BANGLADESH
Garment workers’s wages to be raised
Bangladesh’s government plans to raise the minimum wage for garment workers, a Cabinet minister said Sunday, after the deaths of more than 1,100 people in the April 24 collapse of a factory building focused international attention on the textile industry’s dismal pay and hazardous working conditions. A new minimum wage board will issue recommendations for pay raises within three months, Textiles Minister Abdul Latif Siddiky said. The Cabinet will then decide whether to accept those proposals. The wage board will include representatives of factory owners, workers and the government, he said.
BULGARIA
Exit polls: No clear winner in vote
Bulgaria’s center-right party and its main challenger, the Socialists, finished first and second in Sunday’s parliamentary election, with neither one winning a majority needed to form a government, two exit polls indicated. If that outcome is confirmed, it could lead to more political and economic instability in this financially strapped Balkan nation. That was clear late Sunday when dozens of angry people clashed with police in front of the election press center where party leaders arrived for post-election news conferences. Some 6.9 million eligible voters chose among candidates from 36 parties.
ISRAEL
Leader criticized for installing bed on plane
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will seek alternate sleeping arrangements when traveling after receiving a sky-high bill for installing a customized bed on a recent flight to London, officials close to the Israeli leader said. Netanyahu found himself facing a public uproar Sunday after a television station reported over the weekend that he had spent $127,000 in public funds on a special sleeping cabin for the five-hour flight to attend Margaret Thatcher’s funeral last month. The Israeli prime minister’s office does not have its own plane, such as the U.S. presidential aircraft Air Force One. Instead, Israeli leaders must charter a plane when traveling abroad.
CALIFORNIA
Officers seek triple homicide suspect
More than 70 law enforcement officers were part of the ongoing hunt Sunday for a Northern California man wanted in the killing of his wife and two young daughters. The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department said SWAT teams from three counties, federal officials and local police continued to search through the rugged terrain of California’s remote North Coast for Shane Franklin Miller. Miller, 45, is suspected of slaying his family Tuesday night in the rural community of Shingletown, then fleeing to Humboldt County. Miller — who is considered armed and extremely dangerous — grew up in the area and knows the thick forests of the region very well, officials said.
LIBYA
Officials back at work after militia siege
Officials at two Libyan government ministries returned to work Sunday after nearly two weeks of protests by militia fighters, who blocked the entrances to the buildings. Militias, many composed of former rebels who fought in Libya’s eight-month civil war that toppled Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, have mushroomed in size and power in the past two years. The militias blocked access to the ministries in an attempt to push parliament to pass a contentious law that would prevent members of Gadhafi’s regime from serving in senior government posts. Libyan lawmakers approved the measure over the weekend, with guns still drawn on the streets.
SPAIN
British fugitive caught sunbathing
Spanish police sneaked up on a British fugitive as he sunbathed, arresting him in a dramatic raid that even saw the suspect leap onto the roof of a nearby outhouse to try to get away. The arrest of Andrew Terence Moran, 31, on Friday came some four years after he assaulted and escaped from security guards during an armed robbery trial in the United Kingdom. Moran was found at a luxury villa in Calpe, a resort on the Alicante coast, an Interior Ministry statement said Sunday. Police video footage showed how officers stealthily approached a swimming pool while hiding behind walls before pouncing on Moran as he relaxed in red swimming trunks.
MINNESOTA
Ice from lake pushed ashore to doorsteps
Strong winds have pushed huge ice sheets ashore at a northern Minnesota lake and right up to people’s doorsteps. WCCO-TV reports that the ice from Lake Mille Lacs reached the doors and windows at the Izatys Resort on Saturday morning. National Weather Service Meteorologist Shawn Devinny says 30 to 40 mile an hour winds pushed the water into the ice, driving it ashore. He says the winds were lighter Sunday and the shoreline got a reprieve. The Department of Natural Resources says about 10 miles of shoreline are covered, with some reaching up to 30 feet high.
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