Bangladesh police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at garment workers who stitch clothes for Western retailers during clashes on Tuesday as demonstrations against low wages intensified, an officer said.
Some 40,000 workers downed tools and took to the streets in the Ashulia export zone on the outskirts of Dhaka for the second day, forcing around 200 factories to suspend production, police and factory owners said.
The workers are demanding a wage hike to $100 per month instead of the rise to $67 approved last week by the Minimum Wage Board after rounds of meetings with industry, unions and government representatives. (AFP)
TEHRAN – Iran and the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency agreed on Monday on a plan to give IAEA inspectors access to a uranium mine and a heavy water plant.
The pact was signed in Tehran by IAEA director Yukiya Amano and the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi.
Based on the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran has signed, the document is “a roadmap for cooperation that determines mutual steps to resolve remaining issues,” Salehi said during a joint press conference with Amano.
Tehran’s willingness to grant access to the Gchine mine and the heavy water plant near Arak ends a nearly two-year impasse with the IAEA.
“It was agreed that Iran and the IAEA will cooperate further with respect to verification activities to be undertaken by the IAEA to resolve all present and past issues,” the parties said in a joint statement.
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, was elected in June after pledging to work to resolve the dispute with the West over the Iranian nuclear program.
Israel and some Western nations say they suspect Iran is seeking the capability to make nuclear weapons, while Tehran insists the purposes of the program are strictly peaceful.
Talks in Geneva between Iran and the P5+1 group – Britain, France, the United States, Russia and China plus Germany – on a broad solution to the nuclear issue ended over the weekend without agreement, though negotiations are set to continue.
The IAEA has never found evidence that Iran is diverting nuclear materials for military purposes and the most recent estimate from the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Tehran is not pursuing nuclear weapons
Reza Heydarpour, the Evin Prison physician who prepared the report on the death of jailed blogger Sattar Beheshti in custody, has been arrested, according to the exiles activist website.
Mohabat News - The report indicates that on Monday November 4, Heydarpour was arrested by the ministry of intelligence as he left Evin Prison.
The report adds that the detained physician was transferred to ward 209 of the prison, and there has been no news of him since then.
Beheshti was arrested in October of 2012 by the cyber police for his media activities and was pronounced dead in jail within a few days of his arrest. There have been many reports that his death was the result of severe beatings and torture by his interrogators.
The Beheshti family's efforts to hold prison authorities responsible for his death have so far been unsuccessful.
In 2009, Ramin Pourandarjani, the physician on duty at the notorious Kahrizak Prison, died under suspicious circumstances. The prison was later shut down, after reports of the deaths and abuse of detainees in that facility hit the media. /Radio zamaneh
Pastor Saeed Abedini has been placed in a single cell with five death row inmates in Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj and is prevented from having any visitors, the American Center for Law and Justice said, raising further concerns that officials placed him there to "disappear." "Rajai Shahr is a murders' jail. It's a violent criminals' jail," said ACLJ Executive Director Jordan Sekulow on Fox News following news that the U.S. pastor was abruptly transferred from Evin Prison in Tehran on Monday.
"He is not allowed any visitors, and he is under quarantine. He is in Ward 9, which is the murders' ward. So he's sharing a 10x10 cell with five people who have been convicted of violent crimes, these are people who are basically on death row. So unlike being in a prison that is horrendous and you may face torture, you are now imprisoned with people who are just as violent as maybe those prison guards."
Sekulow noted that recent protests in Iran against the U.S. government are evidence that certain elements in the Iranian regime are trying to undermine any change in relationship, or any negotiations between the United States and Iran.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been described as a "moderate" in a number of reports, and in September held the first communication between U.S. and Iran leaders since 1979 when he spoke with President Barack Obama over the phone regarding Abedini's imprisonment.
The ACLJ, which represents the pastor's wife, Naghmeh, and two children in the U.S., has led an international campaign calling for his release, insisting that he was arrested during a trip in Iran and later sentenced to eight years in prison because of his Christian faith. Despite these efforts, however, Iranian authorities have refused to release Abedini, and fears are that moving him to Rajai Shahr Prison may be a way to have him murdered by other prisoners.
TEHRAN – Iran and the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency agreed on Monday on a plan to give IAEA inspectors access to a uranium mine and a heavy water plant.
