Porimol Palma

Dhaka may give a fresh push for water-sharing deals of Teesta and other common rivers during the Bangladesh-India Joint Consultative Commission (JCC) meeting scheduled to be held today.

Let’s take the example of Sufia Khatun, 65, a resident of Dhanmondi in the capital. She had suffered a heart attack in 2018 and saw doctors both in Bangladesh and India and was on medication prescribed by a cardiologist in Delhi. Torsemide was working well.

The Saudi Arabian pressure on Bangladesh to issue passports to 54,000 Rohingyas and bring back 462 others is unacceptable and unfair, analysts and Rohingya activists have said.

With Vietnam returnee Rubel languishing in jail, his wife and three children are struggling to make ends meet as he is the sole wage-earner of his family.

The recent market disruption in Bangladesh due to India’s ban on onion exports could potentially cause a glitch in an Indo-Bangla relationship which is otherwise at its friendliest, analysts said.

Lawmaker Shahid Islam Papul and three managers of his company were taken to a Kuwait court yesterday on charges of human trafficking, money laundering, bribing and threatening the state security.

Mobilising thousands of troops in northern Rakhine has created fears of a fresh crackdown and subsequent Rohingya influx like the one that forced around 750,000 members of the ethnic group to flee to Bangladesh.

Already trailing behind in the race to get a potential Covid-19 vaccine, Bangladesh is all set to start the much-talked-about clinical trial of the Chinese shot by the end of this month.

The confessions of two former Myanmar soldiers about their involvement in massacres, rape, and other crimes against Rohingyas and their transfer to the International Criminal Court (ICC) could be a turning point for justice for the Rohingyas, analysts said.

Rohingya leaders, who went on a “go-and-visit” to Bhashan Char housing project, said they were happy with the facilities there and that those were far better than their current living conditions in Teknaf and Ukhiya camps.

Eighty-one migrant workers who returned to the country after being exploited in Vietnam for months were thrown into jail yesterday, whereas the perpetrators either remain scot-free or face little action.

The situation of 6,00,000 Rohingyas still living in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has worsened -- a reality that mocks the International Court of Justice order to prevent the acts of genocide, legal experts and Rohingya activists have said.

When Bangladesh continues to bear the brunt of sheltering more than a million Rohingyas, Myanmar is doing little for their repatriation amid the silence of global powers though the Southeast Asian country faces a genocide case.

Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla’s two-day visit to Dhaka is part of India’s larger policy to boost relations with its neighbours as China seeks to draw them closer to it, foreign relations analysts said.

Mahin Mia was serving guests in a Lebanese restaurant, which is a seven minutes’ walk from the warehouse that exploded on Tuesday evening, rocking entire Beirut.

It remains a mystery why Bangladesh government is still in a fix about allowing a clinical trial of the Chinese Covid-19 vaccine here when health experts are saying the trial can help the country access the life-saving vaccine quickly and build national capacity for advanced research.

After arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, they found that the Vietnamese company that sponsored their visas had no jobs for them. After a week, they were asked to work for a furniture factory though they were promised jobs at the seaport.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan called his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday. In not so common a conversation, they exchanged greetings and discussed the flood and coronavirus situations in both countries.

As trafficking of Bangladeshis to Vietnam came to the fore after 27 stranded nationals demonstrated in Hanoi last week, 15 others are crying out to be rescued from the Southeast Asian country.

Shahid Islam, the Laxmipur lawmaker now detained in Kuwait, was defended by the Bangladesh ambassador to the Gulf country in a February letter to the foreign ministry following media reports on his alleged criminal activities.