Funerals may be postponed, new dress codes are being imposed at work and people are taking the stairs rather than escalators, as the war in Iran has curious effects in Asia.

Countries across the region are facing “crippling shortages” of oil and gas, said The Guardian, because most supplies have been “held up in the Gulf” since the US and Israel began bombing Iran.

Shrinking reserves

Sri Lanka is introducing a four-day working week to “preserve its shrinking fuel and gas reserves”, said the broadsheet. Starting this week, state institutions, schools and universities, began to operate only four days a week, and civil servants are being ordered to work from home where possible.

After an emergency meeting chaired by the president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the commissioner general of essential services said the government was also asking the private sector to “declare every Wednesday a holiday from now on”.

As well as changing how people work, the war could also alter how they mourn, because it is “threatening sacred funeral ceremonies” in Thailand, and Buddhist temples are “scrambling to obtain diesel for cremations”, said Bloomberg.

The abbot of Wat Saman Rattanaram in Chachoengsao province, about 50 miles east of Bangkok, warned that cremation services may have to be suspended. “In more than 50 years, I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.

Last week, the Thai government ordered civil servants to take the stairs rather than the lift, and it’s increased the air-conditioning temperature to 27C. It will tell government employees to wear short-sleeved shirts rather than suits.

Vietnam has asked companies to allow people to work from home to “reduce the need for travel and transportation”, while the Philippines is pushing for a four-day work week, and has told officials that travel should be limited to “essential functions only”, said Fortune.

Load shedding

In Bangladesh, the final Ramadan holidays began early for students, “but for all the wrong reasons”, said The New York Times. Lectures at the country’s main universities have been cancelled until later this month as the government closed the campuses to save electricity.

The government has also begun to impose temporary blackouts and other measures to conserve power, because “if the gas runs out, so does the electricity that turns on the lights and powers the factories that are crucial to Bangladesh’s export-oriented economy.”

Bangladesh already uses “load shedding”, or planned blackouts, to “reduce the strain on over-burdened power stations”. Usually lasting a couple of hours, they are the “scourge” of modern factories, which can’t afford to “idle thousands of workers”.

What happened

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, one of the South Asian nation’s two entrenched political factions, claimed a decisive victory this morning in Bangladesh’s first election since the 2024 student-led uprising that ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party, came in second.

Hasina’s Awami League, traditionally the BNP’s main rival, was barred from contesting Thursday’s election after its exiled leader was sentenced to death in November for her role in the deaths of 1,400 protesters.

Who said what

The BNP won more than two-thirds of 299 contested seats in the Jatiya Sangsad, or parliament, while Jamaat secured at least 76 seats, according to the BBC. Congratulatory messages for BNP leader Tarique Rahman, expected to become the next prime minister, poured in from India, Pakistan, the U.S., China and other nations.

Rahman, 60, “returned to Bangladesh in December after living in exile in Britain for nearly two decades,” The New York Times said. He “had a ringside seat to the growing pains of Bangladesh, a nation founded in 1971 partly by his father and run for years by his mother,” and during his short campaign he “promised to address the demands of the protest movement.” Along with electing a new government, voters approved democratic reforms, including term limits for prime ministers and stronger judicial independence, in a referendum.

What next?

The BNP’s victory was seen as representing a “desire for stability after months of political turmoil, even if it meant voting for the old guard,” The Wall Street Journal said. “The next few years will be crucial,” though, and if Rahman’s party “reverts back to the old system of patronage and cronyism, little will change despite Hasina’s downfall.”

Bangladesh goes to the polls this week in its first general election since former prime minister Sheikh Hasina was deposed by youth-led protests in 2024.

Thursday’s poll will be seen as a verdict on the student uprising and as a weathervane signalling the political direction of the subcontinent more broadly. With more than 127 million registered voters, it “will be the biggest democratic process of 2026, anywhere”, said the EU delegation to Bangladesh on X. “Described by many as the first free and fair election in more than a decade,” said CNN, “on the streets of Dhaka, the prevailing mood is one of anticipation”.

Who is in the running?

Of the 59 registered political parties in Bangladesh, 51 are taking part, with 1,981 candidates standing, including 249 independents. Hasina’s party, the Awami League, has been banned.

The contest is expected to be a battle between two rival coalitions. The first is headed by the centre-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Tarique Rahman, the son of former prime minister Khaleda Zia and a representative of the entrenched political elite. The other coalition is led by Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami and includes the National Citizen Party, formed by student leaders of the 2024 uprising.

The NCP has become “badly fractured” since the protests and is widely regarded as “too inexperienced” for power, said the BBC. To counter that perception, it has formed an alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami, which says it “would govern under the country’s secular constitution on a reform agenda” if elected, said Al Jazeera. At a pre-election rally, Jamaat leader Shafiqur Rahman said the election was an opportunity “to bury the rotten politics of the past”.

What’s at stake? 

The vote will reflect deep-seated concerns on issues including high inflation (which reached 8.58% in January, said The Daily Star), economic stagnation, law and order, and endemic corruption.

Nearly half of those registered to vote are aged between 18 and 37, and youth unemployment and the lack of opportunities for young Bangladeshis have been key campaign issues. For many, the question of national identity is also at stake, as religious and secular forces vie for power.

As well as voting for representatives in the national parliament, Bangladeshis will also cast their ballot in a referendum on reforms to restructure state institutions and limit executive power. “Everyone agreed that there must be reform in the system so that no one can become a dictator in the future,” Salman Al-Azami, from Liverpool Hope University, told Anadolu Agency.

Why are these elections so significant?

For many Bangladeshis, this election is a test of whether a free and fair democratic process can finally take root. The suspension of the Awami League, the dominant party for over a decade, will radically reshape the party dynamic in the country.

The polling will also be seen as a verdict on the success of the student uprising. As many as 1,400 people died in the protests, the majority of them killed in the security crackdown ordered by Hasina. After the election, “students will learn whether their revolution, and the bloodshed, were worth it”, said the BBC.

More broadly, the vote will be the “linchpin” in South Asia’s “election season”, said Rudabeh Shahid on the Atlantic Council. Nepal will follow Bangladesh to the polls in March, and there are also state-level elections taking place in neighbouring India in the months that follow.

Both countries share Bangladesh’s struggle with “deepening social polarisation, rising religious extremism, and a faltering economy”, so they will be observing the outcome of Thursday’s poll closely. A surge for Jamaat would “reinforce regional concerns” about the rise of Islamist politics, while a strong showing for the NCP may signal that “anti-establishment, generational politics may be moving from street protests to an electoral force”.

Sheikh Hasina, the former prime minister of Bangladesh, has been sentenced to death for her role in the deadly crackdown on protesters last year.

The months-long trial found that she had ordered the violence against the student-led uprising in 2024, which resulted in more than 1,400 deaths and thousands of injuries.

Hasina, who is in exile in India, faced five charges in absentia, primarily related to inciting the murder of the protesters and including ordering the use of lethal weapons, drones and helicopters to suppress the unrest. She denied the charges.

Who is Sheikh Hasina?

Hasina is the eldest daughter of the “founding father” of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was instrumental in the country gaining independence in 1971. She was forced into exile in India in 1975 following the assassination of her father, mother and three brothers in a military coup.

