Bangladesh

=<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/cyclone-amphan-india-bangladesh-2646063894.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/cyclone-amphan-india-bangladesh-2646063894.html</a><div>=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">aha yikes: ocean buffer turns into amplifier?! 5/20 typhoon displace inda? bangladesh in covid outbreak --> camps</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18052020/hurricane-tropical-storms-climate-change">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18052020/hurricane-tropical-storms-climate-change</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>New warnings of a global warming-driven increase in the most deadly and destructive tropical storms are especially scary in regions already hit hard, including the Southeastern U.S., where Hurricane Michael damaged 60,000 homes <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CABamdgnHCA/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">in 2018</a>, and the Caribbean, where <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18092017/hurricane-maria-irma-climate-change-models-storm-path-forecast-puerto-rico" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Hurricane Maria</a> killed nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico and <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22092017/hurricane-maria-puerto-rico-congress-recovery-aid-poverty-climate-change" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">crippled the island's infrastructure</a>. There's more of the same ahead, recent federal research suggests. One <a href="https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1920849117" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">study</a> found that the chances of major tropical storms forming increased globally by 6 percent in each of the last four decades. A <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/28/1922500117" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">second</a> shows the biggest increase in frequency in already storm-battered areas, including Florida, the Bahamas, eastern Africa, Japan, China and the Philippine Islands.The results bolster "projections of increased (tropical cyclone) intensity under continued warming," the authors of the first study wrote. Those researchers focused on storms with winds greater than 115 mph (category 3 or above), because those cause the most damage.The findings landed as residents are warily watching Tropical Storm Arthur spin toward the Carolina coast well ahead of the official start of the hurricane season, and with projections for above-average hurricane activity in the Atlantic this summer. In the Bay of Bengal, Tropical Cyclone Amphan is projected to drive a deadly surge of flooding toward Bangladesh this week, with winds of more than 170 mph. Emergency responders are struggling to evacuate up to a million people, and provide them with emergency shelter during the global coronavirus pandemic, which requires evacuees maintain physical distancing to prevent the spread of the disease.New tropical storm data from 2010 to 2017 showed that "the probability of a hurricane having wind speeds of at least 100 knots increased by approximately 15 percent between the early and latter halves of the 39-year record." Overheated oceans caused by global warming are super-charging tropical storms, but year-to-year variations are also affected by short-term climate cycles like El Niño. The new study helps sort out the different influences, making it "95 percent certain" that oceans heated by global warming are brewing up bigger storms more often, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hurricane scientist Jim Kossin, who led the study."This shows us there is a global trend of more stronger hurricanes," Kossin said. "It's consistent with our expectations, based on physics." Warmer oceans supply more energy for storms and the warmer atmosphere holds more moisture.<a href="https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/analysis/storms/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;"> Several recent studies</a> show how those combine to cause more damage worldwide, and pin down the role of global warming.Increasingly, such projections help city planners and coastal developers consider if they should abandon some areas, build seawalls or floodgates, or discourage development on the most vulnerable beaches and bluffs in the next few decades. Tropical storm frequency has increased in the warm waters of the Atlantic hurricane belt, where dangerous storms often spin toward the Southeastern U.S. and the Caribbean, while decreasing in the southern Indian Ocean and Western North Pacific, according to the second <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/28/1922500117" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">study</a>.Hiroyuki Murakami, a climate scientist with the NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, led that research, which was published May 4 in PNAS. Murakami said the average annual number of tropical storms globally had held steady at 86 since 1980. The frequency increased in hotspots like the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa, Southeast Asia, around the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25082018/hurricane-lane-climate-change-ocean-sea-surface-temperature-hawaii-global-warming-tropical-weather" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Hawaiian Islands</a> and especially in the eastern Atlantic....