The death toll in the deadly Bangladesh building collapse topped 500 on Thursday, while the country’s Finance minister tried to downplay the tragedy, calling it “not really serious.” “These are individual cases of ... accidents,” Finance Minister Abud Maal Abdul Muhith said Friday. “It happens everywhere.” Muhith insisted that the disaster would not harm Bangladesh’s garment industry, the country’s biggest export industry. But he may have his work cut out for him: last month Disney decided to pull its factories from Bangladesh. Although Disney represented less than 1 percent of Bangladesh’s garment industry, others could follow the entertainment giant’s lead.

The owner of the building, Sohel Rana, who is under investigation in the worker's deaths has had his assets seized. Protesters have called for him to be hanged.

Bangladeshi police on Thursday arrested the engineer who warned a day before the disaster that the building was unsafe.

NYT:

The arrest of the engineer, Abdur Razzaque Khan, was a surprise twist since he was regarded as something of a hero for trying to avert the April 24 disaster. A day before the building collapsed, Mr. Khan had been summoned because cracks had suddenly appeared in the structure, forcing an evacuation. He concluded that the building had become dangerous and should be closed until experts could conduct a more thorough investigation — advice that turned out to be grimly prescient.

His comments appeared the next morning in at least one national newspaper. But the police say that the building’s owner, Sohel Rana, and the factory owners are blaming Mr. Khan, saying he told them the cracks were just a small problem. A police official said that Mr. Khan is being interrogated to determine who is telling the truth.

Authorities also suspended the mayor of the city, Savar, for his part in the tragedy. He stands accused of improperly granting building permits to Mr. Rana, who is a political ally, and of failure to take appropriate action to close the building when the structural cracks appeared.

Silent rally against another rape in New Delhi on April 23rd.

A four-year-old Indian girl who was brutally raped died on Monday, hospital authorities said on Tuesday. The little girl had been on a ventilator after suffering severe injuries to both her brain and her vagina. She had been in a coma since April 18, the day after the attack. The girl was the daughter of day laborers in Ghansor. Police said she was lured from her home and was found the next day -- bleeding profusely -- by her parents. Firoz Khan, 27, has been arrested in connection to the attack. A second man, Rakesh Chaudhary, 25, has been arrested for taking the girl to her attacker but not in the rape itself.

NYT:

In India’s capital city of Delhi, just in the month of April, the police said several juvenile girls have been raped. The rape of a five-year old girl in Delhi ignited sometimes violent protests earlier this month in the nation’s capital, but as of Tuesday at noon, there was little public reaction in Madhya Pradesh over the recent death.

“The value of life for a little girl whether in Delhi or Madhya Pradesh is the same,” said Varun Amar, a lawyer from Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh. “So why are people not coming on to the streets when this girl has died?”

“The girl from Delhi got 24-7 coverage, but this girl’s death has hardly been covered,” he said.

The cause of the rise in reported sexual assaults of girls under 18-years-old in India has been examined, with a combination of social and cultural factors blamed by some experts. One Indian religious leader blames the rapes on the "increased consumption of meat and alcohol."

There may be some in the nation who have forgotten the Bush years, explaining his recent bump in a recent Washington Post approval poll, but groups like CODEPINK, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Veterans for Peace and others were on hand at the opening ceremony of the G.W. Bush Library in Dallas on Thursday morning to remind everyone of those 8 years of hell.

Via:

"During the opening dedication ceremony of the George W. Bush Library & Policy Center in Dallas, Texas, Dennis Trainor Jr. of Acronym TV and Gary Egelston of Iraq Veterans Against the War wearing Bush and Cheney papermache impressions, were brutally arrested for walking off the curb. The Bush and Cheney characters were in the custody of CODEPINK Co-founder Medea Benjamin, dressed as a pink police, who was forced back to the sidewalk while the Dallas police dragged Trainor and Egelston to the ground. "It was an appalling use of brutal force immediately. What happened to a warning or a request 'Sir, hands behind your back'?" said Medea Benjamin, who is still recovering from the whiplash of the event."

"Photographer Bill Perry of Veterans for Peace followed the action into the street and was also arrested. He is just recovering from an illness so fellow Veterans were pleading with the police to release him, but to no avail."

"Gary Egelston is a resident of Dallas/Ft Worth area and has served 2 tours of duty in Iraq."

"CODEPINK activists and allies have been using the opportunity of the opening of the new George W. Bush Library & Policy Center in Dallas to bring attention to the injustices committed by former president George W. Bush and his administration, particularly the invasion and destruction of Iraq and the use of torture directed from his office."

Other protesters included ex-talk show host Phil Donahue, who was executive producer of the anti-war documentary Body of War.

Dozens of others wore signs listing the names of those who died in wars launched by the Bush administration.

"We refuse to allow the Bush Library to be a Bush Lie Bury. If anything, it is a monument to folly and should be filled with the biographies of the lives ended, ruined or injured, the principles abandoned, the resources wasted, and the time lost" says Bill Moyer, executive director of The Backbone Campaign.

All three of the arrested protesters were charged with misdemeanors and released after 13 hours in custody.

