DHAKA — The presidential election of Bangladesh will be held by Feb. 23, the Election Commission (EC)’s secretary Md Jahangir Alam said here on Sunday.
He made the announcement at a news conference Sunday evening at his office, saying the incumbent president Abdul Hamid is not to be re-elected for another term, as the country’s constitution allows a maximum of two terms for a person in the post.
Hamid’s tenure will expire on April 24.
Alam said the schedule for the presidential election will soon be announced. (Xinhua)
NEW DELHI: A BBC documentary that looks into Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role during communal riots that wracked the western Indian state of Gujarat in 2002 has been criticized by the Indian government as a “propaganda piece” while the broadcaster has said its two-part series was “rigorously researched.”
The BBC says India: the Modi Question “examines the tensions between India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority and explores the politics of Mr. Modi in relation to those tensions.” The first part was broadcast in Britain on Tuesday, while the second will be aired next week.
The communal riots erupted in Gujarat when Modi, who became India’s prime minister in 2014, was the state’s chief minister. More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in the violence that broke out after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was set on fire, killing dozens.
The documentary highlights an unpublished report that the BBC said it obtained from the British Foreign Office. The report had, according to the broadcaster, raised issues over Modi’s actions during the riots and claims that he was “directly responsible” for the “climate of impunity” that enabled the violence.
“The bias, lack of objectivity and continuing colonial mindset is blatantly visible,” Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi told reporters in response to questions at a press briefing Thursday. Questioning the motives behind the documentary, he said it was “designed to push a particular discredited narrative.”
“It makes us wonder about the purpose of this exercise, the agenda behind it and frankly we do not wish to dignify such efforts,” Bagchi said.
India’s western state of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, right, and his deputy Devendra Fadnavis, left, present a garland to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a rally in Mumbai, India, Jan. 19, 2023.
In 2012, an inquiry by India’s Supreme Court had exonerated Modi for any complicity in the riots, including charges that he had told police officers not to restrain the rioters. Last year, the top court also dismissed a petition that questioned his exoneration.
A day after the Indian government’s sharp criticism of the documentary, the BBC said in a statement that the program was “rigorously researched according to highest editorial standards.”
The British broadcaster said that “a wide range of voices, witnesses and experts were approached and we have featured a range of opinions, including responses from people in the BJP [Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party].”
The statement also said that it had offered the Indian government an opportunity to reply to the matters raised in the series, but the government declined.
The BBC statement said the company was “committed to highlighting important issues from around the world.”
In response to a question on the documentary by British lawmaker Imran Hussain in Parliament on Thursday, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that “we don’t tolerate persecution anywhere” but added that he “did not agree with the characterization” of the Indian prime minister.
GENEVA: The U.N. refugee agency, the UNHCR, has recorded an alarming rise in the death toll of Rohingya refugees while attempting dangerous sea journeys in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal in 2022.
At least 348 people died or disappeared while fleeing Myanmar or Bangladesh by sea last year, making it one of the deadliest years since 2014. That was when more than 700 people reportedly lost their lives or disappeared in a desperate bid for protection from persecution.
The U.N. refugee agency says more than 3,500 Rohingya attempted perilous sea crossings in 2022. Some 700 people made similar journeys the year before.
UNHCR spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo said the dramatic increase in the number of people willing to risk their lives smacks of despair among a population that sees no way out of its misery.
“We are hearing reports, as we mentioned, from Rohingya about this growing sense of desperation and this anxiety about the future. And really no hope for security, for protection,” Mantoo said. “Some of them are willing to reunite with family members. Others, their vulnerabilities are being exploited by traffickers or smugglers luring them with both promises and false hope.”
Mantoo said most of the 39 boats that made the dangerous sea journey last year departed from Myanmar and Bangladesh, highlighting the sense of desperation among Rohingya in those two countries.
In the last two months of 2022, she said four boats carrying more than 450 Rohingya disembarked in Aceh, Indonesia, and another boat carrying 100 people disembarked in Sri Lanka. She said one boat, carrying 180 Rohingya Muslims, is feared to have sunk in early December.
