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Hundreds of thousands of supporters of Bangladesh’s main Islamist party rallied on Saturday, demanding an overhaul of the electoral system as the country gears up for polls next year.The Jamaat-e-Islami party has gained significant momentum since the ousting of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a popular uprising last year. During her tenure, Hasina took a hardline stance against Jamaat, even cancelling its registration as a political party. For decades, Jamaat was barred from holding public rallies. Last month, the Supreme Court restored the party’s registration, paving the way for its participation in elections slated for next April.”We have suffered a lot in the last 15 years. We went to jail, we were robbed of our political rights,” Mohammad Abdul Mannan, a 29-year-old party activist, told AFP.Demonstrators braving the sweltering heat in the capital demaded changes to the distrution of seats, calling for proportional representation. “We’ve gathered here in masses to press our seven-point demand, which includes participatory representation in parliament,” Mannan said.”Elections shouldn’t be held unless our demands are fulfilled.”  After independence, Jamaat was banned. It later re-emerged and registered its best electoral performance in 1991 when it secured 18 seats.The party joined a coalition government in 2001, but failed to build lasting popular support. “We want a proportional representation system so that winners can’t take all — we too deserve a voice,” Mannan said. Tens of thousands of demonstrators began swarming the Suhrawardy Udyan memorial in capital Dhaka by midday, spilling out into the surrounding park. Some wore T-shirts bearing the party’s logo, others sported headbands inscribed with its name, while many displayed metallic badges shaped like a scale — the party’s electoral symbol.Md Shafiqul Islam, 58, travelled from Bogura — a stronghold of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is eyeing a landslide victory in the polls. “I felt it was my duty as a Muslim to attend. Jamaat-e-Islami promises to establish an Islamic country, and that’s why I came,” Shafiqul told AFP. During Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami supported Islamabad, a role that sparks anger among many Bangladeshis today.Bangladesh’s war crimes tribunal sentenced several of Jamaat-e-Islami’s senior leaders to death for their roles in the war, executing four of them.Many Bangladeshis believe the party must acknowledge its past to regain public trust and become a viable electoral force. But at the rally, supporters offered a different take. “Jamaat is being blamed unfairly,” said a 33-year-old private service holder, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity.”It did nothing except uphold the integrity of the nation.” 

At least three wild elephants were found dead across Sri Lanka on Friday, officials said, a day after six young rescued elephants were returned to the jungle under a conservation drive.Wildlife officials said one elephant was run over by a passenger train in the island’s northeast, while two others were found shot dead in the central and eastern regions.Elephants are protected by law and considered sacred due to their significance in Buddhist culture, but farmers often kill them to protect their crops.Human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka has resulted in the deaths of nearly 200 elephants and 55 people so far this year.”We have launched investigations into the shootings of the two elephants, it looks like the work of local farmers,” a police spokesman in the capital Colombo said.The train accident occurred in Gallella, the same area where seven elephants were killed by a locomotive in February, the worst incident of its kind in Sri Lanka.It happened despite speed limits on trains passing through elephant-inhabited forest areas.A Sri Lanka railway official said an “internal investigation has been launched to establish if the driver had violated the speed limit”.Wildlife authorities released six elephants, aged between five and seven, back into the jungle on Thursday after rehabilitating them under a conservation programme that began in 1998.The Elephant Transit Home in Udawalawe, about 210 kilometres (130 miles) southeast of Colombo, cares for rescued animals and eventually returns them to the wild.The sanctuary is a major tourist attraction and holds 57 elephants that had been abandoned, injured, or separated from their herds.Sri Lankan authorities believe the transit home’s strategy of rewilding rescued elephants, rather than domesticating them, has been successful.The home has returned 187 elephants to the wild since 1998.Conservation efforts have become increasingly urgent due to the escalating conflict between wild elephants and farmers.Official figures from Sri Lanka’s wildlife department show that 4,835 elephants and 1,601 people have been killed in the worsening conflict since 2010.

