You are here

  • Home
  • Sheikh Hasina will return to Bangladesh for elections, her son says

Sheikh Hasina will return to Bangladesh for elections, her son says

Sheikh Hasina will return to Bangladesh for elections, her son says
A student-led uprising against prime minister Sheikh Hasina forced her to end her 15-year rule of Bangladesh. (AFP)
Short Url

https://arab.news/b5kaz

Updated 09 August 2024
Reuters
Follow

Sheikh Hasina will return to Bangladesh for elections, her son says

Sheikh Hasina will return to Bangladesh for elections, her son says
  • Sheikh Hasina fled to neighboring India on Monday after weeks of deadly protests forced her to quit
  • Hasina’s Awami League party does not feature in the interim government, following a student-led uprising
Updated 09 August 2024
Reuters
Follow

NEW DELHI: Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will return to her country when its new caretaker government decides to hold elections, her son said, but it was not clear if she would contest.
Hasina fled to neighboring India on Monday after weeks of deadly protests forced her to quit. A caretaker government led by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus was sworn in on Thursday, which will be tasked with holding elections.
Speaking to the Times of India daily, her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy, who is based in the US, said, “For the time being, she (Hasina) is in India. She will go back to Bangladesh the moment the interim government decides to hold an election.”
He did not specify whether Hasina, 76, will contest elections. “My mother would have retired from politics after the current term,” Joy said.
“I never had any political ambition and was settled in the US. But the developments in the Bangladesh in the past few days show that there is a leadership vacuum. I had to get active for the sake of the party and I am at the forefront now,” he told the newspaper.
Hasina’s Awami League party does not feature in the interim government, following a student-led uprising against the long-time former prime minister whose exit came after nationwide violence killed about 300 people and injured thousands.
She is sheltering in a safe house in the New Delhi area. Indian media has reported that she plans to seek asylum in Britain, but the British Home Office has declined to comment.
India’s foreign minister said on Thursday he spoke to his British counterpart about Bangladesh, but did not share any details.

Topics: Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina

Related

Who is Nahid Islam, student leader of campaign to oust PM Sheikh Hasina?
World
Who is Nahid Islam, student leader of campaign to oust PM Sheikh Hasina?
Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina quits after weeks of deadly protests video
World
Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina quits after weeks of deadly protests

India evacuates hundreds of thousands of people and shuts schools as it braces for a tropical storm

India evacuates hundreds of thousands of people and shuts schools as it braces for a tropical storm
Updated 22 sec ago
AP
Follow

India evacuates hundreds of thousands of people and shuts schools as it braces for a tropical storm

India evacuates hundreds of thousands of people and shuts schools as it braces for a tropical storm
  • Tropical Storm Dana is expected to intensify, with winds gusting up to 74 mph, before pushing toward the country’s eastern coastline
Updated 22 sec ago
AP
NEW DELHI: Indian authorities have shut schools, evacuated hundreds of thousands of people and canceled trains in parts of the country as rescue teams braced on Thursday for a tropical storm brewing in the Bay of Bengal.
Tropical Storm Dana is expected to intensify, bringing wind speeds of 100-110 kph (62-68 mph) and gusts up to 120 kph (74 mph), as it pushes toward the country’s eastern coastline, where it is set to make landfall late Thursday and early Friday, according to the Indian Meteorological Department.
Climate scientists say severe storms are becoming more frequent in South Asia. Global warming driven by planet-heating gases has caused them to become more extreme and unpredictable.
The storm is expected to affect most parts of the eastern state of Odisha, which saw strong winds and rain on Thursday morning. Authorities have closed schools, canceled more than 200 trains, suspended flights and warned fishermen not to venture out to sea.
Downpours also began lashing areas of neighboring West Bengal state, where some districts are also likely to be hit, prompting officials there to be on high alert.
Odisha’s Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi told the Press Trust of India news agency that around 300,000 people have been evacuated from vulnerable areas, adding that three districts were likely to be severely affected. Authorities plan to evacuate over 1 million people from 14 districts before the storm hits. Several teams of aid and rescue workers have also been deployed to the state, which is prone to severe cyclones and storms.
“The government is fully prepared to tackle the situation. You are in safe hands,” Majhi said.
India’s eastern coasts have long been prone to cyclones, but the number of intense storms is increasing along the country’s coast. Last year was India’s deadliest cyclone season in recent years, killing 523 people and costing an estimated $2.5 billion in damage.

