M Humayun Kabir: Workers of a garment factory took to the street and blocked Dhaka-Mymensingh highway in Hotapara area yesterday morning demanding arrears and Eid bonus. The workers of Elegant Garments Factory blocked the highway around 9am, creating traffic gridlock on the busy highway. The gridlock caused immense suffering to home-bound people ahead of the…
Russia Today: Latest figures from the US Treasury Department show that Russia and Turkey are not the only countries to dump US debt bonds. Washington’s second-biggest creditor, Japan, is doing the same. Tokyo dumped $82.9 billion, or seven percent of its US Treasuries holdings, over the twelve months ending in June – the latest month…
Russia Today: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – a fierce critic of the Tehran leadership – has announced the creation of a so-called Iran Action Group. It comes amid Washington’s campaign of economic pressure against Iran and its allies. Speaking at the Thursday State Department briefing, Pompeo launched another verbal assault on the Islamic…
Daily Sabah: The Türkiye Diyanet Founda tion (TDV), the charity agency of Turkey’s top religious body, will help some 10 million people around the world this Qurban Bayram (known as Eid al-Adha in Arabic) that begins on Aug. 21. Run by the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), the TDV will slaughter sacrificial animals and deliver the…
Khalequzzaman, General Secretary, Socialist Party of Bangladesh (SPB): The government should make its stand crystal clear over reforming the existing quota system in public service recruitments. The quota reformists pointed to a kind of anarchy and discrepancy in this regard and that’s why they demanded the reformation. But the action taken against the quota reform…
Desk Report: Pangaon container terminal, the country’s first inland container facility, handled 28,702 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) during the last fiscal year (FY), up by nearly 140 per cent from FY 2016-17, reports the financial express. This implies that the once-idle terminal built at a cost of over a billion of taka on the river…
Hossen Sohel: President Trump’s plans for a Veterans Day military parade through the streets of Washington DC have been delayed until at least 2019, reports BBC. Mr Trump was impressed by France’s Bastille Day parade on a visit in 2017 and said the US could “top it”. But figures released on Thursday suggested the event…
The Register: Cosmos Bank in India says that hackers made off with $13.4m in stolen funds over the weekend. Multiple reports out of the country say that a group of attackers used cloned cards to withdraw cash from ATMs at a set time and perform a fraudulent SWIFT money transfer. Together, the efforts resulted in…
Desk Report: Importers and domestic producers of solar panels will enjoy exemption from the value added tax (VAT) as per a recent order of the National Board of Revenue (NBR), reports the financial express. The exemption from 15 per cent VAT would help promote the use of renewable energy at an affordable cost, officials said….
Kabir Humayun: Mitsu-bishi Corporation will purchase a one-fourth stake in Summit LNG Terminal, a unit of Summit Power International. “Mitsubishi Corporation has agreed to acquire a 25 percent interest in Summit LNG Terminal Co to develop a liquefied natural gas receiving terminal that uses a floating storage and regasification unit or FSRU in Bangladesh,” it…