Reuters

A bus veered into a ravine in Pakistan's far north early on Friday, a local government spokesman said, killing 20 passengers, while 21 injured were rescued and taken to hospital.
The bus was headed to the mountainous northern area of Gilgit-Baltistan from the garrison city of Rawalpindi in Pakistan's eastern province of Punjab, when the accident happened in the early hours.
"The bus was passing through Diamer district in Gilgit-Baltistan when it fell into a deep ravine," Faizullah Firaq, a spokesman for local government authorities in the area, told Reuters, adding that 21 people were injured.
The government immediately launched a rescue operation to evacuate all the injured, who were taken to hospital, he added.
Fatal road accidents are common in Pakistan, where traffic rules are rarely followed and roads in many rural areas are in poor condition.
For decades Pakistan has done extensive work in carving roads through its dramatic rugged northern terrain, home to some of the world's highest mountain ranges, approached by narrow roads perched on sheer cliffs.
Militant attacks, including one in March nearby in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that killed six people, pose another risk to travellers in the area, targeting Chinese-backed dams and hydropower infrastructure projects.

Bus falls into ravine in Pakistan's far north, killing 20

AP/UNB

Police have arrested nearly 2,200 people during pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses across the United States in recent weeks, sometimes using riot gear, tactical vehicles and flash-bang devices to clear tent encampments and occupied buildings. One officer accidentally discharged his gun inside a Columbia University administration building while clearing out protesters camped inside, authorities said.
No one was injured by the officer's mistake late Tuesday inside Hamilton Hall on the Columbia campus, the NYPD said Thursday. He was trying to use the flashlight attached to his gun at the time and instead fired a single round that struck a frame on the wall.
There were other officers but no students in the immediate vicinity, officials said. Body camera footage shows when the officer's gun went off, but the district attorney's office is conducting a review, a standard practice.
More than 100 people were taken into custody during the Columbia crackdown, just a fraction of the total arrests stemming from recent campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war. A tally by The Associated Press recorded at least 56 incidents of arrests at 43 different U.S. colleges or universities since April 18. The figures are based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.
Early Thursday, officers surged against a crowd of demonstrators at University of California, Los Angeles, ultimately taking at least 200 protesters into custody after hundreds defied orders to leave, some forming human chains as police fired flash-bangs to break up the crowds. Police tore apart a fortified encampment&rsquo;s barricade of plywood, pallets, metal fences and dumpsters, then pulled down canopies and tents.
Like at UCLA, tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across other campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century.
Israel has branded the protests antisemitic, while Israel&rsquo;s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, protest organizers &mdash; some of whom are Jewish &mdash; call it a peaceful movement to defend Palestinian rights and protest the war.
President Joe Biden on Thursday defended the right of students to peaceful protest but decried the disorder of recent days.
The demonstrations began at Columbia on 17 April with students calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas war, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there. Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, on Oct. 7 and took roughly 250 hostages in an attack on southern Israel.
On April 18, the NYPD cleared Columbia's initial encampment and arrested roughly 100 protesters. The demonstrators set up new tents and defied threats of suspension, and escalated their actions early Tuesday by occupying Hamilton Hall, an administration building that was similarly seized in 1968 by students protesting racism and the Vietnam War.
Roughly 20 hours later, officers stormed the hall. Video showed police with zip ties and riot shields streaming through a second-floor window. Police had said protesters inside presented no substantial resistance.
The officer's gun went off at 9:38pm, the NYPD said, about 10 minutes after police started pouring into Hamilton Hall. The department did not name the officer, whose actions were first reported by news outlet The City on Thursday.
The confrontations at UCLA also played out over several days this week. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block told alumni on a call Thursday afternoon that the trouble started after a permitted pro-Israel rally was held on campus Sunday and fights broke out and &ldquo;live mice&rdquo; were tossed into the pro-Palestinian encampment later that day.
In the following days, administrators tried to find a peaceful solution with members of the encampment and expected things to remain stable, Block said.
That changed late Tuesday, he said, when counterdemonstrators attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment. Campus administrators and police did not intervene or call for backup for hours. No one was arrested that night, but at least 15 protesters were injured. The delayed response drew criticism from political leaders, including California Gov Gavin Newsom, and officials pledged an independent review.
By Wednesday, the encampment had become &ldquo;much more of a bunker&rdquo; and there was no other solution but to have police dismantle it, Block said.
The hourslong standoff went into Thursday morning as officers warned over loudspeakers that there would be arrests if the crowd &mdash; at the time more than 1,000 strong inside the encampment as well as outside of it &mdash; did not disperse. Hundreds left voluntarily, while another 200-plus remained and were ultimately taken into custody.
Meanwhile, protest encampments at other schools across the US have been cleared by police &mdash; resulting in more arrests &mdash; or closed voluntarily. But University of Minnesota officials reached an agreement with protesters not to disrupt commencements, and similar compromises have been made at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago, Rutgers University in New Jersey and Brown University in Rhode Island. &nbsp;

Nearly 2,200 people have been arrested during pro-Palestinian protests on US college campuses

AFP/BSS

Modern Europe is facing a triple existential threat; a new paradigm is needed to counter it, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview with the British weekly The Economist.
"It's this triple existential risk for our Europe: a military and security risk; an economic risk for our prosperity; an existential risk of internal incoherence and disruption to the functioning of our democracies," the French president said. "So these are the three risks that have accelerated in recent years, very strongly no doubt. Moreover, after the pandemic, we underestimated these tensions, even though Europe began to respond to them, but too timidly or sometimes a little too late," he added.
According to Macron, "a new geopolitical, economic and societal paradigm for Europe" is needed to address these challenges. First of all, as the president believes, Europe must take care of its own security. In addition, it needs to ensure its strategic autonomy "in terms of energy, materials and rare resources, but also in terms of key skills and technologies."
Among other things, this concerns the active participation of its companies in the development of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, where the United States and China may get a long-term advantage. Finally, Europe needs to address the vulnerabilities "created by social networks and the digitalization of our societies and the way democracy works," he went on to say.
In reply to the question whether this will lead to a gradual death, or will it be a sudden death, Macron said: "Things can fall apart very quickly. In Europe and everywhere else, they are creating a rise in anger and resentment."

Europe facing 'triple existential risk,' Macron warns

Desk Report

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson, who introduced a contentious requirement for voters to show photo ID while voting, was turned away from a polling station on Thursday for forgetting to bring his.
Johnson, who quit in 2022 following a scandal-ridden premiership, was initially turned away at a polling station in Oxfordshire, southern England, while trying to vote in local elections taking place across England on Thursday (2 May), reports the BBC.
As prime minister, Johnson's government introduced the ID requirement in 2022 to crack down on possible voter fraud but it was heavily criticised for the potential to disenfranchise parts of the electorate.

Boris Johnson, who introduced voter ID rule in UK, turned away from polling station after forgetting his own

The success of ballistic missile defences facing their first complex, high-stakes combat scenarios in Israel, the Red Sea and Ukraine will encourage militaries globally to invest in the pricey systems, experts say - and intensify missile arms races.
Iran launched as many as 120 intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Israel on 13 April, US and Israeli officials say. US SM-3 and Israeli Arrow interceptors destroyed nearly all of them, leaving drones and smaller threats to the Iron Dome system. &nbsp; In previous months, interceptors fired from US Navy destroyers stopped Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles, while in Ukraine, US-made MIM-104 Patriot batteries have shot down advanced Russian Iskander and Khinzal missiles.
Reuters spoke with six experts who said more militaries would look to invest in ballistic missile defence, a potential windfall for companies such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, which build those types of systems. &nbsp; "It's undeniable that any wealthy country with the technological wherewithal will continue to invest in missile defence," said Ankit Panda of the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a defence and security think tank. "All of this is a recipe for a conventional arms race."
European countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Poland already operate RTX subsidiary Raytheon's Patriot batteries, the most common Western advanced ballistic missile defence system. &nbsp; Saudi Arabia has used its Patriots for years to defend against Houthi attacks; it and the United Arab Emirates also operate the Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), opens new tab Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system.
Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain have Patriot batteries as well, and Oman has expressed interest in missile defence.
In the US, Lockheed Martin in April won a $17.7 billion contract for a next-generation interceptor for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) programme - designed to shoot down small numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) aimed at the continental United States. &nbsp; But the impact may be most acute in Asia, where China has invested heavily in conventionally armed ballistic missiles.
A 2023 Pentagon report said the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force has about 500 DF-26 missiles, designed to accurately strike targets thousands of kilometres away.
That puts US and allied bases in Japan and Guam within range of an attack that may only come with 20 to 30 minutes' warning.
Ballistic missile defence works by spotting an attacking weapon either at launch or in flight, then using a surface-based radar to guide an interceptor to the target.
Interceptions can occur in the atmosphere or in space, and each domain requires different hardware. For instance, fins won't work outside the atmosphere - interceptors must have small steering rockets to function there.
The necessary high-powered computers, far-seeing radars and missiles as large as telephone poles are not cheap, together stretching into the billions. In 2022, for example, the US approved the sale of both Patriots and THAAD systems to Saudi Arabia, in deals worth as much as $5.3 billion.
In the Indo-Pacific region, wealthier countries such as Japan, Australia and South Korea are prime candidates for missile defence, Lewis said, while nearly every country in Asia is already investing in missiles.
Japan's defence ministry said the country "needs to fundamentally and swiftly reinforce its defence capabilities, including integrated air and missile defence". It said it is investing in improved Patriot missiles, better radars and enhanced naval anti-missile capabilities.
In its latest defence budget, South Korea increased funding by 12% for its Korea Air and Missile Defense System to expand it "from the existing lower-level defence concept," the country's defence ministry said in a statement.
"Cases such as the Israel-Hamas conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war have reaffirmed the importance of a 'ballistic missile defence system' to respond to increasingly sophisticated missile threats," the ministry said.
In mid-April, Australia announced a A$500 million ($328 million) contract with Lockheed Martin to deliver its Joint Air Battle Management System for tracking and destroying aircraft and missiles.
The cost of a ballistic missile is often much cheaper than the system meant to stop it.
But that isn't the right way to consider cost, said Yoji Koda, former commander in chief of Japan's Self-Defense Fleet, and an advocate of stronger missile defences in his country.
"In a war economy, the cheaper the better. But sometimes what is necessary, is we need to protect key infrastructure, or key command centres, at any cost. Because without them we would lose."
THE CHINA QUESTION
Most of China's conventionally armed ballistic missiles are designed to hit targets on land.
But it also fields steerable warheads meant to hit ships at sea, including the DF-21D and variants of the DF-26, developed by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
Such anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) had never been used in combat until late 2023, when Houthi forces in Yemen began firing Iranian-made models at ships in the Red Sea.
Between November - the first documented use - and April, U.S. Central Command reported at least 85 ASBMs fired in the region, with 20 interceptions and one civilian ship reported sunk.
CENTCOM has declined to provide specifics about the effectiveness of Iranian ASBMs but has noted missiles posing no threat were not engaged and most that were not intercepted landed harmlessly.
The effectiveness of missile defences on land and at sea will catch China's attention, said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow with the Nuclear Policy Program and Carnegie China.
"It raises the possibility that the US and its allies could depend on missile defence significantly against a ballistic missile attack," Zhao said.
Although the technical specifics of China's missiles are closely held secrets, the country's heavy investment means they are likely to be more reliable, and are widely believed to use complex countermeasures to complicate interception.
"For opponents such as China which have missile stockpiles an order of magnitude larger than that of Russia or Iran and which field more sophisticated systems ... it's not clear that the lessons learned invalidate existing operational constructs," said Sidarth Kaushal, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
But the political and practical incentives to invest in missile defence will be too attractive for many countries to ignore, Lewis said.
"All defence procurement decisions are ultimately about politics," he said. "The politics of this stuff is really simple: do you want to defend the country or not? And the winning answer is always 'Yes'."
($1 = 1.5225 Australian dollars) &nbsp;

Missile defence successes in Israel, Ukraine fuel global urgency to acquire systems

Under mounting political pressure, US President Joe Biden broke his silence on campus unrest over the war in Gaza on Thursday, saying Americans have the right to demonstrate but not to unleash violence.
"There is a right to protest, but not a right to cause chaos," Biden said in remarks at the White House.
With television images of campus unrest that have swept the country in recent days playing out on news networks, Biden has faced criticism of his handling of the situation. He had been leaving it largely up to his spokespersons to comment.
The Democratic president, seeking re-election in November, has walked a careful line of denouncing antisemitism while supporting young Americans' right to protest and trying to limit longer-term political damage.
Biden said both sides had a point, that peaceful dissent was critical to a democracy but that violence would not be tolerated.
"Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It's against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancelling of classes and graduations -none of this is a peaceful protest," he said.
Biden said the United States was not an authoritarian nation that silences critics but that "order must prevail."
"Dissent is essential to democracy but dissent must never lead to disorder or denying the rights of others so students can't finish the semester and college education," he said.
Biden, asked whether state governors should call in National Guard troops to restore order if necessary, replied "no."
In response to a reporter's question, Biden said the campus protests had not forced him to reconsider his policies in the Middle East.
Student protesters are calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and demanding schools divest from companies that support Israel's government.

Biden breaks silence on college protests over Gaza conflict

Police forcibly removed scores of defiant pro-Palestinian protesters at several colleges on Thursday, including taking down an encampment at UCLA in a jarring scene that underscored the heightened chaos that has erupted at universities this week.
In the pre-dawn hours, helmeted police swarmed a tent city set up at the University of California in Los Angeles, using flash bangs and riot gear to push through lines of protesters who linked arms in a futile attempt to halt their advance.
Hundreds were arrested at UCLA and other schools.
"I'm a student here," one UCLA protester told cameras as he was led away, his hands bound. "Please don't fail us. Don't fail us."
Hours later, the student, who would only give his first name as Ryan, was back on campus and vowed he would not stop fighting.
"We will be back," said Ryan, who was cited for unlawful assembly. "We will be disrupting. We will be demanding divestment."
Students have rallied or set up tents at dozens of universities in recent days to protest Israel's war on Gaza. Demonstrators have called on President Joe Biden, who has supported Israel's right to defend itself, to do more to stop the bloodshed in Gaza and demanded schools divest from companies that support Israel's government.
Many of the schools, including Columbia University in New York City, have called in police to quell the protests.
Biden broke his silence on the demonstrations on Thursday after the UCLA raid, saying Americans have the right to protest but not to unleash violence.
"Destroying property is not a peaceful protest," he said at the White House. "It's against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancelling of classes and graduations - none of this is a peaceful protest."
Biden, who is seeking re-election in November against Republican former President Donald Trump, has walked a careful line as he confronts criticism from both the right and the left over his Israel policy.
VIOLENCE ON CAMPUS
At UCLA, police repeatedly urged demonstrators to clear the protest zone, which occupied a central plaza about the size of a football field, before they moved in.
Dozens of loud explosions were heard from stun grenades, fired by police, while demonstrators, some carrying makeshift shields and umbrellas, chanted "push them back" and flashed bright lights in officers' eyes.
Live TV footage showed officers taking down tents and tearing apart makeshift barricades.
Some of the protesters had been seen donning hard hats, goggles and respirator masks in anticipation of the siege a day after the university declared the encampment unlawful.
By morning, the plaza was strewn with detritus from the destroyed encampment: tents, blankets, food containers, a Palestinian flag, an upturned helmet. Police remained on hand during the first half of the day as the area was cleaned of debris.
In Portland, Oregon, police entered the Portland State University library on Thursday morning, where demonstrators had barricaded themselves since Monday. Several dozen protesters ran out of the building and rushed into a phalanx of officers in riot gear, who arrested them.
In New Hampshire, police arrested approximately 100 protesters in separate incidents at Dartmouth University and the University of New Hampshire overnight, breaking up encampments.
The protests follow the deadly Oct 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip, which killed 1,200 people and saw dozens taken hostage, and an ensuing Israeli offensive that has killed about 34,000 and created a humanitarian crisis.
The campus demonstrations have been met with counter-protesters accusing them of fomenting anti-Jewish hatred. The pro-Palestinian side, including some Jews opposed to Israeli actions in Gaza, say they are being unfairly branded as antisemitic for criticizing Israel's government and expressing support for human rights.
UCLA had cancelled classes for the day on Wednesday following a violent clash between the encampment's occupants and a group of masked counter-demonstrators who mounted a surprise assault late Tuesday night on the tent city.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, in a written statement, said that officials had allowed the encampment to remain on campus for several days as it was peaceful at first, but that the clashes with the pro-Israeli crowd clearly put students in harm's way.
"It led to unsafe conditions on our campus and it damaged our ability to carry out our mission," Block said of the encampment. "It needed to come to an end."
Taylor Gee, a 30-year-old pro-Palestinian protester and UCLA law student, said the police operation on Thursday felt "especially galling" to many protesters given the slow police response a night earlier.
"For them to come out the next night to remove us from the encampment, it doesn't make any sense, but it also makes all the sense in the world," he said.
UCLA officials said the campus, with nearly 52,000 students, would remain shuttered except for limited operations on Thursday and Friday.

Fresh chaos, arrests on US college campuses as police flatten camp at UCLA

Seventy percent of environmental journalists from 129 countries, polled in March, reported experiencing attacks, threats or pressure related to their job, UNESCO said Thursday.
Of those, two in five subsequently experienced physical violence, it said in a report released on World Press Freedom Day. More than 900 reporters were questioned for the poll.
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization warned of an increase in violence against and intimidation of journalists reporting on the environment and climate.
"Without reliable scientific information about the ongoing environmental crisis, we can never hope to overcome it," UNESCO director general Audrey Azoulay said in a statement.
"And yet the journalists we rely on to investigate this subject and ensure information is accessible face unacceptably high risks all over the world, and climate-related disinformation is running rampant on social media."
UNESCO said at least 749 journalists and news media outlets reporting on environmental issues were "targeted with murder, physical violence, detention and arrest, online harassment or legal attacks" between 2009 and 2023.
More than 300 of those attacks occurred between 2019 and 2023 -- a 42 percent increase on the preceding five-year period.
"The problem is global, with attacks taking place in 89 countries in all regions of the world," the agency added.
At least 44 environmental journalists have been killed for their work in the past 15 years, with convictions in only five cases, said the report.
On top of hundreds of reported physical attacks, "a third of journalists surveyed said they had been censored," it added.
"Almost half (45%) said they self-censored when covering the environment due to fear of being attacked, having their sources exposed, or due to an awareness that their stories conflicted with the interests of concerned stakeholders."
At a press freedom conference in Chile this week, UNESCO will announce the launch of a grants program to provide legal and technical support to over 500 environmental journalists facing persecution, said the statement.

70% of environment journalists report attacks, threats, pressure: UN

Quebec Premier Francois Legault said on Thursday the encampment at Montreal's McGill University should be dismantled as more students erected pro-Palestinian camps across some of Canada's largest universities, demanding they divest from groups with ties to Israel.
The Canadian protests come as police have been arresting hundreds on US campuses and the death toll in Gaza has been mounting.
While McGill had requested police intervention, law enforcement had not stepped in Thursday to clear the encampment and did not respond to Reuters' questions about their plans. Students also set up encampments at Canadian schools including the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia and the University of Ottawa.
"We want the camp to be dismantled. We trust the police, let them do their job," a spokesperson for Legault said.
There was also a pro-Israel counter-protest in Montreal Thursday. The two sides were kept separate.
On Thursday morning, students at the University of Toronto set up an encampment in a fenced-off grassy space at the school's downtown campus where some 100 protesters gathered with dozens of tents.
According to a statement from organisers the encampment will stay until the university discloses its investments, divests from any that "sustain Israeli apartheid, occupation and illegal settlement of Palestine" and ends partnerships with some Israeli academic institutions.
Israel says it does not participate in apartheid and that its assault on Gaza does not constitute genocide.
A university spokesperson told Reuters it was "in dialogue with the protesters" and that, as of midday, the encampment was "not disruptive to normal university activities."
University of Toronto graduate student and encampment spokesperson Sara Rasikh told Reuters they will remain until their demands are met.
"If public disruption is the only way to get our voice heard, then we are willing to do that," she said.
Some Jewish groups have accused protesters of being antisemitic. Organisers deny that charge, noting that some protesters are Jewish.
Asked to comment on the encampments, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office pointed to a statement he made on Tuesday, saying "Universities are places of learning, they&rsquo;re places for freedom of expression ... but that only works if people feel safe on campus. Right now ... Jewish students do not feel safe. That&rsquo;s not right."The protests follow the deadly Oct 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip, which killed 1,200 people and saw dozens taken hostage, and an ensuing Israeli offensive that has killed about 34,000 and created a humanitarian crisis.

