United News of Bangladesh

Speculation is rife that Bollywood singer Babul Supriyo may be made a minister in Bengal government, as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee rejigs her Cabinet on Monday in the wake of the cash-for-jobs scam. Mamata on Thursday sacked Partha Chatterjee, one of her senior ministers, from her Cabinet as well as from all posts of her ruling Trinamool Congress party, days after he was arrested for his alleged involvement in the school teachers' recruitment scam. Chatterjee held several portfolios in the state Cabinet, including Commerce and Industry, IT and electronics, and Industrial Reconstruction. He was also the Trinamool Congress party's general secretary. Read: Bollywood singer Babul Supriyo joins Mamata's party "Supriyo and two other new faces are likely to be inducted as ministers into the Cabinet by Mamata later in the day. A few serving Ministers may be axed too. Mamata may also keep some portfolios with her," sources close to the ruling party told UNB. Supriyo joined the Trinamool Congress party in September 2021, two months after he was dropped as a federal minister by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  The 50-year-old joined politics and India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) some eight years ago. He served as junior Urban Development Minister and Minister of State for Heavy Industries in BJP government's first tenure. He was the junior Environment and Forest Minister in the second term. Born Supriya Baral, he entered Bollywood as a playback singer in the mid-nineties and has sung for many films since then. He has also done playback singing in 11 Indian languages during his musical career.

India reported its first monkeypox death in the southern state of Kerala on Sunday, the Indian Express quoted the state's Health Minister Veena George as saying. The 22-year-old man who died on Saturday afternoon had returned from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last week. The state government has launched a probe into his death. The deceased, a native of Kerala's Thrissur district, showed no symptoms of monkeypox on his return from abroad and his relatives had handed over the positive test result conducted abroad only on Saturday, said the report. Subsequently, the health department sent his samples to the National Institute of Virology (NIV), the result of which is awaited. Read:New York City declares monkeypox a public health emergency "The youth had no symptoms of monkeypox. He had been admitted to a hospital with symptoms of encephalitis and fatigue ... A high-level probe would be held into the death as monkeypox has a very low fatality rate." Following his death all his primary contacts have been placed under observation. India has so far confirmed four cases of monkeypox, three in Kerala and one in Delhi. On Saturday, the country's first monkeypox case, which was detected on July 14, was successfully treated and tested negative. The rest are also reportedly responding well to the medical treatment, said health authorities.

At least 10 people died and 16 others sustained injuries after a van carrying a group of Hindu pilgrims got electrocuted in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal in the small hours of Monday. The tragedy occurred around 12.30am on Dharla Bridge in the state's Cooch Behar district, some 700 kms from West Bengal capital Kolkata, police said. "Preliminary probe has revealed that the van got electrocuted due to a short-circuit in the diesel generator set fitted in the vehicle to power a music system," a police officer told the local media. Read: 28 people dead, 60 sick in India from drinking spiked liquor While the 10 pilgrims, mostly young men in their early 20s, were electrocuted to death on the spot, the injured have been admitted to Jalpaiguri hospital, the officer said. "The condition of two of the injured is serious." The bodies have been handed over to the family members of the victims, police said.  "A probe has been ordered into the tragedy that will also ascertain if the vehicle had the required permission to install and use the music system on board," the officer added.

India and Oman will hold a fortnight-long joint military exercise in the deserts of the western state of Rajasthan, aimed at bolstering bilateral defence ties. "The fourth edition of India-Oman joint military exercise 'AL NAJAH-IV' between contingents of Indian Army and the Royal Army of Oman is scheduled to take place at the Foreign Training Node of Mahajan Field Firing Ranges from August 1 to 13," India's Defence Ministry said in a statement on Sunday. A 60-member team from the Royal Army of Oman will represent the Gulf state in the exercise, where the 18 Mechanised Infantry Battalion of the Indian Army will take part, according to the Ministry. Also read: Mamata sacks tainted Bengal Minister over school jobs scam "The joint exercise would focus on counter-terrorism operations, regional security operations and peacekeeping operations under United Nations charter apart from organising joint physical training schedules, tactical drills, techniques and procedures," it said. Oman is India’s closest strategic and defence partner in the Gulf and provides key support to Indian warships deployed in the Arabian Sea. And the last edition of the joint military exercise was held in Oman's capital Muscat in 2019. Also read: 28 people dead, 60 sick in India from drinking spiked liquor

