AMSTERDAM, 29 August 2022, (TON): Dutch Defense Ministry said “three Dutch commandos in the United States for training exercises were wounded in a shooting outside their hotel in Indianapolis on Friday night.”

It said “one of them was in critical condition, a statement published on Saturday said. The men were in the state of Indiana for training.”

It added that local police were investigating the incident. No arrests have been made.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD), which is handling the investigation, was not immediately available for comment. An IMPD officer told FOX 59 it appeared an altercation took place earlier at a different location from the Hampton Inn in downtown Indianapolis.

“Right now the information we’re willing to disclose is that it was not something that occurred inside the hotel,” the officer told the news channel.

“It was a previous altercation we believe at another location. It did not happen inside the Hampton, the actual occurrence was outside.”

By TON Bangladesh

Bangladesh has called the Padma Bridge the countries longest bridge a sign of national pride. But its excessive cost and World Bank concerns over corruption have raised questions over the project. Bangladesh is slated for graduation from the status of “Least Developed Country” to “Developing Country.”

Bangladesh has just experiencing an economic free-fall. Bangladeshi mainstream media and social media are full of the assumptions about the country’s impending collapse like a Sri Lanka South Asian country. Bangladesh’s GDP is about the size of the Pakistani and Sri Lankan economies combined. Bangladesh’s foreign currency reserves are $39bn, more than twice the $18bn of those two neighbors together.

Bangladesh’s total debt-to-GDP ratio stands at just over 31 percent, matched with 119 percent for Sri Lanka. Bangladesh has a higher per capita GDP than India and is outperforming other major South Asian nations in key socioeconomic metrics.

However, there are three key similarities between the Bangladesh and Sri Lanka .These are despotism under hereditary rule; corruption and cronyism; and debt-fuelled narcissism projects.Like the former president family, the Sri Lankan political dynasty that plunged the country into its recent wilderness of despair, Bangladesh has been ruled for the past 14 years by the Awami League party, led by the family of current Prime Minister.

The current PM of Bangladesh returned to power in 2018 via an election where the country’s security apparatus allegedly full ballot boxes the night previous to the vote. The ruling Awami League won 96 percent of the seats.

Over the years, both the former president of Sri Lanka family and the current ruling family of Bangladesh have derived their political inheritance from their ancestor’s wartime leadership. In 2009, then-President Sri Lankan and his brother, defense minister were in charge when the Sri Lankan government decisively defeated the Tamil Tiger guerilla fighters in Sri Lanka’s decades-old civil war amid allegations of war crimes. Likewise, the current Bangladesh PM father led Bangladesh’s war of independence against Pakistan half a century ago.

Selling their family’s wartime audacity to their poor and needy people, both the current ruling family of Bangladesh and the former president of Sri Lanka established fiefdoms, where almost every living member of their respective clans got helms of power.

The former president of Sri Lankan ran Sri Lanka like a “family company. The president and his brother prime minister and their third brother was a cabinet minister. Their children also held ministerial positions concurrently. The rule of brothers’ crumbled last month.

The current Bangladesh’s Prime Minister has followed a similar pattern. Her daughter seen as her heir-apparent, attends state functions and meetings with her mother. Even the expatriate son of the prime minister, enjoys the title of ICT adviser. The prime minister’s sister nephews, nieces, cousins and their children are delegated with key responsibilities ranging from handling propaganda organizations, diplomatic and donor relationships, military affairs, parliamentary memberships and running business multinationals.

Such control over the state machinery and private businesses always breeds autocracy and disrespect towards public opinion and political opponents. That, in turn, results rampant corruption and cronyism. That’s what happened with the former president and his family in Sri Lanka, where protesters found richness in the presidential palace. That is also the reality in Bangladesh under the current ruling family of Bangladesh.

The former president of Sri Lanka built a $1bn port that rarely saw any ships, a $210m airport where scarcely any planes landed and a 35,000-seat cricket stadium. Bangladeshis are now busy comparing their own white elephants with Sri Lanka’s. While the government has introduced austerity actions, including power rationing, and police have fired upon and even killed those protesting against price hikes, Bangladesh is going ahead with the construction of a $140m cricket stadium bearing the prime minister’s name.

The current Bangladeshi government is busy constructing several multibillion-dollar mega projects, including a $12bn nuclear power plant in Rooppur, which is significantly more expensive than similar projects in other countries. When the World Bank declined to fund Bangladesh’s recently completed Padma Bridge, citing corruption, Bangladesh self-funded and finished the 6km (3.7-mile) long bridge after spending three times the initial budget ($3.8bn vs $1.2bn).

Within about a month of opening the Padma Bridge amid much delight, the country anxiously wrote letters to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Asian Development Bank for loans to keep the economy afloat amid a balance of payment crisis due to increasing oil prices.

It is possible the government acted sensibly by preemptive talk to IMF. After all, the Bangladesh government must have seen in Sri Lanka how economic stress can finish an autocrat government.

That is why the people of Bangladesh see unnerving parallels with Sri Lanka, as the similarities of corruption-prone vanity projects between the countries are same. Seeing the collapse of Sri Lanka’s debt-driven, dynastic authoritarianism, the Bangladeshis government is not unreasonable in their anxiety.

