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Bangladesh police said on Thursday they had arrested 20 people, a day after clashes between supporters of ousted premier Sheikh Hasina and security personnel killed at least four people.The clashes erupted in Hasina’s hometown of Gopalganj on Wednesday after members of her Awami League party tried to foil a rally by the National Citizens Party (NCP), made up of many students who spearheaded the uprising that toppled her government last year. Bricks, stones and shattered windows littered the area where the clashes occurred. More than 1,500 police, as well as soldiers and border guards, have been deployed in the district to enforce a curfew. “The law and order situation in Gopalganj is currently under control and remains peaceful,” the police said in a statement on Thursday. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding president of Bangladesh, hailed from Gopalganj and Hasina, his daughter, also contested elections from the district.Jibitesh Biswas, director of the Gopalganj District Hospital, said on Thursday that four people “were brought in dead” after the clashes.Biswas said shots were also fired in front of the hospital and that at least 18 wounded people were also brought in. “Three of them are in critical condition with wounds to the chest, back of the head, and leg,” he said.Ramjan Sheikh, an 18-year-old mason, died of bullet wounds, his family told AFPblaming the military for his death. “They trampled on his chest… We rushed to the hospital only to find his lifeless body soaked in blood,” Mohammed Kalim Munshi, Ramjan’s uncle, said. AFP could not independently verify the claim. The Bangladeshi army said its soldiers intervened, along with the police, to control an “unruly crowd”.”In response, the crowd grew more aggressive, threw molotov (cocktails) and brickbats compelling the Army to use force in self-defence,” it said in a statement.A 24-year-old Gopalganj resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the NCP should have understood that the town would not “accept any disrespect” towards Rahman.”But their leaders continued rants against Mujibur (Rahman),” the resident said. Human rights organisation Ain o Salish Kendra said “the application of excessive force on people in Gopalganj and shooting at them blatantly violates human rights standards and the constitution”.Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus said on Wednesday the attempt to foil the NCP rally was “a shameful violation of their fundamental rights”.

Sri Lankan authorities returned six orphaned and injured elephants to the wild on Thursday after nursing them back to health under a long-running conservation project, officials said.Two females and four males, aged between five and seven, were released into the Mau Ara forest within the Udawalawe Wildlife Sanctuary, environment minister Dammika Patabendi told AFP.He said it was the 26th such release of rehabilitated elephants since the Udawalawe Elephant Transit Home began its programme in 1998.”We hope, in the interest of conserving elephants, we will be able to improve facilities at this transit home in the near future,” Patabendi said.The calves were transported in trucks and then allowed to walk free because they were deemed strong enough to fend for themselves or join wild herds.Baby elephants have minimal contact with humans at the transit home to ease their integration into wild herds.All elephants at the facility were rescued after being found abandoned, injured or separated from their herds.Udawalawe, about 210 kilometres (130 miles) southeast of Colombo, is renowned for its wild elephants and is a major tourist attraction.Sri Lankan authorities believe the transit home’s strategy of rewilding rescued elephants, rather than domesticating them, has paid off.The centre’s director, Malaka Abeywardana, said 57 elephants remain at the facility, which has released 187 back into the wild since the first release in early 1998.Sri Lanka had previously sent rescued calves to the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, which has also become a popular tourist site.The Pinnawala orphanage marked its golden jubilee in February.Conservation efforts have become increasingly urgent due to growing conflict between wild elephants and farmers.The human-elephant conflict has resulted in the deaths of around 400 elephants and 200 people annually over the past five years.