[graph]</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div>theconv 220c<a href="https://theconversation.com/conservative-islamic-views-are-gaining-ground-in-secular-bangladesh-and-curbing-freedom-of-expression-128692" style="font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; color: rgb(0, 102, 153); text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">onservative Islamic views are gaining ground in secular Bangladesh and curbing freedom of expression</a><header style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 165px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; position: relative;"><div class="article--header" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; float: none; line-height: 1em;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-impacts-in-bangladesh-show-how-geography-wealth-and-culture-affect-vulnerability-128207" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">Climate change impacts in Bangladesh show how geography, wealth and culture affect vulnerability</a></h2><p class="byline" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 2px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 1.2; clear: both;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/saleh-ahmed-813340" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">Saleh Ahmed</a>, <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Boise State University</div></header><div class="content" data-raw="" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 165px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Bangladesh is on the front lines of climate change, but factors including money, gender and religion make some Bangladeshis much more vulnerable than others. Can it find inclusive ways to cope?</div>=Bangladesh has imposed a mobile phone blackout on Rohingya refugees, further isolating up to a million displaced people living in refugee camps. By order of the Bangladeshi telecommunications minister, only residents with national identity cards will be allowed to possess local cellphone SIM cards. The order also bars the sale of cellphones in Rohingya refugee camps and will fine telecom companies that violate the order. Two years ago, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from Burma’s Rakhine State after Burmese authorities launched a campaign that the U.N. has described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; background-color: rgb(241, 242, 243);"><li class="hidden-xs" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.33;"><a data-ga-action="Home Headlines: Headline" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/10/headlines/bangladesh_imposes_mobile_phone_blackout_on_rohingya_refugees" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px;">Bangladesh Imposes Mobile Phone Blackout on Rohingya Refugees</a></li></ul><div>=</div><div>EW</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/worlds-most-polluted-cities-2630812632.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/worlds-most-polluted-cities-2630812632.html</a></div><div>The latest data on the world's most polluted cities is out, and confirms that Asia has a major crisis on its hands when it comes to <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/air-pollution" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">air pollution</a>.The <a href="https://www.airvisual.com/world-most-polluted-cities?continent=&country=&state=&page=1&perPage=50&cities=" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">report</a>, released by <a href="https://t.co/DaMSTKfTRO" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Greenpeace</a> and software company IQAir AirVisual, shows that 22 of the world's 30 most polluted cities are in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/india" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">India</a>. Five are in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/china" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">China</a>, two in Pakistan and one is the capital of Bangladesh: Dhaka.While India dominates the list numerically, Bangladesh is actually the world's most polluted country on average when weighted by population, followed by India and Pakistan, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/world/asia/india-air-pollution.html?emc=edit_mbe_20190306&nl=morning-briefing-europe&nlid=8863129420190306&te=1" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">The New York Times reported</a>.The report looked at 2018 air quality data assessing levels of particulate matter PM2.5, a particularly dangerous form of air pollution that has been linked to a growing number of health problems from pneumonia and heart disease to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/air-pollution-dementia-2602268931.html" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">dementia</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/air-pollution-diabetes-epa-2583155988.html" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">diabetes</a>.The report assessed 3,000 cities and found that 64 percent of them had PM2.5 levels higher than <a href="https://www.who.int/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">World Health Organization</a> (WHO) safety guidelines, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/05/india-home-to-22-of-worlds-30-most-polluted-cities-greenpeace-says" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">The