Hasina’s political journey is a “story of tragedy, exile and power, inextricably linked to the history of her home country itself”, said CNN. Having returned to Bangladesh from exile in 1981 to lead her father’s Awami League, she became prime minister in 1996, presiding over “significant economic development” but with “accusations of corruption, democratic backsliding, authoritarianism and human rights abuses”.

Like in her early years, Hasina has been in self-imposed exile in India since 5 August. She was “last photographed pulling suitcases across a military airbase” with her sister Sheikh Rehana before boarding a “military plane bound for Delhi”, said The Times.

Along with her former home minister and police chief, Hasina was convicted by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, a court established by her government to try war criminals in the 1971 fight for independence.

Why was she convicted?

Today’s decision was “widely welcomed in Bangladesh, with the courtroom erupting in cheers as the verdict was read”, said Bloomberg.

A report by the UN estimated that 1,400 people were killed in a three-week period of protests between 15 July and 5 August, with “thousands” injured. The “vast majority” were shot by Bangladesh’s security forces. “As many as 12-13%” of those killed were children.

Many people saw Hasina’s 15 years in power in her second term as a “reign of terror”, said The Guardian. Her tenure, as both the longest-serving prime minister (1996–2001 and 2009–2024) and also the longest-serving female leader in the world, was “marred by allegations of corruption, torture and enforced disappearances”.

Following the student protests over civil service job quotas in 2024, she led a “ruthless, state-led crackdown”. This was the “worst political violence in Bangladesh since its 1971 independence war”.

What happens now?

Today’s sentence is “likely to put pressure on the Indian government to extradite Hasina to Bangladesh”, said Bloomberg. There is an extradition agreement between New Delhi and Dhaka. Bangladesh’s interim government “formally requested her return” last year, though Indian officials didn’t respond.

The verdict could “set off a wave of political chaos” in the lead up to Bangladesh’s national elections, expected to take place in February, said CNN.

Hasina’s son and adviser, Sajeeb Wazed, warned that supporters of his mother might block February’s election and protests risk escalating into violence if the current ban on the Awami League is not lifted.

What happened

A Bangladesh Air Force fighter jet on a routine training mission experienced a mechanical failure and crashed into the Milestone School and College campus in the nation's capital city of Dhaka Monday. The crash, and the resulting blaze, killed at least 27 people, 25 of whom were children.

Some of the victims' bodies were charred "beyond recognition," The Associated Press said. One teacher rescued more than 20 students and later died from her injuries.

Who said what

The pilot made "every effort" to divert the plane to a "more sparsely inhabited location," the military said. This is the "deadliest plane crash in the Bangladeshi capital in recent memory," AP said. And it comes as neighboring India is "still grappling" with last month's Air India crash that killed 260 people and was the "world's worst aviation disaster in a decade," said Reuters. The losses from this accident are "irreparable," said Muhammad Yunus, the leader of Bangladesh's interim government.

What next?

The air force and the government vowed to investigate the crash. In the meantime, dozens of people remain hospitalized with burns, and worried family members are searching for their missing relatives. Today has been declared a national day of mourning.

Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq has resigned, after growing pressure about allegations of corruption linked to her aunt, the deposed prime minister of Bangladesh.

The Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, who, like Keir Starmer, was first elected in 2015, had referred herself to the prime minister's standards adviser, Laurie Magnus, and insisted she had done nothing wrong.

But, while Magnus did say he had "not identified evidence of improprieties", he concluded that it was "regrettable" that she was not "more alert to the potential reputational risks – both to her and the government – arising from her family's association with Bangladesh". In her subsequent resignation letter, Siddiq said continuing in her role was "likely to be a distraction" for the government.

What are the allegations?

Siddiq finds herself at the centre of controversy because of allegations about her family’s financial dealings in Bangladesh. She has been "named in an investigation into claims her family embezzled as much as £3.9 billion from infrastructure projects" in the country, said the BBC.

The investigations centre on Siddiq's aunt, Sheikh Hasina, the former Bangladeshi prime minister, who went into exile last year after being ousted from power in a student uprising.

Documents, seen by the BBC, show Siddiq has been accused of "helping to broker a deal with Russia in 2013" that significantly inflated the cost of a nuclear-power plant project in Bangladesh. Siddiq told Magnus her visit to Russia was "solely for the purpose of joining family and enjoying tourist access to the city".

Just ahead of her resignation, Saddiq was named in a second investigation in Bangladesh, said The Times, this time "over the alleged procurement of land for her family under her aunt's former regime".

The Labour MP had also come under scrutiny for her use of three London properties connected to members of her aunt's Awami League party. Siddiq had originally said one of the properties, in King's Cross, had been given to her by her parents but was "forced to correct the record when she became a minister" and declare that it was paid for by an associate of the Awami League, said The Times.

What was Siddiq's role in government?

Siddiq is not resigning as an MP but she has stepped down from her government job as economic secretary to the Treasury. Her ministerial responsibilities included tackling corruption in financial markets, and it was this element of her role which turbo-boosted the calls for her to step down.

Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch said it was "clear" that "the anti-corruption minister's position was completely untenable", said The Guardian. The UK Anti-Corruption Coalition, which includes such organisations as Oxfam, Transparency International and Spotlight on Corruption, said that Siddiq had "a serious conflict of interests" as they also called for her to a step aside from all aspects of her role dealing with economic crime, money-laundering or illegal finance.

What has Siddiq said?

Siddiq has repeatedly denied all the allegations, maintaining that she'd acted with "full transparency" and had no involvement in Bangladeshi politics.

What has Downing Street said?

Downing Street has consistently voiced support for Siddiq and said she acted appropriating in referring herself to the standards adviser. In what the BBC called a "warm" exchange of letters, Starmer said he accepted her resignation with sadness and "the door remains open to you going forward".

What next?

Siddiq's resignation marks the second high-profile departure of a senior woman from Starmer's government over ethics concerns. Last year, Louise Haigh stepped down as transport secretary after it emerged that, before she became an MP, she had been convicted of fraud for falsely reporting a mobile phone as stolen.

In the wake of Siddiq's exit, Labour MP Emma Reynolds has been named the new Economic Secretary to the Treasury. Reynolds, the MP for Wycombe, had previously been a parliamentary secretary at HM Treasury and the Department of Work and Pensions.

India has expressed "deep concern" over the arrest of a Hindu monk in Bangladesh and asked its neighbour to "ensure the safety of Hindus and all minorities".

In recent months, India has "repeatedly" raised fears about the safety of Hindus in Bangladesh, and now the arrest of Chinmoy Krishna Das has "triggered a fresh war of words" between the two nations, said BBC News.

Why was Das arrested?

Das was arrested on sedition charges and accused of "disrespecting Bangladesh’s national flag" at a rally, held in October to protest against mistreatment of Hindus in the country.

After a court in Chittagong denied him bail this week, police "used batons and tear gas to disperse" the large crowd of supporters surrounding the van taking Das back to prison. Bangladeshi officials said one man was killed in the clash, according to the BBC.

Das was previously a member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (also known as the Hare Krishna movement), and a legal petition to ban the group's activities was filed in the Bangladesh High Court this week, said India Today.

What's going on between India and Bangladesh?