“Calls by UNHCR to maritime authorities in the region to rescue and disembark people in distress have been ignored or have gone unheeded with many boats adrift for weeks … UNHCR repeats its call for prompt search and rescue and timely disembarkation in a place of safety, and for support to countries where Rohingya refugees are disembarked,” Mantoo said.
In August 2017, more than 750,000 Rohingya Muslims subject to violence and persecution in Myanmar fled to Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh. They are living in overcrowded camps along with hundreds of thousands of other refugees who previously had fled from Myanmar.
The UNHCR says conditions in Myanmar have not improved and it is not safe for them to return to a country that views them as illegal immigrants and denies them citizenship.
NEW DELHI — Indian Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said efforts by all were necessary to reduce road accidents by 50 percent in the country by the end of 2025.
According to a statement issued by the road transport and highways ministry on Wednesday, the minister said a law will soon be brought into the country to determine the working hours of truck drivers.
“Let us make a resolution that we all will participate in the road safety campaign and before the end of 2025, we will contribute toward reducing 50 percent of accidents and 50 percent of deaths,” Gadkari said.
“By obeying road safety rules let us save our lives and those of the people.”
The ministry said it was committed to a reduction in road fatalities and injuries and has undertaken multiple initiatives across all 4Es of road safety, i.e., Engineering, Enforcement, Education and Emergency Care.
Road Safety Week was observed in India from Jan. 11 to 17 to propagate the cause of safer roads for all.
Deadly road accidents are common in India, often caused by overloading, bad condition of roads and reckless driving.
Around 150,000 people are killed every year in around half a million road accidents across India, officials said. (Xinhua)
BNA, Bahrain — Nepalese ophthalmologist Dr Sanduk Ruit has been selected as the winner of the fifth edition of the Isa Award for Service to Humanity.
The winner was announced at a press conference by Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, Special Representative of His Majesty the King and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Isa Award for Service to Humanity, said a Bahrain News Agency report.
Dr Ruit is world-famous for devising a new method for treating cataracts. He was also able to develop a new lens implanted inside the eyeball that could be produced at a much cheaper price than its counterparts. This has helped him in performing cataract surgeries in less than five minutes during which he removes the cataract without stitches through small incisions, and replaces them with a cost-effective artificial lens.
He was able to treat more than 120,000 patients with avoidable blindness for free.
Shaikh Mohammed stressed that the award embodies a living memory of the late Amir and his noble legacy in service to humanity, and showcases His Majesty the King’s commitment to further instilling humanitarian work and celebrating it across the globe.
He highlighted that since its inception in February 2009 and through its five sessions, the award has confirmed Bahrain’s firm commitment, under the leadership of HM the King, and with the support His Royal Highness the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, to upholding the values of tolerance and coexistence.
Isa Award for Service to Humanity Secretary General Ali Abdullah Khalifa said 145 candidates from across the world had applied for the award in its fifth session 2021-2022 and 139 applicants were accepted after validating their applications.
The applications were then shortlisted to five, in accordance with the terms and conditions of the award. He outlined that the Board of Trustees dispatched a field team to visit the locations of the five short-listed applicants to evaluate their conformity with the criteria of the award.
LONDON: As the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) gets underway this week at the Swiss ski resort of Davos; the charity Oxfam says extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years – and is calling for fairer taxation in response to the soaring inequality.
Hundreds of billionaires, dozens of government ministers and central bank governors are due to attend the WEF, widely seen as a get together for the global super rich. In its report, “Survival of the Richest,” published Monday, Oxfam says the world’s billionaires are becoming richer.
“Davos is back in January. The festival of wealth is back. And we’re bringing alarming new findings which show that the one percent, the richest one percent in the world have grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth created since 2020,” Oxfam America’s director of economic justice, Nabil Ahmed, told VOA.