Guardian</a>. Every city in Africa and the Middle East exceeded the guidelines, as well as 99 percent of South Asian cities and 89 percent of East Asian cities. The study estimates that air pollution will cause seven million early deaths next year, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/05/health/100-most-polluted-cities-2018-intl/index.html?utm_campaign=fossil-fuels&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=post&utm_content=single-image&utm_term=no" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">CNN reported</a>."Air pollution steals our livelihoods and our futures, but we can change that," Executive Director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia Yeb Saño told The Guardian. "We want this report to make people think about the air we breathe, because when we understand the impacts of air quality on our lives, we will act to protect what's most important."The report indicated that China was having some success in its <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/chinas-war-on-pollution-helps-kick-coal-habit-1881952951.html" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">war on pollution</a>. PM2.5 levels fell around 12 percent for the Chinese cities listed in the report between 2017 and 2018, The New York Times reported. India, however, has had less success. Its cities' pollution levels saw relatively no change between the two years."We're still in denial," Jai Dhar Gupta, founder of Indian pollution mask company Nirvana Being, told The New York Times. "The priority for 99 percent of Indians is necessities: food, shelter and clothing. Health and environment are not even in the top 10."Here are the world's 100 most polluted cities according to the report, as summarized by CNN:1. Gurugram, India2. Ghaziabad, India3. Faisalabad, Pakistan4. Faridabad, India5. Bhiwadi, India6. Noida, India7. Patna, India8. Hotan, China9. Lucknow, India10. Lahore, Pakistan11. Delhi, India...</div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/activist-arrests-india-are-part-dangerous-global-trend-stifle-dissent">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/activist-arrests-india-are-part-dangerous-global-trend-stifle-dissent</a></div><div>
</div><div>On Tuesday morning, the police from the Indian city of Pune (in the state of Maharashtra) raided the homes of lawyers and social activists across India and arrested five of them. Many of them are not household names around the world, since they are people who work silently on behalf of the poor and oppressed in a country where half the population does not eat sufficiently. Their names are Gautam Navlakha, Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and Varavara Rao. What unites these people is their commitment to the working class and peasantry, to those who are treated as marginal to India’s state. They are also united by their opposition, which they share with millions of Indians, to the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.</div>Gautam Navlakha, a writer, was brought before the Delhi High Court. One of the two High Court judges—S. Muralidhar—was puzzled by the documents produced by the Pune Police. Some were in Marathi, which the judge could not read, while others seemed indecipherable. “It is not possible to make out a case from the documents placed before us,” he said. “What is the specific allegation against him?” the judge asked. The police remained silent. The others are to be moved to Pune. Their fate is uncertain.<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 20px;">I heard the news in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I was—coincidentally—reading carefully the 1977 letter written by the writer and militant Rodolfo Walsh. Walsh’s Operation Massacre (1957) inaugurates a genre of writing now called “narrative non-fiction.” He went to Cuba in the early years of the revolution and cracked the CIA code that warned the revolutionary Cuban government about the Bay of Pigs invasion. Returning to Argentina, Walsh became part of an organization—Montoneros—that fought against the drift of his country into the arms of the ruthless military dictatorship that began in 1976. On the first anniversary of the dictatorship, Walsh mailed several copies of his letter—an open letter—that detailed the “raw numbers of this terror,” the arrests and detentions, the vanished militants of the trade union and student movement, the gasping for air of his society. “You have arrived at a form of absolute, metaphysical torture, unbounded by time,” wrote Walsh in the letter that sealed his fate. He was arrested and vanished—his body burned and thrown into a river in Buenos Aires.What befell Rodolfo Walsh is the fate of too many today—in plain sight.The “raw numbers of this terror” are best counted from Turkey. Since the failed coup of July 15, 2016, the government has arrested, detained or dismissed about 160,000 government officials, dismissing 12,000 Kurdish teachers, destroying the livelihood of thousands of people. The editor of Cumhuriyet, Can Dündar, called this the “biggest witch-hunt in Turkey’s history.” In the name of the war on terror and in the name of sedition, the government has arrested and intimidated its political opponents. The normality of this is astounding—leaders of the opposition HDP party remain in prison on the flimsiest of charges, with little international condemnation. They suffer a fate comparable to Brazil’s Lula, also incarcerated with no evidence.Governments