For the first time, Hindu widows in Bangladesh will have the rights to both agricultural and non-agricultural lands that belonged to their husbands after a top court ruled in their favour, according to a media report. The Bangladesh high court ruled that no separation has been made between the agricultural and non-agricultural lands. So Hindu widows have the rights to the lands of their husbands, Daily Star newspaper reported. Under the current norm, Hindu widows are only entitled to their spouses’ homesteads and not any other assets like agricultural land.
Pak PM rejects aide’s resignation
Pakistan PM Imran Khan refused to accept the resignation of his special assistant on information and broadcasting, retired Lt Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa, claiming he was “satisfied” with his aide’s explanation about his family’s assets. Last week, investigative journalist Ahmed Noorani broke the news on the ‘Fact Focus’ website alleging that Bajwa had used his offices, since 2002 in setting up offshore businesses of his wife, sons and brothers.
FB deletes Pak accounts mostly critical of govt
Facebook has removed 453 FB accounts, 103 pages, 78 groups and 107 Instagram accounts that were part of a Pakistani network of “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”, the firm said in a monthly report. “The vast majority of the accounts, pages and groups engaged in coordinated reporting of content and people that were critical of Pakistan’s government or supportive of India, and some engaged in spam,” it said. Facebook had shared details of the network with the Stanford Internet Observatory Cyber Policy Centre days before removing the pages.
HK shocked by violent police arrest of 12-year-old girl
Hong Kong police have been been criticised over the rough arrest of a 12-year-old girl whose family says was caught in a protest crowd while out buying art supplies. Video widely shared across social media and in Hong Kong media showed the officers seeking to corral a group of people including the young girl, who ducked aside and tried to run away. An officer tackled her to the ground, while several others helped to pin her down. The arrest came amid the largest street protest seen in Hong Kong since July, the first full day under the national security laws imposed by Beijing on the city, outlawing acts of sedition, secession, foreign collusion and terrorism. The girl’s mother said she intended to sue and lodge a formal complaint. She said her daughter and her 20-year-old son – who were both fined under the city’s pandemic-related laws against gatherings – were out buying art supplies, and that the girl ran away because she was scared. Her daughter was bruised and scratched after the encounter.
China diplomats in US hit with new travel curbs
Chinese diplomats in the US face new limits on travel and meetings in the US, secretary of state Mike Pompeo said. Under the new rules, Chinese diplomats must get approval to visit university campuses or meet with local officials, the state department said. Also, any Chinese-hosted cultural events outside of consular posts will need approval if the audience is larger than 50 people. And the state department will require that diplomatic social media accounts are identified as government controlled. “We’re simply demanding reciprocity,” Pompeo said, indicating that the US curbs would be lifted if China removes its requirements.
China-bound ship sinks off Japan's coast
Japanese rescuers were searching for a livestock ship carrying 42 crew members that a survivor said sank during rough weather a day earlier off a southern Japanese island, the coast guard said. The Filipino crew member was rescued after Japanese navy P-3C surveillance aircraft spotted him wearing a life vest and waving while bobbing in the water. The man, who is in good health, told rescuers the ship capsized before sinking, coast guard regional spokesman Yuichiro Higashi said. The 11,947-ton Gulf Livestock 1 ship was carrying 5,800 cows west of Amami Oshima in the East China Sea when it sent a distress call. The cause of the distress was not immediately known, but the weather was rough in the area due to Typhoon Maysak. The ship's other crew members include 38 from the Philippines, two from New Zealand and two from Australia. The ship left the port of Napier in northeastern New Zealand in mid-August and was on its way to Tangshan on China's eastern coast.
HK begins China-led free mass testing
Hong Kong began free virus testing for all residents in the Asian financial hub, as the mainland Chinese-led initiative faced scepticism from the city's medical community and public, with some activists urging a boycott. The initiative began with a 60-strong mainland team conducting tests. It is the first direct help from China’s health officials for the semi-autonomous city. The scheme has emerged as a politically charged issue.
Chinese girls barred from wearing revealing clothes
A Chinese university sparked widespread outrage as female students discovered that they were not supposed to wear anything deemed overly revealing on grounds that it could arouse “temptation”. On August 1, Guangxi University in China published a 50-point safety guide for female students, including a dress code. “Don’t wear overly revealing tops or skirts. Don’t wear low-cut dresses or expose your waist or back, to avoid creating temptation,” the guide said.
Bangkok scraps canal project with Beijing
Amid the border standoff between India and China, the latter has suffered a severe blow from Thailand, which said it will scrap the Kra Canal project that Beijing wanted to build to shorten its access to the Indian Ocean, according to a media report. Not only that, the Thai government has also given in to the public pressure and delayed the purchase of two Chinese submarines worth $724 million. As per a report, China was pinning its hopes on the Kra Canal project, a proposal to construct a 120-km mega canal cutting through the isthmus of Kra in Thailand. The Thai canal could have been a crucial strategic asset for China, allowing its navy to quickly move ships between its newly constructed bases in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean without diverting over 1,100 km south to round the tip of Malaysia.