Bangladesh and India have "traditionally shared a warm relationship", said the BBC, but relations have been "frosty" since former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina was "ousted from power in August", after student protests "spiralled" into nationwide unrest.

The new regime in Dhaka, headed by interim leader Muhammad Yunus, has an "implicit anti-India agenda", wrote Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit for India's The Sunday Guardian, and "unabated Hinduphobia" in Bangladesh is now at an "all-time high".

In Hindu districts, over 200 attacks occurred within 10 days of the Hasina government's fall, including "attacks against individuals" and "incidents of vandalism of businesses, properties, Hindu houses and, especially, temples".

Are Hindus really unsafe in Bangladesh?

Animosity towards Hindus in Bangladesh seems to have been going on for some time. In 2021, mob attacks during and after the Hindu festival of Durga Puja prompted human rights group Amnesty International to say that the Bangladesh state has, over the years, "failed in its duty to protect minorities".

The issue was raised in the House of Commons this week. Bob Blackman, MP for Harrow East, said that "Hindus across Bangladesh" are being subject "to death by their houses being burnt, by their temples being burnt", said The Times of India.

A cross-party group of MPs has also written to the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, warning him about the rise of "Islamist extremists" and "violence and turmoil" in Bangladesh, said The Independent.

There is an "urgent need", concluded the all-party parliamentary group for the Commonwealth, to "end the culture of using the law as a political weapon". Both human rights and the rule of law "need to be upheld".

Hindus are the largest minority in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, accounting for about 8% of the population. The government continues to deny that Hindus are unsafe in the country.

When we think about diplomacy we often picture handshakes and lavish receptions, but animals too have sometimes been involved in this crucial part of global relations.

Recently, some "fishy diplomacy" has caused "diplomatic tensions" and a "culinary crisis" between Bangladesh and India, said Al Jazeera.

Queen among fish

Hilsa, which is Bangladesh's national fish, is "cherished as the queen among fish", said the outlet. Central to the culinary identity of both Bangladesh and the bordering Indian state of West Bengal, it was once used by former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as a "tool of diplomacy" to "foster ties" with India.

But now the fish, also known as ilish, is at the heart of tensions between the two nations because Bangladesh's interim government briefly banned exports of the fish to India in September. The ban came ahead of the festival of Durga Puja, which honours Goddess Durga's triumph over the demon Mahishasura, when the fish is traditionally eaten with mustard sauce.

Some saw the ban as a reproach for New Delhi's backing of Hasina, who has taken refuge in India since her removal from office. But the Bangladesh authorities insisted that the ban was simply to reduce the cost of the freshwater fish domestically because of a leaner harvest this year.

"We cannot allow ilish to be exported while our own people cannot buy them," Farida Akhter, adviser to the Bangladesh Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, told the Dhaka Tribune.

But the plot thickened when the ban was reversed within two weeks and Bangladesh approved a 3,000-tonne shipment to India. The shipment was received with excitement: when 45 tonnes of the "prized white-fleshed fish" arrived in Calcutta, it drew hundreds of locals to the Howrah wholesale fish market, said Wion.

Sacred status

Whatever the reason for the brief ban, experts said it constituted "a firm departure" from Hasina's tradition of using the fish as a symbol of goodwill and friendship between Dhaka and New Delhi.

Hilsa holds "an almost sacred status" among Bengalis on both sides of the border, so its "scarcity will frustrate many", said the BBC. Although it is Bangladesh's national fish, it is "a luxury, affordable only for the rich and middle class", and "the poor can't buy it".

According to reports in Bangladeshi media, the export ban did nothing to address this – hilsa prices have surged in the local market despite the export ban. A 1.5kg hilsa was selling for around 1,800 taka (£11.50), 1.2kg for 1,600 taka, and one kg for 1,500 taka, but those prices are 150-200 taka higher than last year.

This is not the first time fish have been at the centre of diplomacy: Japan and Indonesia traded gifts of goldenfishes, multicoloured carp and tropical fish called Super Red Arowana in the 1960s and 1990s, said Nikkei Asia.

Bangladesh will have a new leader for the first time in over a decade, as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned on Monday, fleeing the country by helicopter. The head of the Bangladesh Army, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, confirmed the news and also announced that he was forming an interim government, to be led by Nobel Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, in what he described as a "critical time for our country."

Hasina's resignation comes following weeks of anti-government protests by students, sparked by anger over a newly implemented quota system for civil service jobs. Hasina had ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and was often described as an authoritarian. Her time in power was "marked by an economic rebirth but also by the mass arrest of political opponents and human rights sanctions against her security forces," said AFP. 

With the world's longest-serving female head of government now ousted, questions are swirling as to what this means for Bangladesh. Where does the country's interim leadership go from here, and will there be a shift away from the democratic backsliding seen during Hasina's rule?

What did the commentators say?

Hasina's political prowess and longevity "relied on tacit backing from the army and on increasing oppression," and "until last month it looked as if Sheikh Hasina's formula for maintaining power still worked," said The Economist. But once the throng of protests started, Hasina was "faced with the prospect of inflicting large-scale bloodshed in order to defend a decaying regime," and "concluded that her position was untenable." The question now becomes "whether, after a period of caretaker military rule, a credible democratic system can be rebuilt."

Complicating matters, "Hasina's position always relied on Bangladesh's military, which has historically meddled in politics" and until recently had been "staunch backers" of Hasina's political party the Awami League, said Charlie Campbell at Time. The military generals were "likely assessing the 'resilience capacity of the movement in the face of repression,'" Ali Riaz, a Bangladeshi-American political science professor at Illinois State University, said to Time. This means the "fall of Hasina is only the first step in what will no doubt be a bitter reconciliation process," as "with practically every government institution politicized by the Awami League, distrust of the security services, military, courts, and civil service runs deep across society."

Religious clashes could also hinder any democratic shift. There is a "feeling that India completely backed Sheikh Hasina's government. Protesters make no distinction between India and Hindu citizens of Bangladesh, which has already led to attacks on temples and people," Debapriya Bhattacharya, an economist at the Center for Policy Dialogue in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, said to the BBC. With Hasina ousted, there is a "power vacuum, there is nobody to implement law and order. The new government will need to protect religious minorities." 

What next? 

It's unclear what the future holds for Bangladesh. The army has "asked the president, who holds a ceremonial role, to form a new government," but Bangladesh's military "has a history of staging coups and counter-coups," said The New York Times. However, the military "has taken a less overt role in public affairs" in recent years. 

The president of Bangladesh did answer the army's request, along with pressure from the student protesters, and dissolved the country's parliament a day after Hasina's departure. This paves the way for new national elections in the country to be held in the near future. Bangladesh "had an imaginary election in the past. Now we need a real election," interim government leader Yunus, who was a common target of Hasina's ire, said to The Washington Post. 

And the military has been working to try and quell fears of continued oppression, though this could be easier said than done in a country that is "already dealing with a series of crises, from high unemployment and corruption to climate change," said The Associated Press. As Zaman works to form an interim government, the general "sought to reassure a jittery nation that order would be restored," adding that he had "ordered security forces not to fire on crowds" of protestors. Zaman also "met with opposition politicians and civil society leaders" to try and find the best path forward. 

