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President Obama has been hosting a series of visitors from the Middle East, and all of them have been urging the U.S. to get more involved in Syria.

They have included the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, whose country has been arming rebel forces in Syria. Obama wants to see such aid go to moderates — but that requires more cooperation with partners like Qatar. Problem is, they don't always see eye to eye.

Qatar was already an important U.S. partner in the region when the Arab uprisings began, and the small, wealthy Gulf nation saw a new opportunity to gain influence when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was toppled, says Tamara Wittes, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

"One of the consequences of the fall of Mubarak is that the U.S. lost in a way its central diplomatic partner in the Arab world," Wittes says. "In many ways, the Qataris stepped up to play that role, in the Arab League, for example, on Libya and then on Syria."

Impression Of Qatar 'Taking Sides'

This was a time when the U.S. wanted others to take the lead. But there were risks in that approach, says Simon Henderson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and director of the center's Gulf and Energy Policy Program.

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Dying on the job continues at a steady pace according to the latest statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The fatal injury rate for American workers dropped slightly in 2011 — the most recent year with reported numbers — from 3.6 to 3.5 deaths per 100,000 workers.

But 4,693 men, women and teenagers died at work. That's three more than the total number of lives lost on the job in 2010.

BLS says it's the third-lowest death toll since counting began in 1992. Worker safety groups find no comfort in the report, though. It comes as they and the Labor Department prepare to mark Workers Memorial Day on Sunday.

"These deaths were largely preventable," says Tom O'Connor, executive director of National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH), an advocacy group formed by organized labor and workers safety advocates. "Simply by following proven safety practices and complying with [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] standards, many of these more than 4,600 deaths could have been avoided."

COSH has just released its own report on workplace deaths, which focuses on specific industries and incidents.

O'Connor blames companies that "decry regulations and emphasize profits over safety."

The vast majority of deaths involve white men in private industry. Nearly 2,000 died in "transportation incidents," including traffic accidents. Close to 10 percent of the workers killed were victims of workplace homicides. Notoriously dangerous work in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting took 566 lives — 24.9 deaths for every 100,000 full-time workers. The most deaths for any single industry were in construction, with 738. That was 9.1 deaths per 100,000 full-time workers.

The BLS report now lists fatalities among contractors and that's a first, according to a story by Jim Morris from the Center for Public Integrity. O'Connor told Morris that "the total death toll is far greater than what we see from a handful of catastrophic incidents. It seems that the public just sort of accepts that as a risk of going to work."

Workers Memorial Day events include the placement of empty and well-worn work boots to symbolize the lives lost at work, groups of spouses and children holding photos of loves ones, and readings of the names of victims.

Last week, Democrats in Congress reintroduced the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA), a bill that seeks tougher penalties for employers when willful and egregious behavior results in workers deaths. Senate Democrats introduced a similar measure last month.

"The fact remains that penalties for harming workers are often the cost of doing business for some employers," said Rep. George Miller of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. "Congress needs to work together to increase these outdated penalties and give real teeth to the law so that workers and communities can remain safe while trying to make a living."

Senators Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Bob Casey, D-Pa., cited a recent NPR series, Buried in Grain, in announcing support for the Senate's version of PAWA.

"Whether working on a factory floor, on an oil rig, or in a grain bin, our workers and their families need to know that they will be safe and protected at the workplace," said Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

PAWA failed to gain enough support in Congress in the past in the face of industry opposition and congressional resistance to expanded government regulation.

South Korea has ordered the withdrawal of its workers from a jointly run industrial zone in North Korea, in a further sign of how relations have gone from bad to worse between the two countries in recent weeks.

Earlier this month, Pyongyang blocked access to the Kaesong zone, which is located just inside North Korea and was established in 2002 as a symbol of rapprochement between the rival neighbors. In the past, even as tensions flared, Kaesong – and important source of hard currency for the North and cheap labor for the South — had kept operating.

On Friday, however, Seoul's Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said that the approximately 175 South Korean workers still in the zone after the North's blockade would be coming home after Pyongyang this week declined to resume bilateral talks.

"Because our nationals remaining in the Kaesong industrial zone are experiencing greater difficulties due to the North's unjust actions, the government has come to the unavoidable decision to bring back all remaining personnel in order to protect their safety," Ryoo said.

"North Korea must guarantee the safe return of our personnel and fully protect the assets of the companies with investment in Kaesong," he added without giving a timeframe for the withdrawal.

About 120 South Korean companies set up shop in the complex, which employed 53,000 North Koreans, according to The Christian Science Monitor. The endeavor was meant to be a "mutually beneficial arrangement," providing South Korean companies with cheap northern labor and North Koreans with much needed income. North Korea earned about $80 million from the complex last year, which produced $470 million worth of goods.

The Monitor reported earlier this month that five days after Kaesong was closed to new workers from the South, that it was already the longest interruption of "in-and-out traffic" at the complex since it opened. The state-run Korean Central News Agency said at the time that South Korea was "trying to 'turn the zone [Kaesong] into a hotbed of war'."

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."