North Korea propaganda leaflets found in Seoul attack South Korea’s first couple

North Korea propaganda leaflets found in Seoul attack South Korea’s first couple
Updated 4 min 50 sec ago
Reuters
Follow

North Korea propaganda leaflets found in Seoul attack South Korea’s first couple

North Korea propaganda leaflets found in Seoul attack South Korea’s first couple
  • Since late May, North Korea has been sending thousands of balloons often carrying trash into various parts of South Korea
Updated 4 min 50 sec ago
Reuters
SEOUL: North Korean propaganda leaflets apparently carried by balloons were found scattered on the streets of the South Korean capital Seoul on Thursday, including some making personal attacks on the country’s president and first lady.
The leaflets attacking South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee found in the capital appear to be the first instance of the North Korean government directly sending anti-South propaganda material across the border.
They included graphic messages accusing the Yoon government of failures that had left his people living in despair, and describing the first couple as immoral and mentally unstable.
The resumption of a campaign by Pyongyang to send balloons into its neighbor comes as tensions on the peninsula have spiked with the North accusing South Korea’s military of sending drones over Pyongyang to violate its sovereignty.
Since late May, North Korea has been sending thousands of balloons often carrying trash into various parts of South Korea saying it was to retaliate for propaganda leaflets sent the other way by South Korean activists criticizing the North’s leadership, with Pyongyang accusing Seoul of being complicit.
South Korea’s military said early on Thursday that North Korea had again sent balloons carrying suspected trash and they were headed to the capital region and the eastern part of South Korea.
The Presidential Security Service said in a statement trash dropped from North Korean balloons was found around the presidential office but it posed no security or contamination risk. It did not provide further details of the material.
The North Korean balloons have caused some property damage as they landed in the South including starting small fires from the trigger that releases the trash but otherwise were retrieved by authorities without incident.
The South Korean government has declined to say if drones were flown toward the North or who may have sent them.

King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan ‘high chief’

King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan ‘high chief’
Updated 2 min 44 sec ago
AFP
Follow

King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan ‘high chief’

King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan ‘high chief’
  • The British monarch is on an 11-day tour of Australia and Samoa, both independent Commonwealth states — the first major foreign trip since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year
Updated 2 min 44 sec ago
AFP

APIA: King Charles III took part in a traditional kava-drinking ceremony before a line of bare-chested, heavily tattooed Samoans and was declared a “high chief” of the one-time Pacific island colony Thursday.
The British monarch is on an 11-day tour of Australia and Samoa, both independent Commonwealth states — the first major foreign trip since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year.
Wearing a white safari-style suit, the 75-year-old king sat at the head of a carved timber longhouse where he was presented with a polished half-coconut filled with a narcotic kava brew.
The peppery, slightly intoxicating root drink is a key part of Pacific culture and is known locally as “ava.”
The kava roots were paraded around the marquee, prepared by the chief’s daughter and filtered through a sieve made of dried bark.
Once ready, a Samoan man screamed as he decanted the drink, which was finally presented to the king.
Charles uttered the words: “May God Bless this ava” before lifting it to his lips.
Charles’s wife, Queen Camilla sat beside him, fanning herself to ease the stiffing tropical humidity.
Many Samoans are excited to host the king — his first-ever visit to the Pacific Island nation that was once a British colony.
The royal couple visited the village of Moata’a where Charles was made “Tui Taumeasina” or high chief.
“Everyone has taken to our heart and is looking forward to welcoming the king,” local chief Lenatai Victor Tamapua told AFP ahead of the visit.
“We feel honored that he has chosen to be welcomed here in our village. So as a gift, we would like to bestow him a title.”
Tamapua raised the issue of climate change and showed the king and queen around the local mangroves.
“The high tides is just chewing away on our reef and where the mangroves are,” he told AFP, adding that food sources and communities were being washed away or inundated.
“Our community relies on the mangrove area for mud crab and fishes, but since, the tide has risen over the past 20 years by about two or three meters (up to 10 feet).”
The king is also in Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, and will address a leaders’ banquet on Friday.
The legacy of empire looms large at the meeting.
Commonwealth leaders will select a new secretary-general nominated from an African country — in line with regional rotations of the position.
All three likely candidates have called publicly for reparations for slavery and colonialism.
One of the three, Joshua Setipa from Lesotho, told AFP that the resolution could include non-traditional forms of payment such as climate financing.
“We can find a solution that will begin to address some injustices of the past and put them in the context happening around us today,” he said.
Climate change features heavily on the agenda.
Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Fiji have backed calls for a “fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty” — essentially calling for Australia, Britain and Canada to do more to lower emissions.
Pacific leaders argue the trio of “big countries” have historically accounted for over 60 percent of the 56-nation Commonwealth’s emissions from fossil fuels.
Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change Ralph Regenvanu called on other nations to join the treaty.
“As a Commonwealth family, we look to those that dominate fossil fuel production in the Commonwealth to stop the expansion of fossil fuels in order to protect what we love and hold dear here in the Pacific,” he said.
Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong said her gas and mineral-rich nation was working to be cleaner.
“We know we have a lot of work to do, and I’ve been upfront with every partner in the Pacific,” she said.
Pacific island nations — once seen as the embodiment of palm-fringed paradise — are now among the most climate-threatened areas of the planet.

