United News of Bangladesh

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1 hit 36 km NE of Lospalos, Timor Leste at 02:36:05 GMT on Friday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said. The epicenter, with a depth of 51.37 km, was initially determined to be at 8.2677 degrees south latitude and 127.2117 degrees east longitude. Also Read: 6.0-magnitude quake strikes off eastern Indonesia  

The Chinese mainland on Thursday reported 80 locally-transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which 45 were in Shanghai and 22 in Beijing, the National Health Commission said Friday. Five other provincial-level regions on the mainland also saw new local COVID-19 cases, including seven in Tianjin, and two each in Jilin and Sichuan. Shanghai also reported 219 locally-transmitted asymptomatic infections of the novel coronavirus Thursday, out of a total of 274 local asymptomatic carriers newly identified on the mainland. Also Read: WHO: COVID-19 cases mostly drop, except for the Americas Following the recovery of 216 COVID-19 patients who were discharged from hospitals on Thursday, there were 3,272 confirmed COVID-19 cases receiving treatment in hospitals across the Chinese mainland. One new death from COVID-19 was reported in Shanghai, according to the commission.    

As many as nine people were killed when their cab veered off a mountainous road and rolled down a deep gorge in Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said on Thursday. The accident occurred at Zojila Pass on the busy Srinagar-Leh National Highway in the federal government-controlled territory. The pass is 3,400 metres above the sea level. "The cab was travelling to Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar with the victims -- eight passengers and the driver -- when the tragedy occurred late on Wednesday night," a police officer told the local media. Read: 8 killed in India road accident While five people died on the spot in the impact, four others, including the driver and an Armyman, succumbed to their injuries later on Thursday, the officer said. "A probe has been ordered into the accident," he added. Road accidents are very common in India, with one taking place every four minutes. These accidents are often blamed on poor roads, rash driving and scant regard for traffic laws. Read: 1,674 children died in Bangladesh road accidents in 28 months, says report Indian government's implementation of stricter traffic laws in recent years has failed to rein in accidents, which claim over 100,000 lives every year.  

Defiant former Prime Minister Imran Khan early Thursday warned Pakistan's government to set new elections in the next six days or he will again march on the capital along with 3 million people. Khan spoke at a rally of thousands of demonstrators in Islamabad aiming to bring down the government and force early elections. The government earlier had summoned troops to guard important buildings, including the parliament and offices of the president and Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif. The measures came following clashes between demonstrators and police. Also read: Pakistan bans Imran Khan's rally, cracks down on supporters Khan in his address claimed that five of his supporters were killed in the violence across the country. There was no immediate comment from the government about Khan's claim, whose supporters were dispersing. Earlier, Khan had vowed that he will stage a prolonged sit-in to get his demands accepted. Khan, a former cricket star turned Islamist politician, was prime minister for over three and half years until being ousted last month by a no-confidence vote in Parliament. Since then, he has held rallies across the country, saying his removal from office was the result of a U.S.-organized plot and collusion with Sharif. Both have denied the allegation. Khan began his march toward Islamabad from the northwestern city of Peshawar. Clashes initially erupted in the eastern city of Lahore, when riot police fired tear gas and pushed back hundreds of demonstrators who hurled stones as they tried to pass a roadblocked bridge near the city to board busses bound for Islamabad. Dozens of Khan's followers also briefly clashed with police in Islamabad, where the demonstrators set fire to bushes lining a main boulevard, sending smoke and flames rising into the sky. Altercations were also reported elsewhere, including in Karachi, where demonstrators burned a police vehicle. At least a dozen demonstrators and several policemen were injured. Ahead of Wednesday's marches, authorities used dozens of shipping containers and trucks to block off major roads into Islamabad. Khan himself traveled by helicopter to a highway some 100 kilometers (62 miles) northwest of Islamabad, where he condemned the police crackdown and urged supporters to join the rally. The government on Wednesday responded by launching a crackdown and arrested more than 1,700 Khan supporters. The measures were announced after a policeman was killed Tuesday during a raid on the home of a notable Khan supporter in Lahore. Also read: Pakistani lawmakers to elect new PM after Imran Khan ouster In a separate development Wednesday, dayslong talks between Islamabad and the International Monetary Fund concluded in Qatar without Pakistan securing a revival of a $6 billion bailout package from the global lender. After the talks, the IMF urged Pakistan to remove subsidies on fuel and energy. The subsidies were approved by Khan’s government in February, forcing the IMF at the time to withhold a crucial tranche of about $1 billion.