What happened

Bangladesh's longtime prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, resigned and fled to India on Monday amid escalating student-led protests that her government had tried to crush with force, leaving hundreds dead. Army chief Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman said he was temporarily taking control of the country to restore order as protesters stormed and ransacked Hasina's official residence and other buildings tied to her family and party, including the museum honoring her father, the country's founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Who said what

"Keep faith in the military," Waker-uz-Zaman said in an address to the nation. "We will investigate all the killings and punish the responsible." He said Parliament would be dissolved and a national government formed as soon as possible, followed by new elections.

The protests, which began in opposition to a quota system that gave most civil service jobs to allies of Hasina, grew into a challenge to her increasingly authoritarian rule. "We are finally free of a dictatorial regime," constitutional lawyer and legal activist Shahdeen Malik said to The New York Times. "This civilian dictator was more dictatorial than previous military dictators."

What next?

After two decades in power, Hasina is unlikely to make another comeback, her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, said to the BBC, adding his mother was "so disappointed after all her hard work."

A "bizarre national crisis" has shaken Bangladesh, said Sharmeen Murshid in the Daily Star (Dhaka). It began when students staged protests demanding an end to an outdated quota system that requires 30% of civil service jobs to go to descendants of those who fought in the nation's 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. 

The protests, though peaceful, were met with a wave of police brutality that left around 200 people dead and thousands injured. That led to violence spreading across this nation of 174 million people, so a nationwide curfew was enforced, with soldiers ordered to shoot on sight. In a few days, the chaos abated, but how on earth did "legitimate" protests trigger such an appallingly disproportionate response? 

Entrenching power

The hated quota system was set up more than 50 years ago, by the then prime minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of the present PM, said Salil Tripathi in Foreign Policy (Washington). The idea was to reward veterans of that bloody war and their descendants – the people who formed the backbone of his own party, the Awami League (AL). But almost 50 years after Rahman was killed in the 1975 military coup, the system's effects are being felt by the 400,000 young graduates who each year compete for the 3,000 or so much-coveted civil service vacancies. 

The quota is widely seen as a way of entrenching the power of Rahman's daughter, Sheikh Hasina, who has been PM for the past 15 years. She's a compelling figure, said Mujib Mashal in The New York Times. A secular Muslim given to wearing colourful saris, she has fought Islamic militancy, lifted millions out of poverty and somehow managed to keep on good terms with both India and China. But her rule has been marred by voter fraud, corruption and, most of all, her unwavering tendency to reward AL supporters while seeking vengeance against heirs of the 1975 coup plotters.

'Calamitous' damage 

Her response to the protests was characteristically ruthless, said The Economist: she cut off the internet, and had some 61,000 people charged by the authorities. At least her government has now had the good sense to reduce the quota to 5%. But students' grievances are about more than the quota. 

Almost every job for educated Bangladeshis "runs through the AL", the student wing of which acts as a "murderous vigilante force" exercising sway over university life: it even controls the "distribution of scarce rooms for undergraduates". The AL and Hasina will "probably survive for now"; but the damage to her party, and to her own standing, could yet prove "calamitous" in the long term.

What happened

Bangladesh issued a nationwide high-security alert as clashes between students and police that have left at least 39 people dead intensify. Riot police opened fire on students with rubber bullets in the capital Dhaka on Thursday before retreating to the headquarters of state broadcaster BTV. Protesters then set fire to the building, with people trapped inside. 

Who said what

In a televised address on Wednesday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina condemned the "murder" of protesters after tensions boiled over earlier this week. But the "violence worsened on the streets despite her appeal for calm," said The Guardian. Students are demanding an end to a quota-based system of government job allocations that critics claim unfairly benefits Hasina's supporters. 

Mubashar Hasan, a Bangladesh expert at the University of Oslo, said the civil unrest has evolved into a "wider expression of discontent" with the "autocratic rule" of Hasina, who has been in power since 2009.

What next?

Hasina's government has "ordered schools and universities to close indefinitely as police step up efforts to bring a deteriorating law-and-order situation under control," said Agence France-Presse. Bangladesh's Supreme Court is expected to rule on the jobs quota system on Aug. 7.

Elections are "no guarantee of democracy", but "it's also true that democracy does not exist without elections".

So said Time magazine talking about 2024, a year dubbed "the Year of Democracy", when half the world's population are eligible to vote in elections across more than 60 countries. About 4.2 billion people representing 42% of the world's GDP have a chance to elect new leaders, according to estimates by Bloomberg Economics – "a busy lineup even in calmer political times". 

This year will "put democracy through its most sweeping test yet", said Politico. Countries are preparing for possible changes of government, "raucous" public protests and populist movements with "the potential to destabilize larger regions".

Why is it such an important year?

Taking part in this "multinational, multiparty democratic Super Bowl" are some of the most powerful and wealthiest states, said The Guardian, such as the US, UK, Mexico and the world's most populous country, India. 

Elections will also be held in "the most despotic" nations, such as Russia and Iran, and "the most stressed": Taiwan and Ukraine. 

"We will know whether democracy lives or dies by the end of 2024," warned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa in September.

What has happened so far?

The "Year of Democracy" got off to an inauspicious start, with Bangladesh's highly controversial national election yesterday. 

Sheikh Hasina Wazed won a fifth consecutive term as prime minister after her party, the Awami League, and its allies won 223 of 300 parliamentary seats. 

The run-up to the "low-turnout election" was marred by violence and "a widespread crackdown on the opposition", said The New York Times, including the "torching" of multiple polling stations. The vote was "largely a one-sided affair", as the main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), boycotted the election. 

In recent months, many senior opposition leaders have been arrested, along with thousands of their supporters. This represents a "violent autocratic crackdown" by the government, said Human Rights Watch, in one of the region's fastest-growing economies.

Hasina, 76, has called for stability by mentioning the country's history of violent coups, including the one that killed her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh's founding leader, in 1975. "We have struggled a lot for this voting right: jail, oppression, grenades, bombs," Hasina said after casting her vote. "This election will be free and fair." But she then called the BNP a "terrorist" organisation. 

"Democracy is dead in Bangladesh," a senior BNP leader told the BBC. The party has branded the results a sham.

Which elections are the ones to watch?

The US presidential election in November, likely a bitter rematch between incumbent Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump, will be the most closely watched, affecting the global geopolitical landscape for years to come. 

In India, the increasingly autocratic prime minister, Narendra Modi, will almost certainly clinch a third term in power this summer, but the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s Hindu nationalist agenda has skewed the structures of power in the party's favour. Nevertheless, "electoral democracy is still very strong", Pratap Bhanu Mehta, an academic and liberal commentator, told the Financial Times.

Elections in neighbouring Pakistan are already embroiled in controversy, as on Friday the Senate passed a resolution demanding a delay to the February vote. Pakistan's election body has rejected the nomination of former prime minister and national cricket captain Imran Khan, with Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party accusing authorities of stopping most of its candidates from participating. 

Indonesia also "faces questions over its democratic spirit" ahead of its election in February, said the FT. The hotly contested race "reflects how far the world's fourth most populous country has moved since the overthrow of the autocrat Suharto 25 years ago".

Mexico will hold an election in June, marking "a democratic milestone", said the paper, as the two main presidential candidates are women. But the outgoing president, left-wing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has been "chipping away at the independence of democratic institutions". 