do not typically like dissent. In Bangladesh, the photographer <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/confrontation-in-dhaka/article24628043.ece" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Shahidul Alam</a> remains in detention for his views on the massive protests in Dhaka for traffic reform and against government corruption. Condemnation of the arrest has come from all quarters, including a British Member of Parliament—Tulip Siddiq—who is the niece of Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The avalanche of criticism has not moved the government. Alam is accused of inciting violence, a charge that is equal parts of ridiculous and absurd.Incitement to violence is a common charge. It is what has taken the Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour to an Israeli prison. Tatour’s poem, “Resist, my people, resist them” (Qawim ya sha’abi, qawimhum), was the reason given by the Israeli government to lock her up. The Egyptian government has taken in the poet Galal El-Behairy for the lyrics he wrote for the song “Balaha”—the name a reference to a character in a 1980s film who sees the world in a topsy-turvy manner, a name now used colloquially in Egypt for President Sisi. The Ugandan government has arrested the radio show host Samuel Kyambadde, who merely allowed his talk show to become a forum for a conversation that included items labeled by the government as seditious—such as the arrest of journalists and the arrest of the opposition MP Robert Kyagulanyi (also known as Bobi Wine).All of them—photographers, poets, radio show hosts—are treated as voices of sedition, dangerous people who can be locked up under regulations that would make any fair-minded person wince. But there is not even any public debate in most of our societies about such measures, no genuine discussion about the slide into the worst kind of authoritarianism, little public outcry.Pain shudders through the arteries of Indian society. The rule of the current government has hardened society, allowed people of ferocious hatred to walk the streets and deliver the justice that they think is appropriate. These vigilantes believe that they can kill anyone who they think threatens cows or that they can kill anyone they dislike (Muslims, oppressed castes, leftists). These are assassinations of ordinary people—people whose names are flashed across the screen for a day or so and then forgotten as other names of other people who have been murdered arrive. Some of them are killed for their social background, others for their political commitments.Four writers and activists—Gauri Lankesh, M.M. Kalburgi, Govind Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar—had been killed in sequence....<div></div>MIKE ELK: Well, it appears—you know, the U.S. government did slap a small sanction on the Bangladeshi government for its record on workers’ right. They took away their GSP special trade status. But that only cost the Bangladeshi government—the Bangladeshi industries about $40 million a year, and it doesn’t directly affect the garment industries. It’s more symbolic.It appears, from the reporting of reporters like Banglashi reporter Emran Hossain and others, that things are going back to normal in Bangladesh. In fact, in some ways, labor law is getting worse in Bangladesh. Hospital workers and nonprofit workers got the right to join a union taken away in Bangladesh. Workers in export processing zones still don’t have the right to unionize. Reporting by people like Jim Yardley of The New York Times shows that the building inspectors are still doing the same kind of corrupt things they used to do in the past. So it appears that business is going back to normal.And nothing has been done to track down the people that killed Bangladeshi trade unionist Aminul Islam in 2012. And the Bangladeshi government won’t even provide a photo of the suspects so that they can track it down, and it’s widely believed that the people that killed Aminul Islam were the Bangladeshi intelligence service.So, it appears that there’s some more pressure going on, but Bangladesh seems to be waiting it out. And, you know, the U.S. could slap tougher sanctions on Bangladesh if they wanted to, but Bangladesh keeps throwing out this card that if they do, it will breed radical Islam in Bangladesh. So you really see, interestingly, the war on terror preventing tougher—you know, disrupting activists at home here in the U.S., as well as preventing tougher sanctions on Bangladesh, because of this fear of radical Islam in Bangladesh.AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Mike Elk, we just have 10 seconds, but does anything happen when an undercover officer who’s posing as a protester actually gets outed, like in the case of Nicole Rizzi?==
by Michael Grabell, ProPublica<a href="http://redstatedems.com/blog/2013/06/12/walmart-accepted-clothing-banned-bangladesh-factories/">http://redstatedems.com/blog/2013/06/12/walmart-accepted-clothing-banned-bangladesh-factories/</a>Since the Rana Plaza building collapse killed more than 1,100 people in April, retailers have faced mounting pressure to improve safety at Bangladesh garment factories and to sever ties with manufacturers that don’t measure up.The world’s largest retailer, Walmart, last month released a list of more than 200 factories it said it had barred from producing its merchandise because of serious or repeated safety problems, labor violations or unauthorized subcontracting.
