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The United States has reiterated its support for trial to bringing to justice those who committed atrocities in the 1971 Liberation War but reminded that trials should be fair and transparent maintaining the international standards. “We understand the importance of this process in closing a painful chapter in Bangladesh’s…Bangladeshi history,” said Jen Psaki, spokesperson of the US Department of Sate. She made the remark when a questioner at the regular briefing in Washington on Wednesday wanted to know whether the US believes that the trial was fair and transparent as the top Jamaat leader and war criminal Motiur Rahman Nizami was awarded death penalty. The US spokesperson referred to US Ambassador-at-Large Stephen Rapp who has said countries that impose a death penalty must do so wi...

Motiur Rahman Nizami News Desk: The head of Bangladesh's largest Islamist party has been sentenced to death for war crimes committed during the independence war against Pakistan in 1971. Motiur Rahman Nizami, 71, faced 16 charges including genocide, murder, torture and rape. A state prosecutor said the sentence reflected the "gravity of the crimes". There are different estimates for the number of people killed in the nine-month Bangladeshi war of secession. Government figures suggest as many as three million people died, while some say that figure is too high and unverifiable. A war crimes tribunal in Bangladesh with a three-judge panel announced the verdict to a packed courtroom in Dhaka. Nizami, who was head of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was accused of acting as supreme commander ...

Windowless Plane Set To Take Off In The Near Future: Would You Fly On It? The next generation of aeroplanes are on their way and they sound seriously space age Aeroplanes haven't changed much in the last few decades - but give it 10 years and flying is set to become at least 100 per cent more fun than today's sardine-can experience.Forget squinting at terrible films on itty bitty screens and shielding yourself from the high power air-con with a scratchy hospital-esque blanket - the future of flying is seriously hi tech.No windows... but still a view (Tomasz Wyszo/mirski/ww.dabarti/CPI) The idea is to get rid of ALL THE WINDOWS on the plane. Digest that for a second. At first thought it doesn't sound too appealing - sitting in a tin can miles above the ground with no view out and no flu...

BANGLADESH WIN BY 3 WICKETS Man of the Match TAIJUL ISLAM DAY 3 - BANGLADESH 254 & 101/7 ZIMBABWE 240 & 114 Gallery Desk: Despite the dreadful performance by Bangladesh top-order batsmen, the Tigers clinched their fifth Test victory in a match against Zimbabwe at Mirpur Sher-e Bangla National Stadium today. Despite left-arm orthodox Taijul Islam’s devastating bowling performance of 8 wickets for only 39 runs, openers Tamim Iqbal, Shamsur Rahman and first down batsman Mominul Haque went back to the pavilion scoring ducks. Amazing with the ball in the first innings, allrounder Shakib Al Hasan, returning from a ban imposed on him from the board, failed to shine with his bat on both innings scoring 5 and 15 runs consecutively. During the second innings of Zimbabwe, Taijul bow...

News Desk: The government, for the first time, will export 50,000 tonnes of non-fragrant coarse rice to Sri Lanka. The export price of per tonne rice has been set at $450, Food Minister Md Qamrul Islam told reporters at Secretariat in Dhaka today. Emerging from a meeting with the officials of Food Planning and Monitoring Commission, the minister said the government will export the rice soon after an agreement between the two countries. At present, the international market price of per tonne rice is between $400 and $420, the minister said. Bangladesh, in the past, exported aromatic rice, but this would be the first-ever shipment of non-fragrant rice as Colombo agreed to import the rice on emergency basis. In this Aman season, the government will procure three lakh tonnes of rice, whi...

In this Star file photo, Bangladeshi workers stand in line to enter Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, before flying to a foreign country for jobs. BSS, Abu Dhabi: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will appoint a labour attaché at its embassy in Dhaka from the beginning of the next year to simplify the procedure of recruiting manpower from Bangladesh. UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdulla Bin Zayed Al Nahyan said this when he called on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the Bilateral Meeting Room of St Regis Hotel in Abu Dhabi this afternoon. Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Engineer Khandakar Mosharraf Hossain, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali, State Minister for Labour and Manpower Md Mujibul Haque, State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and Senior Secretary...

Voted above law!! Stop the bad practice immediately THIS is possible only in a country like Bangladesh. And we have written on this issue umpteen times and will continue ad nauseam to do so until this brazen and rank bad practice of violating traffic rules in a brazenfaced manner is stopped completely. It is not ministers only that violate rules of the road. It is anybody who is somebody and owning a large vehicle violates traffic rules with impunity. Thursday's issue of this paper carried several pictures showing government vehicles belonging to functionaries of various denominations and a university bus to boot going merrily along on the wrong side of the road without any regard for other vehicles. And in one instance seeing a minister's car bend the law, many private vehicles follow...

DRIVING ON WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD End impunity of influentials violating traffic rules: HC News Desk: A police van escorts the vehicle, apparently of a minister, on the wrong side of the street near Ruposhi Bangla hotel in the capital violating traffic rules and risking a head-on collision. A long queue of vehicles follow suit to take advantage of the impunity the “minister's” vehicle is getting. The photo was taken yesterday. Pointing out that influential quarters use their impunity to tamper with and violate traffic regulations in Dhaka city, the High Court today asked government why it should not enforce traffic laws strictly to prevent such practices. "No one should escape from the radar of law with impunity," an HC bench said while issuing a suo moto rule seeking government expl...

News Desk: Migrant workers from Bangladesh and many other Asian and African countries are beaten, exploited, and trapped in forced labour situations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The UAE government, about to take up an influential new role in the International Labour Organization (ILO), has failed to adequately protect female domestic workers – many of them from the Philippines – from abuse by employers and recruiters. In this Star photo taken on August 27, 2013, Bangladeshi workers stand in line to enter Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, before flying to a foreign country for jobs. The 79-page report, “‘I Already Bought You’: Abuse and Exploitation of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the United Arab Emirates,” documen...