Heavy rains have been linked to 54 deaths in the past 24 hours in Pakistan, taking the toll to about 180 since the arrival of the monsoon in late June, the government’s disaster agency said on Thursday.Torrential rain has poured almost without pause across parts of Punjab province since Wednesday morning, causing urban flooding and houses to collapse.Rescue teams used boats to evacuate families from villages along the river further south in the morning, but the water had begun to recede by the afternoon.”Children were screaming for help, and women stood on rooftops, waving their shawls and begging to be rescued,” said Tariq Mehbood Bhatti, a 51-year-old farmer in Ladian village.Residents living in low-lying areas near the Nullah Lai river that runs through Rawalpindi city, neighbouring the capital Islamabad, were ordered to evacuate after a sharp rise in the water level.”Rescue teams are on standby for more evacuations,” a spokeswoman for the disaster agency said.”Residents of vulnerable areas should prepare emergency kits with food, water, and essential medicines for three to five days in case of an emergency,” the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) added in an alert.The Rawalpindi government declared a public holiday on Thursday to keep people at home, with the national meteorological department warning that heavy rain would continue until Friday.- Electrocutions, buildings collapsing -Around 180 people have been killed, including 70 children, and about 500 injured since the start of the monsoon on June 26, according to the disaster agency. “In the last 24 hours, 54 people were killed and 227 injured across Pakistan, with the majority of fatalities reported from Punjab,” the NDMA spokeswoman told AFP, adding that the toll had been counted at 8:00 am (0300 GMT) on Thursday. The majority of deaths were caused by collapsed houses and sudden flash floods, while dozens were also electrocuted.Monsoon season brings South Asia 70 to 80 percent of its annual rainfall, and runs from June until September in India and Pakistan.The annual rains are vital for agriculture and food security, and the livelihoods of millions of farmers, but also bring destruction.South Asia is getting hotter and has seen shifting weather patterns in recent years, but scientists are unclear on how exactly a warming planet is affecting the highly complex monsoon.Pakistan is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, and its 255 million residents are facing extreme weather events with increasing frequency.In 2022, monsoon floods submerged a third of the country and killed 1,700 people.

Heavy rains have been linked to 54 deaths in the last 24 hours in Pakistan, taking the toll to about 180 since the arrival of the monsoon in late June, the government’s disaster agency said on Thursday.Torrential rain has poured almost without pause across parts of Punjab province since Wednesday morning, causing urban flooding. Residents living near a river that runs through the city of Rawalpindi, next to the capital Islamabad, have been ordered to evacuate after a sharp rise in the water level.”In the last 24 hours, 54 people were killed and 227 injured across Pakistan, with the majority of fatalities reported from Punjab,” a spokeswoman for the National Disaster Management Authority told AFP, adding that the toll had been counted at 8:00 am (0300 GMT) on Thursday. She said around 180 people have been killed, including 70 children, and about 500 injured since the start of the monsoon on June 26.The government of Rawalpindi declared a public holiday on Thursday to keep people at home, with the national meteorological department warning that heavy rain would continue until Friday. “Residents of vulnerable areas should prepare emergency kits with food, water, and essential medicines for three to five days in case of an emergency,” said the government. In 2022, monsoon floods submerged a third of the country and killed 1,700 people.