Pandemic profits
Oxfam says the source of that wealth is partly government money: emergency liquidity pumped into the global economy as the coronavirus pandemic forced countries into lockdown in 2020.
“That was essential. But at the same time the ultra-wealthy were able to really ride this asset boom that resulted, the stock market boom that resulted. And without the guardrails of progressive taxation in the economy, the ultra-wealthy were really able to line their pockets,” Ahmed said.
Inflation
Oxfam calculates that at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, meaning people are becoming poorer. The wealth of billionaires, however, has surged as inflation drives up food and energy prices.
“The current cost-of-living crisis, with spiraling food and energy prices, is also creating dramatic gains for many at the top. Food and energy corporations are seeing record profits and making record pay-outs to their rich shareholders and billionaire owners. Corporate price profiteering is driving at least 50% of inflation in Australia, the U.S. and Europe, in what is as much a ‘cost-of-profit’ crisis as a cost-of-living one,” the Oxfam report says.
“We were able to show how 95 food and energy corporations have actually been able to double their profits in 2022,” the charity’s Ahmed told VOA.
Fair taxes
Oxfam is calling for windfall taxes imposed on energy companies to be extended to food companies making big profits. It also wants a tax of up to 5% on the world’s multimillionaires and billionaires.
“The spectacular rise of wealth and income at the very top has coincided with a collapse in taxes on the richest 1%. While there are differences between countries, the general trend towards lower taxes for the rich has been remarkably similar across all regions of the world,” the report says.
“Extreme inequality is not inevitable,” Ahmed told VOA. “This isn’t about nurses, teachers, the middle class. This is really about those at the very top, ensuring that they’re paying far fairer taxes.”
Solutions
The president of the WEF maintained that the annual Davos summit does benefit the whole world.
“So much is at stake, we really need to find solutions on the wars and conflicts. We also have to secure that we don’t go into a recession, and we have 10 years of low growth, as we had in the 1970s. That is at stake, and we need all the stakeholders to be part of working towards a safer and more inclusive growing global economy,” World Economic Forum President Borge Brende told The Associated Press.
(VOA/Some of the information in this report came from The Associated Press)
Kathmandu: British Ambassador to Nepal, Nicola Pollitt, paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ today at Baluwatar.
During the meeting, they exchanged views on further deepening the bilateral relations between the two countries.
RSS adds that, various topics related to bilateral relations were discussed in the meeting that took place at the Prime Minister’s official residence at Baluwatar, PM Prachanda’s Secretariat has said.
Washington DC: Pakistan’s economic growth will slow further to 2 per cent during the ongoing year will lead to South Asia’s weakest economy, the World Bank said. This will mark a drop of two percentage points from its June 2022 estimate.
The Global Economic Prospects report of WB said that Pakistan’s economic output was not just declining itself but also bringing down the regional growth rate as well.
The report also said that a herculean effort will be required to pull Pakistan out of poverty. This pace reflects still robust growth in India, Maldives, and Nepal, offsetting the effects of the floods in Pakistan and the economic and political crises in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. The deteriorating global environment, however, will weigh on investment in the region,” the report said, pointing to a “sharp, long-lasting slowdown” with the global growth expected at 1.7 per cent this year.
Pakistan’s GDP growth rate to improve to 3.2 per cent in 2024, adding, “Policy uncertainty further complicates the economic outlook” of Pakistan, the report reads.
“Recovery and reconstruction needs are expected to be 1.6 times the FY2022-23 national development budget,” the World Bank said.
Pakistan’s forex reserves have hit a new low of USD 4.6 billion that would be barely adequate to pay for foreign bills for three weeks. Analysts have put the country’s need for relief at USD 33 billion.
The shortage of dollars has been drastically hurting the economy and diverting remittances from the legal banking channel to the grey market.
According to a report by Dawn, bankers believe that Pakistan would soon notice shortage of petroleum products along with basic essential including food items.
In Pakistan, soaring prices of basic food items have been burning hole in the pockets of people.