A fire broke out in a hostel in southeastern Moscow, killing eight people and injuring three others, Sputnik reported Friday. An acting head of the city department of the Russian Emergencies Ministry said the fire was caused by the lattices installed on the windows. Read: Russia attacks Kyiv area for the first time in weeks The fire has since been extinguished. An emergency services spokesperson noted that the victims had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

At least 357 people were killed and over 400 were injured as heavy monsoon rains continued to batter Pakistan for more than five weeks, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said Thursday. Besides human loss, infrastructure, road networks and houses have also been damaged due to the heavy monsoon rains and flash flooding across Pakistan since June 14, official sources from the NDMA told Xinhua. A total of 23,792 homes have been fully or partially damaged, making thousands of people displaced, according to the NDMA statistics, adding that the heavy downpours have also damaged dozens of bridges and shops. Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif tweeted Thursday that Pakistan is facing the challenges of climate change and stressed the need to address the problem of current flash flooding. "Climate change is an undeniable reality of our times and has serious consequences for developing countries like Pakistan ... The government is aligning its development goals with the climate change requirements," he said. Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province remained one of the most hard-hit areas, where 106 people died in rain-related incidents and subsequent flooding, followed by 90 dead in the southern Sindh province. There have been 76 fatalities in the eastern Punjab province, 70 in the northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, while 15 people were killed in other parts of the country, said the NDMA. Read: 19 women drowned as boat capsizes in Pakistan's Indus River: media Meanwhile, civil administrations in respective cities along with the Pakistani army are carrying out rescue and relief efforts in affected areas. The authorities are shifting stranded people to safer places, providing food and water to affected people, whereas doctors and paramedics are in the field to provide medical care. Taking notice of the huge losses across Pakistan, the prime minister has constituted a committee to assess the damage caused by monsoon rains and floods, while announcing to enhance monetary compensation for the affected citizens. Farzana Bibi, a 48-year-old resident of the southern port city of Karachi, said that her family members cannot leave the house as streets in her neighborhood are submerged in knee-deep muddy flood water. "The flood water has entered my house and damaged all of my furniture which I bought recently ... I am so upset. Rains are considered a blessing from God, but the recent heavy rains and floods have brought us a lot of inconveniences," Bibi told Xinhua. Predicting more rains during the ongoing week, the Pakistan Meteorological Department said that monsoon currents are continuously penetrating the country and are likely to shift and intensify in upper and central parts of Pakistan.