Filipino seafarer Cocoy was off-duty and resting in his cabin when the captain’s voice boomed over the intercom of the cargo ship: “We are under attack”.The 38-year-old realised what sounded like a “knock” from inside the vessel was gunfire being exchanged by ship security and Huthi rebels swarming the ship in small boats.The July 6 assault on the Greek-owned Magic Seas broke a months-long lull in attacks by Yemen’s Huthi rebels on Red Sea shipping, which began after the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.Crew members scrambled to reach the “muster station” at the centre of the ship, considered the safest place should a projectile strike the vessel.”There was panic, but we knew we had to move. It’s like we were on autopilot,” said Cocoy, who asked to be referred to by his nickname as he undergoes a debriefing.”(The crew) were in a daze, but they were all rushing to do their assigned jobs for our safety protocol… maybe I looked dazed too,” he told AFP.”There were speedboats from the right, left and back of our ship,” he said, relaying what the ship’s security team had told him. “There was also a bigger boat with around 15 crew who were attempting to board our ship, but luckily, our armed guards were able to stop them.”Of the 22 aboard the ship, 17 were FilipinoThe group huddled inside the muster station for nearly five hours as the ship’s three armed Sri Lankan security guards tried to stave off the attack. “I lost count of how many hits we took,” he told AFP of Huthi projectiles. A Huthi spokesman would later claim that five ballistic and cruise missiles and three drones had been employed in the attack.One would breach the hull.”The flooding had started so we decided to abandon the ship,” Cocoy said. “We deployed our lifeboat, all 22 of us, and left our main vessel.”Filipino sailors make up as much as 30 percent of the world’s commercial shipping force. The nearly $7 billion they sent home in 2023 accounted for about a fifth of remittances sent to the archipelago nation.While a seafarer for more than 15 years, it was Cocoy’s first passage through the Red Sea, and what he called a case of “really bad timing”.”During the gunfight, the faces of my wife and child flashed before my eyes. I kept thinking… will they survive without me?” he said.”I thought I was going to die.”After abandoning ship, Cocoy and his shipmates spent three hours floating in the Red Sea before being picked up by a Panama-flagged container ship.”They were the longest hours of my life,” he said.The Magic Seas was no longer within their sight as it sank beneath the waves.- ‘We were just lucky’ -A day after Cocoy’s ordeal, another vessel crewed largely by Filipino sailors, the Eternity C, was attacked and sunk.Ten of those aboard were rescued. Another 15 are dead or missing.It was the deadliest such assault since three people were killed in a missile attack on another ship in March last year.On Wednesday night, eight Filipinos rescued from the Eternity C landed at Manila’s international airport.The Iran-backed Huthis said last week they had “rescued” an unspecified number of the Eternity C’s crew and taken them to a safe location, prompting charges of kidnapping by the US government.Maritime news journal Lloyd’s List reported six Filipino seafarers as “believed taken hostage”.The Philippine government has so far offered no information about the possibility of either hostages or negotiations.”I feel terrified for the (missing) Eternity C crew,” Cocoy told AFP.”We were just lucky, because all of us survived… I pray that many of their crew can still be located alive.”Cocoy, who is plagued by nightmares of the attack, said he is unsure if he will return to the sea.”What happened to us was not normal,” he said, urging shipowners to find routes that avoid the Red Sea. “It’s something that no one should ever experience.”

Bangladesh skipper Litton Das says his team’s first ever T20 series win in Sri Lanka has been “huge” for his leadership and made the cricket-crazy fans back home happy.Bangladesh hammered Sri Lanka by eight wickets on Wednesday in Colombo to clinch the three-match series 2-1 and cap off their tour of the island nation on a high.Chasing a modest 133 for victory, Bangladesh rode on opener Tanzid Hasan’s unbeaten 73 to achieve their target with 21 balls to spare at the R. Premadasa Stadium.Spinner Mahedi Hasan set up victory with figures of 4-11 to restrict Sri Lanka to 132-7 after the hosts elected to bat first.”It is a proud moment for me as a captain,” Litton said.”I am happy that the fans are also happy seeing us win a T20 series in Sri Lanka.”Litton, who was named Bangladesh T20 skipper until next year’s World Cup in India, led the T20 team in the absence of Najmul Hossain Shanto last year in a 3-0 series sweep in the West Indies.”Both series wins are huge for me,” said Litton, who was named player of the series for his 114 runs in the three matches.”Beating the West Indies in their back yard is massive. They are a strong team in their conditions. It is the same in Sri Lanka. They are a balanced team too.”Sri Lanka, led by Charith Asalanka, won the ODI series 2-1 followed by victory in the opening T20 before they lost two straight matches by big margins.”We are bitterly disappointed,” said Asalanka.”We probably made a blunder at the toss. When I came on to bowl, I realised that the wicket had improved.”We need to take responsibility for the way we batted. It can happen in one game but this happening in back-to-back games is a huge concern.””The World Cup is just seven months away and we can’t let these things happen. Credit to Bangladesh. “They outperformed us. They fielded better than us and their bowlers were more effective than ours. Their batsmen also had clear plans.”