The crucial presidential election in Taiwan on Saturday will have major implications for the island's fractious relationship with neighbouring China, amid growing fears of a possible invasion. China has described the vote as a choice between "war and peace", suggesting President Xi Jinping plans to further ramp up military pressure in the Taiwan Strait.

Europe is braced for a possible surge from the far-right and Eurosceptic groups in its parliamentary elections in June, after anti-Islam extremist Geert Wilders won in the Netherlands in November. 

And, in Africa, elections in Senegal, Ghana, South Sudan, Mali and Chad could "shape the trajectory of multilateral institutions across the continent", said Politico. In South Africa, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) could lose power for the first time in the country's post-apartheid history.

The novelist Tahmima Anam has described her native Bangladesh as a “beautiful, bruised” country. It certainly has its problems, including the devastating floods it experiences owing to its location on the Ganges Delta. But she is right about its beauty too, says Kate Eshelby in the FT. There’s the 120km-long beach of Cox’s Bazar, where you can walk for hours passing nothing but fishing boats “shaped like crescent moons”. And there are the floating markets of Barisal, and the “tiger-prowled” Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest on Earth. And yet, it sees few tourists, and some of its loveliest areas lack for hotels. That’s why Royal Bengal Tours has started offering “home-stay” itineraries, so that visitors can explore more widely while also getting a sense of daily life in the country.

Bangladesh is roughly the size of England and Wales, but home to 170 million people, making it one of the world’s most densely populated countries. Its flat, fertile floodplains are largely given over to rice cultivation, but fragments of subtropical forest survive in the hilly northeast. In Lawachara National Park, you can stay in the village of Lawachara Punji, a 20-minute walk through the jungle. Your host, Papia Sultana, lives in a mud-walled house with handmade wooden beds, and cooks “delicious” meals such as butter catfish with local wild vegetables. There’s wonderful wildlife to see, including western hoolock gibbons and capped langurs. And there’s much else to do around the nearby town of Srimangal, including cycling tours of local tea plantations and birdwatching in the wetlands of Hail Haor.

The northwest has a particularly “rich” architectural heritage. In Puthia, there’s a marvellous complex of Hindu temples built between the 17th and 19th centuries, and nearby is Paharpur, a seventh century Buddhist monastery city that is simply magnificent.

A week-long trip costs from £1,200pp, excluding flights (royalbengaltours.com).

The UK has suggested it is open to paying climate change reparations to developing countries by backing talks on the subject at the Cop27 summit that kicks off in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt today.

The idea of “loss and damage” compensation – otherwise known as climate reparations – has been under debate since UN-backed climate talks first began in the early 1990s.

Axios said the issue “is rooted in the disparate impacts of climate change around the world, with a relatively small group of countries – roughly the G20 nations – responsible for most of the warming-related impacts we’re experiencing today”.

By contrast it is predominantly countries in the developing world, particularly in Africa, South Asia and small island nations in the Pacific, that are most vulnerable to climate disasters, despite having played little part in causing them.

What have the papers said?

The last-minute agreement to include talks on “loss and damage” payments at Cop27 “might sound like the most dry processology you might ever have to read but actually history has been made today, before the event has even started”, wrote Allegra Stratton for Bloomberg.

With the cost of loss and damage for developing countries estimated to reach a possible $1trn by 2040, “who foots the bill is a question the rich economies responsible for the bulk of past emissions, and for current global warming, have been resolutely avoiding for years”, said Al Jazeera.

But opinion in those rich economies “has softened in recent years as catastrophic events such as the floods in Pakistan have focused global attention, and tension over the issue threatens to derail coordinated climate action”, said The Telegraph.

Unprecedented flooding last month left vast swathes of Pakistan submerged, causing more than 1,700 deaths and driving some 33 million people from their homes.

“The disaster puts Pakistan at the forefront of evolving thinking in the international community about how to pay for countries’ adaptation to the ravages of global warming – and who should pick up the bill,” said the Financial Times.

Bangladesh, another of the countries leading calls for loss and damage payments, could see a third of its agriculture lost and its GDP fall 9% by 2050 due to climate change impacts, a new World Bank report has found.

This is why loss and damage financing was a “top priority” in the run-up to the Cop summit, said Sohanur Rahman, executive co-ordinator for YouthNet for Climate Justice in The Business Standard.

“We are not asking for charity or debt from developed countries, but rather reparations for their historical legacy in the climate crisis,” he argued.

What next?

Progress on climate reparations is likely to dominate this year’s summit and ultimately be the barometer by which it will be judged a success or a failure.

Industrialised nations remain “skittish about committing to a specific way of paying for it”, said Axios, a stance that “will come under pressure in Sharm el-Sheikh, as developing countries seek specific funding arrangements given how quickly climate disasters are ratcheting up in scope, severity and frequency”.

For their part, developed countries, including the UK, “have long pushed back on agreeing to the principle that they should pay for the impacts of climate change, fearing a cascade of reparation demands that will play out badly in domestic politics”, said The Telegraph.

The paper set out the dilemma facing many leaders amid a cost-of-living crisis by arguing that Rishi Sunak, who was due to address the summit later today, will “come under pressure in Egypt to agree to a costly deal on reparations at the same time as he draws up plans for sweeping domestic tax rises and spending cuts”.

Appearing on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the shadow climate and net zero secretary Ed Miliband insisted it was “morally right” to hand money to poorer nations that are “on the frontline of the climate crisis” and that it would also be in Britain’s “self-interest” to boost aid to developing countries.

Yet using taxpayers’ money to compensate poorer countries affected by climate change at a time when domestic spending is being cut will be a hard sell. As MailOnline noted, Pakistan’s receipt of foreign aid from Britain has “often been criticised due to the Asian country’s development of a space programme and nuclear weapons”.

ICC Cricket World Cup

• West Indies: 321-8 (50 overs)
• Bangladesh: 322-3 (41.3 overs)
• Bangladesh won by seven wickets

Bangladesh may not have been the bookies’ favourites before the Cricket World Cup started, but they laid down a marker of intent as they nonchalantly chased an imposing target of 322 against the West Indies in Taunton.

Shakib al Hasan smashed an unbeaten 124 as his side eased to victory with seven wickets and 8.3 overs still left in the tank.

“This was a record-breaking performance, Bangladesh’s highest successful run chase in ODI cricket and the second highest – after Ireland’s triumphant pursuit against England in Bangalore – in World Cup history,” says The Guardian.

“For West Indies it was heartbreaking. Their early defeat of Pakistan raised hopes of a revival in this form of the game but since then they have been frail in body and mind.”

Shakib is now the tournament’s leading run-score, ahead of the likes of Steve Smith, Joe Root and Virat Kohli. But Shakib “hasn’t just contributed with the bat”, says Forbes writer Steve Busfield.

“He’s also bowled almost the maximum allowed and taken five wickets,” Busfield reports. “None of this should be too much of a surprise really: he has the career stats of a long-term world class all-rounder, with a batting average higher than his bowling average in all formats of the international game.

“His career has probably been a badly-kept secret in the host nation due to the rarity of Bangladesh’s invitations to English shores.”

Busfield says that while a place in the semi-finals may be beyond them, Bangladesh are in the running to be “best of the rest”.