Students erect pro-Palestinian encampments across major Canadian universities

The United&nbsp;Nations said Thursday that the post-war reconstruction of Gaza would require an&nbsp;international effort unseen since the aftermath of World War II, estimating it&nbsp;could cost up to $40 billion.
It came as Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh struck an optimistic tone over a&nbsp;possible truce and hostage release deal for Gaza, after weeks of largely&nbsp;stalled negotiations.
There have been reports of sticking points between the group and Israel nearly seven months into the war that has devastated the Palestinian&nbsp;territory.
But Haniyeh, head of the militant group's Qatar-based political bureau,&nbsp;said in calls to Egyptian and Qatari mediators that Hamas was studying the&nbsp;latest proposal with a "positive spirit".
Much of Gaza has been reduced to a grey landscape of rubble and the United&nbsp;Nations estimated the cost of reconstruction at between $30 billion and $40&nbsp;billion.
"The scale of the destruction is huge and unprecedented... this is a&nbsp;mission that the global community has not dealt with since World War II," UN&nbsp;assistant secretary-general Abdallah al-Dardari told a briefing in the&nbsp;Jordanian capital Amman.
The UN official said "72 percent of all residential buildings have been&nbsp;completely or partially destroyed".
Reconstruction is made more difficult by the presence of large quantities&nbsp;of unexploded ordnance in the debris that Gaza's Civil Defence agency says triggers "more than 10 explosions every week".
The war started with Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in&nbsp;the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of&nbsp;Israeli official figures.
Israel estimates that 129 captives seized by militants during their attack&nbsp;remain in Gaza. The military says 34 of them are dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 34,596&nbsp;people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Mediators have proposed a deal that would halt fighting for 40 days and&nbsp;exchange Israeli hostages for potentially thousands of Palestinian prisoners, according to details released by Britain.
An Israeli official not authorised to speak publicly said Israel was still&nbsp;waiting for Hamas's formal response to the latest proposal.
Before Haniyeh's comments on Thursday, Hamas officials had given it a&nbsp;generally negative reception.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP late Wednesday that the&nbsp;movement's position on the proposal was "negative" for the time being.
Another senior Hamas official, Suhail al-Hindi, said the group's aim&nbsp;remained an "end to this war" -- a goal at odds with the stated position of&nbsp;Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But the militant group has come under intense pressure from mediators to&nbsp;accept the latest offer.
"Hamas needs to say yes and needs to get this done," US Secretary of State&nbsp;Antony Blinken said in Israel Wednesday on his latest Middle East crisis tour.
&nbsp;

Gaza needs biggest post-war reconstruction effort since WWII: UN

Myanmar's junta has suspended the issuing of permits for men to work abroad, it said, weeks after it introduced a military conscription law that led to thousands trying to leave the country.
The labour ministry had "temporarily suspended" accepting applications from men who wish to work abroad, the ministry said in a statement posted by the junta's information team late Thursday.
The measure was in order to "take more time to verify departure processes and according to other issues," it said, without giving details.
The Southeast Asian nation has been in turmoil since the military seized power in 2021, sparking massive armed opposition it has failed to crush.
In February, it said it would enforce a law allowing it to call up all men aged 18-35 and women aged 18-27 to serve in the military for at least two years.

Myanmar junta bans men from applying to work abroad

Japan and India are struggling economically because they are "xenophobic," US President Joe Biden told a campaign event, lumping the American allies in with rivals China and Russia as countries rejecting immigrants.
"Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan in trouble? Why is Russia in trouble? And India? Because they're xenophobic. They don't want immigrants," Biden said on Wednesday, with a transcript not made public until Thursday.
The 81-year-old Democrat, who is seeking reelection against Republican rival Donald Trump in the November presidential vote, made the remarks at a campaign fundraising event in Washington marking the start of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders Heritage Month.
Such events are neither filmed nor recorded, but a small number of journalists attend and provide a written account.
"One of the reasons why our economy is growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants," the president said.
While China and Russia are considered US rivals, Biden's remarks on Japan and India came as a surprise.
Since taking office in 2021, Biden has made a point of strengthening ties with US allies in Asia, in particular with New Delhi and Tokyo.
He has hosted state dinners -- a rare high-level diplomatic gesture -- for both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
The White House sought to downplay the president's remarks on Thursday.
"The broader point the president was making, and I think people all around the world recognize this, is that the United States is a nation of immigrants, and it's in our DNA," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
"Our allies know very well how much the president respects them, values their friendship, values their contributions," he added.

Biden calls ally Japan 'xenophobic' along with India, China

Turkey said Thursday it was suspending all trade with Israel until it allows aid to enter Gaza unhindered during its offensive against Hamas in the territory.
"Exports and imports to and from Israel have been suspended," the trade ministry said in a statement, adding: "Turkey will apply these new measures... until the Israeli government authorises an uninterrupted flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza."
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz had earlier on Thursday accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of breaking agreements between the two countries by blocking Israeli exports and imports.
The move is the latest incident degrading relations after Turkey, one of the few Muslim-majority nations to recognise Israel, restricted exports to the country in April.
The Gaza Strip is suffering a humanitarian crisis caused by Israel's war against Hamas that has been raging since 7 October, with the United Nations and aid agencies warning of impending famine.
The war started with Hamas's unprecedented 7 October attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel estimates that 129 captives seized by Hamas during their attack remain in Gaza. The military says 34 of them are dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 34,596 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

Turkey says suspending all trade with Israel

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida unveiled an international framework for regulation and use of generative AI on Thursday, adding to global efforts on governance for the rapidly advancing technology.
Kishida made the announcement in a speech at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
&ldquo;Generative AI has the potential to be a vital tool to further enrich the world,&rdquo; Kishida said. But &ldquo;we must also confront the dark side of AI, such as the risk of disinformation."
When Japan chaired the Group of Seven leading industrialised nations last year, it launched a Hiroshima AI process to draw up international guiding principles and a code of conduct for AI developers.
Some 49 countries and regions have signed up to the voluntary framework, called the Hiroshima AI Process Friends Group, Kishida said, without naming any. They will work on implementing principles and code of conduct to address the risks of generative AI and &ldquo;promote cooperation to ensure that people all over the world can benefit from the use of safe, secure, and trustworthy AI,&rdquo; he said.
The European Union, the United States, China and many other nations have been racing to draw up regulations and oversight for AI, while global bodies such as the United Nations have been grappling with how to supervise it.

Japan's Kishida unveils framework for global regulation of generative AI

Russian military personnel have entered an air base in Niger that is hosting US troops, a senior US defence official told Reuters, a move that follows a decision by Niger's junta to expel US forces from the country.
The military officers ruling the West African nation have told the US to withdraw its nearly 1,000 military personnel from the country, which until a coup last year had been a key partner for Washington's fight against insurgents who have killed thousands of people and displaced millions more.
A senior US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russian forces were not mingling with US troops but were using a separate hanger at Airbase 101, which is next to Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey, Niger's capital.
The move by Russia's military puts US and Russian troops in close proximity at a time when the nations' military and diplomatic rivalry is increasingly acrimonious over the conflict in Ukraine.
It also raises questions about the fate of US installations in the country following a withdrawal.
"(The situation) is not great but in the short-term manageable," the official said.
The Nigerien and Russian embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US and its allies have been forced to move troops out of a number of African countries following coups that brought to power groups eager to distance themselves from Western governments. In addition to the impending departure from Niger, US troops have also left Chad in recent days, while French forces have been kicked out of Mali and Burkina Faso.
At the same time, Russia is seeking to strengthen relations with African nations, pitching Moscow as a friendly country with no colonial baggage in the continent.
Mali, for example, has in recent years become one of Russia's closest African allies, with the Wagner Group mercenary force deploying there to fight jihadist insurgents.
Russia has described relations with the United States as "below zero" because of US military and financial aid for Ukraine in the war now approaching the end of its second year.
The US official said Nigerien authorities had told President Joe Biden's administration that about 60 Russian military personnel would be in Niger, but the official could not verify that number.
After the coup, the US military moved some of its forces in Niger from Airbase 101 to Airbase 201 in the city of Agadez. It was not immediately clear what US military equipment remained at Airbase 101.
The United States built Airbase 201 in central Niger at a cost of more than $100 million. Since 2018 it has been used to target Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliate Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM) fighters with armed drones.
Washington is concerned about Islamic militants in the Sahel region, who may be able to expand without the presence of US forces and intelligence capabilities.
Niger's move to ask for the removal of US troops came after a meeting in Niamey in mid-March, when senior US officials raised concerns including the expected arrival of Russia forces and reports of Iran seeking raw materials in the country, including uranium.
While the US message to Nigerien officials was not an ultimatum, the official said, it was made clear US forces could not be on a base with Russian forces.
"They did not take that well," the official said.
A two-star US general has been sent to Niger to try and arrange a professional and responsible withdrawal.
While no decisions have been taken on the future of US troops in Niger, the official said the plan was for them to return to US Africa Command's home bases, located in Germany.

Russian troops enter base housing US military in Niger, US official says

Palestinians may be gratified to see American university campuses erupt in outrage over Israel's offensive in Gaza, but some in the embattled enclave are also wondering why no similar protests have hit the Arab countries they long viewed as allies.
Demonstrations have rocked US universities this week, with confrontations between students, counter protesters and police, but while there have been some protests in Arab states, they have not been nearly as large or as vociferous.&nbsp;
"We follow the protests on social media every day with admiration but also with sadness. We are sad that those protests are not happening also in Arab and Muslim countries," said Ahmed Rezik, 44, a father of five sheltering in Rafah in Gaza's south.&nbsp;
"Thank you students in solidarity with Gaza. Your message has reached us. Thank you students of Columbia. Thank you students," was scrawled across a tent in Rafah, where more than a million people are sheltering from Israel's offensive.&nbsp;
Reasons for the comparative quiet on Arab campuses and streets may range from a fear of angering autocratic governments to political differences with Hamas and its Iranian backers or doubts that any protests could impact state policy.&nbsp;
American students at elite universities may face arrest or expulsion from their schools, but harsher consequences could await Arab citizens protesting without state authorisation.
And US students may feel more motivation to protest as their own government backs and arms Israel, while even those Arab countries that have full diplomatic relations with it have been strongly critical of its military campaign.&nbsp;
When asked about the conflict, Arabs from Morocco to Iraq have consistently voiced fury at Israel's actions and solidarity with Gaza's embattled inhabitants, leading to muted Ramadan celebrations across the region last month.&nbsp;
Some rallies to support Palestinians have erupted, notably in Yemen where the Houthis have joined the conflict with strikes on shipping in the Red Sea.&nbsp;
And Arabs around the region have also shown their horror at the war and support for their fellow Arabs in Gaza on social media, even if they have not taken to the streets.&nbsp;
But whatever the reason for the lack of public protests, some people in Gaza are now drawing unfavourable comparisons between the tumult in the United States and the public reaction they can see in other Arab countries.&nbsp;
"I ask Arab students to do what the Americans have done. They should have done more for us than the Americans," said Suha al-Kafarna, displaced by the war from home in northern Gaza.&nbsp;
PUBLIC OPINION
In Egypt, which made peace with Israel in 1979 and where President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has largely outlawed public protests, the authorities fear that demonstrations against Israel could later turn against the government in Cairo.&nbsp;
At state-sanctioned protests over the war in October, some demonstrators veered off the agreed route and started chanted anti-government slogans, prompting arrests.&nbsp;
"One cannot see the lack of large public protests against the war and the muted reaction on the Egyptian street in isolation from a broader context of crackdown on all forms of public protest and assembly," said Hossam Bahgat, head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.&nbsp;
At the American University in Cairo security forces are less likely to intervene on campus and there have been some protests. But a student activist there who requested anonymity said they could still face consequences for demonstrating.&nbsp;
"Being arrested here is nothing like being arrested in the US It's completely different," he said, adding that there was "the factor of fear" preventing many from taking to the streets.&nbsp;
In Lebanon, where success in studies has become even more personally important to many young people after years of political and economic crises that have shrunk their shot at future prosperity, that calculation is even tougher.&nbsp;
Several students Reuters approached at campus protests in Beirut declined to be interviewed, saying they feared repercussions from university authorities.&nbsp;
The complex histories of Lebanon and other Arab states such as Jordan that host many Palestinian refugees also play into the question of public protests.&nbsp;
In Lebanon, some people blame Palestinians for triggering the 1975-90 civil war. Others fear any overt displays of support for Palestinians might be hijacked by the Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has been trading fire with Israel since the start of the Gaza conflict.&nbsp;
"The Arab world is not reacting like Columbia or Brown (US universities) because they don't have the luxury to do so," said Makram Rabah, a history professor at the American University of Beirut.&nbsp;
Besides, he added, with public opinion already largely backing the Palestinian cause it was not clear what protests there would achieve.&nbsp;
"The dynamics of power and the way you change public perception are just different in the Arab world compared to the US," he said.

Why Palestinians can count on American students but not Arab allies to protest

India's Kerala state has closed all schools and colleges until Monday due to scorching temperatures, urging people in the coastal region to limit exposure to the sun and take care to prevent wildfires.
With most parts of India reeling from high temperatures, the weather department has forecast an unusually high number of heatwave days for April to June, as the country stages a general election that has seen a low voter turnout.
Heatwaves are rare in Kerala and data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) shows that the state recorded five heatwave days in April.
Referring to the current El Nino weather pattern, the IMD said on Wednesday that El Nino years typically have more heating, with hot and dry weather in Asia and heavier rains in parts of the Americas.
Fewer thunderstorms and an anti-cyclonic circulation near India's southeastern coast were causing heatwaves, the IMD said.
Kerala's state government on Thursday directed people to minimize exposure to the sun and urged authorities to monitor situations to avoid fires. With several districts issuing heatwave warnings, the government asked all educational institutions to be shut till Monday.
Heatwaves have forced school closures in parts of Asia and North Africa too, widening learning gaps between developing nations in the tropics and developed countries, experts told Reuters.
Local media reported that at least two people died earlier this week in Kerala, but authorities are yet to confirm if their death was due to extreme heat.
On Thursday, temperature in state capital Thiruvananthapuram touched 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) but the IMD said it felt like 46 (115) due to high humidity.
Soaring temperatures and dry spells have caused frequent forest fires in other parts of India, and the blazes have been worsened by people burning the forest to collect a flower used to brew alcohol in Odisha state.
&nbsp;

India's Kerala shuts schools, colleges amid sweltering heat

Staff Correspondent

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), India's largest private port operator, posted a 76% rise in its fourth-quarter profit on Thursday, helped by record cargo volumes.
The company, which is part of billionaire Gautam Adani's conglomerate, said its consolidated net profit rose to 20.40 billion rupees ($244.6 million) in the quarter ended March 31, from 11.58 billion rupees a year earlier.
Adani Ports achieved its highest ever quarterly volumes at 109 million metric tonnes (MMT) in the January-March period, helping revenue rise by 19% to 68.97 billion rupees as business activities picked up pace in the early months of 2024.
APSEZ operates 13 ports and terminals in India, including the country's largest container handling port in Mundra in the western state of Gujarat.
The Adani group company last month said more than a fourth of India's cargo volumes was routed through its ports in FY24, while flagging a growing share of cargo volumes for its non-Mundra ports.
APSEZ handled 420 MMT cargo in FY24, surpassing its guidance of 370 MMT-390 MMT.
In March, the company said it would acquire 95% of Odisha's Gopalpur Port for $162 million to expand its east-coast presence.
Shares of APSEZ were up 1.5% after the company reported its results. So far this year, the stock has risen about 31%, outperforming a 4.5% gain in the blue-chip Nifty 50 index (.NSEI).
($1 = 83.3970 Indian rupees)

India's Adani Ports Q4 profit soars 76% on record cargo volumes

The death toll from the collapse of an expressway section in China's Guangdong province that caused vehicles to tumble down a slope has risen to 48, with rescue work hampered by mudslides, state media reported on Thursday.
The road collapsed in the wee hours of Wednesday, the first day of the five-day May Day holiday break as millions in the country travel.
The collapse, triggered by heavy rain, occurred at around 2:10 a.m. on the Meizhou-Dabu Expressway, Xinhua news agency reported, adding that 17.9 meters (58.7 feet) of the road gave way and caused 23 vehicles to plunge. Another 30 people sustained injuries, it said.
Meizhou is one of the areas in southern China's Guangdong that has been badly hit by heavy rain and hail since late April which set off dangerous mudslides, inundated homes and destroyed bridges.
Meizhou officials told a press conference on Thursday livestreamed on state broadcaster CCTV that 577 relief personnel and more than 80 rescue vehicles and equipment had been dispatched to the site but rescue work proved difficult as some vehicles were buried deep in the mud after their fall.
Video from state media showed a twisted metal guardrail and a big hole in the path of the forested green area where the collapse happened. Rescue personnel with cranes and excavators as well as a few damaged cars could also be seen.
Some vehicles fell and caught fire, according to social media accounts in China. A driver of a vehicle said in a video posted on Weibo he saw a crack in the road in front of him and mistook it for a puddle, but sped off before the road collapsed.
President Xi Jinping called for the utmost efforts to save lives and eliminate danger as rainy weather continued in the region, according to a Xinhua report.
Task forces from the central and local governments have been dispatched for the rescue work, the report added.
&nbsp;

Road collapse in southern China kills 48, state media reports

UNB/AP

Over 1,000 pro-Palestinian protesters have been arrested in recent days according to US media reports, as the anti-war demonstrations at over 20 American universities continued on Tuesday.
Some schools including Columbia University, where the protests initially erupted, have seen a further intensification of the protests, while on some other campuses, the situation appears to be cooling down.
Early Tuesday, dozens of protesters at Columbia University's Manhattan campus moved furniture and metal barricades to block the entrance of Hamilton Hall, one of several buildings occupied by students during the 1968 civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protests.
Protesters formed a human chain in front of the building and said that they would only leave unless the school meets their demands, which include the university's divestment from Israeli-related companies, disclosure of all financial assets, and amnesty for students and faculty disciplined in the protests.
In a statement Tuesday, a Columbia spokesperson said that "students occupying the building face expulsion."
The university spokesperson stated that the protesters were offered an opportunity to depart peacefully and complete the semester. However, those who does not comply with the conditions outlined since Monday should face suspension.
"Protesters have chosen to escalate to an untenable situation -- vandalizing property, breaking doors and windows, and blockading entrances -- and we are following through with the consequences we outlined yesterday," the spokesperson said.
On Tuesday night, New York police entered Columbia University campus and started to make arrests after pro-Palestinian protesters refused to leave.
In light of the escalation, the White House expressed disapproval of the actions taken by the protesters at Columbia University.
"The president believes that forcibly taking over a building on campus is absolutely the wrong approach, that is not an example of peaceful protests," White House national security communications adviser John Kirby told reporters. "Taking over a building by force is unacceptable."
"A small percentage of students shouldn't be able to disrupt the academic experience, the legitimate study, for the rest of the student body," Kirby said.
At a demonstration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill earlier Tuesday, police entered the protest camp and arrested about 30 people.
Later in the day, protesters returned to the site and replaced the American flag in the center of the campus with a Palestinian flag. They linked arms and formed a circle around the flagpole, and could be heard chanting "Intifada" and "Free Palestine," according to the school newspaper. Law enforcement officers later switched back to the American flag.
In the northwestern state of Oregon, protesters occupied a library at Portland State University overnight. On Tuesday, the university urged protesters to leave the library and asked the police for help.
Clashes between police and protesters turned violent in some cases. Police used riot gear and pepper spray to break up a protest at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond late Monday after protesters threw objects at officers and used chemical spray, officials said. Thirteen people, including six students, have been charged with unlawful assembly and trespassing.
Since protests broke out at Columbia University on April 18, more than 1,000 protesters have been arrested on over 20 U.S. college campuses in recent days, the New York Times reported.
While tensions have increased on some campuses, they appear to be cooling on others.
On Tuesday, police managed to end an eight-day occupation of the administration building at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. Protest camps at Yale University and the University of Pittsburgh also appeared to have been emptied.
Northwestern University announced an agreement with protesters late Monday, saying it would re-establish an Investment Responsibility Advisory Committee in the fall with participation of student, faculty and staff representatives.
The agreement calls for the removal of tents set up by protesters and in exchange, the school allows students to demonstrate peacefully on the grass until the end of the semester on June 1.
The multi-day wave of campus anti-war protests is a manifestation of young Americans' discontent with how the Biden administration is managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A recent CNN poll found that 71 percent of American adults surveyed were dissatisfied with the Biden administration's handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Among those under 35, 81 percent were dissatisfied.

Over 1,000 arrested so far in protests on US college campuses nationwide

A lower turnout so far in India&rsquo;s long general election has rattled Prime Minister Narendra Modi&rsquo;s campaign managers, raising into question whether his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies can achieve the landslide victory predicted by opinion polls just one month ago.
The lack of momentum has been partly blamed on apathy among party workers believing victory is assured and seems to have prompted Modi to change tack in his campaign speeches to try to fire up the Hindu majority, the party&rsquo;s support base, and get them out to voting stations, political analysts said.
The last major opinion poll had predicted that the BJP and its allies could win three-fourths of parliament's 543 seats at stake on the back of Modi's popularity, strong economic growth, handouts and the inauguration of a Hindu temple on a contested site in the Hindu majority country.
At the last election in 2019, the BJP won 303 seats and its allies won around 50 seats. Its slogan before this year's election began was "Ab ki baar, 400 paar" or "This time, above 400".
More than half a dozen BJP leaders and political analysts that Reuters spoke to said a lack of momentum in the two initial phases of the seven-phase election have dampened hopes of a huge majority for the party, although they said it was still likely to retain power in the world's most populous nation.
What could be affected is the BJP's aim to get a two-thirds majority in the chamber, or 362 seats, which would let the party usher in far-reaching constitutional changes.
"The fall in polling turnout is mainly due to apathy among party workers and voters," said Sanjay Sharma, one of the members of the BJP's campaign committee in the northern state of Haryana.
Some candidates were being affected by an anti-incumbency wave, he said, adding the party was facing a "tough fight" in the state where it won all ten parliamentary seats in 2019.
Modi himself has shifted in his campaign speeches from a focus on the administration's successes in his 10-year tenure to targeting minority Muslims and the opposition Congress party.
"After the first phase, we saw a definite change of strategy by the PM...delivering Islamophobic kind of speeches," said Arati Jerath, a Delhi-based political commentator.
"Obviously, he has now decided to polarise the campaign."
A total of 190 seats went to the polls on April 19 and 27 with approximate voter turnout at about 66%, the Election Commission has said. The number was only slightly lower than the last election in 2019, although there was a drop of 5-8 percentage points in voting in the BJP and allied-ruled states Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan.
The BJP had been hoping for a high turnout, believing that would signal that its supporters had voted in force.
Polling ends on June 1 and votes will be counted on June 4. The government bans the publication of exit polls until all voting is concluded.
'BELOW EXPECTATIONS' Gopal Krishna Agarwal, BJP's national spokesman, said the voting numbers were "below expectations" but would not have much impact on the final results.
"Many voters have become lethargic as they are convinced about the victory of the party," he said.
The BJP's shift in tack may have backfired with some voters.
"We have lost interest because the BJP is seeking votes by communalising the campaign, and not on its performance," said Vikash Kumar, a voter in Rajnandgaon in the state of Chhattisgarh.
Kamal Abbas, a Muslim shopkeeper in the city of Lucknow, the capital of politically vital Uttar Pradesh state, reflected the sense of apathy. He said he would not waste time and money to travel to his hometown Prayagraj to vote as Modi's party was set to win the election.
"Minority votes do not stand anywhere in the majoritarian government... there is no point in wasting time," he said.
Anirudh Singh, one of the district campaign managers of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, said the party would have reaped rich electoral dividends if the election was held during February-March, when fervour over the construction of the Ram Temple was at its peak.
"The party has failed to encash public support for Modi after the inauguration of the temple," said Singh, noting that the religious feel-good mood had by and large been replaced by issues like jobs and inflation.
"So far there's neither a communal wave, nor a Ram wave, nor a Modi wave in the election,&rdquo; said Jerath, the political commentator, noting Modi would have to re-invigorate his party workers and supporters if he hoped for a sweep.
After being battered by Modi in the two last general elections, opposition parties are hopeful of a better performance.
The shift in the language and style of Modi's campaign reflected a sense of nervousness, said Jairam Ramesh, a Congress party general secretary.
"The initial voting trends show there is no Modi wave. In states where we were wiped out in 2019, this time the trends are encouraging," he said.
Gilles Verniers, a political analyst who teaches at Amherst College in Massachusetts, said the BJP appeared to have revised its expectations and was feeling a bit rattled at the moment.
"But it's still a very long campaign. There's still room for events and surprises that may alter the course of the election," he said.
"The balance of probability continues to tilt in favour of the BJP, but not maybe as strongly as they would have hoped."