Britain has lifted restrictions on Pakistani airlines, the UK embassy in Islamabad said on Wednesday, ending a five-year ban on the country’s beleaguered national carrier.Flag carrier Pakistan International Airlines was barred from flying to Britain in June 2020, a month after one of its aircraft plunged into a Karachi street, killing nearly 100 people.The disaster was attributed to human error by the pilots and air traffic control, and was followed by allegations that nearly a third of the licences for its pilots were fake or dubious.The UK Air Safety Committee had decided to lift the ban following aviation safety improvements in Pakistan, the British High Commission in Islamabad said, adding that decisions on de-listing states and air carriers were made “through an independent aviation safety process”.”Based on this independent and technically-driven process, it has decided to remove Pakistan and its air carriers from the (UK Air Safety) List,” it said in a statement.The move comes after European regulators lifted a four-year ban on PIA, with the Pakistani state-owned carrier resuming flights to Europe in January.Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif welcomed the lifting of the ban as “an important milestone for the country”.”The lifting of the ban on Pakistani flights by the UK is a source of relief for Pakistanis residing in Britain,” he added in a statement.PIA said it would resume services to Britain in “the shortest possible time” with the first flights operating from Islamabad to Manchester.Aviation minister Khawaja Asif acknowledged the ban had caused losses.”Confidence is being restored in Pakistani airlines once again,” he said at a news conference in Islamabad.PIA, which employs 7,000 people, has long been accused of being bloated and poorly run — hobbled by unpaid bills, a poor safety record and regulatory issues.Pakistan’s government has said it is committed to privatising the debt-ridden airline and has been scrambling to find a buyer.In 2024, a deal fell through after a potential buyer reportedly offered a fraction of the asking price.PIA came into being in 1955 when the government nationalised a loss-making commercial airline, and enjoyed rapid growth until the 1990s.

Pakistanis are increasingly ditching the national grid in favour of solar power, prompting a boom in rooftop panels and spooking a government weighed down by billions of dollars of power sector debt.The quiet energy revolution has spread from wealthy neighbourhoods to middle- and lower-income households as customers look to escape soaring electricity bills and prolonged power cuts.Down a cramped alley in Pakistan’s megacity of Karachi, residents fighting the sweltering summer heat gather in Fareeda Saleem’s modest home for something they never experienced before — uninterrupted power.”Solar makes life easier, but it’s a hard choice for people like us,” she says of the installation cost.Saleem was cut from the grid last year for refusing to pay her bills in protest over enduring 18-hour power cuts.A widow and mother of two disabled children, she sold her jewellery — a prized possession for women in Pakistan — and borrowed money from relatives to buy two solar panels, a solar inverter and battery to store energy, for 180,000 rupees ($630).As temperatures pass 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), children duck under Saleem’s door and gather around the breeze of her fan.Mounted on poles above homes, solar panels have become a common sight across the country of 240 million people, with the installation cost typically recovered within two to five years.Making up less than two percent of the energy mix in 2020, solar power reached 10.3 percent in 2024, according to the global energy think tank Ember.But in a remarkable acceleration, it more than doubled to 24 percent in the first five months of 2025, becoming the largest source of energy production for the first time.It has edged past gas, coal and nuclear electricity sources, as well as hydropower which has seen hundreds of millions of dollars of investment over the past decades.As a result, Pakistan has unexpectedly surged towards its target of renewable energy, making up 60 percent of its energy mix by 2030.Dave Jones, chief analyst at Ember, told AFP that Pakistan was “a leader in rooftop solar”.- ‘The great Solar rush’ -Soaring fuel costs globally, coupled with demands from the International Monetary Fund to slash government subsidies, led successive administrations to repeatedly hike electricity costs.Prices have fluctuated since 2022 but peaked at a 155-percent increase and power bills sometimes outweigh the cost of rent.”The great solar rush is not the result of any government’s policy push,” Muhammad Basit Ghauri, an energy transition expert at Renewables First, told AFP.”Residents have taken the decision out of clear frustration over our classical power system, which is essentially based on a lot of inefficiencies.”Pakistan sources most of its solar equipment from neighbouring China, where prices have dropped sharply, largely driven by overproduction and tech advancements.But the fall in national grid consumers has crept up on an unprepared government burdened by $8 billion of power sector debt, analysts say.Pakistan depends heavily on costly gas imports which it sells at a loss to national energy providers.It is also tied into lengthy contracts with independent power producers, including some owned by China, for which it pays a fixed amount regardless of actual demand.A government report in March said the solar power increase has created a “disproportionate financial burden onto grid consumers, contributing to higher electricity tariffs and undermining the sustainability of the energy sector”.Electricity sales dropped 2.8 percent year-on-year in June, marking a second consecutive year of decline.Last month, the government imposed a new 10-percent tax on all imported solar, while the energy ministry has proposed slashing the rate at which it buys excess solar energy from consumers.- ‘Disconnected from the public -“The household solar boom was a response to a crisis, not the cause of it,” said analyst Jones, warning of “substantial problems for the grid” including a surge during evenings when solar users who cannot store energy return to traditional power.The national grid is losing paying customers like businessman Arsalan Arif.A third of his income was spent on electricity bills at his Karachi home until he bought a 10-kilowatt solar panel for around 1.4 million rupees (around $4,900).”Before, I didn’t follow a timetable. I was always disrupted by the power outages,” he told AFP.Now he has “freedom and certainty” to continue his catering business.In the eastern city of Sialkot, safety wear manufacturer Hammad Noor switched to solar power in 2023, calling it his “best business decision”, breaking even in 18 months and now saving 1 million rupees every month.The cost of converting Noor’s second factory has now risen by nearly 1.5 million rupees under the new government tax.”The tax imposed is unfair and gives an advantage to big businesses over smaller ones,” he said.”Policymakers seem completely disconnected from the public and business community.”