Total massacre

As for the West Indies, their performance in the field was dire. Former star Curtly Ambrose told the BBC: “They came out and bowled absolute rubbish and the Bangladesh batsmen capitalised and won this game handsomely. It was a total massacre.”

Their World Cup now looks to be over, with just three points from their first five games. With New Zealand and India next on the horizon the Windies’s chances of a top-four spot appear to be gone.

“They looked stunned after a chastening defeat,” says the BBC.

Hit wicket or not?

There was a “bizarre” incident during the West Indies’s innings against Bangladesh, when tailender Oshane Thomas knocked the bails off his wicket but was adjudged not out after an umpire review, Yahoo reports.

The batsman broke the stumps as he sauntered back to his crease after missing the ball. But the ICC law states that a batsman is only out if he hits his wicket “in preparing to receive or in receiving a delivery, or in setting off for his first run, immediately after playing or playing at the ball”.

In this case the umpires adjudged he had finished his shot by the time the bails came off.

ICC Cricket World Cup fixtures

All matches are live on Sky Sports:

• Tuesday 18 June: England vs. Afghanistan (10.30am)
• Wednesday 19 June: New Zealand vs. South Africa (10.30am)
• Thursday 20 June: Australia vs. Bangladesh (10.30am)
• Friday 21 June: England vs. Sri Lanka (10.30am)
• Saturday 22 June: India vs. Afghanistan (10.30am)
• Sunday 23 June: Pakistan vs. South Africa (10.30am)
• Monday 24 June: Bangladesh vs. Afghanistan (10.30am)
• Tuesday 25 June: England vs. Australia (10.30am)
• Wednesday 26 June: New Zealand vs. Pakistan (10.30am)
• Thursday 27 June: West Indies vs. India (10.30am)
• Friday 28 June: Sri Lanka vs. South Africa (10.30am)
• Saturday 29 June: Pakistan vs. Afghanistan (10.30am); New Zealand vs. Australia (1.30pm)
• Sunday 30 June: England vs. India (10.30am)
• See the full fixture list at cricketworldcup.com

A woman in Bangladesh has astonished doctors by giving birth to twins just one month after delivering her first child.

Last month, 20-year-old Arifa Sultana gave birth to a premature baby boy at a rural hospital.

Twenty-six days later, she began experiencing stomach pains and visited a second hospital for an ultrasound scan.

There, doctors realised that Sultana not only had a second uterus, but had also unknowingly been carrying twins in it.

The twins, a boy and girl, were born via an emergency caesarean section without complications just 26 days after Sultana gave birth to her son.

Dr Sheila Poddar, the gynaecologist who performed the caesarean, told the BBC that as Sultana and her husband were very poor and lived in a rural village, she had never had an ultrasound before her first birth - which is how she was unaware of her second uterus or the babies inside it.

“The babies and her are all healthy. I am very, very happy that everything went well,” Poddar said.

The condition is known as uterus didelphys, and those affected may experience no symptoms, although common conditions associated with didelphys include stomach pain and abnormal activity of the kidneys and bladder. There is also a higher risk of late miscarriage and premature delivery, and doctors often recommend caesareans to avoid risks during childbirth associated with the condition.

Didelphys is not uncommon – in fact, it affects one in 3,000 women. However, the odds of carrying a baby in both wombs simultaneously are one in five million.

“[It's likely that] three eggs were fertilised at the same time during her fertile period which resulted in three embryos,” said Singapore-based gynaecologist Dr Christopher Ng.

“I don't know how we will manage such a huge responsibility with this little amount,” Sultana, whose husband earns less than £53 a month as a labourer, told the AFP news agency.

However, she added that she is happy with her three children and that all of them are healthy.

Bangladesh has said that it will no longer take in Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar until some of the existing refugee population can be persuaded to return.

Addressing the United Nations Security Council yesterday, Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque stressed the “the socio-economic and environmental impacts Bangladesh is facing for sheltering the displaced Rohingyas”, reports Dhaka-based newspaper The Daily Star.

More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have sought refuge in Bangladesh since August 2017, when the Burmese military launched a crackdown on the Muslim minority in Rakhine state.

The operations are officially aimed at insurgent groups in the region, but reports of indiscriminate violence against civilians - including murder, rape and the burning of Rohingya villages - have been rife.

Last year, estimates of 10,000 civilian deaths were described as “conservative” by the chair of the UN’s Independent International Fact‑Finding Mission on Myanmar, Marzuki Darusman, who called the situation a genocide.

In October, the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed a deal to begin repatriation of willing Rohingya refugees to Rakhine, despite a UN warning that conditions in the province were not yet safe.

Bangladesh had initially welcomed the refugees, but “a year on, their presence has become a politically contentious issue”, with “increasing pressure on [prime minister Sheikh] Hasina to start their repatriation as soon as possible”, The Guardian reported when the deal was announced.

But yesterday Haque said that almost no progress had been made, and questioned the sincerity of Myanmar’s commitment to reintegrating the Rohingya population. Haque accused Burmese officials of “hollow promises and various obstructionist approaches”.

“The Rohingya say they want guarantees over their safety and to be recognised as citizens before returning,” Reuters reports.

Haque told fellow council members that Myanmar’s ambivalence on these issues was reflected in the glacial pace of the repatriation project.

“Not a single Rohingya has volunteered to return to Rakhine due to the absence of conducive environment there,” he said.

“We don’t want anything except a safe, dignified, voluntary and sustainable return of the Rohingyas to Myanmar. We expect the Security Council’s supervision to solve the crisis.”

Western nations on the 15-member council are pointing the finger of blame squarely at the Burmese government, and have repeated calls for UN officials to be granted full access to Rakhine in order to better assess the situation on the ground.

The UK’s ambassador to the UN, Karen Pierce, said the UK was “very disappointed” at the lack of progress, adding: “And that obviously includes creating the conditions where the refugees feel able to go back.”

“The scale of what has been done to the Rohingya Muslims and the allegations of crimes against humanity really mark this out as one of the most terrible events of this century so far,” Pierce said.

Meanwhile, China, an ally of Myanmar, refused to pass judgement on what it described as an issue between neighbours. “It is up to the two countries to work out a solution,” said Chinese Deputy Ambassador Wu Haitao.

A man suspected of attempting to hijack a passenger plane flying from Bangladesh to Dubai has been shot dead by Bangladeshi special forces.

The suspect - described by officials as a 25-year-old Bangladeshi national - “took at least two members of the crew hostage using a toy gun” shortly after Bangladesh Airlines Flight BG 147 took off from capital Dhaka on Sunday evening, CNN reports.

“He tried to create a panic among the cabin crew and claimed that he wanted to enter the cockpit,” Tanbir Ahmed, spokesperson for the Bangladeshi Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism, told the news network.

According to Sky News, the suspect told the pilot that he had “a personal issue” with his wife and demanded to speak to the country’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Security forces stormed the Boeing 737 after it landed at the Shah Amanat International Airport in the southeastern city of Chittagong for a scheduled stopover.

All 148 passengers and crew on board the plane were safely evacuated before the commandos moved in.

“We tried to arrest [the suspect] or get him to surrender but he refused and then we shot him,” Major General S.M. Motiur Rahman of the Bangladesh Army told reporters.

The suspect died on the way to hospital.

The name on his flight ticket was Mazikul Islam, but police “believe he has several identities and are trying to confirm his real name”, says CNN.

