National Desk : Usually vibrant with tourists during public holidays, the popular tourist destinations in the three hill districts now wear a desolate look after a recent directive by the authorities discouraging people from visiting the region. Tourism businesses in Rangamati, Bandarban and Khagrachhari are set to suffer huge losses as all bookings have been cancelled due to the restriction, reports UNB. District administrations asked people not to visit the hill districts from October 8 to31 citing “unavoidable reasons”, including...
Day: October 12, 2024
National Desk : Professor Dr. Dil Rowshan Zinnat Ara Nazneen of the political science department of Dhaka University has been...
Staff Reporter : Bangladesh’s foreign ministry is unusually busy, dealing with ongoing tensions with its neighbours, India and Myanmar, due...
Staff Reporter : Bangladesh has ranked 84th out of 127 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2024, with a score of 19.4, indicating a “moderate” level of hunger. This marks a decline from last year, when the country ranked 81st with a score of 19. However, the hunger situation has improved compared to 2016, when Bangladesh had a score of 24.7. The GHI score is calculated based on four key indicators: undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality....
AP : The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organisation of survivors of the atomic...
Abu Jakir : The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami are working to reshape Bangladesh’s political environment through comprehensive reform proposals aimed at addressing the aspirations of the recent student and mass uprisings. Both parties are striving to bring about qualitative changes that would ensure a stable, democratic, and just society where fundamental rights and freedom of speech are guaranteed. BNP leaders have indicated that the party is currently preparing a detailed reform proposal. Although they have not yet formally...
News Desk : Israel has detained American Grayzone journalist Jeremy Loffredo while he was on assignment in Israel. According to social media posts, Loffredo was detained on Tuesday along with four other journalists who were “beaten, blindfolded, and taken to an Israeli military base.” They also had their phones confiscated. Loffredo remains in custody, while the others, including Andrey X, were released 11 hours later.Loffredo’s last video posted on X reported the damage caused by the Iranian missile strikes on...
Staff Reporter : The United Nations has reiterated its strong support for the reform initiatives led by Bangladesh’s interim government under Professor Muhammad Yunus. UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, reaffirmed this commitment during a meeting on Thursday with Foreign Secretary Md. Jashim Uddin in New York. The meeting underscored Bangladesh’s dedication to multilateralism and its collaboration with the UN. Terming the UN’s support “crucial” for realising the aspirations of the July-August revolution, Foreign Secretary Uddin expressed...
Staff Reporter : Despite facing various challenges, the interim government is making full efforts to ensure the distribution of free textbooks for students from pre-primary to secondary levels at the beginning of the 2025 academic year. Officials from the Ministry of Education stated that a total of 37.5 crore textbooks will be printed for the upcoming academic year, an increase from 35 crore last year. The process will start with the opening of tenders on October 14, and printing is...
AFP : The UN said Friday that in the decade since it launched a campaign to end the limbo of statelessness, over half a million people without a nationality had acquired citizenship. In a report, the United Nations’ refugee agency detailed the progress made since it launched its #IBelong campaign in 2014. Its aim was to mobilize international action to resolve the problem of statelessness. The UNHCR described statelessness as “a major human rights violation”.It leaves people politically and economically...
AFP : Seven high school boys and a driver were killed in a head-on collision in eastern South Africa Friday, authorities said, in the latest of a series of deadly crashes on the country’s roads. The vehicle carrying the students crashed into a truck on the N2 highway about 100 kilometres (62 miles) northeast of the coastal city of Durban in the early morning hours, government and rescue officials said. The seven high school teenagers in the vehicle and their...