With demolishing the district town’s last movie theater, Feni now has no cinema hall left. Dulal Cinema Hall, Feni town’s last remaining movie theater, was demolished last Wednesday (February 15, 2023) due to a steep decline in the number of audiences. A multi-storey shopping mall will be built on the site where the cinema hall stood. Safiuddin Belal, owner of Dulal Cinema Hall said, “We had to seek assistance from law enforcement to tackle the crowd during screening of blockbusters such as ‘Beder Meye Josna’ and 'Rupban'." "However, the number of audiences started declining after 2015," Belal told UNB. Read more: Sammilito Chalacchitro Parishad agrees to import Indian films on conditions: Hasan The cinema hall had eight "VIP" seats (tickets for each cost Tk 100). It also had 80 "first-class" seats (Tk 60 each). Belal said that "second" and "third-class" seats had been discontinued for the past three years. There were six cinema halls in the town and the adjacent Dagonbhuiya upazila. One after another, curtains fell on Feni district’s silver screens as the owners were left with no choice but to demolish them. The lack of quality films, coupled with the steep decline in audience, killed the town’s cinema hall business. Read more: Cinema hall refinance scheme deadline extended to December The four cinema halls in Feni town were Dulal Cinema Hall, Surat Mahal, Bilashi Cinema Hall, and Kanan Cinema Hall. There were two other cinema halls — Beauty Cinema Hall in Fulghazi upazila and Jharna Cinema Hall in Dagonbhuiyan. Thousands of movie lovers from the district’s remote areas used to flock to these halls to see films with their families and friends. In 1952, sports organizer Khairul Eshak opened Dulal Cinema Hall on Feni town’s Railway Station Road. Years later, Afzalur Rahman opened the Surat cinema hall in the city’s Zero Point area. However, the hall was demolished and later replaced by Feni Super Market after Afzalur Rahman’s son Bacchu Mia took over the ownership after his father’s death in 2003. Feni's Kanan cinema hall opened in Masterpara Mor around 1978, under the ownership of Azad Peyara and Momtazul Huq Bhuiyan. The hall was in operation until the owners went out of business during the Covid-19 pandemic. Read More: How Covid-19 brought the curtain down on Kushtia's cinema halls Bilashi, one of the four cinema halls in Feni city, was built around 1980 by Nur Mia. The hall was later rented out to the city’s local commissioner, Omar Faruk, after the death of Nur Mia. Faruk left the business due to losses in 2002, and since then, the hall has been closed. Surat and Dulal cinema halls were the top choices of the audience due to their safer and cleaner environment. According to reports, at least 700–800 tickets were sold per show. The other cinema halls used to attract 400–600 viewers per show. At least 10,000-12,000 viewers used to watch films at the four cinema halls in Feni every day on average. Read More: Cinema hall owners to get Tk 1,000 cr low-interest loans

Danish police believe a shopping mall shooting that left three people dead and four others seriously wounded was not terror-related, and said Monday that the gunman acted alone and appears to have selected his victims at random. Copenhagen chief police inspector Søren Thomassen said the victims — a 17-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl, both Danes, and a 47-year-old Russian man — were killed when the gunman opened fire on Sunday afternoon in the Field's shopping mall, one of Scandinavia's biggest. Read:3 dead, 3 critically wounded in shooting at Denmark mall Four other people were treated for gunshot wounds — two Danish and two Swedish citizens — and were in critical but stable condition, Thomassen said. Several other people received minor injuries as they fled the shopping mall, he added. Thomassen said police had no indication that anyone helped the gunman, identified as a 22-year-old Dane, during the attack. He said while the motive was unclear, there was nothing suggesting terrorism, and that the suspect would be arraigned later Monday on preliminary charges of murder. Read:Gunman fatally shoots 2, wounds 3 Texas cops, takes own life Danish broadcaster TV2 published a grainy photo of the alleged gunman, a man wearing knee-length shorts, a vest or sleeveless shirt, and holding what appeared to be a rifle in his right hand. “He seemed very violent and angry,” eyewitness Mahdi Al-Wazni told TV2. “He spoke to me and said it (the rifle) isn’t real as I was filming him. He seemed very proud of what he was doing.” Images from the scene showed people running out of the mall in panic. After the shooting, a big contingent of heavily armed police officers patrolled the area, with several fire department vehicles also parked outside the mall.

