lauren Beckham Falcone wrote. “This isn’t tasteful. It’s tacky.”

Celebrity gossip specialists, such as TMZ and People, published what they claim to be insider information ranging from the music list – featuring Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and Cat Stevens’ “Wild World” – to the installation of 15,000 dollar luxury portable toilets.

In contrast with the hype, Chelsea and Mezvinsky are barely known to the wider public.

Chelsea met her future husband when she was a teenager attending a retreat for Democrats.

Although now a wealthy banker on Wall Street, he is known chiefly as the son of a former Democratic congressman who recently completed a five-year prison sentence for fraud.

She is a Methodist and he is Jewish. Nothing has been announced about whether they will marry in both religions, whether Chelsea is converting to Judaism or other options. - AFP