Russian forces launched a missile attack on the Kyiv area for the first time in weeks Thursday and pounded the northern Chernihiv region as well, in what Ukraine said was revenge for standing up to the Kremlin. Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, announced a counteroffensive to take back the occupied Kherson region in the country’s south, territory seized by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces early in the war. Russia attacked the Kyiv region with six missiles launched from the Black Sea, hitting a military unit in the village of Liutizh on the outskirts of the capital, according to Oleksii Hromov, a senior official with Ukraine’s General Staff. He said that the attack ruined one building and damaged two others, and that Ukrainian forces also shot down one of the missiles in the town of Bucha. Fifteen people were wounded in the Russian strikes, five of them civilians, Kyiv regional Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said. Kuleba linked the assaults to the Day of Statehood, a commemoration that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy instituted last year and Ukraine marked for the time on Thursday. “Russia, with the help of missiles, is mounting revenge for the widespread popular resistance, which the Ukrainians were able to organize precisely because of their statehood,” Kuleba told Ukrainian television. “Ukraine has already broken Russia’s plans and will continue to defend itself.” Chernihiv regional Gov. Vyacheslav Chaus reported that the Russians also fired missiles from the territory of Belarus at the village of Honcharivska. The Chernihiv region had not been targeted in weeks. Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions months ago after failing to capture either. The renewed strikes come a day after the leader of pro-Kremlin separatists in the east, Denis Pushilin, urged Russian forces to “liberate Russian cities founded by the Russian people — Kyiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lutsk.” Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, also came under a barrage of shelling overnight, according to the mayor. Authorities said a police officer was killed in Russian shelling of a power plant in the Kharkiv region. The southern city of Mykolaiv was fired on as well, with one person reported injured. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military kept up a counterattack in the Kherson region, knocking out of commission a key bridge over the Dnieper River on Wednesday. Read: Ukraine forces strike key bridge in Russian-occupied south Ukrainian media quoted Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich as saying the operation to liberate Kherson is underway, with Kyiv’s forces planning to isolate Russian troops and leave them with three options — “retreat, if possible, surrender or be destroyed.” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said the Russians are concentrating maximum forces in the direction of Kherson, warning: “A very large-scale movement of their troops has begun.” The British military said Ukraine has used its new, Western-supplied long-range artillery to damage at least three of the bridges across the Dnieper that Russia relies on to supply its forces. Ukraine’s presidential office said Thursday morning that Russian shelling of cities and villages over the past 24 hours killed at least five civilians, all of them in the eastern Donetsk province, and wounded nine. Fighting in recent weeks has focused on Donetsk province. It has intensified in recent days as Russian forces appeared to emerge from a reported “operational pause” after capturing neighboring Luhansk province. Ukrainian emergency authorities said two civilians were killed in a Russian bombardment of the town of Toretsk. A missile struck a residential building there early Thursday morning, destroying two floors, officials said. “Missile terror again. We will not give up. ... We will not be intimidated,” Donetsk regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram. Military analysts believe Russian forces are focusing their efforts on capturing the cities of Bakhmut and Siversk in Donetsk province. Zelenskyy instituted the Day of Statehood to remind Ukrainians about the country’s history as an independent state. The commemoration honors Prince Vladimir, who made Christianity the official religion of the medieval state of Kyivan Rus more than 1,000 years ago. “You could say that for us, every day is a statehood day,” the president said in a Day of Statehood address. “We fight every day so that everyone on the planet can finally understand: We are not a colony or enclave or protectorate, not a province, an eyalet, or a crown land, not a part of foreign empires, not a part of a country, not a federal republic, not an autonomy, not a province, but a free, independent, sovereign, indivisible and independent state,” Zelenskyy said. The Kremlin also lays claim to the heritage of the Kyivan Rus. In 2016, Putin erected a monument to Prince Vladimir near the Kremlin.

Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday sacked one of her senior ministers from her Cabinet as well as from all posts of her ruling Trinamool Congress party, days after he was arrested in a school jobs scam. Partha Chatterjee held the portfolios of Commerce and Industry, IT and electronics, and Industrial Reconstruction in the state Cabinet. He was also the ruling Trinamool Congress party's general secretary. "I have removed Partha Chatterjee as a minister. My party takes strict action. There are many plannings behind it but I don't want to go into details,” the Bengal Chief Minister told the media after a Cabinet meeting at the Bengal secretariat. Also read: Mamata, Modi on the same page on Ukraine crisis Trinamool's disciplinary committee, headed by its second-in-command and Mamata's nephew Abhishek, subsequently announced Chatterjee's removal from all party posts. Earlier in the day, the party's spokesperson tweeted to demand strict action against the disgraced minister. "Chatterjee should be removed from ministry and all party posts immediately. He should be expelled." The 69-year-old was taken into custody by India's anti-money laundering probe agency, on Saturday, following hours of questioning for his alleged involvement in school teachers' recruitment scam. Also read: Bengal CM Mamata reinstates nephew as Trinamool general secretary Subsequent raids on multiple flats of Chatterjee's aide Arpita, a small-time actor, helped the Enforcement Directorate seize Rs 50 crore in cash. Chatterjee is said to have taken money for doing out teaching jobs when he was the Education Minister.