But at least two of the factories on the list have continued to send massive shipments of sports bras and girls’ dresses to Walmart stores in recent months, according to interviews and U.S. customs records.In June 2011, Walmart said, it banned the Bangladeshi garment factory Mars Apparels from producing goods for the retail giant. But over the last year, Mars has repeatedly shipped tons of sports bras to Walmart, according to U.S. customs records and Mars owners. The most recent shipment was in late May, almost two years after Walmart claims it stopped doing business with the Bangladeshi firm.A second Bangladeshi clothing maker, Simco Dresses, was blacklisted in January but continued shipping to Walmart Canada into March.Walmart spokesman Kevin Gardner said the Mars shipments were allowed because of confusion over whether Walmart’s standards applied. Mars didn’t produce garments with a Walmart house brand but instead with a Fruit of the Loom label. So, Gardner said, it wasn’t clear if Mars needed to meet Walmart’s standards or Fruit of the Loom’s.Fruit of the Loom could not immediately be reached for comment.As for Simco, orders that Walmart had already placed were accepted to lessen the impact on workers, Gardner said.The shipments raise questions about Walmart’s ability to monitor its supply chain as well as its efforts to ensure decent working conditions in factories located in low-wage countries.Interviews with Bangladeshi factory owners spotlight another potential problem: Walmart’s approach of publishing a blacklist with no further details might unfairly tar family businesses with minor violations.International labor groups have been pressing retailers to sign an <a href="http://www.industriall-union.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/2013-05-13-accord_on_fire_and_building_safety_in_bangladesh.pdf#overlay-context=" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">accord</a> to pay for fire and building safety upgrades to Bangladesh factories. So far, several large retailers including H&M, Inditex and PVH Corp., which includes Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, <a href="http://www.industriall-union.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/2013-05-13-accord_on_fire_and_building_safety_in_bangladesh.pdf#overlay-context=" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">have signed</a> onto the agreement.But many of the biggest retailers in the United States, including Walmart and Gap, have not. Instead, they are working on an alternative plan that they say will improve safety faster – but that is not legally binding.“We think the safety plan that we’ve put in place already meets or exceeds the [other] proposal and is going to get results more quickly,” Gardner said. “The point of the list is to get more accountability and transparency into our supply chain.”Soon, he said, Walmart would also publish safety audits of its current suppliers in Bangladesh.Dan Schlademan, a United Food and Commercial Workers leader who directs the union’s <a href="http://makingchangeatwalmart.org/" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">Making Change at Walmart campaign</a>, said the shipments from barred factories show that Walmart’s program is hollow.“It’s either a question of Walmart just telling people what they want to hear,” he said, “or it’s that Walmart has created a supply chain system that they have no control over.”Making Change at Walmart initially provided the customs data. ProPublica verified the information and found other shipments using public data compiled by research firms serving the import-export industry.<a href="http://marsapparels.com/" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">Mars Apparels</a> is a manufacturer of lingerie and sportswear in the port city of Chittagong. In the last year, the garment maker sent at least 22 shipments, totaling 80 tons, of sports bras through the Port of Newark, according to customs records compiled by <a href="http://www.importgenius.com/" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">Import Genius</a>, a data consultant for the import-export industry. In each case, the customer was listed as “Walmart Stores” and the product mark as “<a href="http://www.ariela-alpha.com/" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">Ariela-Alpha International</a>,” whose brands include L.e.i. and Fruit of the Loom. (Ariela-Alpha did not return phone calls.)Reached on a cell phone in Bangladesh, Shaker Ahmed, deputy managing director of Mars Apparels and the son of its founder, confirmed the customs data and said that the latest shipment went out last month. (Customs data show several May shipments in which the customer was listed as “WMR.”)But Ahmed said that until contacted by ProPublica, he had never had any problems with Walmart or heard about its list of banned factories. He described Mars as a medium-sized garment manufacturer with less than 1,000 workers.Ahmed said Mars has supplied Walmart for more than a decade, though since 2008 it has been making clothes for private labels such as Fruit of the Loom that are owned or licensed by an importer, which then supplies the clothing to Walmart.When Mars was manufacturing clothing for Walmart