Pakistani police have fired tear gas and scuffled with stone-throwing supporters of defiant former Prime Minister Imran Khan as they gathered for planned marches Wednesday toward central Islamabad for a rally he hopes will bring down the government and force early elections. The marches have raised fears of major violence between supporters of Khan — now Pakistan’s top opposition leader — and security forces. The government of Khan’s successor, Shahbaz Sharif, has banned the rally and warned Khan he could face arrest if he went ahead with the demonstrations. Earlier in the morning, riot police fired tear gas and pushed back hundreds of demonstrators who hurled stones as they tried to pass a roadblocked bridge near the city of Lahore to board busses bound for the capital, Islamabad. A dozen demonstrators and several policemen were injured. Altercations between the police and Khan’s supporters were also reported elsewhere. Ahead of Wednesday’s marches, authorities used dozens of shipping containers and trucks to block off major roads into Islamabad. Khan, a former cricket star turned Islamist politician served as prime minister for over three and half years until last month, when he was ousted by a no-confidence vote in Parliament. Since then, he has held rallies with thousands of people across the country. Khan says his removal from office was the result of a U.S.-organized plot and collusion with Sharif, whose government has vowed a stern response if Khan violates the ban. Washington has also denied any role in Pakistan’s internal politics. Despite the ban, Khan is insisting his rally will be massive and peaceful — and continue until the government agrees to hold fresh elections this year, not in 2023 as scheduled. Organizers had planned for crowds to travel by car and bus to Islamabad’s city limits, then march on foot. Khan himself traveled by helicopter to a highway some 100 kilometers (62 miles) northwest of Islamabad, where he condemned the police crackdown and urged supporters to join the rally. “My message for the nation: Everyone must break out of the grip of fear to achieve freedom,” he wrote on Twitter, before starting out by vehicle from the Swabi interchange. His convoy still faces a series of roadblocks ahead that would require heavy machinery to remove. Khan has urged his supporters to remove the containers that were filled with earth and circumvent any blockades in order to enter the city. “I will be among you Wednesday afternoon,” he had vowed on Tuesday. Also Read: Pakistan bans Imran Khan's rally, cracks down on supporters Thousands of Khan’s supporters along with leaders of his Tehreek-e-Insaf party had already massed in Peshawar, the capital of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where his party rules. From there, his followers must cross a bridge at the province’s border that the government has blocked, before assembling on the outskirts of Islamabad. The government launched a crackdown and arrested more than 1,700 Khan supporters, according to Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah. He congratulated his countrymen for rejecting the rally by not participating in it and apologized for the inconvenience caused to citizens due to the blockades. “Imran Khan had claimed that he would gather 2 million people here in Islamabad today, but he is marching toward Islamabad along with only 6,000 or 7,000 demonstrators,” he told a news conference Wednesday. “We are fully prepared to handle him.” Authorities have deployed additional police and paramilitary troops on highways and in Islamabad, with also tractor trailers parked across both lanes of traffic in several areas. The measures were announced after a policeman was killed during a raid on the home of a notable Khan supporter in Lahore. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Supreme Court was hearing a petition Wednesday to remove the blockades into Islamabad. Authorities say that if Khan submits a written assurance that his rally will be peaceful and confined to a public park, the government could consider lifting its ban. The court was expected to announce an order about Khan’s rally later in the day.    

In Afghanistan, 1.1 million children under the age of 5 will likely face the most severe form of malnutrition this year, according to the U.N., as increasing numbers of hungry, wasting-away children are brought into hospital wards. U.N. and other aid agencies were able to stave off outright famine after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last year, rolling out a massive emergency aid program that fed millions. But they are struggling to keep pace with relentlessly worsening conditions. Poverty is spiraling and making more Afghans in need of aid, global food prices are mounting from the war in Ukraine and promises of international funding so far are not coming through, according to an assessment report issued this month. As a result, the vulnerable are falling victim, including children but also mothers struggling to feed themselves along with their families. Nazia said she had lost four children to malnutrition — two daughters and two sons under 2 years old. “All four died due to financial problems and poverty,” the 30-year-old Nazia said. When her children fell ill, she didn’t have the money to treat them. Read: South Asia’s intense heat wave a ‘sign of things to come’ Nazia spoke to The Associated Press at Charakar Hospital in the northern province of Parwan, where she and her 7-month-old daughter were both being treated for malnutrition. Her husband is a day laborer but is also a drug addict and rarely brings in an income, she said. Like many Afghans, she uses only one name. UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, said 1.1 million children this year are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting, nearly double the number in 2018 and up from just under 1 million last year. Severe wasting is the most lethal type of malnutrition, in which food is so lacking that a child’s immune system is compromised, according to UNICEF. They become vulnerable to multiple bouts of disease and eventually they become so weak they can’t absorb nutrients. The numbers of children under 5 being admitted into health facilities with severe acute malnutrition have steadily mounted, from 16,000 in March 2020 to 18,000 in March 2021, then leaping to 28,000 in March 2022, the UNICEF representative in Afghanistan, Mohamed Ag Ayoya, wrote in a tweet last week. Hit by one of its worst droughts in decades and torn by years of war, Afghanistan was already facing a hunger emergency; but the Taliban takeover in August threw the country into crisis. Many development agencies pulled out and international sanctions cut off billions in finances for the government, collapsing the economy.

