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Faced with sharp financial losses stemming from the Boston Marathon bombing attack and the days of forced closure that followed, businesses in the affected Copley Square area can apply for federal help, the Small Business Administration announced Friday.

The news comes as people continue to flock to Boylston Street, to pay their respects to victims of the April 15 attacks and to support stores and restaurants that were open for the first Saturday since the bombings and the ensuing manhunt.

"We're looking at millions of dollars in losses," Meg Mainzer-Cohen, president of the Back Bay Association, tells The Boston Globe. "Some of it can be recouped by the passionate support we're receiving now. But there are some that, no matter what, won't be able to make it up."

The Small Business Administration plan would allow businesses to apply for long-term federal loans that come with low costs and an interest rate of 4 percent.

Today, Boylston Street's shops are open for business; the area reopened to pedestrians Wednesday.

As Rachel Gotbaum reports from Boston for our Newscast unit, one of the newly reopened stores is Marathon Sports. Its windows still showed signs of the attacks, but customers were there in force, manager Shane O'Hara tells Rachel.

"I've never opened up the door on a normal Saturday and had probably 15-20 people walk in, and also saying thank you," he said, his voice beginning to crack with emotion, "and giving me flowers and stuff."

Prior to the SBA announcement, some business owners in the Copley Square area had found themselves in the odd position of hoping the bombing attack would not be officially deemed an act of terrorism.

As WBUR's Curt Nickish reported Friday, that's because not all store owners have insurance policies that cover losses associated with a terrorist attack.

Rescue workers are still hoping to find survivors from the collapse of an eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh that has killed more than 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.

"Some people are still alive under the rubble and we are hoping to rescue them," deputy fire services director Mizanur Rahman told Reuters.

The news agency quoted a spokesman for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as saying that she had ordered the arrest of the owners of the building and of the five factories that occupied it.

According to Army spokesman Shahinur Islam, the death toll had reached 304 and H. T. Imam, an adviser to the prime minister, said it could exceed 350, Reuters said.

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 Associated Press 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."

Sectarian tensions are fueling violence and protests in Iraq, where more than 170 people have been killed since Tuesday, when government forces clashed with Sunni Muslim protesters at a demonstration camp in Hawija, near Kirkuk.

That incident left at least 23 dead, outraged Iraq's Sunni minority, and stoked fears among some Iraqis that their country is heading for a new civil war. Several deadly attacks have been staged on Iraqi soldiers and police this week.

"Everybody has the feeling that Iraq is becoming a new Syria," Mosul businessman Talal Younis, 55, told the AP Wednesday. "We are heading into the unknown. ... I think that civil war is making a comeback."

On Friday, Sunni protesters in Anbar Province announced that they will form their own military force, to be called the Army of Pride and Dignity — named for Pride and Dignity Square, in Anbar's capital of Ramadi, Reuters reports.

In Ramadi Friday, journalist Omar al-Saleh of Al Jazeera was present for a sermon announcing the army's formation. He describes a religious leader asking a crowd of tens of thousands, "Do you agree to sacrifice yourselves and defending your honor?"

With violence showing no signs of abating, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called for peace in a speech on Iraqi TV, after 10 Iraqi military and militia members were killed in two separate attacks Saturday.

"Sectarianism is evil, and the wind of sectarianism does not need a license to cross from a country to another, because if it begins in a place it will move to another place," Maliki said, in remarks widely interpreted as implying that he believes the latest troubles have their roots in Syria.

U.N. special representative to Iraq Martin Kobler, who has condemned the violence at Hawija, said Thursday that civilian and government leaders must work together to calm Iraq's fraying society.

"I call on the conscience of all religious and political leaders not to let anger win over peace," he said, "and to use their wisdom, because the country is at a crossroads."

The 2012 election was the most expensive in history, but there remain some gaping holes in our knowledge about who paid for what. The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering a proposal to add more transparency in future elections, but it won't happen without a fight.

The SEC proposal would require publicly traded companies to disclose all of their political contributions. And that would force companies to decide, in effect, if being linked to a candidate or partisan position is worth the impact political advocacy might have on its bottom line. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is vowing to fight the effort to tighten disclosure rules.

SuperPACs And 'Social Welfare' Groups

The Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling allowed corporations to give unlimited contributions to superPACs, but relatively few public companies have done so, perhaps because political action committees must disclose their donors.

Watchdog groups think some public corporations have contributed to tax-exempt groups that fall under the 501(c) section of the tax code. These groups can engage in political activity — as long as they say their primary purpose is educational — and do not have to disclose their donors. Yet these "social welfare" groups include big political players, ranging from Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS to President Obama's Organizing for Action.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Crossroads GPS spent more than $70 million in 2012. Organizing for Action, which grew out of Obama's 2012 campaign, was formed after the election cycle. Its founders have pledged to refuse corporate contributions and disclose a list of donors.

Most corporations also belong to 501(c)(6) organizations, like trade associations and chambers of commerce, which can engage in political activity. For example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $35.7 million in 2012 — and it's now leading the charge against the SEC's petition. Altogether, the Center for Responsive Politics estimates these tax-exempt groups spent at least $300 million in the 2012 election cycle.

If the SEC does propose the new rule — an action it could take as early as next week — it would start a process that would include a comment period and public meetings. Enacting the rule also could spur legal action from opponents.

Voluntary Transparency

A study of the 2012 election cycle shows that many companies already are making at least some donations public, perhaps due to increased pressure from activists and shareholders.

The Center for Political Accountability has been tracking voluntary disclosure by corporations since 2003. For the past two years, the group has compiled a ranking called the CPA-Zicklin Index, which found that 58 percent of the top 200 companies in the S&P 500 voluntarily disclosed some information about their political spending, and 85 percent of companies studied over two years improved their scores for political disclosure and accountability.

Center for Political Accountability President Bruce Freed said that disclosure and accountability policies have become mainstream corporate governance practices. "When we did the index in 2011, we were really, frankly, quite surprised at the results — really pleasantly surprised — when we found that there were companies that were adopting disclosure and accountability policies without having been engaged by investors," Freed said. "They were doing it on their own."

However, the group also found that 59 percent of companies did not disclose any information about payments to trade associations, and 75 percent did not disclose any contributions to tax-exempt social welfare groups.

The Center for Responsive Politics has reported that some companies, including PepsiCo and Koch Industries, have lobbied against the SEC proposal during the first quarter of 2013. But Freed has found that other corporate representatives are frustrated by the varied patchwork of voluntary disclosures.

"I know from discussions with companies that there are a growing number of companies that will say privately, yes, we would like to see a rule because they see uniformity as in their self-interest," Freed said. "It means that companies would be operating on a level playing field here."

Kara Brandeisky is an intern on NPR's Washington Desk.