Low turnout, apathy in India election a worry for Modi's campaign

WHO Regional Director for Southeast Asia Saima Wazed addressed the Regional Consultation on WHO South-East Asia Priority Programme Initiative in New Delhi, marking a significant step in her first year of leadership.
Wazed's opening remarks came after completing the first quarter of her tenure, a period she described as full of learning and valuable interactions with Member States and the WHO team.
During the consultation, Wazed emphasised the creation of a roadmap for the Priority Programmes that will guide the strategic direction during her term. These programmes were developed with contributions from Member States, aiming to address key health issues across the region and achieve transnational and multigenerational benefits.
Wazed shared her vision for the region, focusing on a holistic approach to health and well-being.
She emphasised prioritising the health of women, children, and marginalised groups such as persons with disabilities and underscored the goal of achieving universal health coverage within primary health care.
The WHO Regional Director highlighted the need for strong partnerships and collaborations beyond traditional health system boundaries to address determinants of health outside these systems.
She stressed that in working with a new and expanded range of partners, WHO's technical leadership, drawn from an extensive network of health professionals, could enrich all collaborations.
The consultation will delve into technical and non-technical aspects necessary for promoting health and well-being in the region. Wazed called for country engagement and ownership of the regional Priority Programme Initiatives as a tactical strategy to meet these ends.
Participants are expected to discuss and contribute to the draft strategic framework known as the Regional Roadmap for Results and Resilience. This roadmap aims to drive results, promote resilience, and enhance the health and well-being of communities across the region. It is synchronised with the WHO 14th General Programme of Work to support the accelerated progress towards SDG3 through five key action points: Promote, Provide, Protect, Power, and Perform.
Reflecting on the collective effort required, Wazed stated, "The roadmap for these programmes is now in your hands. I urge all of you to take ownership of it. This is not my roadmap - it is ours. Please give it the best of your intuition, experience, and expertise."
As the region faces various public health challenges, Wazed's call to action sets a hopeful tone for strategic health improvements driven by local solutions and collaborative efforts across South-East Asia.

WHO Regional Director Saima Wazed calls for collaborative health leadership in South-East Asia

A senior US official on Thursday urged China and Russia to match declarations by the United States and others that only humans, and never artificial intelligence, would make decisions on deploying nuclear weapons.
State Department arms control official Paul Dean told an online briefing that Washington had made a "clear and strong commitment" that humans had total control over nuclear weapons, adding that France and Britain had done the same.
"We would welcome a similar statement by China and the Russian Federation," said Dean, principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability.
"We think it is an extremely important norm of responsible behaviour and we think it is something that would be very welcome in a P5 context," he said, referring to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
Dean's remarks come as the administration of US President Joe Biden tries to deepen separate discussions with China over both nuclear weapons policy and the growth of artificial intelligence.
The Chinese defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The spread of artificial intelligence technology surfaced during sweeping talks between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on April 26.
The two sides agreed to hold their first bilateral talks on artificial intelligence in the coming weeks, Blinken said, adding that they would share views on how best to manage risks and safety surrounding the technology.
As part of normalising military communications, US and Chinese officials resumed nuclear weapons discussions in January, but formal arms control negotiations are not expected any time soon.
China, which is expanding its nuclear weapons capabilities, urged in February that the largest nuclear powers should first negotiate a no-first-use treaty between each other.

US official urges China, Russia to declare only humans, not AI, control nuclear weapons

UNB/AKM Moinuddin

The number of people aged 60 and above in developing Asia and the Pacific is set to nearly double by 2050 to 1.2 billion&mdash;or about a quarter of the total population&mdash;significantly increasing the need for pension and welfare programs as well as healthcare services, said a new report on Thursday.
At the same time, economies have an opportunity to reap a &ldquo;silver dividend&rdquo; in the form of additional productivity from older people, which could boost gross domestic product in the region by 0.9% on average, said the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
&ldquo;Asia and the Pacific&rsquo;s rapid development is a success story, but it&rsquo;s also fueling a huge demographic shift, and the pressure is rising,&rdquo; said ADB Chief Economist Albert Park.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Governments need to prepare now if they&rsquo;re going to be able to help hundreds of millions of people in the region age well. Policies should support lifetime investment in health, education, skills, and financial preparedness for retirement. Family and social ties are also important to foster healthy and productive populations of older people and maximize their contribution to society.&rdquo;
Developing Asia and the Pacific are unprepared to secure the well-being of its rapidly aging population as the growing share of older people in the region face challenges from low pension coverage to health problems, social isolation, and limited access to essential services, according to the multilateral development bank.
While longer lifespans reflect the region&rsquo;s development success, comprehensive policy reforms are urgently needed to support the welfare of older people, according to &ldquo;Aging Well in Asia: Asian Development Policy Report,&rdquo; released on Thursday by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) at its 57th Annual Meeting.
According to the report, 40% of people over age 60 in Asia and the Pacific lack access to any form of pension&mdash;with women disproportionately affected, as they are more likely to do unpaid domestic work.&nbsp;
As a result, many older people in the region have no choice but to work well beyond retirement age to survive.&nbsp;
Among those still working at age 65 or older, 94% work in the informal sector, which typically doesn&rsquo;t provide basic labor protections or pension benefits.
Physical and mental health challenges also increase with age.&nbsp;
Around 60% of older people in Asia and the Pacific do not attend or receive regular health checks, while 31% report depressive symptoms owing to illness, social isolation, and economic insecurity.&nbsp;
Older women in the region are also more likely than older men to suffer from ill health, from depression to diabetes and hypertension.&nbsp;
The report recommended a wide range of policy measures to support healthy and economically secure aging.&nbsp;
Among these are government-assisted health insurance and pension plans, improved health infrastructure, and free annual check-ups and lifestyle evaluations.&nbsp;
Policy makers should aim for universal healthcare coverage, while basic labour protections should be extended to older informal workers, according to the report.
By making mandatory retirement ages more flexible, helping older people stay healthy, and providing them with suitable work opportunities as well as lifelong learning and skills development, economies in the region can help older people stay productive longer.

Despite economic success, rapidly-aging developing Asia unprepared to ensure elderly wellbeing: ADB

Solomon Islands lawmakers selected a new prime minister on Thursday, choosing foreign minister Jeremiah Manele, who has pledged to continue the Pacific Island nation's foreign policy that drew it closer to China.
Governor General Sir David Vunagi announced outside parliament house that Manele had won 31 votes, to Opposition leader Matthew Wales' 18 votes.
Police boosted security in the capital Honiara as newly elected lawmakers arrived at parliament on Thursday to vote in a secret ballot.
A national election last month saw incumbent Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare's government lose half of its seats but failed to deliver a majority to any political party, and two camps lobbied to win support from independents ahead of the vote for prime minister.
The election is being closely watched by China, the US and neighbouring Australia because of the potential impact on regional security, after Sogavare struck a controversial security pact with China in 2022.
Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he looked forward to working closely with Manele. "Australia and Solomon Islands are close friends and our futures are connected," he wrote on social media platform X.
Sogavare, who built close ties with Beijing during five years in power, but only narrowly held his seat last month, did not seek re-election to the top political office and his party backed Manele.
Wale's coalition of opposition parties had criticised the arrival of Chinese police in the archipelago in 2022, and favoured returning to closer ties with traditional aid donors such as Australia and accepting infrastructure aid from the United States.
Manele said outside parliament on Thursday "the people have spoken", and called for calm, noting a history of violence in Solomon Islands after elections.
"Today we show the world we are better than that - we must respect the democratic process for electing our prime minister," he said.
The economy was slowly recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and 2021 anti-government riots, and the government would soon unveil tax, forestry and minerals policies, he added.
Manele is a former diplomat who entered parliament in 2014, and travelled to China as foreign minister in 2019 to formalise Solomon Islands' switch in diplomatic ties from Taiwan to Beijing.
On Monday, Manele said he would keep the "same foreign policy basis - friends to all and enemies to none".
Lowy Institute research fellow Mihai Sora, a former Australian diplomat in the Solomon Islands, said Manele has "a strong track record of working well with all international partners", compared to Sogavare who was "a polarising figure".
Australian National University's Pacific expert Graeme Smith said Manele was capable and "a big change in style" for the Solomon Islands.
Manele's OUR party, which has pledged to build more infrastructure, won 15 seats, and gained four seats under a renewed coalition with two micro parties. It needed support from independents to reach a majority in the 50-seat parliament. A total of 49 votes were cast with one lawmaker absent.
Wale said on Wednesday that lobbying of politicians ahead of the vote was dominated by "people asking for money and positions".
The government had failed to create jobs and the economy was dominated by logging and mining companies which shipped resources to China, while health clinics were unable to obtain medications such as paracetamol, he said at a Solomon Islands National University event.

Solomon Islands picks China-friendly Manele as new prime minister

President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that "xenophobia" from China to Japan and India is hobbling their growth, as he argued that migration has been good for the US economy.
"One of the reasons why our economy's growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants," Biden said at a Washington fundraising event for his 2024 re-election campaign and marking the start of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
"Why is China stalling so badly economically, why is Japan having trouble, why is Russia, why is India, because they're xenophobic. They don't want immigrants. Immigrants are what makes us strong."
The International Monetary Fund forecast last month that each country would see its growth decelerate in 2024 from the year prior, ranging from 0.9% in highly developed Japan to 6.8% in emerging India.
They forecast that the United States would grow at 2.7%, slightly brisker than its 2.5% rate last year. Many economists attribute better-than-expected performance partly to a migrants expanding the country's labor force.
Concern about irregular migration has become a top issue for many US voters ahead of November's presidential election.
Biden, who has condemned the rhetoric of his Republican opponent Donald Trump as anti-immigrant, has worked to court broad economic and political relations with countries including Japan and India to counter China and Russia globally.

Biden blames China, Japan and India's economic woes on 'xenophobia'

India collected a record 2.10 trillion rupees ($25.15 billion) as gross goods and services tax (GST) in April, a rise of 12.4% from the same period last year, the government said in a statement on Wednesday.
The government had collected 1.87 trillion rupees as GST in the same period last year.
"GST collections breach landmark milestone of 2 trillion rupees," Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman posted on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
After refunds, the government's net GST mop-up rose 15.5% year-on-year to 1.92 trillion rupees, the statement said.
The collection in April is usually higher as taxpayers clear their dues when India's financial year ends in March.
The unprecedented surge in GST collections is a positive indicator of economic activity and compliance levels, said Rajat Mohan, executive director at accounting firm MOORE Singhi.
"A significant portion of this rise could be attributed to the accumulation of year-end tax dues, which typically see a spike as businesses and individuals rush to meet fiscal deadlines," Mohan added.
($1 = 83.5050 Indian rupees)

India collects record 2.10 trillion rupees as goods and services tax in April

Eastern India experienced its hottest April on record as a heatwave scorched parts of the country amid a general election, killing at least nine people, and the weather office on Wednesday forecast above normal temperatures for May too.
Searing heat has been cited by political analysts as one of the reasons for low voter turnout in the seven-phase parliamentary election that began on April 19, with results due on June 4.
Heatwave conditions are, however, forecast to abate gradually in the coming days.
The mean temperature in eastern India was 28.12 Celsius (82.61 Fahrenheit) in April, the warmest since records began in 1901, with experts blaming a combination of factors.
"In an El Nino year, you get more heating," said Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, chief of the India Meteorological Department, referring to a climate pattern that typically leads to hot and dry weather in Asia and heavier rains in parts of the Americas.
He said fewer thunderstorms and an anti-cyclonic circulation near India's southeastern coast were causing heatwaves. "Wind blows from land towards the sea during an anti-cyclone ..., so land becomes warmer and temperature rises."
In April, the eastern Indian state of West Bengal recorded the most number of heatwave days for the month in the last 15 years, followed by the neighbouring coastal state of Odisha where heat conditions were the worst in nine years.
Authorities have also declared a rare heatwave in the southwestern coastal state of Kerala, where at least two deaths have been recorded due to soaring temperatures.
Central and northwestern India, which includes major wheat producing states that typically witness heatwaves this time of the year, have been largely spared due to intermittent thundershowers last month, Mohapatra said.
The weather office said rainfall in May is likely to be normal and that it expects more showers during the second half of the monsoon season in August and September as compared to June and July due to the La Nina climate pattern, which typically brings higher rainfall to India.
Monsoon is the lifeblood of India's economy, delivering 70% of the rain needed to water crops and recharge reservoirs, and the met department has predicted that India will receive above normal monsoon rainfall in 2024.
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Parts of India record hottest April as heatwave kills nine

Law enforcement officers massed by the hundreds on the campus of the University of California at Los Angeles after darkness fell on Wednesday in preparation to clear out a pro-Palestinian protest camp attacked the night before by pro-Israel supporters.
Live television footage showed police in tactical gear filing onto the UCLA campus adjacent to a complex of tents occupied by throngs of demonstrators. Some of the activists were seen donning hard hats, goggles and respirator masks in anticipation of the raid a day after the university declared the encampment unlawful.
Hundreds of other pro-Palestinian activists assembled outside the tent city jeered police with chants of "Shame on you," some banging on drums and waving Palestinian flags, as officers marched onto the campus grounds. Many of the demonstrators wore the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh scarves.
Before moving in, police with a loudspeaker urged the demonstrators to clear the protest area in a grassy plaza between the landmark twin-tower auditorium Royce Hall and the main undergraduate library.
UCLA had canceled classes for the day following a violent clash late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning between the encampment's occupants and a group of masked counter-demonstrators who mounted an assault on the tent city with sticks and poles.
The occupants of the outdoor protest camp, set up last week, had remained otherwise largely peaceful before the melee, which university officials blamed on "instigators," vowing an investigation.
Wednesday evening's raid also came a day after police in New York City arrested pro-Palestinian activists who occupied a building at Columbia University and removed a tent city from the campus of the Ivy League school.
Police arrested a total of about 300 people at Columbia and City College of New York, Mayor Eric Adams said. Many of those arrested were charged with trespassing and criminal mischief.
The clashes at UCLA and in New York were part of the biggest outpouring of U.S. student activism since the anti-racism rallies and marches of 2020.
The protests follow the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip and the ensuing Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave.
Students have rallied or set up tent encampments at dozens of schools across the U.S. in recent days, expressing opposition to Israel's war in Gaza and demanding schools divest from companies that support Israel's government. Many of the schools have called in police to quell the protests.

Police mass near UCLA pro-Palestinian protest camp, a day after violent clashes

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Secretariat and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at bolstering collaborative efforts to drive inclusive and sustainable development through trade and economic integration, including in Asia and the Pacific region.
The MoU was signed on Wednesday ahead of ADB&rsquo;s Annual Meeting being held on 2-5 May.
The MoU, signed by WTO Deputy Director-General Jean-Marie Paugam and ADB Vice-President (Sectors and Themes) Fatima Yasmin, marks the deepening of a strategic partnership focused on regional cooperation, trade and economic integration, and the trade and environment agenda in support of the two organisations' respective membership and observers, according to WTO.
At the heart of the collaboration is a shared commitment to advancing environmental sustainability, inclusive growth and resilience in the face of evolving global challenges.
As part of the agreement, the WTO and ADB identified key areas of cooperation, such as the exchange of information including ongoing studies, joint events, dialogue with stakeholders, capacity building, joint publications, and sharing of best practices.
"I am delighted to mark this significant milestone in our collaboration with ADB, which has demonstrated its unwavering commitment to addressing the nexus of trade and climate change, as underscored by ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa's remarks to Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala during the UN COP28 climate conference last November.
&ldquo;Trade, combined with the investment power of ADB, holds immense potential to propel economies and regions toward achieving their net-zero ambitions. As we embark on this next phase of cooperation, we look forward to advancing joint initiatives aimed at promoting trade and environmental sustainability," DDG Paugam said in remarks released for the occasion.
The WTO is the only global international organisation dealing with the rules of trade between nations.
At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world's trading nations and ratified in their parliaments.
The goal is to ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible with a view to raising standards of living in accordance with the objective of sustainable development.
ADB is a multilateral development bank with a vision of Asia and the Pacific region free of poverty and a mission to help its developing members reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of their people.
As a climate bank for the region, ADB is scaling up initiatives to mainstream trade and trade policy solutions in its operations.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) deals with the global rules of trade between nations. Its main function is to ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible. &nbsp;

ADB, WTO strengthen collaboration for sustainable economic growth in Asia-Pacific region

BSS/AFP

President Gustavo Petro said Wednesday Colombia will sever diplomatic ties with Israel, whose leader he described as "genocidal" in its war in Gaza.
"Tomorrow (Thursday) diplomatic relations with the state of Israel will be severed... for having a genocidal president," Petro told a May Day rally in Bogota -- referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Petro has been a harsh critic of the assault on Gaza that followed an unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7.
That attack resulted in the deaths of some 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.
Hamas militants also took about 250 hostages, 129 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 Israel says are presumed dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,568 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
On Wednesday, Petro told thousands of supporters that the world cannot accept "genocide, the extermination of an entire people."
"If Palestine dies, humanity dies," he said to loud applause from the crowd, some of whom flew pro-Palestinian banners.
Israel says it's a 'reward' to Hamas
Israel responded by describing Petro as "anti-Semitic and hateful," saying his stance amounted to handing a reward to Hamas.
"The Colombian president has promised to reward Hamas murderers and rapists -- and today he delivered," Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on X.
"History will remember that Gustavo Petro decided to stand by the most despicable monsters humanity has known, who burned babies, murdered children, raped women and kidnapped innocent civilians," Katz added.
It's a victory, Hamas says
Hamas, for its part, hailed the move as a "victory."
"We greatly appreciate the position of Colombian President Gustavo Petro... which we consider a victory for the sacrifices of our people and their just cause," the group said in a statement, urging other Latin American countries to follow suit.
Colombia has joined Bolivia, Belize and South Africa in severing or suspending ties with Israel. Several other countries have recalled diplomats.
'Fueling anti-Semitism'
In October, days after the start of the war, Israel announced it was "halting security exports" to Colombia after Petro accused Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of using language about the people of Gaza similar to what the "Nazis said of the Jews."
Israel at the time accused Petro of "expressing support for the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists, fueling anti-Semitism," and summoned Colombia's ambassador.
Bogota subsequently demanded that Israel's envoy leave the South American country.
Petro, Colombia's first leftist president, has also asserted that "democratic peoples cannot allow Nazism to reestablish itself in international politics."
In February, he suspended Israeli weapons purchases after dozens of people died in a scramble for food aid in the war-torn Palestinian territory -- an event he said was "called genocide and recalls the Holocaust."
Colombia's armed forces, engaged in a decades-long conflict with leftist guerrillas, rightwing paramilitaries and drug cartels, use Israeli-made weapons and aircraft.
The country has a history of strong diplomatic and military relations with Israel and the United States.
Petro had come out in support of Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who also drew the ire of Israel by saying its Gaza campaign "isn't a war, it's a genocide."
Colombia and Brazil supported South Africa's complaint against Israel to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, alleging the Gaza assault amounted to a breach of the Genocide Convention.
Colombian May Day demonstrator Sandra Gutierrez, a 38-year-old teacher, welcomed her president's announcement Wednesday.
"One cannot be an accomplice of the murderers," she told AFP on the Plaza Bolivar square.

Bogota cuts ties with Israel over 'genocidal' Gaza campaign

What does Joe Biden have to say about the rowdy student protests against Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza that have rocked American college campuses in recent weeks? Almost nothing.
The US president has so far avoided the contentious subject as it is likely to complicate his reelection campaign.
The 81-year-old Democrat, who will almost certainly face Republican Donald Trump in November's presidential election, has publicly addressed the demonstrations only once and briefly, even as students have clashed with police and several hundred people have been arrested at universities across the country.
"I condemn the anti-Semitic protests. That's why I have set up a program to deal with that," Biden said last week in response to a journalist's question. "I also condemn those who don't understand what's going on with the Palestinians."
Biden's reluctance to weigh in on the biggest and most prolonged unrest to rock US campuses since the Vietnam war protests of the 1960s and 70s has not gone unnoticed by Trump.
"There's a big fever in our country, and he's not talking," the 77-year-old tycoon said Wednesday during a campaign rally.
Trump urged college presidents to "remove the encampments immediately, vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses." As for the demonstrators at Columbia University, he called them "raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers."
Balancing act
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday condemned "a small percentage of students" who have been disruptive after a night of clashes and arrests on several campuses.
"Students have the right to feel safe. They have the right to learn... to do this without disruption. And they have a right to feel safe on campus," Jean-Pierre told reporters, adding: "We are going to be really forceful here and continue to underscore how anti-Semitism is hateful speech."
She also acknowledged the war in Gaza was "painful" and assured that Biden supported the right to peaceful protest.
The balancing act is not easy for Biden.
"The protests put Biden in a difficult spot because for his coalition of voters from 2020 he relied heavily on young people in addition to Muslims and Arab Americans," said Alex Keena, who teaches political science at Virginia Commonwealth University.
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said the White House is "apparently convinced that they'll weather this storm and still defeat Donald Trump in November."
He added: "This is a dangerous miscalculation."
Since the start of the war in Gaza, which was triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, Biden has faced criticism for his unconditional support for Israel.
When Biden travels, he is often met by demonstrators chanting "Genocidal Joe" and demanding a ceasefire.
A Harvard University poll published last month showed Biden was more popular with Americans under 30 than his rival, with 45 percent of respondents intending to vote for Biden and 37 percent for Trump.
But the eight-point difference is much smaller compared to a similar poll four years ago, when Biden led by 23 points.
1968
Biden could still win back the hearts of some young voters, if a ceasefire agreement coupled with the release of hostages held in Gaza is reached between Hamas and Israel.
"If there is a ceasefire, that would be huge," said Keena. "That would go a long way in maybe ending some of these protests or getting some stability back."
Washington has been pushing for a ceasefire deal for weeks. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in Israel Wednesday on his seventh Middle East crisis tour since the war broke out, said "Hamas needs to say 'yes' and needs to get this done."
If the agreement falls through and campus unrest continues, that would cloud the Democratic National Convention in August in Chicago, where Biden will be officially nominated for president.
In 1968, police clashes with demonstrators protesting against the Vietnam war marred the Democratic National Convention in Chicago after President Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for re-election.
At the time, Biden, a law student and centrist, stayed away from the protests. In a book published in 2007, he describes seeing students occupying a building at his university and thinking "Look at these assholes."

