The iconic Jal the Band is making a comeback in Bangladesh after a 14 year absence. The band’s lead singer and composer Goher Mumtaz shared a screenshot of the band’s upcoming concerts in Bangladesh on his Instagram account.
Jal is scheduled to perform on September 27 in Dhaka at the ‘Legends of the Decade’ concert.
Fans in Bangladesh have eagerly awaited Jal’s return, and their patience is finally being rewarded. Tickets for the event, priced at Tk3050, or Pakistani rupees Rs7123. The band is expected to perform all its hits including ‘Lamhe,’ ‘Aadat,’ ‘Panchi,’ and ‘Bikhra Hoon Main’. Goher Mumtaz and Atif Aslam formed the band in 2002.
It was previously speculated that the founding members of the band, which included Farhan Saeed, a former singer and actor, would also perform at Bangladesh. The Jhok Sarkar actor posted a story on his Instagram account saying,
“To all Bangladesh fans, I keep getting requests asked if I am coming to Bangladesh in September for concert. The answer is no I am not, my picture is used blatantly though. I am not! When I will be touring Bangladesh I’ll announce it on my social media platforms. All fans are requested to spread the same.”
Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi protesters demanding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resign, clashed with government supporters on Sunday, with dozens killed in one of the deadliest days since demonstrations began.
Rallies that began last month against civil service job quotas have escalated into some of the worst unrest of Hasina’s 15-year rule and shifted into wider calls for the 76-year-old to step down.
At least 91 people were killed on Sunday alone, including 14 police officers, with the rival sides battling with sticks and knives and security forces firing rifles, taking the total killed since protests began in July to at least 261.
Police said protesters attacked their officers, including storming a station in the town of Enayetpur.
“The terrorists attacked the police station and killed 11 policemen,” said Bijoy Basak, a deputy inspector general.
AFP journalists reported hearing sustained crackles of gunfire after dark on Sunday, with protesters defying a nationwide curfew.
Mobile internet was tightly restricted.
‘Final protest’
In several cases, soldiers and police did not intervene to stem the protests, unlike the past month of rallies that repeatedly ended in deadly crackdowns.
Demonstrators in the capital Dhaka, surrounded by a tightly packed and cheering crowd, waved a Bangladeshi flag on top of an armoured car as soldiers watched.
Asif Mahmud, one of the main leaders in the civil disobedience campaign, called on supporters to march on Dhaka on Monday. “Prepare bamboo sticks and liberate Bangladesh,” he wrote on Facebook on Sunday. “The time has come for the final protest,” he said.
Brought to justice
Vast crowds of protesters packed into Dhaka’s central Shahbagh Square on Sunday, with street battles in multiple sites.
“There were clashes between students and the ruling party men,” police inspector Al Helal said, adding two young men were killed in Dhaka’s Munshiganj district.
“One of the dead was hacked in his head and another had gunshot injuries.”
Another policeman, who asked not to be identified, said “the whole city has turned into a battleground”.
Two people were killed in the city of Kishioreganj, where protesters torched a ruling party office, police said.
Some former military officers have joined the student movement and ex-army chief Gen Ikbal Karim Bhuiyan turned his Facebook profile picture red in a show of support.
“We call on the incumbent government to withdraw the armed forces from the street immediately,” Bhuiyan told reporters on Sunday alongside other ex-officers, condemning “egregious killings, torture, disappearances and mass arrests”.
“Those who are responsible for pushing people of this country to a state of such an extreme misery will have to be brought to justice,” he said.
No longer about job quotas
Current army chief Waker-uz-Zaman told officers at the military headquarters in Dhaka on Saturday the “Bangladesh Army is the symbol of trust of the people”.
“It always stood by the people and will do so for the sake of people and in any need of the state,” he said, according to a statement, which did not say explicitly whether the army backed the protests.
The demonstrations attracted people from all strata of Bangladeshi society. Rap songs calling for people’s support have spread widely on social media.
“It is no longer about job quotas,” said Sakhawat, a young female protester who gave only one name, and called Hasina a “killer”.
A group of 47 manufacturers in the economically vital garment sector said they stood in “solidarity” with the protesters.
Obaidul Quader, general secretary of the ruling Awami League, has called on party activists to gather “in every district” nationwide to show their support for the government.
The unrest began in July over the reintroduction of the quota scheme, which reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups. It has since been scaled back by the country’s top court.
Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from the hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.
Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organising this month’s street rallies against civil service hiring rules.
At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure.