The slow Internet connection isn’t just you. The Web has been under one of its biggest-ever attacks since a Dutch Web-hosting company caused service to be disrupted and slowed down. Here’s how it went down: a Geneva-based spam-fighting group, Spamhaus, temporarily added a Dutch firm Cyberbunker, to an email blacklist that blocks out spam, and Cyberbunker did not react well. Cyberbunker infamously operates out of NATO bunker and boasts of hosting any Web site “except child porn and anything related to terrorism” -- which is most likely how it ended up on the list of spammers in the first place. In retaliation, Cyberbunker launched the attack, which has slowed down many sites, including Netflix and other services.

NYT:

A typical denial-of-service attack tends to affect only a small number of networks. But in the case of a Domain Name System flood attack, data packets are aimed at the victim from servers all over the world. Such attacks cannot easily be stopped, experts say, because those servers cannot be shut off without halting the Internet.

“The No. 1 rule of the Internet is that it has to work,” said Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who years ago pointed out the inherent vulnerabilities of the Domain Name System. “You can’t stop a DNS flood by shutting down those servers because those machines have to be open and public by default. The only way to deal with this problem is to find the people doing it and arrest them.”

The heart of the problem, according to several Internet engineers, is that many large Internet service providers have not set up their networks to make sure that traffic leaving their networks is actually coming from their own users. The potential security flaw has long been known by Internet security specialists, but it has only recently been exploited in a way that threatens the Internet infrastructure.

An engineer at one of the largest Internet communications firms said the attacks in recent days have been as many as five times larger than what was seen recently in attacks against major American banks. He said the attacks were not large enough to saturate the company’s largest routers, but they had overwhelmed important equipment.

Patrick Gilmore, chief architect at Akamai Technologies, a digital content provider, said “It is a real number, it is the largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the Internet.”

You've probably seen at least one version of the "Harlem Shake" making the rounds online. In the video above you can watch Tunisia's version, which is quickly becoming a new form of political protest.

The New York Times Latitude Blog writes:

"The Arab revolutions are going through a rough patch, from political uncertainty in North Africa to daily massacres in Syria. Egypt appears, at times, on the brink of either economic collapse or a military coup. Tunisia is still reeling from a political assassination and may face prolonged instability, as negotiations for the formation of a new government unfold with little chance of a consensus emerging. Many ordinary citizens in both countries are depressed and disoriented.

But at least they haven’t lost their sense of humor.

The latest meme to take over both Egyptian and Tunisian social media involves filming a silly dance to the Harlem Shake, an electronic tune by the American D.J. Baauer, and uploading the result to YouTube. The trend started in Australia, but it has spread to the Middle East, with a twist: It is getting people arrested or in trouble, turning it into a new genre of political protest.

Maybe a Global Harlem Shake Day...you in?

They sat in the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard and waited for the police to throw them in jail. But the over 100 strong members of the Culinary 226 and Bartenders 165 union were not quiet in their waiting, blocking traffic for an hour and chanting a message for the decision-makers of the Cosmopolitan resort, where union employees have been working without a contract for two years.

"Cosmopolitan, look around, Las Vegas is a union town!" they chanted. “... No justice, no peace! ...”

NBC News 3:

Culinary Union spokeswoman Yvanna Cancela says the planned Wednesday evening protest will be the first time in two decades that workers have engaged in civil disobedience outside a unionized casino.

Workers have been in contract talks with Cosmopolitan Las Vegas owner Deutsche Bank for two years.

According to watch commander Lt. Bruce Miyama there were about 1,000 demonstrators at the protest. At 5:40 p.m. some started blocking the roadways. 104 people were arrested, cited and released. No physical arrests were made.

The demonstrators were out of the roadway by 6:05 p.m. and traffic was reopened at 6:30 p.m.

More than 80 Metro officers were on scene.

Union members described it as an act of civil disobedience and stressed the action was non-violent and included clergy members.

The protesters blame Deutsche Bank for their lack of a contract for not allowing fair wages and benefits:

"You always hate to do something like this, but sometimes this is what happens and it's necessary – fighting for justice. I am prepared to be arrested," one protestor said.

In a press release, the Cosmopolitan stated

"As we've said before, the Cosmopolitan management is in ongoing negotiations with the union to find a fair agreement. We are hopeful that progress can continue in a positive direction and for continued clarity, the negotiations are being conducted solely between The Cosmopolitan management and the union."

"Our highest priority will continue to be on the safety and hospitality of our guests and CoStars. We will work with the authorities to ensure that access to the resort is maintained."

Video streaming by Ustream

On Monday morning, over 100 students and community members marched into TransCanada’s Westborough office and held a funeral mourning the loss of their future at the hands of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would transport the tar sands that climate scientists say will lock us into irreversible global warming. More than 25 protesters were arrested for refusing to leave the office in an act of civil disobedience.

From Funeral for Our Future:

On Monday, March 11, over 100 people representing a coalition of students, members of the Massachusetts Methodist clergy, mothers fighting for their children, and concerned community members marched into the Westborough, MA office of TransCanada Corporation and held a funeral mourning the loss of our future at the hands of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline will transport the tar sands that climate scientists say will lock us into irreversible global warming.