As student protests shake US campuses, Biden mum

A UK team of archaeologists on Thursday revealed the reconstructed face of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman, as researchers reappraise the perception of the species as brutish and unsophisticated.
Named Shanidar Z after the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where her skull was found in 2018, the latest discovery has led experts to probe the mystery of the forty-something Neanderthal woman laid to rest in a sleeping position beneath a huge vertical stone marker.
The lower part of her skeleton is believed to have been excavated in 1960 during groundbreaking excavations by American archaeologist Ralph Solecki in which he found the remains of at least 10 Neanderthals.
His discovery of a cluster of bodies with one surrounded by clumps of ancient pollen led him to controversially argue that this was evidence of funerary rituals with the dead placed on a bed of flowers.
Political difficulties meant it took around five decades for a team from Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores universities to be allowed back to the site in the Zagros mountains of northern Iraq.
The last Neanderthals mysteriously died out around 40,000 years ago, just a few thousand years after humans arrived.
Shanidar Z's skull -- thought to be the best preserved Neanderthal find this century -- had been flattened to a thickness of two centimetres (0.7 inches), possibly by a rockfall relatively soon after she died.
Professor Graeme Barker from Cambridge's McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, who led the excavations at Shanidar cave, told AFP the team had "never expected to get more Neanderthals".
'Flower burial' theory "We wanted to try and date these burials... to use the site to contribute to the big debate about why the Neanderthals died out, and then we started finding these bits," he said.
Shanidar Z is the fifth body to be identified in the cluster buried over a period of at least several hundred years right behind the rock in the centre of the cave.
Archaeologists believe the stone was used as an identifier to allow itinerant Neanderthals to return to the same spot to bury their dead.
Latest research by team member Professor Chris Hunt of John Moores now suggests the pollen that gave rise to Solecki's contentious "flower burial" theory might in fact have come from bees burrowing into the cave floor.
But Hunt said there was still evidence -- such as the remains of a partially paralysed Neanderthal found by Solecki -- &nbsp;that the species were more empathetic than previously thought.
"There's been this huge reappraisal which was actually started by Ralph Solecki in this cave with 'Shanidar 1' with his withered arm and his arthritis and his deafness who must have been looked after. That tells us there was compassion," he said.
The positioning of the bodies in the cluster in the same spot, in the same position and facing in the same direction implied "tradition" and the "passing of knowledge between generations", he said.
- 'Terrifying' - "It looks much more like purposeful behaviour that you wouldn't associate with the text book stories about Neanderthals which is that their lives were nasty, brutish and short," he added.
Emma Pomeroy, the Cambridge palaeo-anthropologist who uncovered Shanidar Z, said finding her skull and upper body had been both "exciting" and "terrifying".
The skeleton and the surrounding sediment had to be strengthened in situ with a glue-like consolidant before being removed in dozens of small foil-wrapped blocks.
Lead conservator Lucia Lopez-Polin then pieced together the over 200 bits of skull as the first step in the facial reconstruction for the just-released Netflix documentary "Secrets of the Neanderthals".
Pomeroy said the task had been like a "high stakes 3D jigsaw puzzle" especially as the fragments were very soft "similar in consistency to a biscuit dunked in tea".
The rebuilt skull was then 3D-printed allowing palaeoartists and identical twins Adrie and Alfons Kennis in The Netherlands to complete the reconstruction with layers of fabricated muscle and skin for the documentary, which was produced by the BBC Studios Science Unit.
Pomeroy said Neanderthal skulls looked very different to those of humans "with huge brow ridges and lack of chins".
But she said the recreated face "suggests those differences were not so stark in life", highlighting the interbreeding between Neanderthals and humans "to the extent that almost everyone alive today still has Neanderthal DNA."

UK researchers unveil face of 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman

The US State Department accused Russia Wednesday of having used a chemical weapon against Ukrainian forces in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, while also announcing fresh sanctions against Moscow.
In addition to the chemical agent chloropicrin, Russia also used "riot control agents (tear gas) as a method of warfare in Ukraine, also in violation of the CWC," the department said in a factsheet.
"The use of such chemicals is not an isolated incident, and is probably driven by Russian forces' desire to dislodge Ukrainian forces from fortified positions and achieve tactical gains on the battlefield," the State Department said.
Meanwhile the US Treasury Department announced sweeping sanctions aimed at crippling Russia's military and industrial capabilities -- including targeting nearly 300 entities in Russia, China and other countries accused of supporting President Vladimir Putin's invasion.
The sanctions are meant to punish companies that help Moscow acquire weapons for its war in Ukraine. They also target Russian government entities and companies involved in the country's chemical and biological weapons programs.
Russia has said it no longer possesses a military chemical arsenal, but the country faces pressure for more transparency over the alleged use of toxic weapons.
According to the US National Institutes of Health, the chemical chloropicrin is used both as a warfare agent and pesticide. If inhaled, it poses a health risk.
'Sand in the gears'
"Today's actions will further disrupt and degrade Russia's war efforts by going after its military industrial base and the evasion networks that help supply it," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.
The accusations and sanctions come a week after US President Joe Biden signed a much-delayed bill to provide new funding for Ukraine as Kyiv's military struggles to hold back Russian advances.
"Even as we're throwing sand in the gears of Russia's war machine, President (Joe) Biden's recently-passed National Security Supplemental is providing badly-needed military, economic, and humanitarian support to bolster Ukraine's courageous resistance," Yellen said.
"Combined, our support for Ukraine and our relentless targeting of Russia's military capacity is giving Ukraine a critical leg-up on the battlefield."
As part of the measures, the State Department blacklisted additional individuals and companies involved in Moscow's energy, mining and metals sectors.
The sanctions also targeted individuals connected to the death of Russian opposition leader Aleksey Navalny who died in a Siberian prison in February.
The almost 300 targets sanctioned included dozens of actors accused of enabling Russia to acquire desperately needed technology and equipment from abroad, the Treasury said.
Some of those targeted were based in countries such as China that have faced increasing pressure from Washington over support for Russia during its 15-month invasion of Ukraine.
"This support enables Russia to continue its war against Ukraine and poses a significant threat to international security," the Treasury Department said.
Other than China, targeted non-Russian entities were located in Azerbaijan, Belgium, Slovakia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.
These companies "enable Russia to acquire desperately-needed technology and equipment from abroad," the statement said.

US accuses Russia of using 'chemical weapon' in Ukraine

The capital city of Georgia on Wednesday warmly welcomed delegates coming from various parts of the world to attend the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) 57th Annual Meeting.
The meeting opens tomorrow (Thursday) and will examine key development issues facing Asia and the Pacific including climate change, artificial intelligence, and green globalisation.
Finance Minister AH Mahmood Ali, who is scheduled to arrive in Tbilisi tonight (Wednesday), will lead the Bangladesh delegation at the meeting, said an official.
In a curtain raiser to the 2024 Annual Meeting, ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development President Odile Renaud-Basso and Georgia Finance Minister Lasha Khutsishvili shared their insights on what it will take to build a sustainable, inclusive future.
Moderated by international journalist Nisha Pillai, the panel discussion focused on the economic landscape, regional cooperation, and how multilateral development banks and countries can collaborate more effectively despite the uncertainties and risks posed by climate change, deglobalisation, and geopolitical tensions.
The economies of so-called developing Asia are estimated to have grown at 5.0% last year, 2023, up from 4.3% in the previous year, 2022, Asakawa said.
And this growth momentum is expected to be sustained at around 4.9% this year and next year. On the other hand, inflation has been contained well, he mentioned.
 The inflation rate dropped from 4.4% in 2022 to 3.3% in 2023, said the ADB President.
 "This robust growth comes from a couple of factors: First, relatively strong domestic demand. Second, a recovery of export performance thanks to the favorable semiconductor cycle. Third, very strong remittance inflow to the region. Fourth, a recovery of tourism as more and more tourists are coming back. And fifth, recovery of the Chinese economy," he said.
And talking of the Chinese economy a bit, the ADB President said, China only grew by 3.0% in 2022, but it rebounded to 5.2% growth in 2023, after they exited from a very strict zero-Covid policy.
 So looking ahead, he said, the Asia and Pacific economy appears to be very resilient, although they are facing a tremendous amount of uncertainties and challenges.
The ADB President listed four challenges: "One is ongoing geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. Second, the possibility of very unstable global financial markets due to the monetary policy orientation in advanced economies, especially in the US. Third, the food security issue."
While the food price in general has been declining after its peak in 2022, the rice price has been rising.
And fourth, the downside risk the world is facing is the climate change crisis.
"And actually, it's an uncomfortable truth that the Asia and Pacific region is accountable for more than 50% of CO2 gas emissions, but at the same time it is also true that this region is one of the most vulnerable regions, area vis-&Atilde; -vis natural disasters," he said.
"The meeting will showcase the growing partnership between Georgia and ADB and emphasize Georgia's commitment to regional development and cooperation," said ADB Managing Director General Woochong Um.
"Tbilisi's location at a crossroads between east and west presents an excellent opportunity to explore the physical, financial, and economic connections between Asia and Europe."
This is the first time Georgia is hosting an Annual Meeting of ADB's Board of Governors.
The meeting, which runs from 2 to 5 May under the theme "Bridge to the Future", brings together finance ministers, central bank governors, senior government officials, and representatives from the private sector, academia, media, and civil society from ADB's 68 members.
Georgia joined ADB in 2007. ADB has committed more than $4 billion to Georgia, becoming one of the country's largest multilateral development partners.
ADB is committed to achieving a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific, while sustaining its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty.&nbsp;

Developing Asian economies’ growth expected to be sustained at 4.9% this year and the next: ADB President

Madonna's long-awaited free concert on Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach has upended the neighborhood, with over a million fans expected -- but for retired resident Mario Renato Borges, it's the least the singer deserves.
"Welcome, Queen," read some posters near the huge stage erected on the Brazilian beach, where Madonna will on Saturday give the biggest show of her 40-year career and the last of her "Celebration Tour."
The 65-year-old American singer arrived in the coastal city on Monday after more than 80 shows in Europe, the United States and Mexico. This will be her only stop in South America.
The "Like A Virgin" and "Material Girl" performer traveled to Brazil with three planes and 270 tons of equipment, according to her production company.
She has set up camp at the luxurious Copacabana Palace hotel, connected to the stage by a suspended catwalk that dozens of fans crowded under this week, hoping to catch a glimpse of the pop star.
- The biggest dance floor -
Thanks to free admission, organizers expect Madonna's concert to produce the "world's biggest dance floor" of up to 1.5 million people -- a figure only reached on the same beach by the Rolling Stones in 2006.
"The traffic is chaos but the concert will be great, especially because it's Madonna, the queen of pop," says resident Borges, who lives in Leme, a neighborhood at the end of Copacabana Beach.
Madonna's fourth performance in Rio will contribute some 293 million reais (US$57 million) to the local economy, an income 30 times higher than what city authorities invested, according to the mayor's office.
Around 150,000 foreigners are expected to swarm the city, with most hotels already fully booked.
"This will undoubtedly be one of Rio's biggest international events. It will boost our economy and attract tourists from Brazil, Latin American and all over the world," said the city's Tourism Secretary Daniela Maia.
- Return of the conical corset -
Madonna fever is clear to see in Rio -- the so-called "Marvelous City" -- as the hours tick down to her performance.
At the Lix printing shop in the popular downtown Saara shopping district, the songs of the "Material Girl" are playing on loop to inspire devotees who can choose from personalized fans, hats or mugs.
Manager Livia Reis, 23, tells AFP that her store went viral on social media shortly after the concert was announced thanks to an influencer who visited the Madonna-inspired shop.
"A guy came in, took a photo and a video, and sent them to a fan club with 150,000 followers in Portugal. From there, it jumped to TikTok and Instagram," she says.
One particularly popular item is a replica of the conical corset created by French designer Jean Paul Gaultier, which Madonna famously wore on stage in 1990.
Sold as a bra or a top, the item is "doing very well," says Reis, who expects there will be "queues out of the door" in the days ahead of the concert.
- Patrols on the corners -
"All this activity is good for tourism, hotels and restaurants. But let's hope the security is up to the task," says 68-year-old Rio local Borges.
The mayor's office has prepared an operation equivalent to New Year's Eve celebrations in Copacabana, one of the most famous in the world that typically brings down some one million people.
"Operation Madonna" will see some 4,500 agents deployed, working with drones and facial recognition cameras. There will be police patrols on almost every street corner in the neighborhood.
Nagila Alves, 54, who works for a pest control company, was on her way to a client's home when she stopped to take a photo of the impressive stage set up for Madonna.
"I will always love her. Madonna is timeless," she tells AFP, adding she plans to delay her arrival on Saturday to dodge the crowds swarming to the front of the stage.

'Operation Madonna': Rio readies for singer's free mega-concert

Estonia has accused neighbouring Russia of jamming GPS navigation devices in airspace above the Baltic states, echoing concerns from airlines that say they have been contending with such interference for months.
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna's accusation, for which he provided no proof, followed Finnair's, opens new tab decision to pause flights to Tartu in eastern Estonia for one month due to GPS disturbances. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
There have been reports of a rise in GPS interference around the world, particularly since last year, raising fears of an increased risk of accidents if planes veer off-course.
WHAT IS GPS JAMMING AND SPOOFING?
GPS, short for Global Positioning System, is a network of satellites and receiving devices used for positioning, navigation and timing on Earth in everything from ships and planes to cars.
GPS is one of the more important navigation tools in aviation, which has replaced expensive ground devices that would transmit radio beams to guide planes towards landing.
However, it is also fairly easy using store-bought tools to block or distort GPS signals and militaries have invested in technology that can do so.
GPS jamming uses a frequency transmitting device to block or interfere with radio communications, usually by broadcasting signals from the ground that are stronger than satellite-based signals.
Spoofing might involve one country's military sending false GPS signals to an enemy plane or drone to hinder its ability to function and is often considered more disruptive and dangerous than jamming.
The problem for commercial aviation comes if that false signal is picked up by a GPS receiver in a passenger plane, potentially confusing the pilot and air traffic control by showing the wrong time or coordinates without warning.
WHERE DOES IT OCCUR?
In December, aviation advisory body OPSGROUP flagged a surge in spoofing affecting private and commercial jets around the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran and Israel, and the Black Sea.
It tends to impact areas close to war zones as the technology is used to send suicide drones off-track.
Baltic countries have reported the issue for years, particularly since the war in Ukraine began in 2022.
Over the past six months, jamming has worsened around the Baltic Sea, Finnair pilot and Finnish Pilots Association Safety and Security Committee chair Lauri Soini said.
Soini said GPS jamming now occurs in an area extending from Poland across the Baltic states to the Swedish and Finnish coasts, also affecting lower altitudes and maritime traffic.
While politicians and German officials, opens new tab have pointed to Russia as the main culprit in the Baltic states, experts say Western militaries, including U.S. and British forces could be using some form of the technology in parts of the world.
WHY IS IT A PROBLEM FOR AIRLINES?
Most modern airliners have a variety of sensors and sources to determine their positioning, in addition to GPS, meaning they can fly if there is interference.
However, according to pilots and industry experts, airlines still rely primarily on GPS. If jamming or spoofing occurs, GPS might have to be switched off and cannot be reset for the remainder of the flight in many cases.
That can cause stress and delays for take-off and landing because certain procedures require GPS to function.
GPS navigation is also the only form of navigation for some private jets.
However, AirBaltic safety manager and flight captain Janis Kristops said the Tartu incident with Finnair was rare. Most major airports have a variety of navigation tools available if GPS isn't working, he said.
And given the diverse nature of jamming and spoofing devices, it's difficult for the airline sector to come up with a sweeping technological solution that can mitigate the risk.
Instead, authorities are looking to train pilots to verify jamming and spoofing sooner.
&nbsp;

What is GPS jamming and why is it a problem for aviation?

Supporters of Israel attacked a pro-Palestinian protest camp at the University of California in Los Angeles on Wednesday, while New York's mayor said a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University broken up by police had been led by outsiders.
Witness footage from UCLA, verified by Reuters, showed people wielding sticks or poles to hammer on wooden boards being used as makeshift barricades to protect the pro-Palestinian protesters before police were deployed to the campus.
On the other side of the country, New York police arrested pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed up in a building at Columbia University and removed a protest encampment on Tuesday night.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said about 300 people had been arrested and he blamed the protests on outside agitators, but without offering concrete evidence.
The Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip and the ensuing Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave have unleashed the biggest outpouring of U.S. student activism since the anti-racism protests of 2020.
As student rallies have spread to dozens of schools across the U.S. in recent days expressing opposition to Israel's war in Gaza, police have been called in to quell or clear protests.
About 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed in the Oct. 7 attack but the Israeli retaliatory assault has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health ministry figures, obliterated much of the enclave's infrastructure, and created a humanitarian crisis verging on famine.
The student protests in the United States have also taken on political overtones in the run-up to the presidential election in November, with Republicans accusing some university administrators of turning a blind eye to antisemitic rhetoric and harassment.
UCLA PROTESTERS REPORT VIOLENT ATTACKS
On Tuesday, UCLA officials announced that the encampment was unlawful and violated university policy. UCLA Chancellor Gene Brock said it included people "unaffiliated with our campus", though he, like Adams, provided no evidence of the presence of outsiders.
Footage from the early hours showed mostly male counter-demonstrators, many of them masked and some apparently older than students, throwing objects and trying to smash or pull down the wooden and steel barriers erected to shield the encampment.
Some screamed pro-Jewish comments as pro-Palestinian protesters tried to fight them off.
"They were coming up here and just violently attacking us," said pro-Palestinian protester Kaia Shah, a researcher at UCLA.
"I just didn't think they would ever get to this, escalate to this level, where our protest is met by counter-protesters who are violently hurting us, inflicting pain on us, when we are not doing anything to them."
Demonstrators on both sides sprayed each other and fights broke out.
Another pro-Palestinian student protester, Sophia Sandino, said: "We had people (spraying) us, beating us with bats and sticks, throwing whatever they could to us and none of this law enforcement was here at all. So it's kind of disappointing that we're seen as the perpetrators here."
Police said they had responded to a request from UCLA to restore order and maintain public safety "due to multiple acts of violence" within the encampment.
Broadcast footage later showed police clearing a central quad beside the encampment. They erected a metal crowd barrier in front of the encampment and the area was quiet at daybreak.
COLUMBIA DEMONSTRATORS ARRESTED
On Tuesday night, New York police had arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed up in a building at Columbia University and removed a protest encampment that the Ivy League college had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks.
Mayor Adams told reporters on Wednesday that around 300 people had been arrested but did not specify how many, if any, were believed to be external agitators.
"While those who broke into the building did include students, it was led by individuals who were not affiliated with the university," he said.
"Students have a right to protest and free speech is a cornerstone of our society...It was external actors who hijacked peaceful protests and influenced students to escalate."
Columbia President Minouche Shafik asked police to stay on campus until at least May 17 - two days after graduation.
As police stepped in, students standing outside the hall - site of various student occupations dating back to the 1960s - jeered at police with shouts of "Shame, shame!".
Police loaded dozens of detainees onto a bus, their hands bound behind their backs by zip-ties, the scene illuminated with the flashing red and blue lights of police vehicles.
"Free, free, free Palestine!" protesters chanted outside the building. Others yelled "Let the students go!".
Sueda Polat of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the coalition of student groups that organised the protests, said they did not pose any danger.
Another protest leader, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian attending Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, denied that outsiders had been among the organisers, as did many other students.
Students had, however, posted videos of visits to the camp by supporters and activists not enrolled at or employed by Columbia, and said they had contacted alumni from major protests at the university in 1968 to learn about their strategies.
Shafik said the occupiers had vandalized university property and were trespassing. The university earlier warned that students taking part in the occupation faced academic expulsion.
Police were also called in to clear encampments and make arrests overnight at Tulane University in New Orleans, University of Arizona and City College of New York in Harlem.
Dozens were arrested at City College, the New York Times reported.
&nbsp;

Gaza protests in US: Israel supporters attack pro-Palestinian camp in LA, 300 protesters arrested in New York

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said on Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is blaming the delay of a Gaza ceasefire agreement on the Palestinian group unfairly.
Blinken, meeting Israeli leaders to discuss how to get more aid into Gaza, has repeatedly urged Hamas to accept an offer from Israel that will release hostages and achieve a ceasefire, describing it as "extraordinarily generous".
"Blinken's comments contradict reality. It is not strange for Blinken, who is known as the foreign minister of Israel, not America, to make such a statement," Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
"Even the Israeli negotiating team admitted Netanyahu was the one who was hindering reaching an agreement," he added.
Abu Zuhri said that the group was still studying the recent ceasefire offer. Hamas is seeking a permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, while Netanyahu says Israel needs to destroy the remaining Hamas formations in Rafah in southern Gaza for its own security, with or without a deal with Hamas.

