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Rescue workers are still hoping to find survivors from the collapse of an eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh that has killed nearly 300 people and left hundreds missing.

Meanwhile, angry relatives of the missing have clashed with police, blaming authorities for the catastrophe at Rana Plaza in Savar, an industrial suburb of the capital, Dhaka.

Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing rescue operations, told The Associated Press that the death toll at the building that collapsed Wednesday had reached 290, and that 2,200 people have been rescued. The AP says the garment manufacturers' group said the factories in the building employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were inside when it collapsed.

Speaking to NPR, Anbarasan Ethirajan, a Bangladesh-based reporter for the BBC, says rescuers have been using "cranes, diggers and even bare hands."

The factory complex, which reportedly supplies major retailers in the United States and Europe, showed signs that something was wrong the day before the structure suddenly crashed to the ground. Ethirajan says workers had reported cracks in the walls and floor.

Survivors and officials told Ethirajan that when the owner of the building was informed, "he said 'no need to worry about the safety,' [that] they can go back to work on the next day."

One of the garment workers who survived the collapse told Ethirajan that they were told Tuesday "if they didn't go back to work, they might lose their wages."

But employees at a bank on the first floor did not report for work Wednesday because they feared for their safety, he said.

Thousands of workers from the hundreds of garment factories across the Savar industrial zone and other nearby industrial areas are protesting over the collapse and poor safety standards, according to the AP.

Garment makers in the building include at least two that claim to supply Western retail outlets.

The AP reports:

"Britain's Primark acknowledged it was using a factory in Rana Plaza, but many other retailers distanced themselves from the disaster, saying they were not involved with the factories at the time of the collapse or had not recently ordered garments from them. Wal-Mart said none of its clothing had been authorized to be made in the facility, but it is investigating whether there was any unauthorized production."

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2013, the Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated Friday morning.

That's modest growth, and was below the 3.2 percent pace economists had expected to hear about. But growth was up substantially from fourth-quarter 2012, when the economy expanded at a scant 0.4 percent annual rate.

The agency will issue revised estimates of first-quarter growth in each of the next two months, so the figure could change. The agency initially reported, for example, that gross domestic product shrank at a 0.1 percent annual rate in fourth-quarter 2012. Then it said there was 0.1 percent growth. On its third swing at the figures, it came up with the 0.4 percent estimate. The figures shift as more information comes in.

We'll have more from the report and reactions to it as the morning continues.

Update at 8:55 a.m. ET. Not Much Real Change?

According to MarketWatch:

"The acceleration in growth in the early stages of the year stood in sharp contrast to the paltry 0.4% increase in gross domestic product in the fourth quarter of 2012. Yet the underlying strength of demand for U.S.-made goods and services was actually weaker in the first quarter. So-called real final sales rose just 1.5% — matching the smallest increase in two years.

"The softness in demand suggests little change in the overall pace of U.S. growth once unusual factors are stripped out. The economy has been expanding at about a 2% clip for the past two years."

Wolfe, Cockrell and the rest of the team got a couple of Nexus smartphones from Amazon. They added extras, like plus-sized batteries and a powerful transmitter. They put it all in a metal case about the size of a Kleenex box. But the phones were still ordinary smartphones; they still had games on them. "We played around with Angry Birds on the ground," Wolfe says.

The PhoneSats hitched a ride on the very first flight of a commercial rocket called Antares, which NASA hopes will soon be resupplying the International Space Station.

"Within the first orbit after being released from the launch vehicle, we started receiving signals," Cockrell says. The signals from the satellites, which are named "Alexander," "Graham" and "Bell," are actually picked up by ham radio operators all over the world, who send them to the team at NASA Ames. The team is now in the process of using the small data packets to piece together photos taken by the different PhoneSats' cameras.

The achievement could mark big changes in the satellite business. Peter Platzer, CEO of NanoSatisfi, a startup company that's about to launch a small satellite into space using money raised on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, sees a world in which satellites aren't owned solely by powerful corporations and governments.

“ I think whenever you create this flexible platform that you let people program and decide what their own use is, it becomes really, really hard to predict where the combined genius of mankind will lead that platform.

Consumer advocates call them "debt" traps. The banks that offer them call them direct-deposit advances and describe them as available funds for short-term emergencies.

But the cash advances have many of the negative characteristics of payday loans. And on Thursday, U.S. bank regulators took a step toward protecting consumers from the risks they pose. The regulators proposed standards for "deposit-advance products."

Annette Smith, 69, lives in Rocklin, Calif., and knows firsthand how risky direct-deposit advances are. She got one in December 2007 from her local Wells Fargo bank. She had intended to get a small loan to repair her truck.

"And so I asked in the lobby, you know, my banker, 'Could I possibly make a small loan.' And he said, 'We don't make any loans below $5,000,' " Smith says.

But he told her she could get a $500 advance that will be automatically paid off when her next direct-deposit came in. So Smith says she went home, got on the bank's website, clicked around and automatically had $500 in her account.

The loan had to be paid back in full when her next Social Security check was deposited. So, on the third of the month, when her Social Security check came in for a little over $1,200, the bank took back the $500, plus a $50 fee. That left her with just $700 to pay her rent, her phone and food bills. She just couldn't make it stretch.

"You just don't make it through. And so you have to borrow again, and again and again," Smith says.

'Significant Concerns'

Andrea Luquetta, a consumer advocate, says Smith has taken a new $500 advance almost every month since December 2007.

"And in that time, Wells [Fargo] has given her 62 direct-deposit advances and made $2,952.50 in fees, just by transferring to her $500 one day, taking it out of her Social Security check when it comes, and then giving it back to her because she can't afford to make ends meet in the next month," Luquetta explains.

Luquetta works with the California Reinvestment Coalition, which promotes equitable access to financial services for low- and moderate-income people.

Wells Fargo declined to comment on Annette Smith's situation or on the standards for direct-deposit loans proposed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of Comptroller of the Currency.

The Two-Way

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