Wheat, which is an essential staple food of Pakistanis, is barely in reach for many locals. Its prices have surged over 57 per cent, while the cost of wheat flour also saw an increase of 41 per cent, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics said.
COLOMBO — Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe invited the opposition parties on Tuesday to join hands through a new political system to provide relief to the people and work towards their betterment.
The president’s media division said in a statement that the president made this remarks addressing the parliament.
The president said the government is committed to providing relief to the people and he will take steps to allocate 30 to 40 billion rupees (83 to 110 million U.S. dollars) for medicines this year.
The government plans to introduce several new institutions, among which are an institution on economics and trade, a university to train government officials on state policy formulation, and a university on climate change, the president added.
Sri Lanka has been facing one of its worst-ever economic crises since last year and also witnessed a shortage of essential supplies such as fuel and medicines during 2022. (Xinhua)
GENEVA (ILO News) – The current global economic slowdown is likely to force more workers to accept lower quality, poorly paid jobs which lack job security and social protection, so accentuating inequalities exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis, according to a new International Labour Organization (ILO) report.
The ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2023 (WESO Trends), also projects that global employment growth will be only 1.0 per cent in 2023, less than half the level in 2022. Global unemployment is slated to rise slightly in 2023, by around 3 million, to 208 million (corresponding to a global unemployment rate of 5.8 per cent). The moderate size of this projected increase is largely due to tight labour supply in high-income countries. This would mark a reversal of the decline in global unemployment seen between 2020-2022. It means that global unemployment will remain 16 million above the pre-crisis benchmark (set in 2019).
In addition to unemployment “job quality remains a key concern”, the report says, adding that “Decent Work is fundamental to social justice”. A decade of progress in poverty reduction faltered during the COVID-19 crisis . Despite a nascent recovery during 2021, the continuing shortage of better job opportunities is likely to worsen, the study says.
The current slowdown means that many workers will have to accept lower quality jobs, often at very low pay, sometimes with insufficient hours. Furthermore, as prices rise faster than nominal labour incomes, the cost-of-living crisis risks pushing more people into poverty. This trend comes on top of significant declines in income seen during the COVID-19 crisis, which in many countries affected low-income groups worst.
The report also identifies a new, comprehensive measure of unmet need for employment – the global jobs gap. As well as those who are unemployed, this measure includes people who want employment but are not actively searching for a job, either because they are discouraged or because they have other obligations such as care responsibilities. The global jobs gap stood at 473 million in 2022, around 33 million above the level of 2019.
Stagflation conditions threaten productivity and labour market recovery
The labour market deterioration is mainly due to emerging geopolitical tensions and the Ukraine conflict, uneven pandemic recovery, and continuing bottlenecks in global supply chains, the WESO Trends says. Together, these have created the conditions for stagflation – simultaneously high inflation and low growth – for the first time since the 1970s.
Women and young people are faring significantly worse in labour markets. Globally, the labour force participation rate of women stood at 47.4 per cent in 2022, compared with 72.3 per cent for men. This 24.9 percentage point gap means that for every economically inactive man there are two such women.
Young people (aged 15–24) face severe difficulties in finding and keeping decent employment. Their unemployment rate is three times that of adults. More than one-in-five – 23.5 per cent – of young people are not in employment, education or training (NEET).
“The need for more decent work and social justice is clear and urgent. But if we are to meet these multiple challenges, we must work together to create a new global social contract.”Gilbert F. Houngbo, ILO Director-General
“The need for more decent work and social justice is clear and urgent,” said ILO Director-General, Gilbert F. Houngbo. “But if we are to meet these multiple challenges, we must work together to create a new global social contract. The ILO will be campaigning for a Global Coalition for Social Justice to build support, create the policies needed, and prepare us for the future of work.”
“The slowdown in global employment growth means that we don’t expect the losses incurred during the COVID-19 crisis to be recovered before 2025,” said Richard Samans, Director of the ILO’s Research Department and report coordinator. “The slowdown in productivity growth is also a significant concern, as productivity is essential for addressing the interlinked crises we face in purchasing power, ecological sustainability and human well-being.”