Topics: King Charles Samoa

Related

Pakistan’s leading co-working platform raises $2 million, plans to enter Saudi market video
Pakistan
Pakistan’s leading co-working platform raises $2 million, plans to enter Saudi market
Curry leads Golden State Warriors in 139-104 season-opening rout of the Portland Trail Blazers
Sport
Curry leads Golden State Warriors in 139-104 season-opening rout of the Portland Trail Blazers

New Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba fears for majority in snap election

New Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba fears for majority in snap election
Updated 6 min 46 sec ago
AFP
Follow

New Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba fears for majority in snap election

New Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba fears for majority in snap election
  • Shigeru Ishiba took office and called an election less than a month ago after a tough contest within the Liberal Democratic Party
  • Polls suggest the LDP could fall short of the 233 lower house seats needed for a majority for the first time since 2009
Updated 6 min 46 sec ago
AFP

TOKYO: New Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s snap election gamble could backfire this Sunday, with his ruling party at risk of losing its majority for the first time in 15 years.
Ishiba took office and called an election less than a month ago after a tough contest within the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has governed for all but four of the last 69 years.
“This is an attempt to create a new Japan that will drastically change the nature of Japanese society,” he said. “To boldly carry out this major change, we need the confidence of the people.”
But polls suggest the LDP could fall short of the 233 lower house seats needed for a majority for the first time since 2009. They currently hold 256 seats.
This would be bad enough, but some polls suggest that even with its junior coalition partner, the Komeito party, Ishiba will be unable to form a government without forming other alliances.
Not helping matters is the popularity of Yoshihiko Noda, the new head of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party and a former prime minister, who at 67 is the same age as Ishiba.
Noda’s stance “is sort of similar to the LDP’s. He is basically a conservative,” Masato Kamikubo, a political scientist at Ritsumeikan University, said.
“The CDP or Noda can be an alternative to the LDP. Many voters think so,” Kamikubo said.
Japan faces major challenges. With its population projected to drop by almost a third in the next 50 years, many sectors already struggle to fill vacancies.
The world’s fourth-biggest economy has long been flatlining, with a weak yen pushing up import prices in recent years, especially of fossil fuels which still dominate power generation.
Polls show that voters’ biggest worry is inflation, which along with a party slush fund scandal torpedoed Ishiba’s predecessor Fumio Kishida after three years in the job.
Japan already has one of the highest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world, yet the government faces a ballooning bill to care for the growing ranks of the elderly.
Another big area of spending is the military, with Kishida having pledged to double defense spending and boost US military ties as a counter to China.
Ishiba has vowed to revitalize rural areas, where more than 40 percent of municipalities risk disappearing according to a survey in April.
“If the village is left as it is now, the only thing that awaits us is extinction,” said 74-year-old Ichiro Sawayama, an official in Ichinono near Osaka, one such locality.
The community of fewer than 60 people has only one child, and staffed mannequins dot the streets to give the appearance of a bustling hamlet.
Ishiba has promised to consign deflation to history — stagnant or falling prices have stalked Japan for decades — and to boost incomes with a stimulus package.
He says he wants to hike the average national minimum wage by more than 40 percent within this decade, although this could hurt many small firms.
But after an initial honeymoon, Ishiba’s poll ratings have dipped, with a recent Kyodo News survey giving his cabinet a disapproval rating of 40 percent.
Not helping his cause with women is the nomination of just two female members to his cabinet in a country ranked 118th in the 2024 World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report.
A separate poll by the Asahi newspaper found public approval for the cabinet at 33 percent and disapproval at 39 percent, worse than Kishida ahead of his first election in 2021.
But whether the opposition can capitalize and cobble together a majority instead is moot, said Yu Uchimura, a political scientist at the University of Tokyo.
“If the opposition is able to unite as a large group like the Democratic Party did in 2009, then they can win,” Uchimura said.
“But that is the problem with the opposition; they always fight among themselves and disband very quickly.”

