KATHMANDU, July 30 : The main South Asian regional group on Tuesday took new steps toward eliminating tariffs to boost trade in the region, reports AFP. Senior officials from South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries began a three-day meeting here to set an agenda for bringing down tariffs. The inter-governmental group on trade liberalisation will make recommendations to the governments of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka on how to free up trade. The meeting was inaugurated by SAARC Secretary General Naeem U Hasan who stressed the importance of regional cooperation for developing regional trade and commerce through concessional tariffs. The member nations set up the South Asian Preferential...
The ban on the use of children under 15 as jockeys in camel-racing in the United Arab Emirates is a 'positive' move but not 'adequate', said convenor of the Angikar Bangladesh.
...A week-long conference of the Asian Social Forum (ASF), a regional platform to redress adverse effects of globalisation, begins in Hyderabad, India today. Seventeen delegates from the People's Health Movement (PHM), Bangladesh, a non- government organisation, are taking part in the conference. They include AHM Nouman, chairperson of the PHM, Fakhrul Ferdous, Kamal Uddin Ahmed and Samia Afrin.
The outcome of the conference would be placed before the World Social Forum to be held at Porte Allegre in Brazil during the first week of February next.
Bangladesh gets duty- and quota-free access to Canada for all goods except a few items like dairy, egg, poultry and farm products from today.
...Mian Nawaz Sharif the deposed Prime Minister of Pakistan has finally been chargesheeted for abduction as well as attempted murder, hijacking and terrorism in an anti-terrorism court ironically instituted earlier by his government. It is alleged that Mr Sharif and his accomplices prevented a PIA flight carrying General Pervez Musharraf, now the country's chief executive and 200 other passengers from landing at Karachi air-port with a malafide intention. However the time lag of three months between Sharif's detention and formal chargesheet against him sparked hope that General Musharraf would, after an international wave of sympathy for Sharif, sober down from the strident attack on his victim and refrain from taking an...
A Japanese team of experts on oral and maxillofacial surgery will arrive in the city on Saturday, reports BSS.
The team will perform operation on patients with cuts in lips and thumbs free at the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Department of Dhaka Dental College Hospital from January 30 to February 7.
Interested people have been requested to contact Prof Dr Mohiuddin Ahmed, head of the department, at Dental College at 10 am on Sunday.
The process of British immigration operations conducted in Bangladesh are expected to receive special attention during the forthcoming visit of Keith Vaz MP, and United Kingdom's minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
...Backdrop in Sri Lanka seems moderately set for a likely peace deal between the government and the LTTE. If past experience is any guide, the photo-finish could be defective. Ekram Kabir explains why
...Mansoor Mamoon examines India's recent concern regarding its north-eastern states
...The newly appointed High Commissioner of the United Kingdom to Bangladesh, Dr David Carter, presented his credentials to President Shahabuddin Ahmed at Bangabhaban yesterday, reports UNB.
...THE fourteen-year-old 17th Lama's flight, (the Lama properly known as the Karmapa, head of the Karma Kagyu religious order) from Tibet to Dharmasala (India) on 5th January must have embarrassed China. Since then the Karmapa, having met the Dalai Lama, had left Dharmasala for an unknown destination in India.
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