Air Vice Marshal Hassan said he appeared to be “mentally imbalanced”.

An investigation is to be launched into how the suspected hijacker managed to smuggle “even a fake gun” past security at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, reports Indian news site NDTV.

At least 78 people have been killed in a fire that tore through apartments also being used to store flammable chemicals in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, according to officials.

The blaze began at around 10:30pm local time on Wednesday in Chawkbazar, described by CNN as a historic district “with sprawling narrow streets and densely-packed buildings”.

The fire is believed to have started when a fuel cylinder stored in a car exploded. Flames then quickly spread to a nearby restaurant and five buildings, police said.

A traffic jam in the street outside the buildings blocked many exits, trapping people inside.

The apartments are believed to have contained storage units filled with “chemicals, body sprays and plastic granules”, which further fuelled the flames, The Guardian reports.

Firefighters battled through the night to control the blaze.

This morning Bangladesh’s fire service chief Ali Ahmed said the fire had been extinguished, but warned that the death toll was likely to rise.

“The number of bodies may increase,” he said. “The search is still going on.”

The BBC reports that large building fires “are relatively common” in the densely populated cities of Bangladesh, “owing to lax safety regulations and poor conditions”.

Bangladesh-based website BDNews24 says that this week’s tragedy should serve as “another wake-up call” for the authorities, who have faced calls to remove chemical warehouses from Old Dhaka since a massive fire in the Nimtali district in 2010 claimed more than 100 lives.

Two years ago, Dhaka South City Corporation Mayor Mohammad Sayeed Khokon vowed the chemicals warehouses would be relocated from Old Dhaka, “but there has been little visible progress on the matter”, the site adds.

India has effectively stripped four million people of their citizenship after authorities in the northeastern state of Assam declared predominantly Muslim residents of Bangladeshi origin to be foreigners.

Assam’s newly published National Register of Citizens listed people deemed to have entered the country illegally after 1971, when millions fled Bangladesh's war of independence from Pakistan.

The brutal military crackdown led to tens of thousands of refugees fleeing across the border to India. Over the years, “this resulted in a demographic change in tea and oil-rich Assam, with many of its 32 districts becoming Muslim-majority areas”, The Daily Telegraph reports.

This has led to “longstanding social and communal tensions” in the state, says The Guardian. Locals accuse the refugees of taking their jobs and cornering resources, leading to growing resentment between Hindus and Muslims.

The publication of the register, which raises the prospect that millions could be sent to detention centres or deported to a country they have never been to, has been labelled a political ploy by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to target Muslims hostile to his BJP nationalist party ahead of elections next year.

Those who cannot prove that they came to Assam before 24 March 1971, the day before Bangladesh declared independence, will be deleted from electoral rolls and expelled.

In a bid to quell growing unrest, state officials insisted no-one would face immediate deportation to Bangladesh and that anyone deemed a foreigner had the right to appeal, even as authorities placed the Indian Army on standby and deployed more than 40,000 state police and paramilitary personnel across the state.

“The latest move to make millions of people stateless overnight has sparked fears of violence in what is already a tinderbox state” says the BBC’s Soutik Biswas.

The question now is whether Modi will follow through with deportations.

“Chances are India will end up creating the newest cohort of stateless people,” says Biswas, “raising the spectre of a homegrown crisis that will echo the Rohingya people who fled Myanmar for Bangladesh.”

US investigators are piecing together a biography of suspected New York attacker Akayed Ullah, digging into his former life in Bangladesh and his more recent years as a limousine driver and electrician in Brooklyn.

The 27-year-old immigrant is suspected of trying to blow himself up at New York’s main bus terminal “in retaliation for US attacks on so-called Islamic State”, says the BBC. But investigators will want to know what led to the bombing, and who - if anyone - might have assisted the suspect.

Ullah relocated to the US from Chittagong, a coastal city in southeast Bangladesh, in 2011, CBS News reports, along with his parents and siblings, entering on an immigrant visa. Just over a year later, he obtained a livery licence, permitting him to drive for-hire vehicles, although this lapsed in March 2015. He is then believed to have begun working at a relative’s electrical company, says The Sun.

Ullah is believed to have travelled to Bangladesh in September, returning a month later, CBS says. Before that, he reportedly visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

While UAE nationals have been linked to terrorist attacks including 9/11, Bangladesh is “often overlooked by analysts”, says The Guardian, even though the poverty-stricken Muslim-majority nation has experienced “an acute intensification of jihadist activity in recent years”.

In July 2016, at least 20 people - mostly non-Muslim foreigners from Italy and the US - were hacked to death in a bakery in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka. Isis claimed responsibility, although the government blamed Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, a Bangladeshi Islamic group, Foreign Affairs reports.

Dhaka insisted, controversially, that Isis had no presence in Bangladesh, The Diplomat says, although images released on the internet showed the attackers – all men in their 20s – posing with the Islamic State black flag.

Several other terrorist attacks preceeded and followed the bakery massacre. In early 2017, there were three botched suicide bombings in and around Dhaka, following which army commandos killed four suspects after a prolonged battle, the BBC says. Seven to eight people were later found blown up in neighbouring Moulvibazar.

Although Bangladesh condemned yesterday’s New York attack, the source of Dhaka’s problem is not just the threat of terrorism, says Forbes. The problem has also been a government living in a state of denial.

Myanmar and Bangladesh have agreed terms to allow hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees to return home to Myanmar, despite continued abuses and obstruction by the military there.

While the details of the agreement have yet to be finalised, Bangladesh’s foreign affairs minister said the return should start within two months.

However, Reuters said there was “little enthusiasm for the deal among Rohingya refugees” unless they are granted citizenship in Myanmar as part of a wider deal to return their land.

Myanmar has come under intense international pressure to bring the refugees home after more than 600,000 Sunni Muslim Rohingya fled across the border to escape massacres by the military during a Muslim insurgency.

On Wednesday, the US said the military operation that drove the Rohingya into mainly-Muslim neighbouring Bangladesh amounted to “ethnic cleansing”, echoing an accusation first levelled by the UN in the early days of the crisis.

However, “the persecution of the stateless minority has not yet officially been classed as a genocide or crime against humanity”, says Sky News.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said those who perpetrated the atrocities “must be held accountable” and he was considering “targeted sanctions” against individuals, but not broader sanctions against the country.

Not safe to return?

While hailing Thursday’s tentative agreement as a positive step, aid agencies raised concerns about the safety of the Rohingya if they are forcibly returned.

Rights groups have accused the army of carrying out mass rape and other atrocities during a counter-insurgency operation launched in late August in retaliation for attacks by Rohingya militants in Rakhine State. Reuters says many now fear the military “could prove obstructive” should hundreds of thousands of refugees choose to return.

Myanmar is nominally ruled by a civilian government headed by Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, but the military that ruled for two decades still has considerable power.

Its hostility to hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees returning to Myanmar appears to have been bolstered by support from some in the international community. Russia’s ambassador criticised the US use of the term “ethnic cleansing” and China has signalled it wants stronger ties with Myanmar’s military.

Li Zuocheng, who sits on China’s Central Military Commission, called for greater contact between the two armed forces as well as deeper training and technical exchanges aimed at promoting border defence cooperation.

