LOOKEAST EXCLUSIVE | Indian Intelligence agencies have picked up ‘inputs’ about ULFA–I military wing chief Paresh Barua having died after sustaining severe injuries in a road accident on Sino–Burmese border. They say they are trying to confirm the ‘inputs’. ULFA–I sources could not be immediately reached. Intelligence officials were unwilling to share details as…
Read moreDHAKA | BSS The much–anticipated dialogue between the 14–party alliance and the National Unity Front (NUF) kicked off at prime minister’s official Ganabhaban residence this evening. “The dialogue began at about 7 pm,” a Ganabhaban official familiar with the talks said. Awami League President Sheikh Hasina is leading a 23–member team of the 14–party alliance…
Read moreLOOKEAST REPORT | Deeper regional trade and connectivity has the potential to more than triple India’s trade with its South Asian neighbours, says a new World Bank report. A Glass Half Full The Promise of Regional Trade in South Asia, estimates India’s potential trade in goods with South Asia at $62 billion against its actual…
Read moreMANOJ JOSHI | It’s a measure of our attitude to neighbours that the outcome of the third, and possibly most consequential general elections in Bhutan that took place, hardly figured in the Indian media the day the results came out. The decisive victory of a party, Druk Nyamrup Tshogpa (DNT), which was set up only…
Read moreBEIJING | IANS China denied giving shelter to Paresh Baruah, the chief of banned outfit ULFA–I (United Liberation Front of Asom–Independent), saying that it does not interfere in domestic affairs of other countries. China also said it has told India many times that it has issues in declaring Pakistan–based Masood Azhar a global terrorist and…
Read moreM NURUL HAYAT CHOWDHURY | Cracks have surfaced within the Hefajat–e–Islam over a proposed public reception to prime minister Sheikh Hasina, prompting the Islamist group’s senior Nayeb–e–Ameer Mohibullah Babunagari to resign. The proposal that threw Hefajat into the crisis came from none other than its undisputed supremo, Shah Ahmad Shafi. On October 1, he announced…
Read moreNEW DELHI | PTI India asked China to support the pending application in the United Nations (UN) to designate Pakistan–based Jaish–e–Mohammed (JeM) terror group leader Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, officials said. It also asked Beijing not to give shelter to hardline United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) leader Paresh Baruah on its soil,…
Read moreSWADESH ROY | The eleventh parliament election of Bangladesh is coming soon. Most probably, it will be held in the last week of December. The alliance running the government, basically, their leader Sheikh Hasina, the present Prime Minister is now in an absolute vigorous position. There is no leader in the country to compete with…
Read moreSTEPHEN LEAHY | The world’s rarest great ape, discovered only in 2017, will not survive the building of a $1.6 billion hydroelectric power plant and dam in the middle of its remaining habitat in Sumatra, Indonesia, wildlife experts warn. Only 800 of the newly identified Tapanuli orangutans remain in the wild, all in northern Sumatra’s Batang…
Read moreINAM AHMED / SHAKHAWAT LITON | He was hardly known to outsiders until his father, General Ziaur Rahman who became Bangladesh’s president in the process of several coups and counter–coups, died in another military putsch in May 1981. For the first time, through a Bangladesh Television programme “Jodi Kichhu Money Na Koren”, the countrymen came…
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