All three were patients at a hospital in the capital, Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.
“They took them from us,” Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky said. “The men were from the Detective Branch.”
She added that she did not want to discharge the student leaders, but the police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.
The trio’s student group suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they wanted the reform of government job quotas but not “at the expense of so much blood.”
The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.
Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.
Garment tycoon arrested
Police said on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.
On Friday, police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh’s biggest garment factory enterprises.
According to its website, the Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people, and the Daily Star newspaper estimated its annual turnover at $400 million last year.
Dhaka Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the “anarchy, arson and vandalism” of last week.
PM Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters on Friday, visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.
“Find those who were involved in this,” she said, according to state news agency BSS. “Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation.”
Dhaka (AFP) – Thousands of Bangladeshis gathered to pray for rain on Wednesday in the middle of an extreme heatwave that prompted authorities to shut down schools around the country.
Extensive scientific research has found climate change is causing heat waves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.
Bangladesh’s weather bureau says that average maximum temperatures in the capital Dhaka over the past week have been 4-5 degrees Celsius (39-41 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the 30-year average for the same period.
Muslim worshippers gathered in city mosques and rural fields to pray for relief from the scorching heat, which forecasters expect to continue for at least another week.
“Praying for rains is a tradition of our prophet. We repented for our sins and prayed for his blessings for rains,” Muhammad Abu Yusuf, an Islamic cleric who led a morning prayer service for 1,000 people in central Dhaka, told AFP.
“Life has become unbearable due to lack of rains,” he said. “Poor people are suffering immensely.”
Police said similarly sized prayer services were held in several other parts of Bangladesh.
The country’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, issued a statement calling its members to join the prayer services planned for Wednesday and Thursday.
Authorities ordered all schools last week to cancel classes until the end of the month.
Temperatures across Bangladesh have reached more than 42C (108F) in the past week.
“April is usually the hottest month in Bangladesh. But this April has been one of the hottest since the country’s independence (in 1971),” government forecaster Tariful Newaz Kabir told AFP.
Kabir said fewer rainstorms than average for the period had contributed to the heat.
“We expect the high temperature will remain until the end of this month,” he said.
Hospitals in the southern coastal district of Patuakhali had recorded local outbreaks of diarrhoea due to higher temperatures and the resulting increased salinity of local water sources, state medical officer Bhupen Chandra Mondal told AFP.
“The number of diarrhoea patients is very high this year,” he said. “This is all linked to climate change.”
Six of the top ten cities plagued by the worst pollution on the Air Quality Index are from the South Asian region. Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata from India, Lahore and Karachi from Pakistan, and Dhaka from Bangladesh.
Post-Diwali, the air quality index in India is pretty bad as three of its highly-populated cities are facing a rise in air pollution. While Delhi is at the top, Mumbai and Kolkata are competing closely for the sixth and seventh spot on the chart.
Lahore has seen a major drop in the past few days after a short spell of rain, however, the air is steadily getting dense as it retained its second position in the chart for two days in a row. Karachi holds the fourth spot after Baghdad.
The Capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, is a relatively new entrant. It holds the tenth position with an “unhealthy” status in air quality.
Population growth and rapid industrialization are the two major factors contributing to the thickening of air with particulate pollutants in South Asia. This is a threat to all living beings, from animals to plants. Life expectancy is severely reduced in these cities and pollution-related illnesses are rampant. The situation of the poor quality index calls for strict action to be taken for the safety of residents of the world’s most populous region-South Asia.
Indian men’s hockey team won the bronze medal at Asian Champions Trophy after beating Pakistan 4-3 in third-place play-off match.
Earlier, India suffered defeat at the hands of Japan with a 3-5 scoreline in the semifinals the previous day after having topped the round-robin stages with an unbeaten record.
In the other semifinal, South Korea beat Pakistan 6-5.
India will be going home with the bronze medal.
It was India’s second win over Pakistan in the tournament after having beaten the same opponents 3-1 in the round-robin stages.
“It is disappointing for us because we scored more field goals,” said Pakistan captain Umar Bhutta after the semi-final match, referring to his side’s four field goals while the South Koreans only got one from open play.
“We played a good match but the two goals we conceded from penalty corners hurt us,” he said.
Hassan Ali bagged Player of the Match award during Pakistan’s first T20 international of their three-match series against Bangladesh in Dhaka on Friday, which the Men In Green won by four wickets.
It seems that even the technical team at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium were impressed. So much so that they ended up making an error while recording his bowling speed, reporting it as 219kph.