Of those 100 protesters, 25 of us locked themselves together with handcuffs and were arrested in an act of civil disobedience. Carrying a coffin emblazoned with the words “Our Future,” we held flowers and sang an elegy as we marched in procession.

Our action comes a week after a week after the US State Department released a widely criticized Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Keystone XL. While admitting that rejecting the pipeline would have little effect on jobs, the document minimizes claims about the pipeline’s impact on climate change and on communities who would be at risk for devastating pipeline spills like the 2010 Kalamazoo spill, from which the affected communities are still recovering. The impact assessment also makes the assumption that the Alberta tar sands will be developed regardless of whether Keystone XL goes forward—an assumption that we stand with indigenous communities, whose treaties the Canadian government is violating by allowing development of the tar sands, in rejecting.

“If the tar sands are extracted and burned, it will wipe out my future and the future of my entire generation,” said Will Pearl, a Tufts University freshman arrested in the action. “If President Obama will not reject the Keystone XL pipeline, we will stop it ourselves. We will rise up and resist -- from the backwoods of Texas, to corporate offices in Massachusetts, to the steps of the White House.”

For updates on this action, you can follow along on Twitter here.

H/T Brad Johnson

Prominent environmental leaders, including the head of the Sierra Club, were arrested Wednesday after tying themselves to the White House gate to protest the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

The protesters demand that President Barack Obama reject the pipeline, which they say would carry “dirty oil” that contributes to global warming.

Executive Director Michael Brune is the first Sierra Club leader in the group's 120-year history to be arrested in an act of civil disobedience. The club's board of directors approved the action as a sign of their opposition to the $7 billion pipeline, which would carry oil derived from tar sands in western Canada to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president of Waterkeeper Alliance, was arrested along with his son, Connor, the 18-year-old ex-boyfriend of singer Taylor Swift. In an emailed statement from his organization, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said "It's unfortunate that civil disobedience is the only recourse against a catastrophic and criminal enterprise that will enrich a few while impoverishing the rest of humanity and threatening the future of civilization."

Along with the Kennedys, 350.org founder Bill McKibben, and actress Daryl Hannah were also arrested. Hannah was previously arrested for separate Keystone pipeline protests in Texas last October and at the White House in August 2011.

McKibben said in a statement from Tar Sands Action, “We really shouldn’t have to be put in handcuffs to stop KXL–our nation’s leading climate scientists have told us it’s dangerous folly, and all the recent Nobel Peace laureates have urged us to set a different kind of example for the world, so the choice should be obvious."

In all, 48 environmental, civil rights, and community leaders from across the country joined together for a historic display of civil disobedience at the White House, where they were arrested on Wednesday after they handcuffed themselves to the fence.

Tar sands pipelines have a horrendous track record: the existing Keystone 1 pipeline leaked twelve times in its first year, and at least thirty times to date. In 2010, the added dangers of tar sands pipelines were demonstrated by Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline spill of over a million gallons of diluted bitumen into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. The Kalamazoo Tar Sands spill is the costliest inland spill in United States history, draining the oil spill coffers and placing the $800 million and rising price tag onto the backs of local and federal taxpayers. But it is not the monetary burden that weighs heaviest; the toll on human life, health and local ecosystems is immeasurable, and in the immediate, the toxicity of the diluted bitumen and undisclosed proprietary chemicals has proven devastating.

New details have emerged about the deadly fire that swept through a Brazilian nightclub. Guards reportedly first tried to prevent people from leaving, but the death toll was also increased because there was only one door through which club-goers could exit. Once firefighters arrived, they were unable to enter due to “a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance.” They later tried to cut their way in through the walls, but most of those who died suffocated within minutes after the fire started. Many of the victims were younger than 20, and the Federal University of Santa Maria confirmed that 101 of its students were killed in the blaze. Officials believe that the fire started when band members held up a flare and ignited soundproofing in the ceiling. Police have now arrested three people in connection with the fire, including the nightclub's owner, a vocalist in the band, and a person in charge of stage safety.

Previous report on this story:

Brazil Nightclub Fire Kills Hundreds

Video via Al Jazeera

Some of the world's largest energy giants are moving into eastern Australia and investing billions of dollars to exploit coal seam gas reserves so vast they could rewrite the world's energy map. Despite generating massive amounts of revenue and creating thousands of new jobs, they are being met by a groundswell of public protest and a rising chorus of concern about the long-term impacts of coal seam gas extraction on the nation's health, environment and land. Coal seam gas has the potential to make Australia an energy superpower, but at what price?

12 protesters were arrested this week during a demonstration of about 150 people at a coal seam gas drilling site. Activists had locked themselves to trees and trucks.

Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham criticized police for being forceful:

"It's a sad reflection on the coal seam gas industry that police have to arrest local residents and force their way through a community blockade so that they can drill for gas," he said in a statement.

"There is no future for coal seam gas in NSW if each drill rig needs to have a police guard to force its way into communities."

The protesters have been keeping a blockade of the drilling site going for nearly two months now, but police seem determined to break any protest that interferes with drilling.