"A river ferry carrying up to 140 passengers capsized in central Bangladesh on Sunday after being hit by a cargo vessel, killing at least 68 people. Officials said rescue teams were deployed.... Ferry accidents are common in the South Asian nation, which is crisscrossed by more than 130 rivers. The government has licensed 10,000 cargo vessels and 700 passenger ferries, but many thousands operate without licenses, according to the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority."
They finally raise it, did they?
Related: 2 tropical storms lash Bangladesh, killing at least 36
Moving on to more important items:
"Attackers kill Bangladeshi-American anti religion blogger" New York Times February 28, 2015
DHAKA, Bangladesh — A Bangladeshi-American blogger known for his antipathy to religion was hacked to death on the street in this capital city by two assailants wielding machetes, police said Friday.
Those intolerant Muslims opposed to free speech seems to the narrative of this fictitious psyop(?).
Avijit Roy, 42, was leaving a book fair with his wife Thursday evening when his attackers approached him from behind, according to the police. His wife, Rafida Ahmed Bonya, 45, suffered a blow to the head and was in critical condition in a Dhaka hospital, authorities said.
Jibon Ahmed, a photographer for a local photo agency, said by phone that he heard screams outside the fair around 9 p.m. After finding the couple, he said, he helped get them into an auto-rickshaw and took them to the hospital, where Roy died.
The police have not named any suspects, but witnesses reportedly provided descriptions of the attackers. Officers recovered two bloodied machetes from the scene.
Roy was a prolific writer on secularism, and condemned religious extremism, particularly through his blog Mukto-Mona, the Bengali words for Free Mind. He also wrote on the website of the Center for Inquiry, a US-based group dedicated to humanist thinking and critiques of religion.
Krishna Pada Roy, a deputy commissioner of detectives with the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said Friday that the police were investigating possible motives for the killing, including extremist zeal.
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I think you can see why I would like to remain anonymous?
Now remember, rule of thumb, the more coverage an item gets in the propaganda pre$$ the less likely it is a true event:
"Bangladesh arrests suspect in killing of American writer" Associated Press March 03, 2015
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladeshi security officials arrested a suspect Monday after a US writer and prominent critic of extremist Islam was hacked to death last week as he walked with his wife in Dhaka, a government spokesman said.
The arrest of Farabi Shafiur Rahman came four days after attackers wielding meat cleavers killed Avijit Roy, an outspoken atheist and critic of the intertwining of religion and politics, on a crowded sidewalk in the capital, said Mufti Mahmud Khan, a spokesman for the anticrime Rapid Action Battalion.
Khan declined to say whether Rahman was one of the attackers. He was being held on accusations that he made threats against Roy, a Bangladesh-born engineer with US citizenship.
Roy was killed on a visit to attend Dhaka’s main book fair. He and his wife, Rafida Ahmed, were attacked after leaving the fair. Ahmed was seriously injured.
Rahman, a Muslim blogger who denounced atheism, had threatened Roy in Facebook postings, Khan said, quoting him as writing: ‘‘Avijit Roy lives in America, so it’s not possible to kill him right now. But he will be killed when he comes back.’’
Stinking of staged and/or scripted propaganda. Sorry.
Rahman had been arrested previously for threatening an imam who performed funeral prayers for another atheist Bangladeshi blogger who was killed in 2013. He was released on bail after six months in jail.
Rahman acknowledged making the threats, Khan said.
‘‘He has admitted that he threatened Avijit, but we are not sharing more information with you for the sake of the investigation. We need to ask him more,’’ Khan said.
The Bangladesh government has accepted a US offer of FBI help in the investigation of the killing.
Let the evidence plantings and cover-ups begin!
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"Bangladesh court indicts 8 in killing of atheist blogger" Associated Press March 19, 2015
DHAKA, Bangladesh — A leader of a hard-line Islamist group and seven students were indicted Wednesday in connection with the hacking death of an atheist blogger two years ago.
The Metropolitan Sessions court issued the indictments after accepting the police investigation into the killing of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider in front of his house in Dhaka.
The indictments covered Mufti Jasimuddin Rahmani, head of the Ansarullah Bangla Team, and six students at North South University who earlier confessed involvement in the killing. A seventh student said to have planned the attack is in hiding.
Rahmani and the six students pleaded not guilty Wednesday. The judge set April 21 for the start of the trial, and the seventh student will be tried in absentia.
Haider had criticized the Prophet Mohammed and Islam in his blog.
I haven't done that, and that's where the print ended.
In their report, police said Rahmani incited the seven students to murder Haider in sermons in which he said all atheist bloggers should be killed to protect Islam.
My incitements here have been the exact opposite, and this is really stinking like rank-rot, Muslim-hating, Jewish war propaganda. Sorry I no longer trust the source and pri$m of the paper.
He was also a leading campaigner for banning the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, which opposed Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971. Police said the student who allegedly planned the attack is a member of Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir. The party has denied involvement in the killing.
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And they really want you to get the point:
"Another blogger killed in Bangladesh’s capital" Associated Press March 31, 2015
DHAKA, Bangladesh — A blogger was killed in a machete attack by three men in Bangladesh’s capital on Monday, and two of the attackers were caught near the scene, police said.