brands, its factory was regularly audited by the company, Ahmed said. Walmart rates its suppliers green, yellow, orange and red, with green being the best and red the worst, he said. “We never received a rating below yellow.”Since 2008, Ahmed said he has passed all audits by Fruit of the Loom, which uses the <a href="http://www.wrapapparel.org/en/certified-facility-list" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production program</a> to inspect factories. Walmart said Mars didn’t meet all of its criteria, which it said is more stringent than WRAP’s. Ahmed said he welcomed Walmart to look at his factory and that the company is in the process of building a state-of-the-art facility.Walmart accounts for a “very large” percentage of Mars’ business, Ahmed said. “If Walmart were to tell us they’re stopping production, if that were to happen, we would be destroyed. Our workers would be destroyed. We haven’t had a single incident in 19 years. We never had a problem. So that would be catastrophe.”The other banned garment maker in the recent customs records, Simco Dresses, was blacklisted in January. The Import Genius records show three shipments of girls’ dresses in February and March to the <a href="http://theisfelco.com/" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">Isfel Co.</a> destined for Walmart Canada. Isfel didn’t return a call.Customs records provided by another trade research firm <a href="http://www.piers.com/" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">PIERS</a> show four more March shipments of knitted dresses and rompers, also destined for Walmart Canada.The Bangladeshi <a href="http://newagebd.com/detail.php?date=2013-01-23&nid=37733" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">press</a> <a href="http://archive.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=266296" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">reported</a> in January that Walmart had refused a shipment of women’s shorts from Simco after discovering unauthorized subcontracting to Tazreen Fashion, where <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_fire" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">a fire killed 117 people</a> last year. Simco <a href="http://thedhakapost.com/2013/02/26/wal-mart-washes-hands-off-simcos-hardship/" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">said at the time</a> that Walmart’s ban could drive it into bankruptcy.Simco’s managing director Muzaffar Siddique said his firm had subcontracted an order to an authorized Walmart supplier, which then sent the work to Tazreen without its knowledge.Asked about the February and March shipments from Simco, Walmart spokesman Gardner said, “If it isn’t an egregious matter, we will accept goods produced under existing orders as part of our efforts to mitigate impact on the workers.”Siddique contended that Walmart’s listing of his company is unfair and is damaging his family’s business. After the list was published, he said J.C. Penney canceled a $300,000 order for 500,000 pairs of pajamas.“We are very upset about it,” Siddique said. “When I do business with you, it is like a doctor-patient relationship; there should be confidentiality. Walmart has no business going about publishing people’s names that it thinks are bad because that jeopardizes other business we are doing with our customers.”Walmart is the only U.S. retailer to release a list of barred factories in Bangladesh. Gap, which also has a large presence in Bangladesh, said in a <a href="http://www.gapinc.com/content/gapinc/html/csr/bangladesh.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">May statement</a> that it has committed up to $22 million for factory improvements and that its stepped-up inspections have already led to some vendors upgrading their plants. But the company has said it would not sign on to the accord because of a provision that could allow victims of future factory accidents to sue the companies in U.S. courts.Walmart, Gap and other large retailers are moving forward with developing an <a href="http://bipartisanpolicy.org/news/press-releases/2013/05/leading-north-american-retailers-and-brands-address-systemic-safety-issu" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">alternative safety plan</a> with the help of former U.S. Sens. George Mitchell, D-Maine, and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.“We are committed to Bangladesh,” Gardner said. “We understand the role that we play in improving the livelihood of factory workers in that country. And improving the safety of those workers is very important to us.”But Walmart’s approach of naming factories as “red-failed/unauthorized” has led to criticism in the Bangladeshi garment community that Walmart is trying to shift blame rather than serve as a partner.“What Wal-Mart is doing at the moment is nothing but saving its own skin,” Reaz Bin Mahmood of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/06/us-bangladesh-walmart-insight-idUSBRE9550F720130606" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.25s linear 0s; font-weight: bold;">told Reuters</a>. “As a responsible business partner they should stay with us and help improve working conditions for the safety and security of workers.”</div>