Three killed in Bangladesh salary protest

Thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers have picketed factories and blocked roads near the capital Dhaka, in a third day of protests. They are demanding the implementation of a new minimum wage that should have come into effect last month. On Sunday, three people died and scores were injured in the protests. The unrest has paralyzed the country's $15bn garment industry, which accounts for 80% of annual export earnings. More than three million people, most of them women, work in Bangladesh's garment factories, which make clothes for major Western brands, including Wal-Mart, Marks & Spencer and Carrefour. More than 4,000 workers blocked a main highway and demonstrated outside two plants in the manufacturing district of Gazipur near Dhaka. "They have blocked the main highway linking Dhaka to the north of the country," Khandaker Shafiqul Alam, police inspector at Gazipur, told news agency AFP on Monday.