A SpaceX capsule carrying astronauts from India, Poland, Hungary and the United States splashed down off the California coast Tuesday, completing Axiom Mission 4 and capping 20 days in space.The Ax-4 crew undocked from the International Space Station at 7:15 am EST on Monday (1115 GMT) for a 22.5-hour journey, landing in the Pacific Ocean at around 5:31 am EST (0931 GMT) on Tuesday.The capsule performed its de-orbit burn before descending toward Earth, deploying drogue and main parachutes ahead of splashdown.”Thanks for the great ride. … happy to be back,” Commander Peggy Whitson, an Axiom employee and former NASA astronaut, said after the splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego.Also aboard were pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India and mission specialists Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.Axiom Space is a private company that organizes missions to the International Space Station, flying both wealthy individuals and, as in this case, astronauts sponsored by their governments. For the non-American trio, the mission marked a return to crewed spaceflight for their respective nations after decades-long absences.They launched from Kennedy Space Center on June 25 for what turned out to be a two-and-a-half-week mission, during which they conducted around 60 scientific experiments.For rising space power India, the flight served as a key stepping stone toward its first independent crewed mission, scheduled for 2027 under the Gaganyaan (“sky craft”) program.Shukla held a video call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in what was widely viewed as a significant soft power moment. He recounted sharing the sweet dish gajar ka halwa with his crewmates aboard the station.This will be only SpaceX’s second crew recovery in the Pacific Ocean. The first occurred in April with the return of the Fram-2 mission. SpaceX has since shifted permanently to West Coast splashdowns, citing incidents where debris from Dragon’s trunk survived atmospheric reentry and crashed back to Earth.

India’s Fauja Singh, believed to be the world’s oldest distance runner, has died in a road accident aged 114, his biographer said Tuesday.Singh, an Indian-born British national, nicknamed the “Turbaned Tornado”, died after being hit by a vehicle in Punjab state’s Jalandhar district on Monday.”My Turbaned Tornado is no more,” Fauja’s biographer Khushwant Singh wrote on X.”He was struck by an unidentified vehicle… in his village, Bias, while crossing the road. Rest in peace, my dear Fauja.”Singh did not have a birth certificate but his family said he was born on April 1, 1911.He ran full marathons (42 kilometre) till the age of 100. His last race was a 10-kilometre (six-mile) event at the 2013 Hong Kong Marathon when 101, where he finished in one hour, 32 minutes and 28 seconds.He became an international sensation after taking up distance running at the ripe old age of 89, after the death of his wife and one of his sons, inspired by seeing marathons on television. Although widely regarded as the world’s oldest marathon runner, he was not certified by Guinness World Records as he could not prove his age, saying that birth certificates did not exist when he was born under British colonial rule in 2011.Singh was a torchbearer for the Olympics at Athens 2004 and London 2012, and appeared in advertisements with sports stars such as David Beckham and Muhammad Ali.His strength and vitality were credited to a routine of farm walks and a diet including Indian sweet “laddu” packed with dry fruits and home-churned curd.Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tribute on social media.”Fauja Singh was extraordinary because of his unique persona and the manner in which he inspired the youth of India on a very important topic of fitness,” said Modi on X”He was an exceptional athlete with incredible determination. Pained by his passing away. My thoughts are with his family and countless admirers around the world.”