Steep rise in Iran uranium stockpile
The UN’s nuclear watchdog said that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium now stands at more than ten times the limit set down in the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The limit was set at 300 kg of enriched uranium in a particular compound form, which is the equivalent of 202.8 kg of uranium. Measured against the latter figure, Iran’s stockpile now stands at over 2,105 kg, the report said.
Strained Melania- Ivanka ties
A new book revealed the supposed icy relationship between Melania Trump and her stepdaughter Ivanka. Author Stephanie Winston Wolkoff says she was once a friend of the president’s wife and acted as her adviser until 2018 when she fell out of favour. In the book “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady”, Winston Wolkoff has detailed how she and Melania choreographed every minute detail of Trump’s inauguration - and prevented Ivanka from appearing in key photos of the ceremony. Wolkoff and her team orchestrated seating and studied camera angles to make sure Ivanka’s face would be hidden in pictures. The 50-year-old first lady allegedly nicknamed her 38-year-old stepdaughter “princess”, calling her and her husband Jared Kushner “snakes”. The book comes days after Melania and Ivanka exchanged an icy stare at the Republican Convention. Separately, Wolkoff said Melania used private mail accounts while at the White House.
Trump’s new aide has questioned masks
Dr Scott Atlas has argued that the science of mask wearing is uncertain, that children cannot pass on the coronavirus and that the role of the government is not to stamp out the virus but to protect its most vulnerable citizens. Ideas like these have propelled Atlas, a radiologist and senior fellow at Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution, into Trump’s White House. President Trump has embraced Atlas even as he upsets the balance of power within the coronavirus task force with ideas that government doctors and scientists find misguided - even dangerous - according to sources. Atlas is neither an epidemiologist nor an infectious disease expert, but his frequent appearances on Fox News and his ideological bend caught the president’s eye.
Woman walks on aircraft wing after feeling ‘too hot’
Flight experiences are different for different people. Take-offs and landing can often cause a lot of breathing troubles or even anxiety and nausea and people often try out several ways to prevent this including chewing on a something to balance the air pressure inside ears during the take-off. However, a woman passenger flying with Ukraine International Airlines took a completely different route to breathe some fresh air after feeling too hot inside the flight. Accompanied by her two children, the woman took a flight from Turkey, where she went on holiday, and came to Kyiv, Ukraine. As she was feeling ‘too hot’ after her plane landed, she decided to walk all the way from the fin of the plane to the emergency exit gate of the Boeing 737-86N to get on the wing of the flight and ‘get some air’. Her walk was so casual and relaxed that she looked least bothered to be out there on the wing. The entire incident was caught in the camera and uploaded on YouTube.
Saudi Arabia opens airspace for UAE-Israel flights
Saudi Arabia agreed to permit UAE flights to "all countries" to overfly the kingdom, as Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu signalled more direct flights linking the UAE with the Jewish state. The announcement comes after the first direct commercial flight from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi last week, which passed through Saudi airspace, to mark the normalisation of Israel-UAE ties. Riyadh's decision marks another concrete sign of Saudi Arabia's cooperation with Israel even after it refused publicly to follow the UAE in establishing diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
Berlin makes masks must at protests
Berlin has made the wearing of face masks compulsory at demonstrations with over 100 participants, German news agency DPA reported, citing a senate meeting. Exceptions may apply in some cases, such as motorcade processions. This follows the protests in Berlin over the weekend, where people demonstrated against Germany’s coronavirus policies.
‘Hotel Rwanda’ hero ‘kidnapped’ in Dubai
The man portrayed in the film “Hotel Rwanda” as saving the lives of over 1,200 people was “kidnapped” while in Dubai, his daughter said. Paul Rusesabagin’s adopted daughter, Carine Kanimba, said she last spoke with him before he flew to Dubai last week. She didn’t give evidence to support her claim that he had been kidnapped. She said the family has not been able to speak to him since his detention.
Trial of 14 in Charlie Hebdo attack starts
Thirteen men and a woman went on trial in the 2015 attacks against the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper and a kosher supermarket in Paris that marked the beginning of a wave of violence by the Islamic State group in Europe. Seventeen people and all three gunmen died during the three days of attacks in January 2015.
Steroids can help sickest Covid patients: Studies
International clinical trials confirmed the hope that cheap, widely available steroid drugs can help seriously ill patients survive Covid-19. The WHO is expected to release guidelines encouraging the use of steroid drugs in critically ill patients. The new studies include an analysis that pooled data from seven randomised clinical trials evaluating three steroids in over 1,700 patients. It concluded that each of the three drugs reduced the risk of death. That paper and three related studies were published in the journal JAMA. Corticosteroids should now be the first-line treatment for critically ill patients, the authors said. The only other drug shown to be effective in seriously ill patients, and only modestly at that, is remdesivir.
Oz falls into its first recession in 30 yrs
Australia fell into its first recession in almost three decades, buffeted by a renewed Covid-19 outbreak and lockdown in Victoria state. Gross domestic product plunged 7% from the first three months of the year, the first back-to-back quarterly declines since 1991.
Thailand records no local case in 100 days
Thailand has reported no locally-transmitted cases for 100 straight days, joining a small group of places like Taiwan and New Zealand where the pathogen has almost been eliminated. The government said it will reopen borders to tourists soon.