Hamas official says Blinken ceasefire comments are attempt to pressure the group

Dozens of protesters took over a building at Columbia University in New York early Tuesday, barricading entrances and unfurling a Palestinian flag from a window in the latest escalation of demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war on college campuses nationwide. The school promised they would face expulsion.
The occupation at Columbia &mdash; where protesters had shrugged off an earlier ultimatum to abandon a tent encampment Monday or be suspended &mdash; unfolded as other universities stepped up efforts to clear out encampments. Police swept through some campuses, spurring confrontations with protesters and plenty of arrests. In rarer instances, university officials and protest leaders have struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life.
And as cease-fire negotiations appeared to gain steam Tuesday, it wasn&rsquo;t clear whether those talks would inspire campus protesters to ease their efforts.
Protesters on Columbia's Manhattan campus locked arms in front of Hamilton Hall early Tuesday and carried furniture and metal barricades to the building, among several that were occupied during a 1968 civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protest. Posts on an Instagram page for protest organizers shortly after midnight urged people to protect the encampment and join them at Hamilton Hall. A &ldquo;Free Palestine&rdquo; banner hung from a window.
&ldquo;An autonomous group reclaimed Hind&rsquo;s Hall, previously known as &lsquo;Hamilton Hall,&rsquo; in honor of Hind Rajab, a martyr murdered at the hands of the genocidal Israeli state at the age of six years old,&rdquo; CU Apartheid Divest posted on the social platform X early Tuesday.
Hamilton Hall opened in 1907 and is named for Alexander Hamilton &mdash; one of the founding fathers of the United States &mdash; who attended King's College, Columbia's original name.
The takeover occurred nearly 12 hours after Monday&rsquo;s 2 p.m. deadline for the protesters to leave an encampment of around 120 tents or face suspension.
In a statement Tuesday, Columbia spokesperson Ben Chang said, &ldquo;Students occupying the building face expulsion.&rdquo; Chang said the university had given protesters a chance to leave peacefully and finish the semester, but that those who didn't agree to the terms from Monday were being suspended &mdash; restricted from all academic and recreational spaces, allowed only to enter their residences, and, for seniors, ineligible to graduate.
&ldquo;Protesters have chosen to escalate to an untenable situation &mdash; vandalising property, breaking doors and windows, and blockading entrances &mdash; and we are following through with the consequences we outlined yesterday,&rdquo; he said.
The public safety department said in a statement that access to the campus was limited to students living in the residential buildings and essential employees. There was just one access point into and out of campus.
New York Police Department Chief Jeffrey Maddrey said Tuesday that officers won&rsquo;t enter Columbia&rsquo;s campus without a request from college administration or an imminent emergency.
Protesters have insisted they will remain at the hall until the university agrees to three demands: Divestment, financial transparency and amnesty.
At many campuses, including Columbia, the conflict over protests appeared to be coming to a head.
The standoffs have drawn concern from the White House. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said President Joe Biden believes students occupying an academic building is &ldquo;absolutely the wrong approach,&rdquo; and &ldquo;not an example of peaceful protest.&rdquo;
The office of the UN human rights chief, Volker T&uuml;rk, meanwhile, expressed concern about &ldquo;heavy-handed steps&rdquo; taken to dismantle protests on US campuses, while stressing that antisemitic, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian comments were &ldquo;totally unacceptable and deeply disturbing.&rdquo;
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres later told reporters that "it is up to the university authorities to have the wisdom to properly manage situations like the ones we have witnessed.&rdquo;
At California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, where protesters occupied two buildings, dozens of police officers in helmets and carrying batons marched onto campus and cleared both halls overnight. The university said 25 were arrested and there were no injuries. The sweep was broadcast on the Facebook page of KAEF-TV, a satellite of KRCR-TV, until police detained the reporter.
Video posted by the campus newspaper showed students sitting in the campus quad as officers started detaining protesters. One yelled: &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t need to do this!&rdquo;
The campus remains closed to anyone without authorisation.
President Tom Jackson Jr lamented the situation, saying &ldquo;nobody wanted to see things come to this.&rdquo;
"Unfortunately, serious criminal activity that crossed the line well beyond the level of a protest had put the campus at ongoing risk,&rdquo; Jackson said in a statement.
At Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, police and demonstrators clashed Monday night as officers took down tents, charged the line of demonstrators, deployed chemical agents to disperse the crowd, and made arrests, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. Some protesters hurled water bottles and other objects at police.
Yale authorities on Tuesday morning cleared an encampment after protesters heeded final warnings to leave, university officials said. No arrests were reported. Demonstrators said on social media that they were moving their gathering to a sidewalk area. The encampment was set up Sunday, six days after police arrested nearly 50 people, including 44 students, and took down dozens of tents.
Dozens of people were arrested Monday during protests at universities in Texas, Utah, Virginia and New Jersey, while Columbia said hours before the takeover of Hamilton Hall that it had started suspending students. At the University of Texas at Austin, 79 people involved in the Monday protest were jailed, according to the Travis County sheriff&rsquo;s department, most charged with criminal trespass.
A small group of students at Portland State University in Oregon broke into the university&rsquo;s library late Monday, drawing a sharp rebuke from city officials and the district attorney. The downtown campus, where protesters had been demonstrating mostly peacefully, was closed Tuesday.
Also Tuesday, police cleared an encampment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and detained about 30 people. At the University of Connecticut, police made arrests after protesters refused to remove tents.
The nationwide campus protests began in response to Israel&rsquo;s offensive in Gaza after Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry.
Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests as antisemitic, while Israel's critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.
In a rare case, Northwestern University said it reached an agreement with students and faculty who represent the majority of protesters on its campus near Chicago. It allows peaceful demonstrations through the end of spring classes in exchange for some concessions.
At the University of Southern California, organisers of a large encampment sat down with university President Carol Folt for about 90 minutes Monday. Folt declined to discuss details but said talks would continue Tuesday.
USC officials banned the valedictorian, who has publicly supported Palestinians, from making a commencement speech, scrapped the keynote speech and declined to award honorary degrees. They have since cancelled USC's main graduation event. &nbsp;

Columbia University threatens to expel student protesters occupying an administration building

At least 36 people were killed and 30 injured as a section of a highway collapsed in southern China following heavy rain in recent days.
Locals said 18 cars fell down a slope after a 17.9-metre (58.7-foot) long section of the highway collapsed, according to a statement from authorities in Meizhou city in Guangdong province, reports the AP.
The incident occurred at around 2am local time on Wednesday (1 May).
Witnesses told local media they heard a loud noise and saw a hole open up several meters wide behind them after driving past the section of the road just before it collapsed.
Video and photos in local media showed smoke and fire at the scene, with highway rails slanting downward into the flames.
Blackened cars could also be seen on the slope leading down from the highway.
Rescue workers have taken 30 people to the hospital, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
 &nbsp;
&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;

36 dead as highway collapses in China’s southern Guangdong province

Dozens of schools in India's national capital region were evacuated on Wednesday after they received a bomb threat by email, police said, adding that "nothing objectionable" was found during searches of the schools.
More than 50 schools in Delhi and the adjoining suburb of Noida received the threatening email, officials said, triggering panic among parents and prompting schools to send students home.
Television visuals showed parents standing outside the gates of schools across the region waiting to pick up children, as police teams, dog squads, and bomb disposal squads checked the premises.
The hoax affected thousands of school children from grades 1-12.
"Delhi Police has conducted thorough check of all such schools as per protocol...It appears that these calls seem to be hoax," Delhi Police said in a statement. Police did not release any further details about the threat.
Security agencies were taking "all necessary steps", the home ministry said on X.
Delhi Education Minister Atishi, who uses only one name, appealed to people not to panic, adding that school authorities would be in touch with parents wherever needed.
Some schools that were not among the recipients of the email also sent messages to parents to reassure them about the safety of their children.
Similar threats have been sent to schools in New Delhi in the past, but turned out to be hoaxes. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Dozens of schools in India's capital region evacuated after email bomb threat hoax

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday came down heavily on America for its action against university students and teachers for protesting Israeli &nbsp;genocide in Palestine.
&ldquo;The students and teachers did not carry anything like torches &nbsp;or sticks in their hands. But the way police behaved with them raises the question about how much human rights are there,&rdquo; she said.
She was making introductory speech in the AL Central Working Committee (ALCWC) meeting &nbsp;at her official residence Ganabhaban.
&nbsp;Hasina said that some days ago there were protests by the university students and teachers in America.
She mentioned that they were protesting the genocide by Israel.
&ldquo;There while protesting one woman professor was severely physically assaulted by police. It brings the question abou how much freedom of speech they enjoy (in America), that is the question. Our question is how much rights they have to protest against any injustice,&rdquo; she said.
She said that the US writes human rights report on Bangladesh, but does not see their own faces in the mirror.
&ldquo;That is the reality,&rdquo; she said.
She questioned If any police were attacked by any political party in the,US like the BNP did here in the recent past, what would they do.
&nbsp;Hasina denounced the recent killings of some Bangladeshis in the US, including &nbsp;two men brutally killed several days ago.
&ldquo;I am &nbsp;protesting these killings. They went there for their livelihoods, but why they should be killed like this. Even two infants could not escape from their hands,&rdquo; she said.
The prime minister said how will those who always sing the songs for human rights respond to these murders.
&ldquo;How will they answer? I am demanding an answer. I am demanding the answers from the human rights organisations, justice department and those who impose sanctions on us,&rdquo; she said.
Sheikh Hasina reiterated her call to stop genocide in Palestine.
&ldquo;Actually genocide is going on in Palestine by the Israeli forces. We are continuously protesting that. Whenever I go I am registering my protest against the genocide by the Israeli forces and asking all world leaders to stop the war. The whole world is against the genocide against the Palestinians,&rdquo; she said. &nbsp;

PM Hasina blasts US for police action against students protesting Israeli genocide in Palestine

The preparatory meetings of the 15th Session of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Islamic Summit have started in Banjul, The Gambia, on Tuesday (30 April), under the theme &ldquo;Enhancing Unity and Solidarity through dialogue for sustainable development&rdquo;.
The two-day-long senior officials meeting is being led by Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh Ambassador Masud Bin Momen.
The Ambassador of Bangladesh to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the OIC, Dr Javed Patwary, High Commissioner of Bangladesh to Nigeria and Non-Resident High Commissioner of Bangladesh to The Gambia, Masudur Rahman, Director General (International Organsations), Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wahida Ahmed, are participating at the meeting.
It is finalising the &ldquo;Draft Resolution on the issue of Palestine and Al-Quds Ash-Sharif&rdquo;, &ldquo;Draft Final Communique&rdquo;, and &ldquo;Banjul Draft Declaration&rdquo; to be adopted by the Preparatory Meeting of the Foreign Ministers.
The discussions are dominated by issues related to Palestine in view of the recent atrocities in Gaza.
It will also discuss economic, humanitarian, social, cultural, and issues concerning women and youth that have an impact on the Muslim Ummah.
The Preparatory Meeting of the Foreign Ministers will start on 2 May, and will be led by Foreign Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud MP.&nbsp;

OIC Islamic Summit preparatory meetings starts in Banjul

Global investors are eyeing European and emerging market assets to protect themselves from further turbulence in US stocks and bonds as stubborn inflation causes bets on the timing of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts to be revised.
April was a washout on Wall Street, with the S&amp;P 500 share index and US Treasuries posting their biggest monthly loss since September.
Money managers are now looking for ways to limit losses if the trend does not reverse.
That could entail the restructuring of portfolios that had been lifted for years by richly-valued U.S. equities, said Sonja Laud, CIO at Legal &amp; General Investment Management, which manages roughly $1.5 trillion.
"Diversification will be a lot more important going forward," she said, adding that LGIM was not expecting superior returns from global stocks but now preferred European shares to those from the United States.
Amelie Derambure, senior multi-asset manager at Amundi, Europe's biggest asset manager, said she still expected long-term gains from US stocks but had bought put options to protect against a 10% fall.
She had also switched some cash out of Treasuries into euro zone bonds. The S&amp;P 500 fell 4.2% in April.
ENTER EUROPE
US stocks have provided about 80% of the price return of the MSCI World share index since 2020 in dollar terms, Pictet Asset Management calculates.
US stocks ended lower on Tuesday as investors weighed souring consumer confidence and other economic data on the eve of a key Federal Reserve policy meeting.&nbsp;
The "Magnificent Seven" group of tech stocks, supercharged by an artificial intelligence boom, contributed over 60% of the S&amp;P's total return last year.
But as sticky inflation drives expectations that the Fed will hold US borrowing costs at a 23-year high of 5.25%-5.5% or even hike again, the cost of betting on long-term gains from big tech's hefty AI investments versus holding cash is rising.
A sharp fall in Facebook owner Meta's shares in April highlighted the risks of hoping for stellar tech earnings in an environment where rates stay high. Until recently, markets had expected the Fed to start cutting in June.
The S&amp;P remains highly valued, with a price-to-earnings multiple almost 7 percentage points above Europe's Stoxx 600, LSEG data shows.
Investors said the Stoxx appealed because it is stacked with companies in so-called value sectors such as banking and energy which benefit from steady global growth but tend not to suffer when borrowing costs rise.
"We are increasing exposure to Europe," said Luca Paolini, chief strategist at Pictet Asset Management. "The general macro outlook is supportive for a cheap, cyclical value market." &nbsp; European fund manager Carmignac reduced some US tech holdings in April and was seeking opportunities closer to home, the group's head of cross-asset Frederic Leroux said.
"Diversifying towards Europe today makes a lot of sense," he said. "Each time you have a new wave of (US) inflation you will see a big outperformance for Europe."
Moderating euro zone inflation means the European Central Bank is expected to start cutting interest rates on 6 June.
Ross Yarrow, managing director for US equities at investment bank Baird, said global investors were mostly negative on towards US stocks on valuation grounds.
But superior revenue growth also helped Wall Street outpace Europe in 12 of the past 16 years, he said.
TREASURY BEARS
An index of Treasury bonds, dropped around 2% in April, its worst month since September.
Amundi's Derambure said she still expected Fed cuts but had topped up on euro zone government bonds in recent weeks to wait "for this washout in US fixed income to be over".
Traders expect 35 bps of US rate cuts this year but 65 bps in the euro zone, where inflation has dropped closer to the ECB's 2% target.
According to Barclays strategists, Treasuries may not rally even when the Fed does cut because of high and rising US government debt.
Emerging market bonds are picking up buyers, however, as investors hope to see robust economic growth in the likes of India, Indonesia and Vietnam.
LGIM's Laud added that she was positive on Indian bonds, which have been snapped up by foreign investors ahead of inclusion in a major debt index later this year and as the economy booms.
"Within fixed income we see the best opportunities from a risk perspective (from) dollar-based emerging market debt," Manulife's chief investment officer for multi-asset solutions Nathan Thooft said.
TANGLED
Diversifying from US assets could be tough.
The Stoxx tends to track the S&amp;P, with an 88% correlation between the two markets since 1986, Baird's Yarrow calculates.
Treasuries also strongly influence other debt markets, with a 1 percentage point rise in 10-year US yields commonly pulling global yields 56 basis points higher, a Barclays study found.
"It is always very difficult to say, OK I want to be lighter on the US and investing more in other parts of the world," said Carmignac's Leroux.
"But even with correlations, you have moments where you can find outperformance somewhere else."

Investors scour the globe for shelter as Wall Street shakes

Brown University on Tuesday reached an agreement with students protesting the war in Gaza that would see them remove their encampment from school grounds in exchange for the institution considering divesting from Israel.
The move represents the first major concession from an elite American university amid relentless student protests that have paralyzed campuses across the country, divided public opinion and led to hundreds of arrests.
In a statement, Brown President Christina Paxson said students had agreed to end their protests and clear their camp by 5:00 pm local time Tuesday and "refrain from further actions that would violate Brown's conduct code through the end of the academic year."
In turn, "five students will be invited to meet with five members of the Corporation of Brown University in May to present their arguments to divest Brown's endowment from 'companies enabling and profiting from the genocide in Gaza'."
The board will vote on the proposal in October.
Student protesters jumped for joy upon hearing the news of the deal and chanted "with love not fear, divestment is getting near" before beginning to remove their tents.
"We are ending (the encampment) knowing that we made a huge victory for divestment at Brown, for this international movement and a victory for the people of Palestine," said Brown student Leo Corzo-Clark. &nbsp; The university, located in Providence, Rhode Island, "has come to the table to listen to our demands and to listen to its students and to consider divesting from war, divesting from death, divesting from occupation," said Sam Theoharis, another student protester.
The campus demonstrations have posed a major challenge to university administrators across the country who are trying to balance commitments to free expression with complaints that the rallies have veered into anti-Semitism and hate speech.
In her statement, Paxson said "the devastation and loss of life in the Middle East has prompted many to call for meaningful change, while also raising real issues about how best to accomplish this."
But she added: "I have been concerned about the escalation in inflammatory rhetoric that we have seen recently, and the increase in tensions at campuses across the country."

Brown University reaches deal with pro-Palestine student protesters

Colombia's President Gustavo Petro said on Tuesday that an inventory of military weapons showed over a million bullets, thousands of explosives, including grenades, and some missiles were missing from military bases, blaming corruption for the lost weapons.
He has ordered any corruption networks within the security forces to be dismantled.
Petro added in a joint statement with the defense minister and the head of the armed forces, saying judicial authorities were investigating the issue.
"The only way to explain this type of lacking (inventory) is that there has existed, for a long time, networks of people in the armed forces and civilians dedicated to mass commercialisation of arms, using legal arms from the Colombian state," Petro said.
The weapons will have gone to Colombian armed groups, the president said, and may have been smuggled to Haiti or put on the international black market for weapons.
"We must, undoubtedly, completely separate the armed forces, as with any branch of public power, from any incident of corruption. That is the only way to guarantee the safety of our citizens and of the armed forces themselves."
More than 1.3 million 5.56mm bullets are missing from inventories at two military bases in Tolemaida in central Colombia and La Guajira province, along with hundreds of thousands of bullets of other calibres, Petro said.
Two Spike missiles - anti-tank weapons manufactured in Israel - are also gone, Petro said, along with 37 Nimrod missiles, which are also made in Israel.
Thousands of grenades and mortar rounds of various sizes and 550 rocket-propelled grenade launchers are also missing.
Investigations are underway, Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez told journalists, and some officials have been moved from certain posts.

Colombia's president says armed forces' bullets, missiles stolen due to corruption

The judge overseeing Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial fined the former US president $9,000 for contempt of court on Tuesday and said he would consider jailing him if he continued to violate a gag order.
In a written order, Justice Juan Merchan said the fine may not be enough to serve as a deterrent for the wealthy businessman-turned-politician and lamented he did not have the authority to impose a higher penalty.
"Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment," Merchan wrote.
Merchan had imposed the gag order to prevent Trump from criticising witnesses and others involved in the case.
The judge fined Trump $1,000 for each of nine online statements that he said violated his order not to criticize witnesses or other participants in the trial. Prosecutors had flagged 10 posts as possible violations.
The posts, made between 10-17 April, included an article calling his former lawyer Michael Cohen a "serial liar." Cohen is expected to be a prominent witness in the trial.
Another post quoted a Fox News pundit who claimed "undercover liberal activists" were trying to sneak onto the jury. Merchan rejected Trump's argument that he could not be held liable for "reposts" of material he did not write himself.
Merchan will consider whether to impose further penalties for other statements at a hearing on Thursday. The judge also ordered Trump to remove the statements from his Truth Social account and his campaign website on Tuesday.
Trump said Merchan had taken away his free speech rights. "I am the only Presidential Candidate in History to be GAGGED. This whole 'Trial' is RIGGED," he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump's lawyer Todd Blanche has argued that the statements at issue were responses to political attacks, but Merchan noted that Blanche was unable to provide any evidence that the expected witnesses had attacked Trump before he insulted them.
The $9,000 fine, due by Friday, is a relatively small penalty for Trump, who has already posted $266.6 million in bonds as he appeals civil judgments in two other cases.
Imprisonment, however, would be an unprecedented twist in the first criminal trial of a former US president.
If that happened, it is unclear whether Trump would be sent to New York City's jail on Rikers Island or whether security concerns would require more lenient treatment, such as home confinement in his Trump Tower triplex. As a former president, he remains under Secret Service protection.
Trump, the Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election is charged with falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump in 2006.
Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied having sex with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
DANCING WITH THE STARS
Lawyer Keith Davidson, who worked with Daniels to sell her story, said interest picked up in 2016 after audio from the "Access Hollywood" TV show was released that portrayed Trump making crude remarks about women.
Davidson had previously sold the story of another woman who claimed to have had an affair with Trump, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, to the National Enquirer tabloid.
He said he leveraged an offer from the ABC television network, which he said promised efforts to feature her as a contestant on the "Dancing With the Stars" show.
The Enquirer never ran McDougal's story, in a practice known as "catch and kill" that Davidson said was meant to protect Trump.
The Enquirer's former publisher, David Pecker, testified last week that he used the Enquirer to suppress negative stories about Trump ahead of the 2016 election.
Trump has denied having an affair with McDougal.
Trump is required to attend the trial and has said he could instead be campaigning ahead of his rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden in the 5 November election.
The criminal case is one of four pending against Trump, but could be the only one to go to trial and result in a verdict before the election.

