Dhaka, Bangladesh – AFP Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus was convicted on Monday of violating Bangladesh’s labour laws in a case decried by his supporters as politically motivated. Yunus, 83, is credited with lifting millions out of poverty with his pioneering microfinance bank but has earned the enmity of longtime Prime Ministe...
Char Shildaha, Bangladesh – – AFP An award-winning architect in Bangladesh, one of the nations most at risk from flooding driven by climate change, has developed an ingenious two-floor housing solution to help people survive what scientists warn is a growing threat. This year, when the annual monsoon floodwaters swelled the country...
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AA) – Bangladesh registered 1,701 dengue deaths in 2023, a grim record since the South Asian nation started keeping dengue records in 2000. Of the total, 168 were children between 0 – 15 years of age, according to official figures. Health authorities reported two deaths Thursday and 110 new hospitalizations. Twen...
ANKARA (AA) – Hundreds of young students stormed a Rohingya refugee shelter in Indonesia’s westernmost province of Aceh and forced them to leave the building, local media reported. A group of students entered a building where the authorities had housed around 135 Rohingya refugees, including women and children, and attacked them, accordi...
Lhokseumawe, Indonesia — AFP On a remote island in northwestern Indonesia, just miles from the white sand beaches where more than a thousand Rohingya refugees have arrived since mid-November, throngs of residents marched outside a temporary shelter housing the newcomers. “Shoo them away!” a protest leader chanted, met by chee...
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AA) – At least four people, including a woman and her three-year-old child, were killed in Bangladesh Tuesday morning in what authorities confirmed was an arson attack on a commuter train. Arsonists in the capital Dhaka set alight three cars of the Mohanganj Express at the Tejgaon Railway Station, according to the medi...
Lhokseumawe, Indonesia – AFP Holding his son’s hand in a temporary shelter in Indonesia, Rohingya refugee Mohamed Ridoi says he made the dangerous 12-day sea journey from massive refugee camps in Bangladesh to escape the pervasive threats of kidnapping, extortion and murder. The 27-year-old said he was starting a peaceful life in a...
Lhokseumawe, Indonesia — AFP Indonesian police and fishermen say they have begun patrolling parts of the country’s westernmost province to prevent Rohingya refugees from landing on its shores, after nearly 1,100 members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority arrived this month. Thousands from what has been described by the UN a...
Bireuen, Indonesia — AFP As a rickety wooden boat carrying Rohingya refugees approached the shores of western Indonesia, several desperate men swam ashore to plead that the vessel be allowed to land after weeks at sea. But the calls of the men — some of whom collapsed to the sand in exhaustion — fell on […]
Dhaka, Bangladesh — AFP Hundreds of garment factories in Bangladesh have shuttered as thousands of workers staged violent protests to demand a near-tripling of their wages. Bangladesh’s 3,500 garment factories account for around 85 percent of the South Asian country’s $55 billion in annual exports, supplying major Western bra...
