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Four retailers who represent the largest purchasers of clothes produced in Bangladesh announced Monday that they have will help finance safety upgrades at apparel factories in the South Asia country after the collapse of a garment complex killed more than 1,000 workers.

The news comes as the death toll in the April 24 collapse of the eight-story Rana Plaza near Dhaka rose to at least 1,127, according to officials.

In a statement from Sweden-based H&M and Inditex, the parent company of Zara, the retail giants urged others to join them. Within hours Britain's Primark Stores and Tesco as well as C&A of the Netherlands said they would also sign on to the legally binding agreement to "guarantee safe working conditions in the Bangladeshi garment industry."

H&M spokeswoman Helena Hermersson said the company's "strong presence in Bangladesh" gave it a unique opportunity to "contribute to the improvement of the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and contribute to the community's development."

H&M called the agreement a "pragmatic step," and said if other brands follow suit they could collectively cover all of the country's estimated 5,000 garment factories.

Karen Stinebrickner-Kaufman, executive director of the watchdog group SumOfUs.org praised H&M and Zara and expressed hope that "Gap and other brands follow their competitors' lead.

"Only legally binding programs that are accountable to workers themselves can guarantee that the clothes we buy aren't being made in death traps," she said.

The New York Times reports that the agreement:

"... calls for independent, rigorous factory safety inspections with public reports and mandatory repairs and renovations underwritten by Western retailers. A legally enforceable contract, it also calls for retailers to stop doing business with any factory that refuses to make necessary safety improvements, and for workers and their unions to have a substantial voice in factory safety."

"I laid there for probably five minutes, then the entire night just erupted into automatic gunfire. My first initial thought is that we were being re-kidnapped by another group, or maybe it was al-Shabab [the Islamic military group in Somalia] — that was always the eminent threat, and then I knew there was no hope for survival if it was al-Shabab. And I just, I laid there and I prayed and I also just said, like, 'I can't survive another kidnapping. I've already learned this group. ... I'm so tired, I can't, I can't do this anymore.'

"The next thing I know, somebody pulls the blanket from my face and then I hear a man say my name. You know, I haven't heard anybody say my name in so long. And then he says, 'We're the American military, and we're here to save you, we're here to take you home. You're safe now.' And I ... was just in so much shock I just couldn't wrap my brain around it. The American military, they knew I was here? Americans are here? I'm not alone? One of them just scoops me up, I mean, like a movie, and just, you know, runs across the desert with me to a safe place, and they quickly give me medication and at one point form a ring around us because they weren't sure if the premises was completely safe."

On how she responded when a Navy SEAL asked if she'd forgotten anything at the camp

Buchanan: "I can't believe I did this, but I had a small little powder bag that they had let me keep, and inside I had re-stolen from them a ring that my mom had made, and I thought, 'I can't leave it here in the desert.' [Her mother had recently died.]

"And so I ask him to go back and get the bag for me. And, I mean, these men are just, they're incredible. He goes back out, into a war zone basically, to go get my ring. And then he comes back with the bag."

On being reunited at a base in Italy, where military personnel told them to take things slow

Buchanan: "Our first meeting was one hour. I don't think either one of us could have handled any more."

Landemalm: "No. No, it was — I mean, inside of yourself you want to talk about everything. But I think that [in] one hour you are able to kind of relay the main message that you love each other and that whatever has happened during these 93 days we have the rest of our lives to talk about it."

NPR Coverage Of The Kidnapping

The Two-Way

In Daring Raid, Navy SEALs Free 2 Aid Workers From Somali Kidnappers

Here's the paradox with international news.

In our wired and rapidly shrinking world, there is no distant war, no isolated economic crisis and no social trend that observes national borders.

When a building collapses in Bangladesh, photos of the dead and grieving appear instantly. When a battle takes place in Syria, YouTube videos surface in real time. You can even get tweets from North Korea.

Yet all this technological wizardry can easily become a confusing cacophony, a discordant electronic buzz that has erupted at a time when many American news organizations have retreated from international coverage. There's no substitute for having a reporter at the scene, and yet they have become increasingly scarce.

But NPR has been bucking that trend. We have reporters around the world who are willing to go anywhere to find a good story and explain what it means. And they are the reason we are launching this blog.

Our correspondents won't just be reporting the news, they will be looking to tell stories that connect us all. They will be seeking out, well, parallels, between stories far away and those close to home. And in the process, we hope to offer up some uncommon answers and alternate perspectives.

So many stories cross borders and we have the reporters to cover them at both ends. After the bombing at the Boston Marathon, the focus of the story soon moved to the family roots of the suspects, who came from the Caucuses region in southern Russia. NPR's Corey Flintoff was there to help explain the complicated history of this troubled territory.

As we begin the blog this week, our reporters will be taking you from Africa to Asia as we look at the increasingly sophisticated nature of international poaching. South Africa has the largest number of rhinos, and the best protected. Yet high-tech poachers are slaughtering them by the hundreds for their horns. The destination may surprise you: it's often Vietnam, where the newly emerging rich are prepared to spend big money in the misguided notion that these horns can cure everything from hangovers to cancer.

We'll be visiting many other countries as well. We know we have well-traveled readers engaged in the world, and your feedback will be invaluable. As the host of this blog, I invite you to join in the conversation.

In December 1944, the Nazis looked like a spent force: The U.S. and its allies had pushed Hitler's armies across France in the fight to liberate Europe from German occupation.

The Allies were so confident that the Forest of Ardennes, near the front lines in Belgium, became a rest and recreation area, complete with regular USO performances.