Judge fines Trump $9,000, threatens jail

A ground operation by Israeli troops in the southern Gaza city of Rafah would be a "tragedy beyond words", the UN's humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said in a statement on Tuesday.
"The simplest truth is that a ground operation in Rafah will be nothing short of a tragedy beyond words. No humanitarian plan can counter that," Griffiths said, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to launch an offensive on Rafah, which has become a refuge to some 1.5 million Palestinians.
With Hamas weighing a truce plan proposed in Cairo talks with the US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators, Netanyahu vowed to launch the assault on Rafah "with or without a deal".
Washington has joined calls on Israel from other countries and humanitarian organisations to spare the city for fear an army incursion would lead to massive civilian casualties.
"The world has been appealing to the Israeli authorities for weeks to spare Rafah, but a ground operation there is on the immediate horizon," said Griffiths.
"For the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled to Gaza's southernmost point to escape disease, famine, mass graves and direct fighting, a ground invasion would spell even more trauma and death.
"For agencies struggling to provide humanitarian aid despite the active hostilities, impassable roads, unexploded ordnance, fuel shortages, delays at checkpoints, and Israeli restrictions, a ground invasion would strike a disastrous blow.
"We are in a race to stave off hunger and death, and we are losing."
The war in Gaza started after Hamas's 7 October attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,535 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Palestinian militants also took some 250 hostages on 7 October. Israel estimates 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 believed to be dead.
&nbsp;

Israeli ground operation in Rafah would be 'tragedy beyond words': UN

New York City police raided Columbia University late on Tuesday to arrest dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, some of whom had seized an academic building, and to remove a protest encampment the Ivy League school had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks.
Shortly after police moved in, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik released a letter in which she requested police stay on campus until at least May 17 - two days after graduation - "to maintain order and ensure that encampments are not re-established."
Within three hours the campus had been cleared of protesters, said a police spokesperson, adding "dozens" of arrests were made. Television images at the start of the raid around 9 p.m. ET showed throngs of helmeted police marching onto the elite campus in upper Manhattan, a focal point of student rallies that have spread to dozens of schools across the U.S. in recent days expressing opposition to Israel's war in Gaza.
"We&rsquo;re clearing it out," the police officers yelled.
Soon after, a long line of officers climbed into Hamilton Hall, an academic building that protesters had broken into and occupied in the early morning hours of Tuesday. Police entered through a second-story window, using a police vehicle equipped with a ladder.
Students standing just outside the campus jeered police with shouts of "Shame, shame!"
Police were seen loading dozens of detainees onto a bus, each with their hands bound behind their backs by zip-ties, the entire scene illuminated with flashing red and blue lights of police vehicles. "Free, free, free Palestine," chanted protesters outside the building. Others yelled "Let the students go."
&ldquo;Columbia will be proud of these students in five years,&rdquo; said Sweda Polat, one of the student negotiators for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the coalition of student groups that has organized the protests.
She said students did not pose a danger and called on police to back down, speaking as officers shouted at her and others to retreat or leave campus.
PROTEST DEMANDS
Protesters were seeking three demands from Columbia: Divestment from companies supporting Israel's government, greater transparency in university finances, and amnesty for students and faculty disciplined over the protests.
President Shafik this week said Columbia would not divest from finances in Israel. Instead, she offered to invest in health and education in Gaza and make Columbia's direct investment holdings more transparent.
In her letter released Tuesday, Shafik said the Hamilton Hall occupiers had vandalised University property and were trespassing, and that encampment protesters were suspended for trespassing.
The university earlier warned that students taking part in the Hamilton Hall occupation faced academic expulsion.
The occupation began overnight when protesters broke windows, stormed inside and unfurled a banner reading "Hind's Hall," saying they were renaming the building for a 6-year-old Palestinian child killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.
The eight-story, neo-classical building has been the site of various student occupations dating back to the 1960s.
At an evening news briefing held a few hours before police entered Columbia, Mayor Eric Adams and city police officials said the Hamilton Hall takeover was instigated by "outside agitators" who lack any affiliation with Columbia and are known to law enforcement for provoking lawlessness.
Police said they based their conclusions in part on escalating tactics in the occupation, including vandalism, use of barricades to block entrances and destruction of security cameras.
One of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian scholar attending Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, disputed assertions that outsiders led the occupation.
"Disruptions on campus have created a threatening environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty and a noisy distraction that interferes with the teaching, learning and preparing for final exams," the university said in a statement on Tuesday before police moved in.
PROITESTS ACROSS COUNTRY
7 October attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from Gaza, and the ensuing Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave, have unleashed the biggest outpouring of US student activism since the anti-racism protests of 2020.
Many of the demonstrations across the country have been met with counter-protesters accusing them of fomenting anti-Jewish hatred. The pro-Palestinian side, including Jews opposed to Israeli actions in Gaza, say they are being unfairly branded as antisemitic for criticizing Israel's government and expressing support for human rights.
The issue has taken on political overtones in the run-up to the US presidential election in November, with Republicans accusing some university administrators of turning a blind eye to antisemitic rhetoric and harassment.
White House spokesperson John Kirby on Tuesday called the occupation of campus buildings "the wrong approach."
New York Police Department officials had stressed before Tuesday night's sweep that officers would refrain from entering the campus unless Columbia administrators invited their presence, as they did on 18 April, when NYPD officers removed an earlier encampment. More than 100 arrests were made a that time, stirring an outcry by many students and staff.
Dozens of tents, pitched on a hedge-lined grassy area - besides a smaller lawn since planted with hundreds of small Israeli flags - were put back up days later. &nbsp;

Police arrest dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters in Columbia University raid

Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) has issued a country-wide heatwave alert for the next two days.
"The prevailing heatwave over Khulna, Rangpur, Rajshahi divisions and the western parts of Dhaka division may continue for the next 48 hours starting from 6:00pm today," said BMD Meteorologist Md Omar Faruq on Friday (3 May).
During this time, increased moisture in the air may cause discomfort, he added.
Meanwhile, BMD said more heat waves and rains are likely to sweep across the country throughout the month of May.
Temperatures are, however, anticipated to marginally decrease compared to April, BMD Meteorologist AKM Nazmul Haque said.
&ldquo;During the month of May normal rainfall is expected. In some parts of the country, two to three severe and occasionally one to three mild to moderate heatwaves may occur,&rdquo; he added.
&ldquo;There is a possibility of rain in Dhaka and its surrounding districts from the 5-6 May, and it may rain across the country from the 6-10 May. After that, the temperature will increase slightly from the 12 May,&rdquo; the meteorologist further said.

BMD issues heat wave alert for next 2 days

More heat waves and rains are likely to sweep across the country throughout the month of May, said the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD).&nbsp;
Temperatures are, however, anticipated to marginally decrease compared to April, BMD Meteorologist AKM Nazmul Haque told Bangladesh First on Friday (3 May).
&ldquo;During the month of May normal rainfall is expected. In some parts of the country, two to three severe and occasionally one to three mild to moderate heatwaves may occur,&rdquo; he added.
&ldquo;There is a possibility of rain in Dhaka and its surrounding districts from the 5-6 May, and it may rain across the country from the 6-10 May. After that, the temperature will increase slightly from the 12 May,&rdquo; the meteorologist further said.
He also said daytime temperatures may surpass seasonal averages in some areas during May.
BMD warns of potential nor'westers over a three to five-day period in May, accompanied by thunderstorms and lightning across various regions of the country.
Moreover, coastal areas along the Bay of Bengal may experience the formation of one to two light to moderate cyclones, with a depression in the middle of the month.
In the northern and northeastern regions of the country, including Sylhet and the haor areas, the water level of rivers may rise rapidly. In some places, it may exceed the danger level.
The severity of the April heatwave prompted the issuance of multiple heat alerts, with reports indicating widespread incidents of heat-related illnesses, including heat strokes. &nbsp;Such an extreme scenario has not been witnessed in the past 76 years, BMD added.

More heatwaves and rains in May: BMD

Two platoons of Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) have been deployed to assist in the rescue work of two trains derailed after a commuter train crashed into an oil-carrying train in Joydebpur Railway junction in Gazipur on Friday morning.
The information came in a media release signed by Shariful Islam, public relations officer of the BGB headquarters in Dhaka.
The paramilitary members led by BGB-63 commander would remain deployed to maintain law and order and assist in the rescue operation, it reads.
Earlier in the morning, the Dhaka-bound Tangail commuter train smashed into Gazipur-bound freight train allegedly due to an error of the signalman on the south end of the railway junction.
Several compartments of both the trains derailed after the accident that occurred around 11am, disrupting rail communication with Dhaka and northern and western parts of the country.
Four people including the loco master of the commuter train sustained injuries in the accident.

Gazipur train derailment: 2 BGB platoons deployed to help rescue work

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is keen to work together with Bangladesh and other partners on climate front, extending finance to important projects which are useful and impactful.
"We want to finance very impactful, very useful and very important projects with other private sector investors," ADB Vice-President (Market Solutions) Bhargav Dasgupta told UNB while responding to a question during an interaction on Friday.
Dasgupta, who assumed the position on December 4 last year, said in Bangladesh what they understand is that there is a lot of interest in diversifying the energy sources.
"We are happy to see how we can partner with the government of Bangladesh and how we can work together," he said.
ADB&rsquo;s private sector operations are designed to empower businesses, unlock investments, and support the advancement of key development priorities in Asia and the Pacific.
ADB collaborates with a diverse range of stakeholders to address critical development challenges such as climate change, food security, and gender equality by providing innovative solutions to our clients.
Dasgupta, who is responsible for management of the operations of ADB&rsquo;s Private Sector Operations Department and Office of Markets Development and Public&ndash;Private Partnerships, ADB has been one of most "respected and trusted" partners for the governments in Asia's developing countries.
"We are trying to continue the good work we do always," he said.
The ADB vice president said they have been playing a fair role in the private sector, but they need to increase and scale up that role.
In 2021, ADB announced its ambition to increase its cumulative climate financing to $100 billion between 2019 and 2030, and to allocate $34 billion of this amount for cumulative adaptation and resilience investments, and $66 billion for cumulative mitigation financing.
ADB also aspires to reach $12 billion in cumulative climate finance for private sector operations by 2030, and to crowd in an additional $18&ndash;$30 billion to support the development of more commercially viable and climate-friendly businesses.
In 2022, ADB committed climate financing from own resources reached $6.7 billion, of which $2.7 billion is on adaptation and resilience and $4.0 billion is on mitigation.
The ADB official said one of the numbers that they have studied that Asia needs $1.7 trillion to achieve net zero objective.
Talking about engagement in Bangladesh with the private sector, he referred that the ADB last month signed a $121.55 million financing package with Dynamic Sun Energy Private Limited to build and operate a 100-megawatt (MW) grid-connected solar photovoltaic power plant in Pabna, Bangladesh.
&nbsp; The plant is the country&rsquo;s first private sector utility-scale solar facility to secure support from global financiers.
ADB arranged, structured, and syndicated the debt package as the sole mandated lead arranger and bookrunner.
The financing package comprises a $46.75 million loan from ADB, a syndicated B-loan of $28.05 million from ILX Fund I, an Amsterdam-based emerging market private credit fund focused on supporting the Sustainable Development Goals with ADB as lender of record, and a syndicated parallel loan of $46.75 million from the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
&ldquo;As Asia&rsquo;s climate bank, ADB welcomes the opportunity to support renewable energy in Bangladesh, where obtaining long-term financing for such projects is a challenge,&rdquo; said ADB Private Sector Operations Department Director General Suzanne Gaboury.
&ldquo;This partnership exemplifies our lead role in mobilising financing for clean energy facilities and stimulating further investment in sectors where it&rsquo;s needed the most.&rdquo;
The solar power plant will generate 193.5 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually and avoid 93,654 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. &nbsp;

ADB keen to work together with Bangladesh on useful, Impactful projects

The Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) has released the apparel export statistics for the period of July-April FY-2023-24.
During the mentioned period, the readymade garment (RMG) exports grew by 4.97% year-over-year to US$ 40.49 billion from US$ 38.58 billion during the same period of the fiscal year 2022-23, said BGMEA Director Mohiuddin Rubel.
The export of knitwear was US$ 22.88 billion, growth increased by 9.11% and woven garments were US$ 17.62 billion, growth increased by 0.03%, the business group&rsquo;s leader said.
The single-month apparel export earnings that indicate export in April 2024 was US$ 3.29 billion which decreased by 1.01% growth compared to April 2023, he added.

RMG exports up by almost 5pc in FY 2023-24

Although the rainfall in different parts of the country has declined heatwave intensity by this time in various places while&nbsp;medium to high range heatwave still continue in several north and southern parts of the country. &nbsp; "Severe heatwave is sweeping over Rajshahi, Pabna, Jashore, Chuadanga and&nbsp;Kushtia districts. Mild to moderate heatwave is sweeping over Dhaka, Rangpur,&nbsp;Mymensingh and Barishal divisions and rest part of Rajshahi and Khulna&nbsp;divisions and the district of Chandpur and it may abate from some places over&nbsp;the country," said a met office release for the next 24 hours begins from 9am on Friday (3 May).
Rain or thundershowers accompanied by temporary gusty or squally wind are likely to occur at a few places over the Chattogram division and at one or two places over Dhaka, Barishal and Sylhet divisions with hails at isolated&nbsp;places.
Weather may remain mainly dry with temporary partly cloudy sky elsewhere over&nbsp;the country, the release added.
Trough of westerly low lies over West Bengal to the North-east Bay across the&nbsp;southwestern part of Bangladesh.
The country's highest temperature on Thursday was recorded 41.8 degree Celsius at Chuadanga and today's minimum temperature 16.1 degree Celsius was recorded at&nbsp;Tetulia.
Maximum rainfall for the last twenty-four hours till 6am today was recorded 67 millimetres (mm) at Rangamati.
Day temperature may fall slightly and night temperature may rise slightly&nbsp;over the country.
The sun sets at 06.28 pm today and rises at 05.22 am tomorrow in the capital.

Heat wave weakens thanks to rain but still sweeping over country

Bangladesh has ranked 165th among 180 nations in on the World Press Freedom Index 2024.
Only Afghanistan is below Bangladesh in the list among South Asian countries, according to the index by Reporters Without Borders published on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day on Friday (3 May).
Bangladesh&rsquo;s score dropped to 27.64 out of 100 - a decrease from 35.31 last year, when it was ranked 163rd.
In 2022, Bangladesh held the 162nd position with a score of 36.63.
Meanwhile, it was in 2021, it was in 152nd place with a score of 50.29.
World Press Freedom Index assesses the level of freedom enjoyed by journalists and media across various countries and territories, analysing five contextual indicators: Political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context, and safety.
The report underscores that press freedom worldwide faces threats from political authorities, as indicated by the significant decline in the political indicator, which has experienced a global average decrease of 7.6 points.
The report highlights the Asia-Pacific region as the world's second most challenging region for journalism.
Myanmar, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan are among the top 10 most dangerous countries for media personnel, according to the index.
Norway retains its top spot in the global index with a score of 91.89, followed by Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Finland, Estonia, Portugal, Ireland, Switzerland, and Germany, rounding up the top 10.
Ranking 74th globally with a score of 60.52, Nepal has emerged as the leader in press freedom in South Asia.
It is followed by the Maldives at 106th with a score of 52.36.
Bhutan, previously leading in the region, now stands in third place in the region with a score of 37.29 and a global ranking of 147th.
Sri Lanka follows closely behind at fourth place with a score of 35.21 and a global rank of 150th.
Pakistan occupies the fifth position in the region, standing at 152nd place.
India holds the sixth position regionally and has climbed to 159th globally from last year's 161st.
Afghanistan now ranks at the bottom of the region, plummeting 26 places to 178th, with a score of 19.09.

Bangladesh among bottom 15 countries in Press Freedom Index 2024

Nine Bangladeshi universities have made it to the Times Higher Education 2024 Asia list.
Times Higher Education, a renowned education magazine from the UK, shared a list of 739 universities across Asia for the year 2024 on its website on April 30.
Including Bangladesh, the list includes universities from 31 different territories in Asia. Among them, India has 91 universities, China has 86, and Pakistan has 40 universities.
Bangladeshi universities, including BUET and Jahangirnagar University, are ranked between 301-350.
Other top universities in Bangladesh include Bangladesh Agricultural University, North South University, BRAC University, University of Dhaka, University of Rajshahi, Khulna University, and Shahjalal University of Science and Technology.
The top two spots on the list went to Chinese universities: Tsinghua University and Peking University. China also has 33 universities in the top 100.
In India, the Indian Institute of Science is at the top, ranking 32nd in Asia. In Pakistan, Quaid-i-Azam University leads nationally and ranks 121st in Asia.
The rankings consider things like teaching quality, research, industry connections, and international influence.
The list was made available on Times Higher Education's website on Tuesday (April 30th).

9 Bangladeshi universities in Times Higher Education 2024 Asia list

The present situation of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia is the result of the party leaders&rsquo; negligence, said Awami League General Secretary and Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader.
&ldquo;The case was filed against her by the caretaker government, Awami League did not file the case. She was arrested and imprisoned in that case. &nbsp;BNP leadership&rsquo;s negligence is the reason for Begum Zia's current situation,&rdquo; he said at a press briefing at the Awami League president's political office in Dhanmondi on Friday (3 May).
&ldquo;A trial that could have been over in a year has not been completed in ten years,&rdquo; he added.
He said PM Sheikh Hasina was generous enough to allow Khaleda&rsquo;s punishment to be suspended.
&ldquo;Arrangements have been made for her to stay at home and receive treatment,&rdquo; the AL leader said.
In response to a question about domestic and foreign pressures, Obaidul Quader said, "We feel these pressures while performing the duties of the country."
&ldquo;Before the elections, there were public threats, intimidation, and fear of sanctions. These were given openly. Our statement on this matter is also clear,&rdquo; he further said.

BNP’s negligence responsible for Khaleda Zia’s present situation: Quader

Chapainawabganj, the country's mango capital, is facing a potential fruit failure this year due to the relentless heatwave scorching the region. Mango cultivation, already hit by an off-year with lower yields, is now under further threat as the intense heat dries up and causes immature mangoes to fall from trees.
Despite efforts by farmers to irrigate and control the situation with pesticides, the mangoes continue to fall, raising serious concerns about the district's mango output. The woes of growers began earlier in the season when excessive cold delayed the emergence of mango buds. This was followed by untimely rains during the blooming stage, destroying many buds and reducing fruit production.
Disheartened by these initial setbacks, farmers are now grappling with the scorching heatwave. A visit to several orchards revealed a disheartening scene &ndash; small mangoes scattered on the ground instead of hanging healthily on the trees. The lack of rain has stunted their growth, leaving them significantly smaller than they should be at this stage.
Some fortunate farmers with the resources have installed diesel-powered irrigation machines to provide much-needed water to their trees. However, many others lack this facility and can only watch helplessly as their mangoes fall victim to the harsh weather conditions.
Abdur Ahad, a local mango grower, shared his worries: "This year, there were very few mangoes to begin with due to the scarce buds. Now, the situation is even worse with the drought. The mangoes are drying up and falling every day. Despite irrigating and spraying, I can't seem to stop them. The lack of rain is hindering their growth as well."
Abdur Rakib, another grower from Ajaipaur, echoed Ahad's concerns. "The intense heatwave is causing the mangoes to fall. I've already sprayed them thrice, and the production cost is skyrocketing. If the yield is affected, I'm looking at a major financial loss."
Shamima, a grower from the same area, painted a bleak picture: "The condition of mangoes in our district is very bad. We won't be able to achieve our goals from cultivating the orchards. It seems like there will be a mango fruit failure this time."
Palash Sarkar, Deputy Director of the District Agricultural Extension Department, explained the factors contributing to the crisis. "This year, we observed a significant decrease in mango bud formation. The dense fog in February and March followed by rain and light hailstorms damaged the flowers during the crucial flowering stage. Now, the intense heatwave is causing the remaining mangoes to fall. The possibility of future hailstorms and Kal Baisakhi storms further threatens the yield."
According to the Department of Agriculture, mango cultivation in Chapainawabganj this season covers 37,604 hectares of land, with a target production of 450,000 metric tons. Last season, the district produced 443,625 MT of mangoes.
The current heatwave poses a significant threat to exceeding or even meeting last year's production. The plight of Chapainawabganj's mango growers highlights the vulnerability of agriculture to extreme weather events and the urgent need for climate-resilient practices to safeguard future harvests. &nbsp;

Fear of fruit failure grips mango growers in Chapainawabganj as heatwave intensifies

The United Nations General Assembly has unanimously adopted Bangladesh&rsquo;s flagship annual resolution on the &lsquo;Culture of Peace&rsquo; with an overwhelming number of co-sponsorships.
Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN in New York Ambassador Muhammad Abdul Muhith introduced the resolution at the General Assembly Hall.
It marks the 25th anniversary of the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace.
In 1999, during the first tenure of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the delegation of Bangladesh led the intergovernmental negotiations for adoption of the Declaration and Programme of Action which identified eight areas of action to promote culture of peace and non-violence.
While introducing the resolution, Ambassador Muhith highlighted the continued relevance of culture of peace, as the world faces spiralling conflicts and dereliction of human dignity.
&ldquo;To reverse the trend, we must rekindle the brighter and harmonious faculties of the human minds, foster respect for equality and equal value of all human beings; and most importantly we must make peace more profitable than war,&rdquo; he said.
To observe and celebrate the 25th anniversary in a befitting manner, the president of the General Assembly has been requested to convene a day-long high-level forum.
Through this resolution, the General Assembly also invited the Member States, United Nations entities, international and regional organisations and other relevant stakeholders, including civil society, the private sector, academia and the media to observe the 25th anniversary, in an appropriate manner, including through educational and public awareness-raising activities.
Referring to Bangladesh&rsquo;s own experience of war and devastation, Muhith said that the initiative of Bangladesh to introduce the notion of culture of peace in the UN was inspired by the country&rsquo;s own experience.
&ldquo;Having born out of a devastating war that was rooted in discrimination, racial intolerance and subjugation, we made promotion of peace a fundamental principle of our foreign policy,&rdquo; he added.
The consideration of the resolution was preceded by a general debate on the culture of peace.
A large number of member states and groups of countries delivered statements in which they expressed their commitment to advancing the implementation of the Declaration and Programme of Action on a culture of peace.
The delegations particularly acknowledged the historic leadership of Bangladesh on this agenda.
This year's resolution has been cosponsored by 112 countries, showcasing a broad-based endorsement from a diverse representation of UN Member States.

