Following yet another fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Saturday, January  26 that killed at least seven people who were locked inside Smart Export Garments Ltd, the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) called on major retailers and brands that buy apparel from Bangladesh to join the labor-supported Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement in order to prevent future tragedies, according to a statement issued by the Clean Clothes Campaign.

Words fail at times like this – another garment factory fire in Bangladesh; 112 dead and 150 injured; another round of despair and anguish for the workers and their families; another round of denials by international garment brands that they bear any responsibility; another round of promises by the brands and their contractors that they will “do better” while refusing to acknowledge that it is their “profits first and foremost” production system that has led to fire after fire after fire.

Here is a roundup of the week’s top news stories from www.ISHN.com:

A blaze that killed at least 112 workers in Bangladesh Saturday occurred in a garment factory that was known to be unsafe by at least one of the U.S. companies that sourced goods from it.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has called for national action to protect workers' health and safety, following the deaths of at least 240 workers in a garment factory in Karachi, Pakistan.

At least 261 people burnt to death as fires swept through two factories in Pakistan, police and government officials said on Wednesday, raising familiar questions about industrial safety in the nuclear-armed South Asian nation.