Pakistan will ban for five years the construction of new hotels around picturesque lakes in the north that attract tens of thousands of tourists each year, a government agency said.Unregulated construction of hotels and guest houses in Gilgit-Baltistan — which boasts around 13,000 glaciers, more than any other country on Earth outside the polar regions — has sparked major concerns about environmental degradation.The natural beauty of the region has made it a top tourist destination, with towering peaks looming over the Old Silk Road, and a highway transporting tourists between cherry orchards, glaciers, and ice-blue lakes.However, in recent years construction has exploded led by companies from outside the region, straining water and power resources, and increasing waste.”If we let them construct hotels at such pace, there will be a forest of concrete,” Khadim Hussain, a senior official at the Gilgit-Baltistan Environmental Protection Authority told AFP on Friday.”People don’t visit here to see concrete; people come here to enjoy natural beauty,” he added.Last month, a foreign tourist posted a video on Instagram — which quickly went viral — alleging wastewater was being discharged by a hotel into Lake Attabad, which serves as a freshwater source for Hunza.The next day, authorities fined the hotel more than $5,000.Asif Sakhi, a political activist and resident of the Hunza Valley, welcomed the ban.”We have noticed rapid changes in the name of tourism and development,” he said, adding hotel construction was “destroying our natural lakes and rivers”.Shah Nawaz, a hotel manager and local resident of the valley, also praised the ban, saying he believes “protecting the environment and natural beauty is everyone’s responsibility”.

State authorities blamed the management of India’s Royal Challengers Bengaluru cricket team for last month’s deadly stampede during celebrations for their first IPL title.Eleven fans were crushed to death and more than 50 wounded in a stampede near the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium after hundreds of thousands packed the streets in the southern city of Bengaluru on June 4, to welcome home their hero Virat Kohli and his RCB cricket team.Karnataka state authorities singled out the RCB, its partners and the state cricket association for their mismanagement of the event in a report made public on Thursday.It said organisers had not submitted a “formal request” or provided enough detail for permission to be granted for the celebrations. “Consequently, the permission was not granted,” it said.The team went ahead with its victory parade despite police rejecting RCB’s request, according to the report.AFP has been unable to contact RCB for comment.Four people, including a senior executive at RCB, representatives of event organisers DNA and Karnataka State Cricket Association, were detained by police in the days following the stampede.Players were parading the trophy near the stadium a day after their win over Punjab Kings in the final in Ahmedabad when the stampede occurred.The dead were aged between 14 and 29.Prime Minister Narendra Modi called it “absolutely heartrending” and Kohli, who top-scored in the final, was “at a loss for words” after it unfolded.India coach Gautam Gambhir said he was never a fan of roadshows, and the authorities should not have allowed the mass celebrations if they weren’t prepared.

Air India’s inspection of the locking feature on the fuel control switches of its existing Boeing 787 aircraft found no issues, an internal communication circulated within the airline said.The switches have come under scrutiny following last month’s crash of an Air India jet, which killed 260 people, after a preliminary probe by Indian investigators found that they had flipped from the run position to cutoff shortly after takeoff.India’s aviation regulator ordered the country’s airlines this week to investigate the locking feature on the switches of several Boeing models.The order came after Boeing notified operators that the fuel switch locks on its jets were safe.However, it was in line with a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) issued by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2018, which recommended inspection of the locks to ensure they could not be moved accidentally.Air India’s probe found no problems with the locking mechanism.”Over the weekend, our Engineering team initiated precautionary inspections on the locking mechanism of Fuel Control Switch (FCS) on all our Boeing 787 aircraft,” the airline’s flight operations department said in a communication to its pilots.”The inspections have been completed and no issues were found,” the communication said, noting that it had complied with the regulator’s directives.It said all of its Boeing 787-8 aircraft had also undergone “Throttle Control Module (TCM) replacement as per the Boeing maintenance schedule”, adding that the FCS was part of this module.Other countries have also ordered their airlines to examine fuel switches on Boeing aircraft.Singapore found them all to be “functioning properly”.”Our checks confirmed that all fuel switches on SIA (Singapore Airlines) and Scoot’s Boeing 787 aircraft are functioning properly and comply with regulatory requirements,” an SIA spokesperson told AFP this week.The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner that crashed last month was heading from Ahmedabad in western India to London. All but one of the 242 people on board were killed, as well as 19 people on the ground.A report in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, which cited unidentified sources, said a cockpit recording of a conversation between the two pilots indicated the captain had cut off fuel to the engines.India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which released the preliminary report, said it was still “too early to reach any definite conclusions”.It said the investigation’s final report would come out with “root causes and recommendations”. “We urge the public and the media to refrain from spreading premature narratives that risk undermining the integrity of the investigative process,” it said in a statement. 

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.”