Significant variations in regional 2023 labour market prospects
In 2023 Africa and the Arab States should see employment growth of around 3 per cent or more. However, with their growing working-age populations, both regions are likely to see unemployment rates decline only modestly (from 7.4 to 7.3 per cent in Africa and 8.5 to 8.2 per cent in the Arab States).
In Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean, annual employment growth is projected to be around 1 per cent. In Northern America there will be few or no employment gains in 2023 and unemployment will pick up, says the report.
Europe and Central Asia are particularly hard hit by the economic fallout from the Ukraine conflict. But while employment is projected to decline in 2023, their unemployment rates should increase only slightly given the backdrop of limited growth in the working-age population.
London — A British man was among dozens of people killed in Nepal’s deadliest air crash in decades.
Ruan Calum Crighton was among 72 people onboard the Yeti Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara in the Annapurna mountain range when it crashed without warning on Sunday, The Guradian writes.
Crighton’s nationality was initially described as Irish but it has since been confirmed he was travelling on a UK passport. His was among the names of passengers published by the civil aviation authority of Nepal on Sunday.
The former ballet dancer from Essex trained at London’s Central School of Ballet before an 11-year career as a dancer first for the Slovakian National Ballet and then the Finnish National Ballet.
Kathmandu : Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal (TAAN) has said the Yeti Airlines plane crash in Pokhara, the country’s touristic hub, on Sunday dealt a powerful blow to Nepal’s aviation and tourism sectors.
Issuing a press statement today, TAAN general secretary Binod Sapkota said the crash caused an irreparable loss to the domestic tourism industry that was trying to revive from the implications of COVID-19 pandemic.
Flights at Pokhara Regional International Airport were recently launched following its upgrade from the national to international standard and the crash took place at the country’s touristic hub was itself a major blow to the entire domestic tourism business, the TAAN concludes.
TAAN President Nilhari Bastola demanded the State takes significant measures to ensure that Nepal’s sky and aviation service are safe. He advised the State’s responsible bodies to take measures for the prevention of such incidents in the days to come.
The plane with the call sign 9N-ANC ATR-72-500 that had left Kathmandu for Pokhara on January 15 carrying 72 people, including 68 passengers and four crew members, crashed on the Seti River Gorge.
NAC expresses grief
Office bearers of the Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) are saddened by death of scores of people in the crash, according to the NAC.
The NAC in a statement today offered its heartfelt condolences to those killed in the tragedy while wishing that the bereaved families may have patience and strength to endure the incident. It has termed the crash as a saddest one in the history of Nepal’s aviation.
It has expected the findings of facts relating to the incident while urging effective investigations so as to make the country’s aviation sector safe and reliable.
HAN mourns
The Hotel Association Nepal (HAN) has expressed its sorrow over the crash. “The Association and all other organisations under it are saddened by the incident. In this time of sorrow, we offer our condolences to all passengers and crew members killed in the tragedy, and to the bereaved families,” read a statement issued by the HAN.
Stating that the accident has had negative impacts not only the country’s aviation sector, but the whole nation and tourism sector as it has spread the message at national and international levels that Nepal’s sky is unsafe, it said it was the responsibilities of all of us including the state and stakeholders to make the country’s sky safe. (RSS)
ISLAMABAD — Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif kicked off a three-day nationwide polio eradication drive on Sunday as part of the South Asian country’s efforts to overcome the resurfacing of polio cases.
“The spread of the disease would be controlled with collective national efforts. I have the conviction that all the provincial governments, along with the federal government, would continue collaborating to eradicate the disease forever,” the prime minister said during the launching ceremony.
Unfortunately, Pakistan is among the few countries where polio cases have resurfaced, he said, adding that about 20 cases of polio were reported from northwest Waziristan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province last year.
The resurfacing of the cases has certainly raised concerns among the partners, including World Health Organization (WHO) and other stakeholders, he said.
