Modi’s meeting with Khaleda Sunday

The meeting with Khaleda, former Bangladesh Prime Minister, will take place after Modi's meeting with the leader of the opposition Raushan Ershad. Photo: STAR

Star Online Report

Besides holding talks with his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have a meeting with BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia in Dhaka on Sunday.
The meeting with Khaleda, former prime minister of Bangladesh, will take place after Modi's meeting with the leader of the opposition Raushan Ershad, Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar made the announcement while talking to reporters in New Delhi.
This sets at rest speculation whether Modi will have a meeting with the BNP chief during his Dhaka visit.
The Indian PM will also meet some left leaders.
The meeting between Modi and Khaleda assumes important as it was the BNP chief who had declined to meet Indian President Pranab Mukherjee when the latter had visited Dhaka in March 2013.
Jaishankar said an announcement would be made during Modi's visit about the availability of Bangladeshi TV channels in India officially, a long-pending demand of people in West Bengal. 

Tk 97,000cr ADP implementable: Planning minister

Planning Minister Mustafa Kamal. Star File Photo.

Star Online Report

Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal today hoped that the development outlay of Tk 97,000 crore is implementable with an equal expenditure in every quarter.
It has become a tradition of spending around half of the development budget in the first three quarters, but the pace accelerates in the fourth quarter and 40 to 45 percent of the development outlay implemented in the last quarter, he said.
“But we are trying to get out of the practice and spend the total development outlay equally in every quarter, and if we can do it the annual development programme can be implemented,” he said replying to queries at a post-budget press conference at Osmani Memorial Auditorium in Dhaka.
“We have also taken several reform measures to implement the ADP,” the planning minister added.

Israel launches retaliatory strikes on Gaza militant targets

Israel has said it has launched retaliatory air strikes on targets in the Gaza Strip. Israel's defense minister said he held the Palestinian militant group Hamas responsible for two rockets fired at the Jewish state.

An statement released by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon on Thursday provided little in the way of detail, saying only that the air force had carried out strikes on three militant targets in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for Palestinian rocket attacks late on Wednesday, which hit open fields near Ashkelon and the town of Netivot.
"In response to this attack, the Israel Defence Forces struck three terror infrastructures in the Gaza Strip," the statement said.
Yaalon also blamed the rocket fire on Palestinian militant group Hamas, which effectively controls the coastal territory.
"We will hold Hamas responsible for everything that happens in the Gaza Strip and we will not tolerate any attempt to harm our citizens," he added.
Indications were, though, that it may well not have been members of Hamas who launched the latest rocket attacks on Israel.
The Reuters news agency cited a statement posted via Twitter by a radical Islamist group calling itself the Omar Brigades as claiming responsibility for the attack.
Hamas is said to have been trying to crack down on Islamist extremist groups in the territory, with AFP reporting that Hamas security forces had shot a Salafist miltant dead in a confrontation in Gaza City earlier in the week.
Concerns about possible escalation
The latest incidents of violence come just two days after German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited the Gaza Strip, where he called on Israel to lift its blockade of the territory. He warned that a failure to break the current stalemate, nearly a year after 50 days of conflict in Gaza, could spur a military escalation. Steinmeier also said that it would only be possible for Israel to lift the blockade if all rocket attacks out of Gaza stopped.
pfd/msh (Reuters, AFP, dpa)