Topics: Japan Shigeru Ishiba

Related

Ishiba dissolves Japan’s lower house to set up Oct. 27 parliamentary election
World
Ishiba dissolves Japan’s lower house to set up Oct. 27 parliamentary election
Japan PM facing lukewarm approval ahead of election
World
Japan PM facing lukewarm approval ahead of election

Funeral home owners accused of storing decaying bodies expected to plead guilty to COVID-19 fraud

Funeral home owners accused of storing decaying bodies expected to plead guilty to COVID-19 fraud
Updated 51 min 55 sec ago
AP
Follow

Funeral home owners accused of storing decaying bodies expected to plead guilty to COVID-19 fraud

Funeral home owners accused of storing decaying bodies expected to plead guilty to COVID-19 fraud
  • Prosecutors say the Hallfords stashed 190 decaying bodies in a funeral home storage building and sent grieving families fake ashes
  • Court documents say the Hallfords used the pandemic aid to buy expensive cars, cryptocurrency and trips
Updated 51 min 55 sec ago
AP

DENVER: Colorado funeral home owners accused of misspending nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 pandemic relief funds and living lavishly, all while allegedly stashing 190 decaying bodies in a building and sending grieving families fake ashes, are expected to plead guilty to federal charges Thursday.
Jon and Carie Hallford, owners of Return to Nature Funeral Home about an hour’s drive south of Denver, have been charged with 15 federal offenses related to defrauding the US government and the funeral home’s customers. Additionally, over 200 criminal counts are already pending against them in Colorado state court, including for corpse abuse and forgery.
The Hallfords used the pandemic aid and customers’ payments to buy a GMC Yukon and Infiniti that together were worth over $120,000, laser body sculpting, trips to California, Florida and Las Vegas, $31,000 in cryptocurrency and luxury items at stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co., according to court documents.
The federal charges could carry up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
Jon Hallford is being represented by the federal public defenders office, which does not comment on cases. Calls and emails to Carie Hallford’s lawyer in the federal case have not been returned, and her attorney in the state case, Michael Stuzynski, declined to comment.
The federal indictment arrived after last year’s discovery of the 190 corpses in a bug-infested building owned by Return to Nature in Penrose, a small town southwest of Colorado Springs. The Hallfords allegedly stashed bodies as as far back as 2019, at times stacking them on top of each other, and in two cases buried the wrong body, according to court documents.
An investigation by The Associated Press found that the Hallfords likely sent fake ashes and fabricated cremation records to families who did business with them. Court documents allege that the dust inside some of the bags was dry concrete, not the cremated remains of lost loved ones.
The discovery devastated relatives of the deceased, who began learning that their family members’ remains weren’t in the ashes that they ceremonially spread or held tight but were still languishing in a building. The stories prompted Colorado lawmakers to patch the state’s lax funeral home regulations in 2024, requiring routine inspections of facilities and licensing for funeral home roles.

Topics: covid 19

Related

American Express Saudi Arabia participates in Seamless 2024
Corporate News
American Express Saudi Arabia participates in Seamless 2024
Saudi Embassy in Turkiye condemns Ankara terror attack
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Embassy in Turkiye condemns Ankara terror attack

Latest updates

India evacuates hundreds of thousands of people and shuts schools as it braces for a tropical storm
India evacuates hundreds of thousands of people and shuts schools as it braces for a tropical storm
North Korea propaganda leaflets found in Seoul attack South Korea’s first couple
North Korea propaganda leaflets found in Seoul attack South Korea’s first couple
King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan ‘high chief’
King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan ‘high chief’
Curry leads Golden State Warriors in 139-104 season-opening rout of the Portland Trail Blazers
Curry leads Golden State Warriors in 139-104 season-opening rout of the Portland Trail Blazers
Blinken heads to Hamas mediator Qatar on Gaza truce push
Blinken heads to Hamas mediator Qatar on Gaza truce push

Search form

Print Edition
Read pdf version Subscribe now
© 2024 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.