UN unanimously adopts Bangladesh’s Resolution on Culture of Peace

The former joint secretary general of Hefazat-e-Islam, Maulana Mamunul Haque has been released from jail after securing bail in the cases filed against him.
He walked out of Kashimpur High-Security Central Jail in Gazipur at around 10:30am on Friday (3 May), Senior Jail Superintendent Subrata Kumar Bala said.
Mamunul Haque's supporters and Hefazat activists gathered at the jail gate to welcome him.
Initially slated for Thursday (2 May) night, Mamunul's release was postponed due to security concerns, as disclosed by a source familiar with the matter.
Mamunul is accused in 41 cases filed with different police stations.
On April 3, 2021, Mamunul was found at a resort in Sonargaon, Narayanganj, with a woman. He was surrounded by Awami League activists.&nbsp;
Later, activists and supporters of Hefazat went there, ransacked the resort and took him away. &nbsp;
Then on April 30, 2021, the woman appeared at Sonargaon police station and filed a case against Mamunul alleging that he had raped her with the promise of marriage.
Two cases were filed against Mamunul Haque at Paltan police station in the capital and Sonargaon police station in Narayanganj in connection with violence and the resort incident.

Mamunul Haque walks out of jail after getting bail

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina received eye treatment at the National Institute of Ophthalmology and Hospital like a general patient after buying a Tk10 ticket.
The premier reached the National Institute of Ophthalmology and Hospital in the capital at around 11am on Friday (3 May), PM's Assistant Press Secretary ABM Sarwar-e-Alom Sarkar said.
She stood in line, collected the ticket herself and went for regular eye exams.
While leaving the hospital, she exchanged pleasantries with the patients and their relatives, as well as the doctors, nurses, and employees of the hospital .
&nbsp;

PM Hasina takes treatment at eye hospital as general patient

This year's Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and equivalent exam results will be published on 12 May.
Education Minister Mahibul Hasan Chowdhury Naufel will hand over the summary and statistics of the results to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at 10am on that day, said a letter sent from the Prime Minister's Office to the Education Secretary on Thursday (2 May).
The chairmen of nine education boards will be with him at that time.
&nbsp;

SSC results on 12 May

The health authorities in Bangladesh said they are monitoring the global concern over the serious side effects of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
However, no serious side effects have been reported so far among the vaccine&rsquo;s recipients in the country, said the officials.
The National Immunisation Technical Advisory (NiTAG) acts as an advisor to the government on vaccine approval and implementation in the country.
When the AstraZeneca vaccine was introduced under the Covishield name in 2021, public health expert Professor Dr Bey-Nazir Ahmed was a member of NiTAG.
"In emergency situations, after analysing the scientific data, NiTAG advised to approve the vaccine in the country. The AstraZeneca vaccine was prepared in a very short time. It usually takes 10-12 years for a vaccine to reach the implementation stage. Sometimes more time is needed. When the vaccine was approved in Bangladesh, it was also approved in the UK,&rdquo; he told the media recently.
&ldquo;A clinical survey is needed to determine whether the problem that is being talked about is happening in Bangladesh. We advised the government at that time to monitor those who will be vaccinated. This observation is usually for a short or long period of time,&rdquo; he added.
&ldquo;Which vaccine can be approved, whether there will be a trial or not, how it will be applied, who will get priority, how to save - NiTAG advises the government on these issues. The Directorate of Drug Administration (DGDA) seeks feedback when a vaccine is discovered. These procedures have been adopted regarding coronavirus vaccination. If a vaccine causes a problem in a person, it may not be detected if the subject is not properly reviewed. For this, a certain number of people should be monitored for a long time after vaccination,&rdquo; the health expert further said.
According to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), so far 8 coronavirus vaccines have been administered in the country.
More than 15 crore people of different ages have received 36,68,75,000 vaccinations in the first to fourth doses, DGHS added.
DGHS Line Director (Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health and Expanded Immunisation Programme) Dr Mohammad Nizam Uddin said, "We are not giving AstraZenecar vaccine now. We have heard about the side effects of this vaccine. However, no such incident has been found in Bangladesh. We have an expert committee to work on this. The issue of vaccine side effects is observed across the country.&rdquo;
On 27 January, 2021, the government administered the first Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on an experimental basis.
It was developed by the Serum Institute of India. After that, Bangladesh got AstraZeneca vaccine from other sources as well.
So far, 5,62,80,000 doses of vaccine has been administered in the country - which is 15.3% of the total administered vaccines.
Rare side effects have recently been reported in Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine recipients and the British-Swiss pharmaceutical company even has been forced to admit it in a legal battle following a case in the British court on the matter.
Although the company had said so far, the COVID-19 vaccine developed with the help of Oxford University is not harmful; however, there were claims that some people died and some suffered serious illnesses because of the vaccine.
UK&rsquo;s The Telegraph reported that it causes a rare side effect called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS).
According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), TTS is a rare physical condition that causes low platelets in the blood.
Platelets help blood clot. As a result, if this component of the blood decreases, the physical condition of the person may deteriorate.
TTS causes blood clots in the brain or intestines, sometimes in the legs or lungs. As a result, the platelet count in the blood can drop below 150,000 per microlitre.
Symptoms of TTS include severe headache, abdominal pain, leg swelling, shortness of breath and seizures.
Considering the various side effects, no vaccine other than Pfizer is being used in the country, said NiTAG President Professor Dr Khan Abul Kalam Azad.
"Last November, we only told the government about Pfizer's vaccination. Moderna&rsquo;s vaccines have some side effects on the heart, so we stopped that too,&rdquo; he added.
"When the AstraZeneca vaccine was introduced, there was no alternative vaccine. Later many vaccines were found. These vaccines have been approved in different countries of the world including the USA, UK, Australia, Japan, and Germany. We have suggested the same. This approval was given based on scientific data,&rdquo; the health expert further said.
However, he said those who have received the CoviShield vaccine have been asked to monitor whether there are any problems.
Doctors have been asked to seriously monitor patients with neurological, heart and lung problems.
As early as March 2021, concerns about side effects of the Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine spread in Europe.
Blood clots in about 40 people who received the vaccine in Norway and Denmark raised concerns.
In a statement at the time, AstraZeneca said there was no scientific evidence that the vaccine it developed increased the risk of blood clots.
DGHS says that the vaccination programme is now ongoing in the country on a regular basis.
As advised by the technical advisory committee, only Pfizer vaccine is being used in the country.
The AstraZeneca vaccine was last administered at least a year and a half ago, DGHS added.

AstraZeneca side effects: Bangladesh monitoring global situation

Islami Bank Plc and Social Islami Bank Limited (SIBL) were the top remittance collectors in April as $2.4 billion was sent to Bangladesh by expatriates in the month.
A total of around $500 million in remittances were sent through Islami Bank PLC in the month of April this year, according to Bangladesh Bank data released on Thursday (2 May).
SIBL, BRAC Bank, Janata Bank and National Bank respectively stood at the second, third, fourth and fifth positions.
The central bank said the growth in remittance flow in April compared to March was 2.16%.
Earlier, remittances fell by 8.46% in March compared to February.
&ldquo;Decrease or increase in remittance flow is a regular and normal phenomenon. However, the remittance flow is increasing every year. Remittances help stabilise the supply and exchange rate of foreign currency in the country and strengthen reserves,&rdquo; said a top official of the Bangladesh Bank.
Meanwhile, central bank sources said that if the 'hundi' syndicates are not stopped, the flow of remittances through the legal route will decrease.&nbsp;
Meanwhile, in the first 10 months of the current financial year, remittance inflows saw a 7% increase compared to last year.
According to sources, a total of $1.99 in remittances came to the country in March. The amount of remittance in February was $2.16 billion.

Islami Bank, SIBL top remittance collectors in April

Several people were injured when a freight train collided head-on with a passenger train in Gazipur.
The incident took place at Joydebpur railway station around 10:45am on Friday (3 May).
Locals said a commuter train leaving Dhaka for Tangail hit a freight train standing at the outer signal at Kazipara when it crossed Joydebpur railway station.
Five compartments of the passenger train have been derailed.
&nbsp;
&nbsp;

Several injured as trains collide head-on in Gazipur

Despite there being no shortage of supply, the prices of almost every daily essential commodity have increased on the pretext of the heat waves sweeping across the country.
Traders say there is adequate supply but high prices are due to items rotting faster than before because of the severe heat waves.
However, the price of broiler chicken has decreased slightly compared to week.&nbsp;
Visiting the capital's Karwan Bazar kitchen market on Friday (3 May), broiler chicken was found to be selling at Tk190-200 per kg, which was Tk220-230 per kg last week.
Beef was being sold at Tk780-800 per kg while mutton was at Tk1,100 per kg.&nbsp;
Meanwhile, the price of vegetables has increased compared to last week, citing less supply due to last night's rain.&nbsp;
No vegetable was being sold for less than Tk60-70.
Carrots were being sold at Tk60, beans at Tk80, and eggplants at Tk100 per kg.
A hali (set of four) of lemons was being sold at Tk40.
Prices of fish have not increased much compared to last week.&nbsp;
Hossain Ali, a resident of Moghbazar, came to the kitchen market for his weekly grocery shopping.
&ldquo;The price of fish seems to be the same as before. But the price of vegetables is increasing day by day,&rdquo; he said.

Prices of kitchen market essentials still high

Chattogram division is likely to experience rain and thundershowers accompanied by gusty winds, with the possibility of hail at isolated spots, according to BMD&rsquo;s weather bulletin for Friday.
Similarly, Dhaka, Mymensingh, Barishal, and Sylhet divisions may see rain in one or two places, alongside temporary gusty winds. Elsewhere in the country, the weather is expected to remain dry with partly cloudy skies.
A severe heatwave continues to grip districts including Rajshahi, Pabna, Jashore, Chuadanga, and Kushtia.
Meanwhile, Dhaka, Rangpur, Mymensingh, and Barishal divisions, along with parts of Rajshahi, Khulna, and the district of Chandpur, are experiencing mild to moderate heatwave conditions.
There are expectations that this heatwave may begin to ease in some areas, it said.
Daytime temperatures are expected to slightly decrease, and night temperatures may fall by 1-2 degrees Celsius across the country, added the bulletin.

Rain, thunderstorms likely in Dhaka, Chattogram

Dhaka's air quality was categorised as &lsquo;unhealthy&rsquo; this morning.
With an air quality index (AQI) score of 158 at 9:33am, Dhaka ranked sixth on the list of cities worldwide with the worst air quality.
India&rsquo;s Delhi, Nepal&rsquo;s Kathmandu and Pakistan&rsquo;s Lahore occupied the first three spots on the list, with AQI scores of 318, 197 and 193 respectively.
When the AQI value for particle pollution is between 101 and 150, air quality is considered &lsquo;unhealthy for sensitive groups&rsquo;, between 150 and 200 is &lsquo;unhealthy&rsquo;, between 201 and 300 is said to be 'very unhealthy', while a reading of 301+ is considered 'hazardous', posing serious health risks to residents.
The AQI, an index for reporting daily air quality, informs people how clean or polluted the air of a certain city is and what associated health effects might be a concern for them.
The AQI in Bangladesh is based on five pollutants: particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), NO2, CO, SO2, and ozone.
Dhaka has long been grappling with air pollution issues. Its air quality usually turns unhealthy in winter and improves during the monsoon.
As per World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution kills an estimated seven million people worldwide every year, mainly due to increased mortality from stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and acute respiratory infections. &nbsp;

Dhaka air ‘unhealthy’ this morning

Bangladesh recorded a substantial increase in remittances, receiving $2.04 billion in April, marking a 21.3%&nbsp; rise compared to the same period last year.
According to Bangladesh Bank, from January to April this year, the country received a total of $8.31 billion from expatriates, spurred by various bank initiatives aimed at encouraging the flow of remittances.
The figures show a consistent upward trend with $2.11 billion received in January, $2.16 billion in February, $1.99 billion in March, and $2.04 billion in April. This influx has been a boon to the economy, particularly during the ongoing foreign exchange crisis.
Dr Ahsan H Mansur, a noted economist, told UNB that Bangladesh could further increase remittances through legal channels by offering more financial and non-financial incentives to expatriates. He highlighted the preference among remitters for using the hundi system, an illegal money transfer method, due to its higher exchange rates, which are Tk5-7 more per US dollar compared to the official rates.
To counter this, Dr Mansur proposed that the government could introduce various benefits for legal remitters, including health cards, insurance coverage, and pension schemes, to make formal channels more attractive and dissuade the use of illegal methods like hundi.

Bangladesh secures $8.31 billion remittance in first 4 months of 2024

Earthquake warning smartphone apps have surged in popularity in Taiwan due to high demand from people eager to get a few extra seconds to take cover after more than 1,300 aftershocks rattled the island in the past month following a large temblor.
Taiwan's east coast was struck by a 7.2 magnitude quake on April 3, killing 17 people.
The frequent aftershocks since then - including more than 200 tremors in a 24-hour period starting April 22 - have unnerved many.
While the government has an automated quake warning system, sent in the form of an text message accompanied by a loud alert sound meant to sound a few seconds before the shaking starts, it can be patchy. In the capital Taipei it did not sound before the April 3 quake, prompting criticism of the system.
That, along with the rising demand to stay more informed about forthcoming earthquakes, have helped a surge in popularity in privately-developed quake warning apps.
"What we offer is customised earthquake early warning. You get to set your own threshold," said Kuo Chen-yu, the 20-year-old co-founder of Disaster Prevention Information Platform, whose users jumped to nearly 370,000 from around 3,000 in recent weeks.
Lin Ruei, another co-founder of the app launched in 2022, said their app tracks fast-moving seismic waves from more than 130 seismic sensors the team installed across the island to give users early warnings. For instance, he said, the app could give users in more populated western Taiwan up to 30 seconds warning for a quake from the remote eastern coast.
"Some people might feel quite panic with just an earthquake of intensity 2, then they can download our app," said Lin, a 17-year-old student.
"If you get a 10-second early warning and you move to a secure spot, maybe it would be a life-saving tool for you."
The official, government-run warning system only goes to phone users in areas where major earthquakes with estimated intensity of 4 or above are expected, which authorities say are powerful enough to move some furniture, cause wall cracks or disrupt power or water supplies.
Wu Chien-fu, Director of the Central Weather Administration's Seismological Center, told Reuters they encourage development of alternative tools which provide innovative means for disaster response, adding authorities were aware of calls to lower thresholds for official alerts, a system designed for bigger tremors that are more likely to bring damage.
"We will consider whether to issue warnings to the whole of Taiwan for big earthquakes," Wu said.
Still, many are drawn to the privately-developed apps extra functionalities, such as automatic flashlight switch-on before the shaking starts, a countdown timer, or alerts for smaller quakes that did not trigger the government warnings - a reassurance for those who wish to stay more alerted for the frequent tremors.
"The 30-second countdown gave me enough time to mentally prepare myself, grab my survival kit, and dash to my child's room," one user wrote in the review of Taiwan Earthquake Quick Alert, currently one of the most-downloaded apps for iPhones in Taiwan which issues a countdown to the first shock waves.

Quake warning app demand surges in earthquake-rattled Taiwan

A delegation of the Near East South Asia (NESA) Centre for Strategic Studies, a pre-eminent institution of the US Department of Defense (DoD), visited Bangladesh Embassy in Washington DC on Wednesday and joined an interactive session with officials of the mission.
Dr. Hassan Abbas, the distinguished professor of the NESA Centre for Strategic Studies, led the 46-member team. The delegation comprised of participants of 28 countries in a seminar organised by the NESA Centre in Washington DC, said a press release.
Bangladesh Ambassador to the USA Muhammad Imran welcomed the NESA Centre delegation at the embassy and presented a keynote speech at the event.
In his keynote speech, Ambassador Imran highlighted the history of Bangladesh and the country&rsquo;s recent socioeconomic development. He also focused on the Rohingya crisis issue, Bangladesh&rsquo;s success in countering terrorism and extremism and the progress on Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF).
The ambassador stressed the need for undertaking coordinated and concerted efforts by all countries to effectively address the global challenge of terrorism. Terrorism is a global challenge and no country can handle the challenge alone, he said.
While talking about the protracted Rohingya crisis, Ambassador Imran reiterated Bangladesh&rsquo;s stance on durable and dignified repatriation of all displaced Rohingya people to their homeland in the Rakhine State of Myanmar.
If the problem persists further, it may affect the security and stability of the entire region and jeopardize development initiatives, he said.
While addressing the interactive session at the Bangabandhu Auditorium in Embassy, Dr. Abbas, highly commended Bangladesh&rsquo;s success in combating terrorism, violent extremism as well as climate change challenges.
Referring to Bangladesh&rsquo;s rich history, culture and heritage, he said he was highly inspired by the historical figures of Bangladesh in his personal and professional life.
Dr Abbas said his institution&mdash; NESA Centre for Strategic Studies &mdash; is looking forward to closer relationship between Bangladesh and the United States and wished more prosperous and developed Bangladesh.
First Secretary of the Mission Wahiduzzaman Noor highlighted the various initiatives and successes of Bangladesh in combating terrorism and extremism before the delegation.
First Secretary of the Mission Ataur Rahman moderated the event, while Counsellor and Head of Chancery Shamima Yasmin Smriti was in the overall coordination of the session.

US NESA Centre delegation praises Bangladesh’s success in combating terrorism

Shamsunnahar Seba

With the world yet to be civilized enough to see a girl as a human being akin to a man, &ldquo;Laapataa ladies&rdquo; played the role of a wake-up call, alerting those oblivious to the struggles of girls living in the lowest echelons of our multi-layered society.
Just as the life of Jaya, who was barred from pursuing her dreams despite showing potential, sheds light on the struggles of Afghan girls who are prevented from continuing their studies after completing their academic year in schools.
Meanwhile, Phool, one of the two brides who were swapped, leading to the exposure of the flaws of patriarchal society that sets norms to handicap women for its survival, represents those who are unaware of their rights.
She was content with society until she had to face the world alone. Phool found herself unable to take a single step without the support of others, making her realize the hypocrisy of the paternalistic patriarchal society.
It showcases the independent nature of women through the portrayal of Manju Maai, who embodies strength and humanity simultaneously.
Apart from depicting the harsh reality, the movie possesses every element to captivate an audience. Especially, the love story of Deepak and Phool touches the hearts of the audience and provides satisfaction with their reconciliation. The joyful moments of people with limited or no access to entertainment uphold the notion that wealth or fame has nothing to do with happiness. It can be attained anywhere through the right approach to life.
Additionally, the flawless cinematography lends the movie a semblance of reality. Director Kiran Rao did not compromise on the length, cast, or timing required to film the perfect version of the movie.
Kiran Rao, the ex-wife of Bollywood actor Amir Khan, has already garnered acclaim both domestically and internationally for this outstanding movie. I believe the movie will surely endure beyond its time, much like the struggle of women.

Laapataa Ladies: Heart wrenching yet wonderful

After a relentless month of fierce heatwave, Dhaka finally witnessed the much-desired rain, bringing a breath of cool relief.&nbsp;
The first drops fell around 9 pm on Thursday, as if the sky itself sighed in relief.&nbsp;
Across the capital, the rains whispered their arrival. The evening had already cloaked the city in heavy clouds, with occasional flashes of lightning piercing the gathering darkness, hinting at the impending downpour.&nbsp;
The Meteorological Department had forecasted this welcome change, signaling it as the clouds began to rumble in the evening. Lightning flickered, lighting up the sky, a prelude to the rain that would soon quench the heat-oppressed city.&nbsp;
The promise of rain lifted spirits, and prompted some to prepare to step out and embrace the cooling showers.&nbsp;
The lightning and the patter of rain gradually quieted, leaving behind a serene hush over Dhaka. Streets, dusty and dry till this evening, now glistened under the lamplight, reflecting the calm after the storm. The fleeting showers, though short-lived, provided a temporary escape from the persistent heat, whispering promises of cooler days ahead.

Rain arrives in Dhaka after prolonged heatwave

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Thursday said the government has taken plan to build open jail in Bangladesh like those in the developed countries.
He said this in reply to a query from ruling Awami League MP Mamunur Rashid Kiran elected from Noakhali-3.
The Home Minister said that 160 acres of land has been acquired in Ukhiya Upazila of Cox's Bazar district for the construction of an open jail following the model of Malaysia's Community Rehabilitation Program (CRP).
&ldquo;The construction of the open jail will start soon,&rdquo; he said.
In response to the question of Nizam Uddin Hazari, another ruling AL MP from Feni-2, the Home Minister said that 83,577 posts have been increased in the Bangladesh Police in the past three terms of the current government in order to modernise the Bangladesh Police Force.
&ldquo;Recruitment of manpower to these posts has been ensured through a transparent and corruption-free process,&rdquo; he said.
The minister said that the process of adding two sophisticated helicopters is underway to prevent criminal activities and conduct operations and transform the Bangladesh Police into a three-dimensional force.
&nbsp; He said that with the aim of making the police a smart force, various types of modern firearms are being given to them.
For example, the home minister said that 7.62 mm rifles are currently being used instead of the previous .303 rifles.
Also, policemen are being supplied with necessary ammunition including 7.62/9 mm pistol, 9 mm SMG, .45 inch SMG, 12 bore shotgun, 38 mm tear gas, gas gun/launcher.
In response to the question of AL MP Mahbubur Rahman from Chattogram-1, the Home Minister said Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) has been equipped with modern weapons, vehicles, aircraft and watercraft.
State-of-the-art weapons including 40 ALCOTAN, 12 ATGW, 132 Sniper Rifles, 3 AAMG, 28 APC Amors have been added to BGB.
The vehicles include 259 ATVs, 10 Riot Control Vehicles (RCV), 40 Armored Personal Carrier (APC), among others.
Three helicopters were also included in BGB.
Among the vessels, there are 87 speed boats, 12 high-speed engine boats, 4 air boats, 1 logistics ship, 5 pontoons, 25 motor launches, 4 petrol boats, 15 rescue boats, and 2 water carrier vessels.
In response to the question of AL MP Morshed Alam from Noakhali-2, the Home Minister said, for the first time in the country, seven grams of black cocaine was recovered by the Department of Narcotics Control on December 11, 2023.
&nbsp;

Govt plans to build open jail in Cox's Bazar’s Ukhiya: Home Minister

BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia returned to her Gulshan residence on Thursday night after receiving treatment for just a day at Evercare Hospital in the capital.
"She was discharged from the hospital as per the advice of the medical board. The board took the decision after reviewing her medical test reports," said her personal physician, AZM Zahid Hossain.
He said the BNP chairperson will now be provided with proper treatment at home.
The BNP chief left the hospital at 8:20 pm and reached home around 9:00 pm, said BNP media cell member Sayrul Kabir Khan.
Earlier on Wednesday night, Khaleda was admitted to Evercare Hospital in the capital and placed in the CCU following the advice of the medical board.
She was shifted to a cabin from the Coronary Care Unit (CCU) in the afternoon.
Dr Zahid said the BNP chief underwent several urgent tests on Wednesday night.
Based on the test reports, the medical board determined her next course of medical treatment.
Since her conditional release from prison in 2020, the BNP chief has been receiving medical care at the hospital under the supervision of a medical board headed by cardiologist Prof Shahabuddin Talukder.
The 79-year-old former prime minister has long been battling various ailments, including liver cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes, and issues related to the kidney, lung, heart, and eyes.
Khaleda's physicians have been advocating for her treatment abroad since she was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis in November 2021.
On October 26 last year, three US specialist doctors performed the hepatic procedure known as transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS procedure) to alleviate fluid accumulation in Khaleda Zia&rsquo;s abdomen and chest, as well as to address bleeding in her liver.