Eye Witness News says China has been “angered by fighting between Myanmar’s military and autonomy-seeking ethnic minority rebels close to the Chinese border in recent years, which has at times forced thousands of villagers to flee into China”.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, has been overwhelmed by the scale of the humanitarian crisis and wants to ensure its overstretched refugee camps along the border do not become permanent homes for more than half a million people.

A catastrophe is unfolding in South Asia where the monsoon season has brought floods, landslides and more than 1,200 deaths in India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

While Hurricane Harvey in Texas has inspired 24-hour news coverage, there have been few reports of the heavier-than-normal rain that is affecting at least 41 million people in South Asia, according to UN estimates.

"In Nepal, thousands of homes have been destroyed and dozens of people swept away," says the New York Times. "Elephants were pressed into service, wading through swirling waters to rescue people, and aid workers have built rafts from bamboo and banana leaves."

Asked how the situation in Nepal compared with that in Houston, Francis Markus, a Red Cross and Red Crescent spokesman, said: "We hope people won't overlook the desperate needs of the people here because of the disasters closer home."

In India, heavy rain has caused damage across Assam, Odisha and West Bengal, but the worst-affected state is Bihar where "the overall flood toll in the state stood at 514 on Tuesday", the Times of India reports.

About a third of Bangladesh is under water in the worst flooding in 40 years, according to the Red Cross. At least 140 people have died there, 700,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed and the World Food Programme is feeding more than 200,000 people.

Jono Anzalone, the vice president of international services at the American Red Cross, told National Public Radio that Bangladesh's shelter and rescue teams cannot be compared to those in Texas: "For better or for worse, when people look at the US response system, we have a very mature federal disaster response system...

"You don't see that in Nepal, Bangladesh or India. In Nepal and Bangladesh, the government simply doesn't have the resources."

After winning the first Test against Bangladesh by the skin of their teeth, England have been faced with a selection quandary ahead of the second match in Dhaka, which is also the final game they play before the tougher assignment of a Test series against India, the world's number one team.

With that in mind, England have handed a debut to Surrey's left-arm spinner Zafar Ansari, who comes into the side in place of off-spinner Gareth Batty.

"With a double first in politics and sociology from Cambridge, Ansari's academic credentials are not in doubt. Uncertainty as to whether his spin bowling is up to speed is the main reason why England have made this... change for the second Test that begins tomorrow on a pitch that, while greyer and firmer than Chittagong, is dry and cracked and likely to provide assistance to the spinners again," says Michael Atherton in The Times.

"Better to find out now, rather than later in the winter," he adds. "There is little desire to land in India with bowlers who have yet to play meaningful long-form cricket."

England will hope that Ansari takes to Test cricket, given the exacting task ahead of them this winter.

"England got away with playing two off-spinners – Batty and Moeen Ali – in the first Test against Bangladesh, who had four left-handed batsmen in their top order," says Scyld Berry in the Daily Telegraph. "But this tactic will not work against India, whose current top seven consists entirely of right-handers."

"Ansari's immediate responsibility over this weekend will be to bowl more accurately and economically than England's three spinners did in Chittagong," he adds. Although the pitch was "as close to paradise as a spinner could want" all three went for more than three an over.

How Ansari fares in comparison to Adil Rashid will also be intriguing, says Atherton of the Times, and will give England a "clear idea of the relative merits of both men in similar conditions".

It is also a debut that is long overdue. The 24-year-old was called up for the Test series against Pakistan in the UAE last year, but on the day his selection was announced he fractured his thumb and did not return to action until midway through the summer.

Whether he prospers remains to be seen, but England sorely need an expert spinner. For while they excel in most areas, Berry of the Telegraph notes that "the standard of English spin bowling is now lower – appreciably lower – than it was a hundred years ago".

Bangladesh levelled the one day series with England on Sunday but the match was marred by an ugly confrontation between Jos Buttler and some of the home side.

The tourists had won the first of the three-match rubber on Friday and Bangladesh were clearly fired up as they strode out to bat first in a 50-over contest they had to win to keep the series alive. But they managed to post only a modest 238 for eight in their innings, with Chris Woakes the pick of the England bowlers taking 2 wickets for 40 runs in his nine overs. Only Mohammad Mahmudullah of the Bangladesh batsmen made a significant score, compiling a patient 75 in two and a quarter hours.

England, however, failed to cope with the gloomy conditions in Dhaka, slumping to 26 for four and then 120 for six as Bangladeshi seamers Mashrafe Mortaza and Taskin Ahmed ripped through their top order.

Buttler stood firm but when the England captain was trapped by Taskin on 57 Bangladesh knew victory was all but theirs. Their celebrations turned to taunting, which provoked a sharp reaction from Buttler, who had to be restrained by umpire Aleem Dar from confronting his opponents.

The animosity lingered after Bangladesh had clinched victory by 34 runs with accusations that Tamim Iqbal had shoulder-barged some of the England players during handshakes. Ben Stokes exchanged strong words with Iqbal at one moment and the England all-rounder subsequently tweeted: "Congrats to Bangladesh on the win tonight, outplayed us. What I won't stand for is someone putting a shoulder to my team-mate at handshakes."

Buttler also voiced his concerns at the behaviour of the opposition, telling journalists. "I was just disappointed in the way they celebrated. Rightly they are happy to get a wicket but there is no need to run in someone's face and give me a send-off. But feelings were running high."Bangladesh captain Mortaza, who took the man-of-the-match award for his bowling figures of 4-29, admitted that some of the scenes had been unsightly. "Sometimes, a lot of things happen in the heat of the moment," he said. "But players from both sides should control themselves."According to the Daily Mail Buttler and Stokes "could face disciplinary action from referee Javagal Srinath", while the official is also likely to examine the conduct of several Bangladesh players ahead of Wednesday's deciding match in Chittagong.

A YOUNG woman has been found alive in the wreckage of the Dhaka garment factory which collapsed in Bangladesh 17 days ago. Rescuers had given up hope of finding survivors and were removing decomposing bodies from the site when they discovered the woman, named Reshma, this morning.

There were jubilant scenes when the incredible discovery was made, with rescuers ordering the cranes and bulldozers to stop work immediately. Reshma was spotted waving her hand and shouting "I'm still here". She had been trapped in the building's basement, the BBC reports.

"As we were clearing rubble, we called out [to see] if anyone was alive," one unnamed rescuer said. "Then we heard her saying: 'Please save me, please save me!'"

Workers shouted "praise Allah" during the 45 minutes they spent freeing her. Reshma, who is thought to be in her late teens, did not have any “significant" injuries despite the ordeal. She smiled as she was given food and water by rescuers before being taken by ambulance to a military hospital.

It is believed Reshma may have survived for such a long time because of the large amounts of oxygen and water rescuers pumped into the wreckage of the factory during the initial efforts to free trapped workers. Bangladesh's prime minister Sheikh Hasina had already visited Reshma in hospital, ITV News reports.

More than 1,000 people were killed after the eight-storey Rana Plaza building collapsed last month in Bangladesh's worst ever industrial accident.

There were reports that garment workers at the Rana Plaza building were threatened with 'beating sticks' to make them enter the factory before its collapse. Bangladesh has one of the largest clothing industries in the world, employing around 3.6 million people. Some earn as little as $38 a month.