Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has criticised opposition's ongoing agitation to thwart the January 5 polls and warned that Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Khaleda Zia would be held responsible for the deaths and violence.
Noting that the Indo-Pak ties "remain tense", the US intelligence chief said India's engagement with Pakistan hinges on Islamabad's willingness to act against those responsible for the Pathankot terror attack.
Zia and 27 leaders and officials of her BNP have been accused of instigating the firebombing in Dhaka as part of a deadly campaign against the government.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday warned Bangladeshis against attacking the minority Hindu community, saying such assaults could have repercussions in neighbouring India.
Seven top leaders of Bangladesh's main opposition party Bangladesh Nationalist Party were arrested today during raids, prompting it to extend a 48-hour nationwide strike by one more day, defying premier Sheikh Hasina's appeal to shun violence.
'Hamas is going to be prepared. There will be booby traps and tunnels; it's going to be door to door fighting.'
Bangladesh on Tuesday pressed anti-terrorism charges against several suspects and identified the fifth assailant in the country's worst terror attack as authorities intensified efforts to unravel the plot behind the brazen assault in which 22 people were slaughtered by Islamists.
Carlile was to hold a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday.
The earlier attempt by the authorities in Dhaka that Islamist militancy had not established a presence in Bangladesh will now have to be given up.
Bangladesh's violence-plagued general elections, being boycotted by opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance, on Sunday witnessed low turn out in initial hours amid heavy security, as voters preferred to stay inside home fearing violence that has left six persons dead in last 12 hours.
Barely days after imposing a 40 per cent export tax on onions to cool down soaring prices, which, in turn, triggered widespread protests across the main growing belts, the Centre on Tuesday sought to mitigate both political and economic tensions gripping parts of Maharashtra. It decided to procure an additional 200,000 tonnes of onions at Rs 2,410 per quintal for its buffer stock from farmers, a rate that is strikingly close to the price at which they were being exported before the 40 per cent duty was levied on August 19. The export price before the imposition of the duty stood at around $320 per tonne free on board (approximately Rs 2,650 per quintal).
Pawar said Nitish took the decision anticipating the crisis the BJP was planning to bring on.
India is one of the few countries in the region that enjoys good relations with both Israel and Saudi Arabia, and IMEC would allow it to recreate the old Spice Route to Europe. All this is in jeopardy now, notes Rajeev Srinivasan.
If the Berlin wall can be demolished then why not India, Pakistan and Bangladesh can come together, asks
'We should see to it that not even one woman gets radicalised.' 'We should not let even one young man become a jihadi.'
The going has not been too smooth for the United Liberation Front of Asom, the violent separatist outfit that has, for decades, unleashed a reign of terror and mayhem in the north-eastern state.
Amartyada, says Omkar Goswami, thank you for being the humane, caring and socially concerned economist that you are.
Every patriot should learn from our history and recognise that celebrating size will neither negate nor obscure the huge economic challenges that India faces, asserts Rathin Roy.
The Bangladesh government on Sunday claimed the attackers who slaughtered 20 hostages inside a cafe in Dhaka in the country's worst terror attack were members of "homegrown" Islamist terrorist outfits and not Islamic State of Syria and Iraq militants.
'If a bloodbath of this nature can occur in a high security area like Gulshan, I shudder to think how vulnerable other parts of this country are.'
A Bangladeshi court on Wednesday upheld the arrest warrants issued against former PM Khaleda Zia in two graft cases.
The Sheikh Hasina-Narendra Modi summit put India-Bangladesh ties on a firmer pitch. Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd) takes stock.
The North East is a sizeable success story for the Modi government politically and for the BJP electorally. It will be an unpleasant surprise if they choose to blow it, bowing to their basic, polarising instinct at any point, points out Shekhar Gupta.
'When we have a terrorist outfit in a neighbouring nation, we need to do whatever we can to neutralise that threat,' says Ramananda Sengupta.
An "all-party" interim government headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was installed in Bangladesh on Monday to oversee the upcoming general elections despite boycott by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party which termed the move as "farce", heightening tension in the country.
Not many people in Bangladesh are talking about the Teesta issue.
The annual Reporters Without Borders analysis attributed the decline in index to "pressure on the media to toe the Hindu nationalist government's line."
The United Progressive Alliance government's efforts to extend a friendly hand to the Sheikh Hasina government in neighbouring Dhaka were thwarted by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee whose party joined hands with the Adom Gana Parishad in the Rajya Sabha on Monday, ensuring that the Constitution Amendment Bill ratifying the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh could not be introduced.
India and Indians can ignore Pakistan, but that cannot be said of other nations in the neighbourhood, where New Delhi's 'Neighbourhood First' policy constantly reverberates. Four of the eight SAARC member-nations are Muslim -- Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. The rulers decide the nation's India or anti-India policy in the first two, and street-opinion contributes to the same in the latter two, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Pawar asked Modi why he was daring Opposition leaders to bring back Article 370 of the Constitution after it was nullified by Parliament in August.
A T M Azharul Islam, a top leader of fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party, was sentenced to death on Tuesday by a Bangladeshi special court for committing war crimes during the country's independence war against Pakistan.
It is for the investigating agencies to probe all aspects of the assassination, including a possible Chinese hand, or if the killer was just a disgruntled element who acted on his own and wanted to earn some dark space in history like Nathuram Godse or Lee Harvey Oswald, notes Japan expert Rajaram Panda.
'We may think that in our border quarrel, the Chinese can give up a bit of territory here or there to satisfy us, but that's not how they see it.' 'Arunachal Pradesh is 90,000 square kilometres and twice the size of Taiwan.' 'The Chinese can't be seen to be asserting their rights to Taiwan and on the other hand, cheaply giving up Arunachal Pradesh.'
Azad, who recently announced that he would float his own political outfit was present in solidarity with the anti-CAA protesters. He led his supporters during the protest at the historic mosque. Tens of hundreds of people turned up in Jama Masjid area of Old Delhi on Friday in a major protest against the CAA and raised slogans denouncing the newly-enacted law.
The contentious bill will be tables in RS on Wednesday. The BJP hopes to get up to 130 votes in a 240-member upper house.
American analysts and their camp followers in India are talking absolute rubbish when they try to establish that India is facing a Hobson's choice in regard of Donbass, called upon to take sides between Russia and the West, asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Bangladesh's main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party's three top women leaders were arrested on the second day of the 'democracy march' on Monday, as clashes erupted inside the supreme court premises between pro- and anti-government lawyers.
Two days after MNS chief Raj Thackeray declared his support to the Modi government over eviction of Bangladeshi and Pakistani infiltrators, the Shiv Sena said in its mouthpiece that Muslim infiltrators from these countries should be thrown out. It also took a dig at Raj over his ideological shift towards Hindutva.
Asked about the clash between Chinese and Indian soldiers at Galwan Valley in Ladakh last month, Pawar said, "When I say there should be no politics over the issue, it is because we can attack them. But the entire country will have to pay a heavy price when there is retaliation to the attack."
India will be donning their first ever 'away kit' for Sunday's match against England.