Khaleda returns home from hospital

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation, led by Chris Papageorgiou, engaged in discussions with key Bangladeshi energy officials on Thursday. The meetings, centered around the pressing financial challenges in the country&rsquo;s power and energy sectors, remained closed to the media.
The delegation first met with officials from the Power Division, led by Power Secretary Habibur Rahman, before progressing to talks with the Energy and Mineral Resources Division, and concluding with Petrobangla, the nation&rsquo;s energy corporation.
Despite the high-profile meetings, officials were tight-lipped about the discussions. "Right at this moment it&rsquo;s really tough to comment on the issues discussed in the meeting,&rdquo; Rahman told UNB, reflecting the general reluctance among the participants to disclose any outcomes.
Sources close to the matter indicate that the primary focus of the discussions was on reducing the subsidies provided in the power and energy sector and adjusting power and gas tariffs accordingly. The IMF voiced concerns over pending dues amounting to approximately Tk 50,000 crore ($5 billion), pressing for a detailed plan on how the government intends to settle these substantial bills.
The IMF's visit forms part of a broader review of Bangladesh's adherence to economic commitments, including the implementation of an automated price adjustment system for petroleum fuels and recent hikes in power and gas prices aimed at curbing financial losses. Despite these measures, the disparity between government spending and income in these sectors continues to necessitate significant subsidies.
The ongoing negotiations also touched on the necessity of further tariff adjustments as a means to bridge the financial gap, a stance that the IMF has consistently maintained. As Bangladesh navigates these economic reforms, it anticipates the next installment of the IMF&rsquo;s $4.7 billion loan, with hopes pinned on an upcoming tranche worth around $690 million.
Previously, the IMF had disbursed an initial $476 million in January 2023, following the government's commitment to economic reforms, and a subsequent $690 million in December 2023, despite not meeting revenue and forex reserve targets.

IMF wants to know govt plan on settling energy dues

The authorities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) have published a list of 80 Saudi companies that are keen to invest in various sectors of Bangladesh, said Salman F Rahman, Private Industry and Investment Adviser to the Prime Minister.
Salman, who is currently visiting Saudi Arabia, attended meetings with the Saudi Ministers and various important persons in the country and discussed potential investment opportunities in Bangladesh.
After attending the special meeting of the World Economic Forum in Riyadh, Salman held these meetings with Saudi officials, according to a press release on Thursday.
He also met with the Chief of Staff and Secretary General of the Board of Directors of the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saad Alkroud.
&ldquo;PIF Secretary General praised the economic development of Bangladesh and gave this information in a meeting: 80 Saudi companies have expressed interest in investing in Bangladesh,&rdquo; Salman said.
He said Saudi Arabia is interested in energy cooperation with Bangladesh. Saudi Arabia's Assistant Minister of Energy, Mohammed Al Ibrahim, said that the Saudi government is actively considering the proposal to buy crude oil on a deferred payment basis from Bangladesh. At this time, they discussed various issues of partnership between the two countries.

80 Saudi companies keen to invest in Bangladesh: Salman F Rahman

Press Release

Foreign Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud has called upon the UK government to collaborate with Bangladesh to establish a peaceful and conflict-free world and to put an end to the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
During his speech as the Guest of Honour at a high-profile diplomatic reception hosted by Bangladesh High Commission, London to celebrate the 54th Independence and National Day of Bangladesh on Wednesday, the Foreign Minister emphasized the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire in conflict zones worldwide, including Gaza and Ukraine, reads a press release.&nbsp;
He stressed that stopping the killing of innocent people is crucial to restoring normalcy and establishing peace.&nbsp;
Speaker of the UK&rsquo;s Parliament Rt Hon Sir Lindsay Hoyle was the Chief Guest at the event where Leader of the House of Commons Rt Hon Penny Mordaunt, UK FCDO Minister for Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and United Nations Lord Tariq Ahmad, Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Steve Reed, and Chairman of All-party Parliamentary Group on Bangladesh Rushanara Ali spoke as special guests.&nbsp;
International Affairs Adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Dr Gawher Rizvi, Former Foreign Minister and Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs Dr AK Abdul Momen and State Minister for Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Shofiqur Rahman Choudhury attended the reception.
Bangladesh High Commissioner to the UK Saida Muna Tasneem gave welcome remarks at the reception held at the historic Churchill Room of Queen Elizabeth II sited in a magnificent setting centering the British Parliament.&nbsp;
In his speech, the Foreign Minister Dr Mahmud paid profound homage to Bangladesh's Founding Father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the 3 million martyrs, and the valiant freedom fighters of the 1971 War of Liberation. He expressed his gratitude to the UK Government, its citizens, and the British-Bangladeshi diaspora for their support during Bangladesh's War of Liberation, and pledged to elevate Bangladesh-UK historical relations to new heights under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
He paid tribute to British Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath, who warmly welcomed Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib as the President of independent Bangladesh at No 10 Downing Street on 8 January 1972.&nbsp;
The Minister also paid tribute to the then opposition Leader and two-time British Prime Minister Sir Harold Wilson, who welcomed Bangabandhu in London and later mourned his brutal assassination on 15 August 1975.
&ldquo;Bangabandhu&rsquo;s shared values of democracy, secularism and progressive aspirations with these stalwart British leaders and his special love and affection for his British Bangladeshi compatriots set the foundation of today&rsquo;s Bangladesh-UK friendship&rdquo;, he said.
Dr. Mahmud thanked Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for emphasizing his commitment to enhancing the economic and security partnership between Bangladesh and the UK in his congratulatory letter to Prime Minister Hasina after the national election on 7 January 2024.&nbsp;
He stated that Prime Minister Hasina remains dedicated to strengthening their robust trade, investment, aviation, climate, defence, security, and migration cooperation to the next level in her current term, as agreed upon by the two Prime Ministers in London last May.
The minister termed the UK as a true friend of Bangladesh and hoped that Bangladesh-UK friendship would continue to thrive, as they are an important partner in ensuring peace, prosperity, and security in the Bay of Bengal and a free, open, peaceful, and secure Indo-Pacific region.&nbsp;
He also emphasized the importance of the UK's support in the early repatriation of 1.2 million Rohingyas back to their ancestral home in Myanmar.
In his speech, he highlighted the sustained economic growth of Bangladesh over the past one and a half decades under the globally acclaimed dynamic Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who has leapfrogged Bangladesh from 41st to the world&rsquo;s 34th largest economy- just over the past decade. Today, the world has its eyes on Bangladesh, which is set to become the 9th largest consumer market by 2030, and a tech-based &lsquo;Smart Bangladesh&rsquo; by 2041.&nbsp;
The minister commended the Bangladesh High Commissioner to the UK for launching the 'Bangabandhu-Edward Heath Friendship Award' and the 'Bangabandhu-Harold Wilson Friendship Award.'&nbsp;
Speaker of the UK's Parliament Rt Hon Sir Lindsay Hoyle in his speech paid tribute to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and recalled the contribution of the British-Bangladeshis to the War of Liberation in 1971.&nbsp;
He reaffirmed that the UK would remain a steadfast partner of Bangladesh efforts towards a developed country.
Penny Mordaunt commended Bangladesh's recent progress and assured that the UK would collaborate with Bangladesh to build a better and prosperous future.&nbsp;
He also praised the significant role of the British-Bangladeshi diaspora for their contribution to the UK&rsquo;s economy and society.
Lord Tariq Ahmad lauded Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for upholding the values and spirit of Bangabandhu in creating a self-sustaining, inclusive, and secular Bangladesh, which is now one of the world's most rapidly growing economies.&nbsp;
He said that Sheikh Hasina is a leader who showed the world the magnanimity of humanity by hosting over a million of Rohingya displaced from the country Myanmar.&nbsp;
Lord Tariq Ahmad also praised Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for her efforts in upholding the values and ideals of Bangabandhu, which has resulted in a self-sustaining, inclusive, and secular Bangladesh.&nbsp;
He also highlighted Bangladesh's rapid economic growth, which has made it one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Lord Ahmad further acknowledged Sheikh Hasina's compassionate leadership in providing refuge to over a million Rohingya people who were displaced from Myanmar.
Paying deep homage to the Father of the Nation and 1971 martyrs, High Commissioner Saida Muna Tasneem in her welcome remarks said: &ldquo;Bangabandhu founded Bangladesh on democratic, secular, and progressive values. Now, as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina relentlessly strides to realise Bangabandhu's vision of a prosperous Bangladesh, the UK remains a crucial partner in achieving this goal&rdquo;.&nbsp;
The High Commissioner thanked Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for his congratulatory message to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina following January election, and also recalled the bilateral meeting of the two Premiers where they agreed to take Bangladesh-UK relations to new heights towards a sustainable, greener and more prosperous future.&nbsp;
High Commissioner also thanked the UK Government for its continued support to the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, and urged the UK to take stronger diplomatic leadership for the return of the Rohingyas to their ancestral home in Myanmar.&nbsp;
In her speech, the envoy thanking the Foreign Minister Lord David Cameron for his congratulatory message to Bangladesh Foreign Minister, also highlighted the significant collaborations between Bangladesh and the UK in various fields including in trade, investment, climate, aviation, and defence, and said that the first-ever home office dialogue between the two countries would be held later this month.
The Foreign Minister along with the UK&rsquo;s Speaker, High Commissioner and distinguished guests unveiled the exclusive &ldquo;Mujib and Britain&rsquo; publication by Bangladesh High Commission, London and handed over the Bangabandhu-Edward Heath Friendship Award&rsquo; and the &lsquo;Bangabandhu-Harold Wilson Award&rsquo; to two great friends of Bangladesh Lord Marland and Lord Swaraj Paul respectively to honour their extraordinary contributions in promoting Bangladesh-UK Friendship.
The event's highlights included an Exhibition on Bangabandhu, a colourful cultural performance by British-Bangladeshi prominent performers; and a traditional Bangladeshi Saree exhibition. It was well attended by the vibrant presence of a distinguished selection of guests including UK parliament members, UK government officials, eminent British Politicians, high commissioners and ambassadors, senior representatives from Commonwealth and International Maritime Organisation (IMO), and representatives from the diplomatic missions in London, think tanks, members of the media, academia as well as members of the Bangladesh community in the UK.

Bangladesh wants UK on its side to end war in Gaza for world peace: FM Hasan in London

Speakers at a panel discussion in Dhaka on Thursday said there is no alternative to freedom of the press and freedom of expression to ensure democracy.
It is also imperative that the safety and freedom of the press be prioritised to tackle the ongoing environmental crisis and natural disasters, they said.
Marking World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) 2024, speakers made these remarks at panel discussions organised jointly by UNESCO, Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), and Article 19 at MIDAS Centre in Dhaka&rsquo;s Dhanmondi on Thursday.
The discussions centred on the WPFD theme of this year, &ldquo;A Press for the Planet: Journalism in the Face of the Environmental Crisis.&rdquo; There were two separate panel discussions where the panellists talked about issues like the ongoing oppression against journalists and their safety concerns in the context of climate-related issues, freedom of expression and the press, tackling misinformation, and access to information.
Dr Iftekharuzzaman, TIB executive director,, said, &ldquo;In the period from 2022 to 2023, while covering environmental issues, there were 23 attacks on the media, resulting in the torture of 43 journalists.
Between 2016 to 2021 alone, 12 individuals, including environmental rights activists, were killed for protesting against coal-based plants.&rdquo;
He further stated that those who are legally responsible for protecting the environment are the ones leading the destruction of the environment. Therefore, it is imperative to create an environment where journalists and civil society organisations can play their active roles. But in reality, such space is being shrunk by the use of repressive acts like the Digital Security Act.
Taking part in the &ldquo;zero-sum political game,&rdquo; journalists and rights activists are harassed by misusing laws, which ultimately benefits a certain faction. The harassment of media workers and civil society actors has been normalised through this process, he added.
There are additional risks while reporting on land grabbing, water bodies' destruction, or the construction of training centres by taking over protected land. To tackle such challenges, those who are responsible in the government have to respect the commitment to freedom of press and speech enshrined in the constitution, so journalists and activists working on environmental issues do not become the victims of "shoot the messenger".
Speaking at the opening session, Susan Vize, Head of Office and UNESCO Representative to Bangladesh, said, &ldquo;Raising public awareness about climate change and other environmental issues in Bangladesh is critical to achieving behavioural change. The media remains the single most influential source of credible public information. WPFD 2024 aims to build the capacity of Bangladesh&rsquo;s media to ensure accurate and impactful coverage of the current environmental crises.&rdquo;
Alexandra Berg von Linde, Ambassador to Bangladesh, Sweden Embassy, said, &ldquo;Public interest is inextricably linked to climate change and environmental degradation. The negative effects of climate change are becoming more visible, affecting people's daily lives. People want to know about the results and effects of negative climate change. Freedom of the media and the ability to report independently on all such matters of public interest are important elements of democracy.&rdquo;
Responding to a question about the misuse of repressive acts (ICT, DSA and CSA) and the safety concerns of journalists, State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Mohammad A Arafat said, &ldquo;We always talk about ensuring freedom of the press. However, in some cases, vested interests exploit this freedom to publish agenda-driven news and disseminate misinformation. Instances of such misinformation regarding Rampal or Adani power plants have been observed. Therefore, alongside ensuring media freedom, accountability must also be ensured.
"If media freedom is misused to spread false information or disinformation, appropriate legal action should be taken. However, I will take necessary steps to ensure the protection of journalists in the country who report on environmental crises or climate issues based on truth and scientific evidence.&rdquo;
The first panel discussion titled &ldquo;A Press for the Planet: Free Press and Freedom of Expression in the Context of the Current Global Environmental Crisis&rdquo; kicked off with the presentations of Shamsuddin Illius, bureau chief of Chattogram, The Business Standard, and Usraat Fahmidah, freelance journalist, regarding the challenges of journalism in environmental issues and training young journalists.
The second panel discussion focused on the safety issues of journalists under the theme of &ldquo;Media Defence for Crisis Reporting,&rdquo; where journalists and experts from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, India, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka participated.
&nbsp;

No alternative to press freedom to ensure democracy: Speakers

Maximum temperature in the country started falling on average one or two degrees Celsius from today, the Met Office said predicting temperature may dip more from 5 May as almost all parts of the country may witness much awaited rainfall. &nbsp; "Maximum temperature has started one or degree Celsius . . . it is an indicator that rainfall is likely to occur from May 5 in most areas in the country," Md Omar Faruq, a meteorologist of Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) told BSS today.
Analyzing the mathematical model of rainfall index, he said, Bangladesh may witness heavy to very heavy downpour from the next three or four days meaning intense of heat will decrease significantly providing some relief as the entire country braced for more extreme heat since 1 April.
Large swaths of Khulna and Rajshahi division are sweltering through a heatwave as the Met office logged highest temperature above 40 degree Celsius in most stations located in the two divisions since 1 April, Omar said predicting rains are likely to occur in different areas of the two division.
"Northeastern, central parts including Sylhet division and some parts of Mymensingh and Dhaka division are likely to experience heavy to very heavy rainfall from 2 May," Dr Abul Kalam Mallik, BMD meteorologist said.
The meteorologist attributed uncomfortable feelings of unbearable hot-weather to high humidity persisting in the air during the afternoon and evening period suggesting avoiding movement between 12 noon to 4pm as the sunlight is getting too hot as it (the Sun) provides sunlight vertically with intense heat.
"Normally we record temperature from the air," Mallik said the highest temperature was found between 12 noon and 4pm because of vertical position of the Sun.
Analyzing humidity indexes, Mallik continued, "There is a close relation of temperature and humidity . . . discomfort feelings will increase, if high humidity persists in the air with high temperature. "Although temperature decreases after 4pm, but we feel very hot weather due to high humidity," he added. &nbsp; The Met Office today recorded 41.7 degree Celsius at Chuadanga, the highest temperature of the current year while the temperature in Dhaka was recorded at 37.9 degrees Celsius but the high humidity has exposed the residents to massive discomfort.
The BMD official said the country witnessed the longest duration of the heatwave for the past 30 days since April 1 and the met office warned the phenomenon would continue throughout the next month.
"But unlike the previous heatwaves, this year it spread all over the country," commented meteorologist Abul Kalam Mollik, who was supported by Zebunnesa as well.
Visibly for the first time the meteorologists acknowledged that the climate change phenomenon caused the erratic weather pattern with gradually expanding areas of heatwave, joining the voice with the climate experts and activists.
According to the weather bulletin of BMD issued here today, very severe heat wave is sweeping over the districts of Jashore, Khulna, Chuadanga, Pabna and Rajshahi and severe heat wave is sweeping over the districts of Tangail, Faridpur, Gopalgonj and rest parts of Khulna division.
Mild to moderate heat wave is sweeping elsewhere over the country and it may abate from some places over eastern part of the country, the bulletin said adding day temperature may fall slightly over western part and it may fall by (1-2)oC elsewhere over the country
April is typically hot in Bangladesh as it is in other South and Southeast Asian countries, but according to meteorologists, temperatures this month have been unusually high which was highlighted by international media outlets as well.
According to the New York Times, hundreds of millions of people in South and Southeast Asia were suffering from a grueling heatwave that has forced schools to close, disrupted agriculture, and raised the risk of heat strokes and other health complications.
The recent report also specially acknowledged the Bangladesh scenario saying temperature in some areas soared above 42 degrees Celsius but the "numbers don't quite capture how extreme humidity makes the heat feel even worse".
The schools across the country were closed due to the extreme weather but students are struggling to or doing anything at home as well.
The heatwave has forced the healthcare facilities to take emergency measures to provide medical services with higher number of patients reporting to hospitals with heat-related ailments since the beginning of April while the children and elderly people appeared as the most vulnerable during this prolonged hot weather.
"Large numbers of people are becoming ill with heatstroke, dehydration, exhaustion and breathing problems and they are suffering from other heat-related diseases as well," Director of Mugda Medical College and Hospital Dr Md Niatuzzaman told BSS.
The other hospitals and healthcare facilities including Shishu Hospital, Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital and International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) reported identical scenarios.
"Nearly, 500 diarrhoea patients have been admitted to the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B). A significant number of patients are getting admission to ICDDRB daily," ICDDR'B spokesman AKM Tariful Islam Khan said. &nbsp; The health ministry issued a directive to take extra measures to face the crisis in hospitals across the country.
Doctors suggested people to stay indoors as much as possible and wear weather-suitable clothes during exposure to sun to protect themselves from heatstroke and take rest after one or two hours during working period alongside consuming more liquid food beside water to avoid dehydration during the heatwave.
"Our brains can tolerate certain level of temperature, if it exceeds people may faint, suffer heatstroke besides suffering from dehydration causing electrolyte imbalance and other complications including kidney dysfunction," former Suhrawardy Hospital director Professor Dr Khalilur Rahman said.

Temperature starts falling, may dip more from 5 May

Finance Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali has sought increased support from the development partners including ADB to improve Bangladesh's food distribution system, develop market connectivity and scale up innovation in agriculture in the wake of climate challenges.
The Finance Minister said this while addressing a High-Level panel titled "Harvesting hope; ensuring a food secure, climate resilient Asia and the Pacific" as a distinguished speaker at the 57th annual meeting of ADB at Tbilisi in the capital of Georgia today. &nbsp; Ali is currently leading a seven-member Bangladesh delegation to the 57th annual meeting of ADB at Tbilisi, said a press release received here today.
In his remarks, the Finance Minister said despite being a land scarce country, Bangladesh emerged globally as the third largest producer of rice and vegetables by increasing food production, supporting agriculture and expanding social safety net programmes under the guidance of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's inclusive development policies.
On the same day, The Finance Minister met ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa to discuss bilateral issues.
In the meeting with the ADB President, the Minister sought policy based lending (PBL) supports for undertaking trade policy, logistics, climate, and LDC graduation reforms.
He also requested ADB to increase concessional climate finance, facilitate cross-border energy trade, assist Bangladesh in its initiatives for tax sector reforms, undertaking projects for river restoration and developing some of the thrust sectors of its economy such as, jute, leather and tourism towards Bangladesh's drive for diversifying economy.
In response, the ADB President praised Bangladesh government's strong climate and development agenda, and assured ADB's continued support both in sovereign and non-sovereign resources, in Bangladesh's prioritized sectors.

Finance Minister seeks increased support from development partners to improve food distribution system

The price of gold has dropped for the consecutive eighth time as the Bangladesh Jewellers Association (BAJUS) reduced prices again on Thursday (2 May).
The price of 22-carat gold was downed by Tk1,878 per bhori (11.664g).
Each carat of top-quality gold will now cost Tk1,09,163, BAJUS said in a statement on Thursday.
The new revised prices will be effective from 3 May, it said, adding that the price will remain in effect until further notice.
Meanwhile, each bhori of 21-carat gold will cost Tk1,04,194 while 18-carat gold&rsquo;s price now stands at Tk89,331.
The traditional gold price has been set at Tk 74,276. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

Gold prices reduced for 8 times straight

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an end to "the dangerous cycle of retaliation" in the Middle East following reports of Israeli strikes against Iran.
The UN chief condemned "any act of retaliation" and called on the international community to prevent "any further development that could lead to devastating consequences for the entire region and beyond," his spokesman said in a statement on Friday.

UN chief says Mideast 'cycle of retaliation' must stop

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