Day: August 15, 2014

Messi, Neymar to play for Gaza peace Online Report: Combining his love of world peace with his love of soccer, Pope Francis plans to host a celebrity soccer match this September to promote a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing crisis in the Gaza Strip. The exhibition game will take place on September 1 at the Olympic Stadium in Rome with "all-star players" like F.C. Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and the legendary – and contentious - Diego Maradona taking the pitch for the event, reports Fox News Latino referring to Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Besides Messi and Maradona, Brazilian start Neymar is expected to play along with Yossi Benayoun, an Israeli National Team star, along with former Italian star Robert Baggio, a renowned Buddhist, and former French player Zinedine Zidane, who professes...

Transactions via SWIFT rise 32.7pc The financial messaging network celebrates 20 years in Bangladesh Suman Saha: Bangladesh last year registered 32.7 percent year-on-year growth in foreign exchange transactions through SWIFT owing to an increase in trade finance payment. Around eight million foreign currency transactions in and out of Bangladesh were completed through the SWIFT network last year, according to Alain Raes, chief executive of SWIFT's Asia-Pacific region. Trade accounts for 56.1 percent of financial traffic sent by Bangladesh, which is 5.06 million a year. “Bangladesh has registered significant growth in trade finance as it is gradually becoming a manufacturing hub,” he told The Daily Star in an interview yesterday. Bangladesh's import payment rose 9.77 percent year-on-y...

43 workers return from Libya Online Report: Forty three Bangladeshi workers today returned home from violence-torn Libya as their South Korean employer closed a power construction project on security ground. A flight of Emirates Airlines carrying the migrants landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport around 12:00pm, said Zahid Anowar, assistant director of Wage Earners Welfare Board of the Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry. The returnees are among around 200 Bangladeshis used to work for Hyundai Construction and Engineering, a South Korean Company in Benghazi. Ahsan Kibria Siddiqui, first secretary (labour) at Bangladesh embassy in Tripoli, said as the Korean companies started evacuating their employees some migrants are opting to return home. South Korea ...