A gunman opened fire inside a busy shopping mall in the Danish capital Sunday, killing three people and critically wounding three others, police said. A 22-year-old Danish man was arrested after the shooting, Copenhagen police inspector Søren Thomassen told reporters, adding there was no indication that anyone else was involved in the attack, though police were still investigating. Gun violence is relatively rare in Denmark. Thomassen said it was too early to speculate on the motive for the shooting, which happened in the late afternoon at Field’s, one of the biggest shopping malls in Scandinavia and located on the outskirts of the Danish capital. When the shots rang out, some people hid in shops while others fled in a panicked stampede, according to witnesses. “It is pure terror. This is awful,” said Hans Christian Stoltz, a 53-year-old IT consultant, who was bringing his daughters to see Harry Styles perform at concert scheduled for Sunday night near the mall. “You might wonder how a person can do this to another human being, but it’s beyond … beyond anything that’s possible.” Thomassen said the victims included a man in his 40s and two “young people,” without giving details. Several others were injured, three of them critically, he said. He said police received the first reports of a shooting at 5.37 p.m., and arrested the suspect 11 minutes later. Thomassen described the suspect as an “ethnic Dane,” a phrase typically used to mean someone is white. Danish broadcaster TV2 published a grainy photo of the alleged gunman, a man wearing knee-length shorts, a vest or sleeveless shirt, and holding what appeared to be a rifle in his right hand. “He seemed very violent and angry,” eyewitness Mahdi Al-Wazni told TV2. “He spoke to me and said it (the rifle) isn’t real as I was filming him. He seemed very proud of what he was doing.” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the Scandinavian country had been hit by a “cruel attack.” “It is incomprehensible. Heartbreaking. Pointless,” she said. “Our beautiful and usually so safe capital was changed in a split second.” Also read: Russian missile strike hits crowded shopping mall in Ukraine Images from the scene showed people running out of the mall, and TV2 posted a photo of a man being put on a stretcher. After the shooting, an enormous contingent of heavily armed police officers patrolled the area, with several fire department vehicles also parked outside the mall. Laurits Hermansen told Danish broadcaster DR that he was in a clothing store at the shopping center with his family when he heard “three, four bangs. Really loud bangs. It sounded like the shots were being fired just next to the store.” The shopping center is on the outskirts of Copenhagen just across from a subway station for a line that connects the city center with the international airport. A major highway also runs adjacent to the mall. Organizers called off the Harry Styles concert, which had been scheduled at the nearby Royal Arena, by order of police. On Snapchat, Styles wrote: “My team and I pray for everyone involved in the Copenhagen shopping mall shooting. I am shocked. Love H.” The royal palace said a reception with Crown Prince Frederik connected to the Tour de France cycling race had been canceled. The first three stages of the race were held in Denmark this year. The reception was due to be held on the royal yacht that is moored in Soenderborg, the town where the third stage ended. In a joint statement, Queen Margrethe, her son Crown Prince Frederik and his wife, Crown Princess Mary, said: “We do not yet know the full extent of the tragedy, but it is already clear that more people have lost their lives and that even more have been injured.” “The situation calls for unity and care,” they said in a statement. The shooting came a week after a mass shooting in neighboring Norway, where police said a Norwegian man of Iranian origin opened fire during a LGBTQ festival, killing two and wounding more than 20. It was the worst gun attack in Denmark since February 2015, when a 22-year-old man was killed in a shootout with police after going on a shooting spree in the capital that left two people dead and five police officers wounded.

The government has directed the authorities concerned to take necessary steps to close shopping malls and kitchen markets by 8 pm to save electricity and energy in the current climate of continuous rise in global energy price hikes. A letter, signed by Ahsan Kibria Siddiqui, director-general of the Prime Minister's Office (Administration) on Thursday, said that the Premier has instructed to take necessary steps to ensure that shops, shopping malls, kitchen markets, etc. are not kept open after 8 pm with the provisions of Section 114 of Bangladesh Labor Act, 2006. The Prime Minister's Office has sent a letter to the concerned to ensure proper implementation of this directive. Also read: Hasina cancels PMO’s vehicle procurement plan, diverts fund to public healthcare