WASHINGTON, 28 August 2022, (TON): A United States judge has recommended that victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks not be allowed to seize billions of dollars of assets belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank to satisfy court judgements they obtained against the Taliban.

After the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, governments and international institutions froze the country’s central bank assets held abroad, totalling about $10bn. About $7bn of that was held in the US and other countries hold about $2bn.

Western governments have refused to recognise the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan and the money has remained in limbo. Non-recognition of the Taliban government undermines its ownership of the frozen central bank assets.

Judge Netburn wrote “the Taliban’s victims have fought for years for justice, accountability, and compensation. They are entitled to no less.”

ISTANBUL, 28 August 2022, (TON): Turkey’s Finance Minister on Friday dismissed “meaningless” concerns among Turkish businesses over a US Treasury warning that they risked being penalised if they maintained commercial ties with Russians under sanctions.

NATO-member Turkey has sought to strike a balance between Moscow and Kyiv by criticising Russia’s invasion and sending arms to Ukraine while opposing the Western sanctions and continuing trade, tourism and investment with Russia.

Minister Nureddin Nebati said “Turkey was determined to improve economic and trade relations with its neighbours within a framework that is not subject to sanctions”.

Some Turkish firms have purchased or sought to buy Russian assets from Western partners pulling back, while others maintain major assets in Russia. Ankara has said Western sanctions will not be circumvented in Turkey.

ADDIS ABABA, 28 August 2022, (TON): The UN children’s agency UNICEF condemned an air strike that “hit a kindergarten” in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, killing at least four people including two children.

Friday’s strike in the Tigray capital Mekele came days after fighting erupted on the region’s southern border between government forces and rebels, ending a five-month truce.

UNICEF’s executive director Catherine Russell said “UNICEF strongly condemns the air strike ... (that) hit a kindergarten, killing several children, and injuring others.”

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that controls the northern region said the air raid demolished a kindergarten and hit a civilian residential area, claims the government denied.

THE HAGUE, 28 August 2022, (TON): Dutch police said “at least two people were killed and several others injured after a cargo truck ran off a dike and plowed into a group of revellers.”

The accident happened early Saturday evening when the Spanish-registered truck left the road on the narrow Zuidzijdsedijk, about 30 kilometers south of Rotterdam.

Rotterdam police said “the cargo truck drove into a group of people while they were at a neighborhood barbeque.”

Some in a serious condition, police said “there are several dead and several others have been taken to the hospital.”

A police officer at the scene told the local Rijnmond broadcaster that “at least two people were killed” but that police were still at the scene verifying exact numbers.

KYIV, 28 August 2022, (TON): The state energy operator said “there the state energy operator said is a risk of a radioactive leak at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant currently occupied by Russian troops.”

Energoatom said Moscow’s troops had repeatedly shelled the plant site over the past day.

The nuclear agency said “as a result of periodic shelling, the infrastructure of the station has been damaged, there are risks of hydrogen leakage and sputtering of radioactive substances, and the fire hazard is high.”

UNITED NATIONS, 28 August 2022, (TON): Russia late Friday blocked agreement on the final document of a four-week review of the UN treaty considered the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament which criticized its military takeover of Europe’s largest nuclear plant soon after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, an act that has raised fears of a nuclear accident.

Igor Vishnevetsky, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department, told the delayed final meeting of the conference reviewing the 50-year-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The document needed approval by all 191 countries that are parties to the treaty aimed at curbing the spread of nuclear weapons and ultimately achieving a world without them.

Argentine Ambassador Gustavo Zlauvinen, president of the conference, said the final draft represented his best efforts to address divergent views and the expectations of the parties “for a progressive outcome” at a moment in history where “our world is increasingly wracked by conflicts.”

UAE operates air bridge to ship aid to Sudan’s flood victims

DUBAI, 28 August 2022, (TON): Emirates News Agency reported “the UAE has begun operating an air bridge to Khartoum to dispatch large quantities of aid to support those affected by torrential rains and floods in Sudan.”

The aid aims to support over 140,000 displaced people in the floods, which killed at least 89 and destroyed 50,000 homes.

The assistance will include around 10,000 tents, 28,000 food and medical aid parcels, and 120 tonnes of urgent relief supplies to improve the living conditions of the flood-hit population and support efforts of authorities in containing the crisis.

The first aircraft carrying 30 tonnes of shelter assistance has earlier departed the UAE as the country’s field operations began in the flood-affected areas of Blue Nile, Khartoum, and Gezira. Three more aid cargo flights are scheduled to fly to Khartoum.

MOSCOW, 28 August 2022, (TON): Russian agencies reported “Russia forces based in Syria on Friday said four Israeli jets had launched a total of four cruise missiles and 16 guided aerial bombs against a research facility in the city of Masyaf.”

He said “Syrian troops using Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons shot down two missiles and seven guided bombs, Tass and RIA said, quoting a senior Russian officer. The attacks damaged equipment at the facility.”

Russian forces have remained in Syria since 2015 when they helped turn the tide in a civil war in favor of President Bashar Assad.

For several years, Israel has been mounting attacks on what it has described as Iranian-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran-backed forces, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, have deployed to help Assad fight anti-government forces.