The lives of Afghan women and girls are being destroyed by a “suffocating” crackdown by the Taliban since they took power nearly a year ago, Amnesty International said in a report released Wednesday. After they captured the capital, Kabul, in August 2021 and ousted the internationally backed government, the Taliban presented themselves as having moderated since their first time in power, in the 1990s. Initially, Taliban officials spoke of allowing women to continue to work and girls to continue their education. Instead, they formed an all-male government stacked with veterans of their hard-line rule that has banned girls from attending school from seventh grade, imposed all-covering dress that leaves only the eyes visible and restricted women's access to work. Amnesty said the Taliban have also decimated protections for those facing domestic violence, detained women and girls for minor violations and contributed to a surge in child marriages. The report also documented the torture and abuse of women arrested by the Taliban for protesting against restrictions. “Taken together, these policies form a system of repression that discriminates against women and girls in almost every aspect of their lives,” the report said. “This suffocating crackdown against Afghanistan’s female population is increasing day by day.” The group's researchers visited Afghanistan in March as part of a nine-month-long investigation conducted from September 2021 to June 2022. They interviewed 90 women and 11 girls, between 14 and 74 years-old, across Afghanistan. Among them were women detained for protesting who described torture at the hands of Taliban guards, including beatings and threats of death. Read: Hope and despair: Kathy Gannon on 35 years in Afghanistan One woman told Amnesty that guards beat her and other women on the breasts and between the legs, “so that we couldn’t show the world.” She said one told her, “I can kill you right now, and no one would say anything.” A university student who was detained said she was electrically shocked on her shoulder, face, neck and elsewhere, while the Taliban shouted insults at her. One held a gun at her and told her, “I will kill you, and no one will be able to find your body.” The report said rates of child, early and forced marriage in Afghanistan are surging under Taliban rule. The increase, Amnesty said, is fueled by Afghanistan’s economic and humanitarian crisis and the lack of education and job prospects for women and girls. The report documented cases of forced marriages of women and girls to Taliban members — under pressure by the Taliban member or by the women’s families. One woman from a central province of Afghanistan told Amnesty that she was compelled her to marry off her 13-year-old daughter to a 30-year-old neighbor in exchange for 60,000 Afghanis (around US$670). She said she felt relieved because her daughter “won’t be hungry anymore.” She said she was also considering the same for her 10-year-old daughter but was holding off in hopes the girl could get an education and eventually secure a job to support the family. “Of course, if they don’t open the school, I will have to marry her off,” she added. “You have a patriarchal government, war, poverty, drought, girls out of school. With all of these factors combined … we knew child marriage was going to go through the roof,” said Stephanie Sinclair, director of Too Young to Wed, who was quoted in the report. The Taliban seized Kabul as U.S. and NATO forces were withdrawing from Afghanistan, ending a nearly 20-year war against the Taliban’s insurgency. The world has refused to recognize the Taliban's rule, demanding it respect human rights and show tolerance for other groups. The U.S. and its allies have cut off billions in development funds that kept the government afloat, as well as froze billions in Afghan national assets. This sent the already shattered economy into freefall, increasing poverty dramatically and creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Millions, struggling to feed their families, are kept alive by a massive U.N.-led relief effort. Amnesty called on the international community to take action to protect Afghan women and girls. “Less than one year after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, their draconian policies are depriving millions of women and girls of their right to lead safe, free and fulfilling lives,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty secretary general. “If the international community fails to act, it will be abandoning women and girls in Afghanistan, and undermining human rights everywhere,” she said.

A strong earthquake shook the northern Philippines on Wednesday, causing some damage and prompting people to flee buildings in the capital. Officials said no casualties were immediately reported. The 7.3 magnitude quake was centered around Abra province in a mountainous area and several aftershocks have followed, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said. The quake was set off by movement in a local fault at a depth of 25 kilometers (15 miles), the institute said, adding it expected damage and more aftershocks. Officials said the strong shaking caused cracks in buildings and houses. Read: Japan minister says women ‘underestimated’ The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake’s strength at 7.0 and depth at 10 kilometers (6 miles). Shallower quakes tend to cause more damage. The Philippines lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of faults around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur. It is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and tropical storms each year, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries. A magnitude 7.7 quake killed nearly 2,000 people in the northern Philippines in 1990.