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SC upholds HC order for amending CrPc 54, 167

Human Rights Report:
The Supreme Court Appellate Division on Tuesday turned down the government's appeal challenging the High Court instructions on arrest on suspicion and remand in police custody under CrPc section 54 and 167.
A 4-member Appellate Division bench, led by chief justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, will gave verdict on the appeal on 24 May.
Bangladesh Legal and Services Trust filed a writ over the death of Independent University student Shamim Reza Rubel in police custody in 1998. He was detained under Section 54. The HC had issued a rule on the government in connection with the writ.
After hearings on the rule, the High Court in 2003 gave some instructions and recommendations on CrPc Section 54, under which police can detain a person on suspicion without any charge.
Part of HC instructions
Police cannot arrest a person for detention, according to the High Court's instructions which also say a police man must show his/her ID card while arresting a person. The arrested person must be acquainted about the cause of arrest within three hours. Relatives of the arrestee must be informed of the arrest incident within an hour of the arrest when he/she is arrested from outside of his house or workplace. The arrested person must be allowed to consult with his/her relatives and lawyer.
According to the HC instruction, the arrestee can be interrogated in a glass-made room in the police custody if he needs to be remanded at the permission of magistrate. Relatives and lawyers of the arrestee can stay outside the room.
The arrestee must undergo medical check up before and after police remand. Magistrate shall form a medical board in case of allegation of torture during police remand.

DNA test finds rape evidence in Tonu's body
 

Human Rights Report:
Unlike the report of the first autopsy conducted on the body of Sohagi Jahan Tonu, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has found rape evidence on the body of the Comilla Victoria College student in its DNA test.
Quoting Special Police Super of Cimilla CID Dr Nazmul Karim Khan, UNB reports that investigators found profile of semen of three men in the dresses and underwear of Tonu in the DNA test conducted at the CID Dhaka laboratory.
The CID official confirmed the matter on 16 May 2016 night.
He said they matched the blood found on the dresses and underwear of Tonu with her teeth to get sure that the clothes belonged to the college girl.
 

Bangladesh should create free atmosphere for journalists: UN

Human Rights Report:

The United Nations has said Bangladesh government should create an atmosphere in which journalists can operate freely.
"The Secretary General and various human rights organisations have expressed their concern at the targeted violence we've seen in Bangladesh against reporters and bloggers. Also, the recent death penalty that was imposed," spokesman for the UN secretary general Stéphane Dujarric replied to a questioner on Friday's daily briefing.
He continued saying, "We would like to see the Government create an atmosphere in which our journalists can operate… can operate freely."
Drawing his attention to The New York Time's editorial titled "Bangladesh's Descent into lawlessness', the questioner had asked, "As you know, the murder of LGBT editor Xulhaz Mannan, and bloggers and extrajudicial killings and the government harassment is going on. Particularly, an 82 year old editor in Bangladesh is in prison, and the President of the Bangladesh Union of Journalists is in prison. So, these things are happening in Bangladesh. What can be done to rescue Bangladesh from this lawlessness?"
 

 President Obama will visit Hiroshima

Human Rights Report:
In his final months in the White House, a visibly liberated Barack Obama is piling up firsts - the first sitting president to visit Castro-led Cuba, the first to venture inside a federal prison and talk to inmates. Now he's about to add another first, perhaps the trickiest of the lot. He's about to become the first incumbent president to visit Hiroshima.
On May 27, immediately on the side lines of a G-7 summit, Obama will travel to the city where the US became the first, and thus far only, country to use a nuclear weapon in anger. And, despite (or perhaps because of) the post-war alliance between the two nations, you can see why no occupant of the Oval Office has yet ventured to Hiroshima.
More than 70 years after the explosion of the uranium fission atomic bomb, code-named Little Boy, killed 100,000 people or more, America's use of the bomb to end the deadliest war in history is as controversial as ever. An unnecessary savagery inflicted on civilians, as many Japanese and some American revisionist historians believe, and on a country that was about to surrender anyway? Or, as the standard US narrative has it, just desserts for a country that had unleashed brutal imperial aggression across Asia and the unprovoked sneak attack on Pearl Harbour that led to America's entry into World War II? What is certain is that few presidents would have turned down the chance offered to Harry Truman: to end, at a single stroke, a war that otherwise might have culminated in a land invasion of Japan costing, his generals estimated, a quarter of a million American lives.
 

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UN says turning migrants away 'won't work'
 

Human Rights Report:

The UN high commissioner for refugees says the migrants crisis is now a global phenomenon and that simply turning them away "won't work". Filippo Grandi told the BBC that more nations had to help the "few countries" shouldering the burden, by increasing both funding and resettlement. He said that, last year, fewer than 1% of 20 million refugees had been resettled in another nation. More are fleeing conflict and hardship than at any other time in history. Mr Grandi was speaking to the BBC during a day of special live coverage examining how an age of unprecedented mobility is shaping our world. Later, the UN refugee agency's special envoy, Angelina Jolie-Pitt, will deliver a keynote speech, in which she will warn about the "fear of uncontrolled migration" and how it has "given space, and a false air of legitimacy, to those who promote a politics of fear and separation". A range of speakers, including the UNHCR's special envoy Angelina Jolie-Pitt, and former British secret intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove, will set out the most important new ideas shaping our thinking on economic development, security and humanitarian assistance. 'Difficult discussion'Mr Grandi, who took up the UN post in January this year, said the fact that Syrians were arriving in East Asia and in Caribbean as refugees showed "how global the phenomenon has become and therefore we have to have global responses".
 

Roanu' hits power supply system hard
 

Human Rights Report:
The Power Distribution System was seriously disrupted on Saturday in cyclone-hit areas like Chittagong, Noakhali, Bhola, