DHAKA: Rival students in Bangladesh clashed on Monday leaving at least 100 people injured, as demonstrators opposing quotas for coveted government jobs battled counter-protesters loyal to the ruling party, police said.
Police and witnesses said hundreds of anti-quota protesters and students backing the ruling Awami League party battled for hours on Dhaka University campus, hurling rocks, fighting with sticks and beating each other with iron rods.
Some carried machetes while others threw petrol bombs, witnesses said.
The quota system reserves more than half of well-paid civil service posts totalling hundreds of thousands of government jobs for specific groups, including children of heroes from the country’s 1971 liberation war from Pakistan.
“They clashed with sticks and threw rocks at each other,” local police station chief Mostajirur Rahman told AFP.
Masud Mia, a police inspector, said “around 100 students including women” were injured, and had been taken to hospital. “More people are coming,” Mia added.
Students launched protests earlier this month demanding a merit-based system.
They have continued despite Bangladesh’s top court suspending the quota scheme.
Anti-quota protesters blamed the ruling party students for the violence.
“They attacked our peaceful procession with rods, sticks and rocks,” Nahid Islam, the national coordinator of the anti-quota protests, told AFP.
“They beat our female protesters. At least 150 students were injured including 30 women, and conditions of 20 students are serious.”
Critics say the system benefits children of pro-government groups who back Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Hasina, 76, won her fourth consecutive general election in January, in a vote without genuine opposition parties that saw a major crackdown against her political opponents, who boycotted the poll.
Injured student Shahinur Shumi, 26, said the protesters were taken by surprise.
“We were holding our procession peacefully,” she said from her hospital bed at Dhaka Medical Hospital.
“Suddenly, the Chhatra League (the ruling party student wing) attacked us with sticks, machetes, iron rods, and bricks.”
Police said hundreds of students from several private universities shouting anti-quota slogans joined the protests in Dhaka, halting traffic near the US embassy for more than four hours.
“Some 200 students squatted and stood on the road,” deputy police commissioner Hasanuzzaman Molla told AFP.
Thousands of students also marched in a dozen universities overnight Sunday into the early hours of Monday morning, protesting against what they said were Hasina’s disparaging comments.
Protesters said they were compared to collaborators of the Pakistani army during Bangladesh’s war of independence.
“This is unacceptable,” a female student from Dhaka University said, asking not to be named for fear of reprisal.
“We want a reform of the quota system so that meritorious students can get a fair chance.”
Violence also erupted during protests in Bangladesh’s second city Chittagong late on Sunday, anti-quota students said.
Khan Talat Mahmud Rafy, the organizer, said two fellow protesters were injured.
“Dozens of Chhatra League activists attacked one of our processions,” Rafy said.
Students are demanding that only those quotas supporting ethnic minorities and disabled people — six percent of jobs — should remain.
Bangladesh was one of the world’s poorest countries when it gained independence in 1971, but it has grown an average of more than six percent each year since 2009.
But much of that growth has been on the back of the mostly female factory workforce powering its garment export industry, and economists say there is an acute crisis of jobs for millions of university students.
100 injured as Bangladesh student groups clash over job quotas
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100 injured as Bangladesh student groups clash over job quotas
- The quota system reserves more than half of well-paid civil service posts totalling hundreds of thousands of government jobs
- These jobs are reserved for specific groups, including children of heroes from the country’s 1971 liberation war from Pakistan
Pakistan security forces say they killed 3 insurgents involved in the death of a local administrator
Pakistan security forces say they killed 3 insurgents involved in the death of a local administrator
It said security forces conducted a raid in Mastung, a district in Baluchistan province where members of an outlawed separatist group ambushed a vehicle carrying regional Deputy Commissioner Zakir Baloch and killed him on Aug. 12.
The military said the slain men were members of the Baluch Liberation Army, which claimed responsibility for the attack on Baloch ahead of the country’s Independence Day. The men were also involved in other previous attacks, it said.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif praised the security forces for avenging the killing of Baloch. He said the war against terrorism would continue until all insurgents are eliminated from the country.
There was no immediate comment from the Baluch Liberation Army, which was expected to respond with more attacks.
Authorities say the insurgents have formed an alliance with the Pakistani Taliban, which also has a presence in Baluchistan, the scene of frequent militant attacks in a long-running insurgency by groups seeking independence for the mineral- and gas-rich province bordering Iran and Afghanistan.
Other Islamic militant groups also have a presence in the province.
Taliban morality police dismiss over 280 men without beards from security forces
- The morality ministry has been criticized for restrictions on women and inhibiting freedom of expression
- Ministry did not provide figures in relation to policing of women’s attire or their travel without a male guardian
KABUL: The Taliban’s morality ministry has dismissed more than 280 members of the security force for failure to grow a beard and have detained more than 13,000 people in Afghanistan for “immoral acts” in the past year, officials said on Tuesday.
The Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue said in its annual operations update that around half of those detained had been let go after 24 hours. It did not break down the type of the alleged offenses or gender of the detainees.
Mohibullah Mokhlis, Director of Planning and Legislation at the ministry, told a press conference officials had destroyed 21,328 musical instruments in the past year and prevented thousands of computer operators from selling “immoral and unethical” films in markets.
It had identified 281 security force members for not having a beard and they had been dismissed, he said, in line with their interpretation of Islamic law.
The morality ministry, which took over the disbanded women’s ministry premises in Kabul after the Taliban took over in 2021, has been criticized by human rights organizations and the United Nations for restrictions on women and inhibiting freedom of expression.
The United Nations’ mission to Afghanistan has reported cases of morality ministry officials stopping and detaining women, at times for a few hours, for not meeting their interpretation of Islamic dress.
The Taliban has called the allegations of detentions “baseless” and say the rules apply their interpretation of Islamic law and Afghan customs.
The morality ministry did not provide figures in relation to policing of women’s attire or their travel without a male guardian, which authorities have also barred for longer distances. It said that a new plan was being worked on to ensure its Islamic dress rules were followed, overseen by the supreme spiritual leader who is based in the southern city of Kandahar.
“Based on the guidance of the Supreme Leader, the draft plan for observing women’s hijab (Islamic dress) has been formulated and approved,” Mokhlis said.
The morality ministry has previously said that women should cover their faces or wear an all-enveloping burqa and that enforcement would involve “encouragement” with women’s male family members being targeted rather than women directly.
Most Afghan women covered their hair in public in the conservative country even before the Taliban takeover, but some, especially Kabul, did not usually cover their faces or wear a burqa.
Mokhlis said they had prevented just over 200 cases of the sale of women and over 2,600 cases of violence against women.
US says Iran responsible for Trump campaign hack
- Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied the country’s role in the hack and challenged Washington to release evidence for the claim
Washington: Iran was behind a recent hack targeting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, US security agencies said Monday, accusing Tehran of seeking to influence the 2024 election.
The statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed the Trump campaign claim from earlier this month that it had been targeted, potentially by Iran.
“We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns,” the security agencies said.
“This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former president Trump’s campaign, which the (intelligence community) attributes to Iran,” they said.
In response, Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied the country’s role in the hack and challenged Washington to release evidence for the claim.
“Such allegations are unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing,” the mission said in a statement.
“As we have previously announced, the Islamic Republic of Iran harbors neither the intention nor the motive to interfere with the US presidential election.
“Should the US government genuinely believe in the validity of its claims, it should furnish us with the pertinent evidence — if any — to which we will respond accordingly.”
The United States goes to the polls on November 5, with both Trump’s and Democratic rival Kamala Harris’s campaigns saying they had been targeted by cyberattacks in recent weeks.
US-based tech companies have also said they detected such attacks.
The US intelligence community said Monday it was “confident” that Iran had used social engineering and other methods to target individuals in both campaigns, and that the attempts were “intended to influence the US election process.”
Trump’s campaign said on August 10 that it had been hacked, blaming “foreign sources” for distributing internal communications and a dossier on running mate J.D. Vance.
“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our democratic process,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
The Republican former president’s campaign implied Iran was behind the move as news outlet Politico reported it had received emails with the campaign material from a source who refused to identify themselves.
Cheung cited a report from Microsoft this week that said Iranian hackers “sent a spear phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign.”
The materials received by Politico included research on vetting Vance, Trump’s vice presidential pick.
In 2016, a hack of Democratic National Committee emails — blamed on Russians — exposed internal party communications, including about candidate Hillary Clinton.
Trump, who would go on to win the election, was criticized for encouraging the hack.
Harris’s campaign said on August 13 that it too had been targeted by foreign hackers, but did not give an indication of which country was believed to be behind the attempt.
“In July, the campaign legal and security teams were notified by the FBI that we were targeted by a foreign actor influence operation,” a Harris campaign official told AFP.
Google said this month that hackers backed by Iran were targeting the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns.
A hacker group known as APT42 linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps went after high-profile individuals and organizations in Israel and the United States, including government officials and political campaigns, according to a threat report released by Google.
Google’s threat analysis group continues to see unsuccessful attempts from APT42 to compromise personal accounts of individuals affiliated with Biden, Harris and Trump, the report said.
World’s oldest person dies in Spain at 117: family
- Guinness World Records had officially acknowledged Branyas’s status as the world’s oldest person in January 2023
Madrid: The world’s oldest living person, Spain’s Maria Branyas Morera, who was born in the United States and lived through two world wars, has died at the age of 117, her family said Tuesday.
“Maria Branyas has left us. She died as she wished: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” her family wrote on her account on social network X.
“We will always remember her for her advice and her kindness,” they said.
Branyas, who had lived for the last two decades in the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the town of Olot in northeastern Spain, had warned in a post on Tuesday that she felt “weak.”
“The time is near. Don’t cry, I don’t like tears. And above all, don’t suffer for me. Wherever I go, I will be happy,” she added in the account which is run by her family.
Guinness World Records had officially acknowledged Branyas’s status as the world’s oldest person in January 2023 following the death of French nun Lucile Randon aged 118,
In the wake of Branyas’s death, the oldest living person in the world is Japan’s Tomiko Itooka, who was born on May 23, 1908 and is 116 years old, according to the US Gerontology Research Group.
Texas jury finds school shooter’s parents not liable for violence
- Lawsuit was filed after the May 18, 2018, Santa Fe High School rampage in which 10 students killed
- Among those killed was a 17-year-old Pakistani girl who was an exchange student at the school
COLORADO: A Galveston, Texas, jury on Monday found the parents of a teenager who shot and killed 10 classmates at Santa Fe High School in 2018 not liable for the violence, ending an unusual civil trial.
Family members of the shooting victims and survivors accused Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Kosmetatos of being negligent in allowing their son, Dimitrios, to obtain weapons from their home and for not warning school officials or police about his deteriorating mental state.
The jury did decide that Dimitrios Pagourtzis and Lucky Gunner, the company that sold him the ammunition used in the shooting even though he was too young to buy it, were liable for the deaths and injuries, and awarded $330 million in damages.
Lucky Gunner last year reached a settlement with families that sought to exclude it from having to make any more payments.
Jake Felde, Lucky Gunner’s CEO, said in a written statement that his company “isn’t responsible for paying any monetary damages awarded by the jury” as it already reached a separate settlement for the shooting and was not a party to the Texas trial.
Nicholas Poehl, the criminal attorney representing Dimitrios Pagourtzis, said in a phone call that his client had no money “and never will.”
Dimitrios Pagourtzis, who was 17 at the time of the shooting, has been charged with capital murder. He has been deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial and will remain in a treatment facility until a judge declares he is competent.
Judge Jack Ewing told the jurors they had sent a clear message with their verdict.
“That message will carry even outside of the walls and doors of this courtroom, and hopefully it will fall into the ears of our legislators, who can help in taking some action,” Ewing said from the bench.
The lawsuit was filed shortly after the May 18, 2018, Santa Fe High School rampage that also injured 13 people. Among those killed was a 17-year-old Pakistani girl who was an exchange student at the school.
The jury’s decision came four months after the sentencing of two Michigan parents found guilty of manslaughter after a jury found they ignored warning signs before their son shot and killed four classmates at Oxford High School in 2021. Jennifer and James Crumbley are the first parents known to have been charged with manslaughter in a school shooting carried out by one of their children.
Lori Laird, an attorney representing Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Kosmetatos, said before the verdict that holding her clients responsible for their son’s shooting rampage was not justified.
“Regardless of the outcome of this lawsuit, nobody has won,” Laird added.
Laird said in an interview that the parents did not know their son was mentally ill and saw no warning signs. Since the shooting, she said, Dimitrios Pagourtzis had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.
Laird also said the parents’ guns were stored in a gun safe and a locked cabinet.
Experts and gun safety advocates have said holding parents accountable for shootings carried out by children is an important step in reducing school violence. Studies by the US Department of Homeland Security have shown that around 75 percent of all school shooters obtained their weapons at home.
James Miller, senior counsel of Everytown Law and counsel to plaintiffs Abdul Aziz and Farah Naz, said they were disappointed the jury didn’t hold the shooter’s parents responsible “for their role in this heinous act.”
“Guns are the number one killer of American children and teens, and secure storage is absolutely essential in the fight to end this nation’s gun violence epidemic,” Miller added.