The devastating heat wave that has baked India and Pakistan in recent months was made more likely by climate change and is a glimpse of the region’s future, international scientists said in a study released Monday.The World Weather Attribution group analyzed historical weather data that suggested early, long heat waves that impact a massive geographical area are rare, once-a-century events. But the current level of global warming, caused by human-caused climate change, has made those heat waves 30 times more likely. If global heating increases to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) more than pre-industrial levels, then heat waves like this could occur twice in a century and up to once every five years, said Arpita Mondal, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, who was part of the study.“This is a sign of things to come,” Mondal said.The results are conservative: An analysis published last week by the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office said the heat wave was probably made 100 times more likely by climate change, with such scorching temperatures likely to reoccur every three years.The World Weather Attribution analysis is different as it is trying to calculate how specific aspects of the heat wave, such as the length and the region impacted, were made more likely by global warming. “The real result is probably somewhere between ours and the (U.K.) Met Office result for how much climate change increased this event,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the Imperial College of London, who was also a part of the study.What is certain, though, is the devastation the heat wave has wreaked. Indian cities and Pakistan consistently saw temperatures above 45C (113F) in the past weeks. In Pakistan, scorching temperatures over 50C (122F) were recorded in some places like Jacobabad and Dadu. Parts of the Indian capital New Delhi saw temperatures reaching 49C (120F) this month.India sweltered through the hottest March in the country since records began in 1901 and April was the warmest on record in Pakistan and parts of India. The effects have been cascading and widespread: A glacier burst in Pakistan, sending floods downstream; the early heat scorched wheat crops in India, forcing it to ban exports to nations reeling from food shortages due to Russia’s war in Ukraine; it also resulted in an early spike in electricity demand in India that depleted coal reserves, resulting in acute power shortages affecting millions.Then there is the impact on human health. At least 90 people have died in the two nations, but the region’s insufficient death registration means that this is likely an undercount. South Asia is the most affected by heat stress, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of a dataset published Columbia University’s climate school. India alone is home to more than a third of the world’s population that lives in areas where extreme heat is rising.Experts agree the heat wave underscores the need for the world to not just combat climate change by cutting down greenhouse gas emissions, but to also adapt to its harmful impacts as quickly as possible. Children and the elderly are most at risk from heat stress, but its impact is also inordinately bigger for the poor who may not have access to cooling or water and often live in crowded slums that are hotter than leafier, wealthier neighborhoods.Rahman Ali, 42, a ragpicker in an eastern suburb of the Indian capital New Delhi earns less than $3 a day by collecting waste from people’s homes and sorting it to salvage whatever can be sold. It’s backbreaking work and his tin-roofed home in the crowded slum offers little respite from the heat.“What can we do? If I don’t work...we won’t eat,” said the father of two.Some Indian cities have tried to find solutions. The western city of Ahmedabad was the first in South Asia to design a heat wave plan for its population of over 8.4 million, all the way back in 2013. The plan includes an early warning system that tells health workers and residents to prepare for heat waves, empowers administrations to keep parks open so that people can shade and provides information to schools so they’re able to tweak their schedules.The city has also been trying to “cool” roofs by experimenting with various materials absorb heat differently. Their aim is to build roofs that’ll reflect the sun and bring down indoor temperatures by using white, reflective paint or cheaper materials like dried grass, said Dr. Dileep Mavalankar, who heads the Indian Institute of Public Health in western Indian city Gandhinagar and helped design the 2013 plan.Most Indian cities are less prepared and India’s federal government is now working with 130 cities in 23 heat wave-prone states for them to develop similar plans. Earlier this month, the federal government also asked states to sensitize health workers on managing heat-related illnesses and ensure that ice packs, oral rehydration salts, and cooling appliances in hospitals were available.But Mavalankar, who wasn’t part of the study, pointed to the lack of government warnings in newspapers or TV for most Indian cities and said that local administrations had just not “woken up to the heat.”