The killing took place a month after a prominent Bangladeshi-American blogger known for speaking out against religious extremism was hacked to death in Dhaka.
In the latest incident, Washiqur Rahman Babu, 26, was declared dead at a hospital shortly after being attacked in Dhaka’s Tejgaon area, police official Biplob Kumar Sarker said.
Two suspects, both students at Islamic schools, were captured and three machetes were recovered, Sarker said. The third suspect fled, he said.
One of the suspects told reporters they attacked Babu because he had disrespected Islam’s prophet Mohammed.
‘‘I stabbed him because he humiliated my prophet,’’ said Jikrullah, a 20-year-old student at Hathajari Madrassah in the southeastern district of Chittagong, without elaborating.
The other detained suspect, Ariful Islam, also 20, is a student at an Islamic school in Dhaka’s Mirpur area. They named a third suspect, but details about him were not available. It was not immediately known what kind of blogging Babu did, but the suspects told police they targeted him for anti-Islamic writings, Sarker said.
The deputy spokesman for the UN secretary general, Farhan Haq, expressed concern at the latest death. ‘‘We have been calling for the respect of basic rights in Bangladesh, including the right to freedom of expression,’’ he said.
Yeah, Muslims are against that and I can think of no better reason to wage war on them.
Of course, it is the WEST that is using POLITICAL CORRECTNESS to engender SELF-CENSORSHIP and the eventual CONTROL of SPEECH! Just look at France.
Two of Babu’s cousins told reporters at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, where his body was being kept, that he recently joined a travel agency in Dhaka after finishing his studies, and they were not aware of any blogging he had done.
Local media reported that Babu had a Facebook page that contained the line ‘‘IamAvijit,’’ meaning he was a follower of Avijit Roy, the Bangladeshi-American blogger who was hacked to death late last month.
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Other kinds of violence that doesn't fit the propaganda pre$$ narrative:
"Bangladeshi clothing firm agrees to halt labor violence" by Steven Greenhouse and Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times February 19, 2015
NEW YORK — After wielding intense pressure against a Bangladeshi apparel maker over assaults on union leaders outside its factories, Western companies have agreed to resume business with that manufacturer, on the condition that it stay committed to halting further violence and make peace with its labor unions.
Violence against labor is as AmeriKan as apple pie. Think Pinkertons.
VF, which makes North Face and Nautica, and PVH, the parent of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, as well as Gap, El Corte Ingles, and other companies, had cut off or threatened to cut off orders from the company, Azim Group, last year over the incidents at two of its factories in Chittagong.
How are the safety reviews going?
But now, after weeks of negotiations, these companies have agreed to resume business with Azim because it has promised to recognize and bargain with the unions at the two factories where the violence occurred.
Azim, industry and labor officials said, has also agreed to stop efforts to oust a labor union, to pay the medical bills of a badly beaten union leader, and to allow several union officials to return to work with full back pay.
“It’s the first time that brands have taken such a concerted action in response to the use of violence against trade unions in Bangladesh,” said Jeff Hermanson, a US union official who helped several Western companies in their investigation of Azim.
VF, PVH, Li & Fung, and several European companies moved to penalize Azim late last year after a closed-circuit camera outside an Azim factory in Chittagong showed that a female union leader was swarmed by people, pushed to the ground, and beaten while a male union activist was chased away and punched.
Investigations by VF and a Washington-based workers rights group concluded the video showed that factory managers had directed those attacks at Azim’s Global Garments factory on Nov. 10.
Three months earlier, a female union president was beaten on the head with an iron rod just outside a nearby factory that was also owned by Azim Group, workers right groups say; her injuries required more than 20 stitches.
Azim insists that neither it nor its managers were involved in either altercation, asserting that the Nov. 10 dispute arose between workers and union leaders.
Still, Farhan Azim, executive director at Azim, which says it has 24 factories and 27,000 employees, said it reached the agreement in the face of intense pressure.
“Azim Group was alarmed and to some extent helpless due to the lack of order flow after the suspensions were in place,” he wrote in an e-mail, referring to the numerous customers that had suspended orders.
“We understood that the Western companies were under pressure from the labor groups and thus to offer some relief to their anxiety, we kept them well-informed of all developments.”
Scott Deitz, VF’s vice president for corporate relations, said his company had warned Azim after what he described as two “horrible incidents” including the beating of the union leader Mira Boashak, resulting in what he said were “life-threatening injuries.”
Deitz, who said his company represented about 10 percent of Azim’s volume, said VF had made clear to Azim that it would not tolerate harassment of union leaders and would insist on freedom of association, bargaining in good faith, and punishing managers responsible for the incidents.
He said Azim had told VF that it would punish four managers, without giving details on the punishments.
Azim said his company “has always recognized the union in both the factories, and there was never a question of ousting the union.”
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UPDATE:
"A Bangladeshi garment industry leader welcomed retailer Benetton’s pledge of about $1 million to victims of a factory collapse that killed more than 1,100 people two years ago, saying it was late but appreciated. Shahidullah Azim, of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said Saturday the pledge would help the UN-sponsored compensation fund reach its commitment to give $30 million for survivors (AP)."
