ISLAMABAD, 30 March, 2021, (TON): Pakistan PM Imran Khan directed the country’s high commissioner in Dhaka to continue efforts to strengthen bilateral ties with Bangladesh. 

Imran Khan gave the instructions as the country’s high commissioner to Bangladesh Imran Ahmed Siddiqui called on him in Islamabad on Monday, according to a tweet of the Pakistan prime minister’s office on Monday night.

The Pakistan government called the high commissioner to Islamabad for consultations, according to diplomatic sources. 

Pakistan President Arif Alvi also gave similar instructions to the high commissioner during his trip to Islamabad.

DHAKA, 28 March, 2021, (TON): Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina on Saturday and discussed the progress achieved in areas like connectivity, energy, trade, health, and developmental cooperation following which the two countries signed five MoUs covering a number of areas of bilateral cooperation.

Modi, who is visiting Bangladesh on his first trip to a foreign country since the outbreak of the coronavirus, held one-on-one talks with Hasina which was followed by a delegation-level meeting that continued for over an hour.

The two sides signed five Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) covering areas such as connectivity, commerce, information technology, and sports. In a humanitarian gesture, PM Modi handed over a representational key of 109 ambulances to his counterpart Hasina. He also handed over a representational box to her as a symbol of India’s gift of 1.2 million Covid vaccine doses to Bangladesh.

THIMPHU, 24 March, 2021, (TON): PM Sheik Hasina today put accentuation on building important frameworks to receive the most noteworthy rewards from the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) endorsed among Bangladesh and Bhutan.

She mentioned the objective fact during a meeting with visiting Bhutanese Prime Minister Dr. Lotay Tshering at her office.

PM's press secretary Ihsanul Karim briefed reporters after the meeting. He said that both PM talked about different fields of collaboration between the two nations, particularly exchange and network. The two of them consented to enact the riverine courses so that exchange between the two nations could be extended.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina put emphasis on building more ports of call. For establishing cooperation in the hydropower project, she asked for formulating bilateral or tripartite MoU in this regard.

The Bhutanese Prime Minister mentioned PM Hasina to give one-time numerous full-term visas for their understudies who are concentrating in Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Prime Minister settled upon the issue and asked the officials concerned for making essential strides. She additionally said that Bangladesh would participate in Bhutan in the ICT area, particularly giving broadband web.

Earlier, both PM also held a meeting for 45 minutes.

Foreign Minister Dr. AK Abdul Momen, Principal Secretary Dr. Ahmad Kaikaus, Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen, and Ambassador of Bangladesh to Bhutan AKM Shahidul Karim were present from the Bangladesh side.

Ambassador of Bhutan to Bangladesh Rinchen Kuentsyl and chief of protocol Daso Ugyen Gongphel were present, among others, during the meeting.

PTA BETWEEN BANGLADESH, BHUTAN

Bangladesh on December 6, 2020, signed its maiden PTA with Bhutan to boost bilateral trade between the two countries. The PTA with Bhutan is the first such bilateral agreement Bangladesh signed with any country since independence in 1971.

Nearly 100 Bangladeshi items will get obligation-free access in Bhutan. These incorporate infant garments and dress extras, men's pants and shorts, coats, and jackets, jute and jute products, cowhide and calfskin merchandise, dry cell battery, fan, watch, potato, condensed milk, concrete, toothbrush, pressed wood, molecule board, mineral and carbonated water, green tea, squeezed orange, pineapple juice, and guava juice

Then, 34 Bhutanese items that will get obligation-free admittance to the Bangladeshi market including orange, apple, ginger, organic product juice, milk, regular nectar, wheat or Maslin flour, homogenized arrangements of jams, natural product jams, preserves, food preparation of soybeans, mineral water, wheat grain, quartzite, concrete clinker, limestone, wooden molecule sheets, and wooden furnishings.

DHAKA, 20 March, 2021, (TON): Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina stated that "Bangladesh will always be with Sri Lanka and it will continue to be.

“I can assure you," she said during bilateral talks with touring Sri Lanka's delegation.

DHAKA, 17 March, 2021, (TON): The dead body of the politician and lawyer Barrister Moudud Ahmed will be brought back home on Thursday evening (today).  He will be buried in the family graveyard at Manikpur village in Noakhali’s Companiganj on Friday. 

Moudud Ahmed, a standing committee member of the BNP, he also former prime minister and vice-president of the country. He had been suffering from lung congestion and heart and kidney complications for a long time.

He passed away while undergoing treatment of heart, lung, and kidney diseases in Singapore at the age of 81. He left Dhaka for Singapore for better treatment on February 1. He was accompanied by his wife Hasna Jasimuddin Moudud.

DHAKA, 15 March, 2021, (TON): A court in Bangladesh on Sunday ordered a probe into claims by a formerly jailed cartoonist that he was tortured before police detained him under the country's harsh internet laws, his lawyer said.

Ahmed Kabir Kishore, 45, was arrested in May 2020 under the controversial laws and charged with carrying out anti-state activities and spreading rumors.

The prominent sketch artist was delivered on bail fourteen days prior after a public objection over the demise in prison in February of an essayist, Mushtaq Ahmed, who was captured under similar laws.

Kishore has affirmed he and Ahmed were held at the very prison and that the essayist was likewise tormented by obscure men guarantees that authorities have straight denied.

Kishore filed a petition with a Dhaka court on Wednesday, saying he was beaten with sticks and slapped hard by more than a dozen unknown men who abducted him on May 2 and held him for nearly three days.

Kishore said the unknown men later handed him over to an elite police unit, the Rapid Action Battalion.

Barua said the court had ordered three doctors from the Dhaka Medical College Hospital to examine Kishore, and added that he had undergone an operation on his right ear on Saturday for injuries allegedly sustained when he was beaten.

Quick Action Battalion representative Lieutenant Colonel Ashique Billah said that neither Ahmed nor Kishore were tormented while they were in their care or in prison.

Ahmed's passing in jail started long periods of fights against Prime Minister Sheik Hasina's administration. The nonconformists additionally required the annulment of the advanced laws, which critics say are utilized to suppress disagreement.

DHAKA, 12 March, 2021, (TON): US State Department upheld a workshop in Rajshahi upgrading understudy police commitment through authority development zeroed in on countering savage radicalism, mentorship, local area policing, and resistance.

Thirty students from Rajshahi University, Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology, Rajshahi College, and five Rajshahi Metropolitan cops joined the current year's Student Leadership Development Workshop on Thursday, said a US embassy press release.

US Ambassador to Bangladesh Earl Miller and Rajshahi Additional Metropolitan Police Commissioner Md Sujayet Islam spoke at the inaugural ceremony of the workshop.

Ambassador Miller applauds programs like the Student Leadership Development Workshop, which illustrates the United States and Bangladesh’s enduring commitment to building a brighter future together.

The series’ five seminars involved over 150 Rajshahi students and 25 police officers, promoting the US embassy’s effort to countering violent extremism. Since 2016, the US States Department of Defense and Department of Justice utilized this program in Bangladesh.