However, due to consistent efforts, the emergence of new cases was restricted and controlled, and the virus did not spread to other parts of the country, the prime minister said.
Sharif also expressed his gratitude to the WHO, stakeholders, related departments and law enforcement personnel for their continuing efforts and commitments. (Xinhua)
BEIJING: China reported nearly 60,000 deaths in people who had COVID-19 since early December following complaints it was failing to release data, and said the “emergency peak” of its latest surge appears to have passed.
The toll included 5,503 deaths due to respiratory failure caused by COVID-19 and 54,435 fatalities from other ailments combined with COVID-19 since Dec. 8, the National Health Commission announced.
It said those “deaths related to COVID” occurred in hospitals, which left open the possibility more people also might have died at home.
The report would more than double China’s official COVID-19 death toll to 10,775 since the disease was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.
China stopped reporting data on COVID-19 deaths and infections after abruptly lifting antivirus controls in early December despite a surge in infections that began in October and has filled hospitals with feverish, wheezing patients.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and other governments appealed for information after reports by city and provincial governments suggest as many as hundreds of millions of people in China might have contracted the virus.
The peak of the latest infection wave appears to have passed based on the decline in the number of patients visiting fever clinics, said a National Health Commission official, Jiao Yahui.
The daily number of people going to those clinics peaked at 2.9 million Dec. 23 and had fallen by 83% to 477,000 by Thursday, according to Jiao.
“These data show the national emergency peak has passed,” Jiao said at a news conference.
The United States, South Korea and other governments have imposed virus-testing and other controls on people arriving from China. Beijing retaliated Wednesday by suspending issuance of new visas to travelers from South Korea and Japan.
China kept its infection rate and deaths lower than those of the United States and some other countries at the height of the pandemic with a “zero-COVID” strategy that aimed to isolate every case.
That shut down access to some cities, kept millions of people at home and sparked angry protests.
The average age of people who died since Dec. 8 is 80.3 years and 90.1% are aged 65 and above, according to the Health Commission.
It said more than 90% of people who died had cancer, heart or lung diseases or kidney problems.
“The number of elderly patients dying from illness is relatively large, which suggests that we should pay more attention to elderly patients and try our best to save their lives,” said Jiao.
This month, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said agency officials met with Chinese officials to underline the importance of sharing more details about COVID-19 issues including hospitalization rates and genetic sequences.
Davos-Klosters [Switzerland], January 15 (ANI) The theme for this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting, to be held in Davos, Switzerland, from January 16 to 20, will be ‘Cooperation in a Fragmented World‘. The congregation of experts, academics, investors, political and business leaders will discuss some of the pressing issues, such as the Ukraine war crisis, global inflation, climate change, the world is facing and promote innovative solutions. Global leaders taking part include European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, South Africa President Cyril M Ramaphosa, Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, Swiss President Alain Berset and Finland Prime Minister Sanna Marin.
There will be strong participation of leaders from India. Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw, Mansukh Mandaviya, Smriti Irani and R K Singh are expected to attend the meeting while chief ministers Eknath Shinde, B S Bommai and Yogi Adityanath are said to attend the congregation. Other than this, India Inc leaders such as Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons India, Rajesh Gopinath, chief executive officer and managing director, Tata Consultancy Services, CP Gurnani, CEO and MD, Tech Mahindra, Rishad Premji, executive chairman, Wipro; Byju Raveendran, founder and CEO, Byju’s; Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO, Paytm; Adar Poonawalla, CEO, Serum Institute of India and Dinesh Kumar Khara, chairman, SBI, might attend the meeting. According to a statement, WEF Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab said, “We see the manifold political, economic and social forces creating increased fragmentation on a global and national level. To address the root causes of this erosion of trust, we need to reinforce cooperation between the government and business sectors, creating the conditions for a strong and durable recovery.” He added, “At the same time there must be the recognition that economic development needs to be made more resilient, more sustainable and nobody should be left behind.” (ANI)