Pakistan’s legendary speedster Shoaib Akhtar holds the record for bowling the fastest ball at 161.3 kph and it is next to impossible to bowl at a speed of 219kph.
Meanwhile, Ali did become the player to take the most number of international wickets in 2021, including Tests, T20Is, and ODIs as he reached the mark of 64 after he picked up 3-22, helping Pakistan restrict Bangladesh to 127-7.
Shaheen Shah Afridi is right behind him with 62 wickets, while Sri Lanka’s Dushmantha Chameera and South Africa’s Tabriz Shamsi have taken 50 wickets each.
Meanwhile, netizens were sure that the world record has been made. Here are a few tweets:
Pak bowlers Hassan Ali and waseem Jnr making great fatest bowling 219.0 and 221.9 respectively .Hassan Ali best bowling 3-22 in 4 over. H.Ali broke @shoaib100mph fatest bowling record against Bangladesh team in t20 . @Wasim_Jnr broke H. Ali record in same match.#hassan_alipic.twitter.com/MrvCH8ImVN
After their loss in the semi-final, the Pakistan cricket team left for Bangladesh to play a three-match T20I and a two-match Test series. The plane carrying them landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka on Saturday.
Skipper Babar Azam and veteran cricketer Shoaib Malik will join the team on November 16 after their holidays.
The members of the Pakistan team headed straight to Hotel Sonargaon upon arrival in Dhaka. Since the beginning of Covid-19, it’s the first time a team is not serving a mandatory quarantine. The members of the visiting team can even move freely if they are Covid-19 negative and jabbed twice.
All the players of Pakistan’s World Cup squad, barring Mohammad Hafeez, feature in their squad for the T20I series against Bangladesh. Khushdil Shah, Shahnawaz Dahani and Usman Qadir who travelled with the team as reserve players in the World Cup have been called up. Iftikhar Ahmed, who missed out on a World Cup spot, has also earned a call-up.
The T20 series will begin on November 19. The next two games will be held on November 20 and 22. All the T20Is will be held at the Sher-E-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Mirpur.
The first Test will start on 26 November in Chattogram. Then the teams will return to Mirpur to play the second Test starting on 4 December.
The national team left the Dubai International stadium on Friday night.
Lahore on Wednesday topped the list of the most polluted cities in the world with the worst air quality levels.
India’s Delhi is second on the list, Poland’s Krakow and Kyrgyzstan’s Bishkek are placed in third and fourth spot respectively while Bangladesh’s Dhaka is on number five according to the air pollution data released by the US Air Quality Index (AQI).
Screengrab of air quality and pollution city ranking
Lahore recorded a particulate matter (PM) rating of 364 that classifies the city under the “hazardous” category of air quality.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency regards air quality as satisfactory if the AQI is under 50.
Rani, who went viral on social media for being the world’s smallest cow, has died in Bangladesh.
As per reports, Rani was just 51 centimeters (20 inches) tall and weighed almost 26 kilograms (57 pounds). She was in the running for the title of the world’s smallest cow.
World’s tiniest cow Rani dies in Bangladesh
▪️The tiny dwarf cow Rani, which was just 51 centimeters tall and weighed 26 kilograms, died in Bangladesh. ▪️The little animal was waiting to be recognised as the world’s smallest cow by the Guinness Book of Records. pic.twitter.com/9KuVWWSj67
Dwarf cow Rani died near Savar in Bangladesh on Thursday. It was waiting for recognition by the Guinness book as the smallest cow of the world. It was 20 inches high and 27 inches long, weight 28 kg. Its owners said it died due to excessive gas in the bowel. pic.twitter.com/vYLPcwqAla
“Rani’s stomach had swollen a lot and she was taken for treatment at around noon on Thursday. However, the vets could not save her life and she died within hours,” Sajedul Islam, a local livestock officer, told Anadolu Agency.
He said the swelling was due to “overeating and gas accumulation in her stomach”.
Rani had become a celebrity worldwide and thousands flocked to see her at her farm in Bangladesh. Guinness Book of Records has been informed about Rani’s death.
This 20-inch-tall cow is the smallest on Earth. Rani, the cow, is 27 inches wide and 20 inches tall.She’s also quite the lightweight,at just 26kgs. Why so small? One factor in Rani’s stature is her breed. Bhutanese cows,like Vechur cows,are typically referred to as dwarf cows(1) pic.twitter.com/cZ3CZL5n51