At least 16 people from Myanmar’s Rohingya minority have died after a storm capsized the boat they were traveling on to seek refuge in another country, officials and a recovery team member said Tuesday. There were 35 survivors of Saturday’s accident that took place Saturday off Myanmar’s southwestern coast and four people were missing, the officials said. UNHCR, the U.N.’s refugee agency, expressed shock and sadness about the accident in a statement and said at least 17 Rohingya, including children, had died. The boat left the western state of Rakhine last Thursday and encountered bad weather two days later off Ayeyarwaddy Region on Myanmar’s southwestern coast, causing it to capsize, the statement said. The Rohingya, a Muslim minority, have long been persecuted in Myanmar. More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled the country to neighboring Bangladesh since August 2017 to escape the brutal counterinsurgency campaign of Myanmar’s military following an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group in Rakhine State. Also Read: Dhaka wants UN actions to ensure early repatriation of Rohingyas Myanmar’s government has denied accusations that security forces committed mass rapes and killings and burned thousands of homes, but the U.S. government recently labeled actions by the country’s military as genocide.   There are more than 100,000 Rohingya left in Myanmar, confined in squalid displacement camps, along with those living in crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh. Groups of Rohingya from camps in both countries embark on hazardous voyages to the Muslim-majority countries of Malaysia and Indonesia to seek a better living. “Some 630 Rohingya have attempted sea journeys across the Bay of Bengal from January to May 2022,” the UNHCR statement said, with women and children making up 60% of those trying to flee. The statement added: “The risk of abuse at the hands of smugglers and the peril of the sea journey itself are both exacerbated during prolonged journeys, when a safe harbor for disembarkation cannot be found.” An Ayeyarwaddy Region resident said the 16 bodies, including those of two young boys, were recovered near Pathein township, about 300 kilometers (180 miles) west of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. He spoke on condition of anonymity because Myanmar’s military government seeks to tightly control the flow of information. A local official, who also requested anonymity for the same reason, said most of the 50 people on board the boat were men under 30 years old. He said the bodies were buried and that the 35 survivors were taken away by the security forces. Maung Maung Than, a spokesperson for the Ayeyarwaddy Region government, confirmed that the accident happened but did not give further details. “The latest tragedy shows once again the sense of desperation being felt by Rohingya in Myanmar and in the region,” Indrika Ratwatte, UNHCR’s director for Asia and the Pacific said in the agency’s statement. “It is shocking to see increasing numbers of children, women and men embarking on these dangerous journeys and eventually losing their lives.”      

India plans to restrict sugar exports for the first time in six years to prevent a surge in domestic prices, potentially capping this season's exports at 10 million tonnes, a government source told Reuters on Tuesday. Also read:India bans wheat exports India is the world's biggest sugar producer and the second biggest exporter behind Brazil, reports NDTV.  

Pakistan on Tuesday banned ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan from holding a massive, planned rally in the capital of Islamabad and cracked down on his supporters in overnight raids across the country, arresting hundreds. The ban came hours after a policeman was killed during one of the raids, when a supporter of the former premier opened fire after officers entered his home in the city of Lahore. Also read:Pakistani lawmakers to elect new PM after Imran Khan ouster Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah warned Khan that he would “not be allowed to disrupt peace in Islamabad" and would be arrested if needed, should the rally go ahead. Sanaullah earlier in the day accused Khan of seeking to create a civil war-like situation. The former cricket star turned Islamist politician, Khan served as prime minister for over three and half years until he was ousted by a no-confidence vote in parliament in April. Khan has remained defiant, demanding early elections and claiming his removal was the result of a U.S.-organized plot in collusion with his successor, Pakistan's new Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif. Washington denies any role in Pakistan’s internal politics. Earlier this week, Khan urged supporters to converge on Islamabad on Wednesday for a massive rally to pressure Sharif's government. The demonstration, he said, would continue until a date for snap elections was announced. Sanaullah, the interior minister, said the decision to ban the rally was taken after Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party failed to assure the administration in writing that the rally would be peaceful. Earlier Tuesday, authorities stepped up security in Islamabad, deploying additional officers and paramilitary Rangers. Large shipping containers were placed on a key road leading to the parliament building, to prevent Khan’s supporters from getting close and possibly staging a sit-in there. According to Fawad Chaudhry, a spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Insaf party, police raids against their supporters started shortly after midnight Monday. Homes were still being raided on Tuesday morning and at least 400 supporters of the party were arrested across the country, Chaudhry said. Khan condemned the arrests on Twitter. Authorities confirmed the raids but refused to share details about any arrests. Also read: Deputy Speaker rejects no-confidence motion against Pakistan PM Imran Khan, declares it unconstitutional At a news conference in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Tuesday, Khan vowed to carry on with the rally in the Pakistani capital as planned. “I tell my supporters to reach Islamabad and I will also be there," he said, insisting he was not afraid of death and urging his followers to “get ready for sacrifices" for the sake of Pakistan's sovereignty. Several other prominent figures from Khan's party warned police they could face violent resistance if raids on their homes continued.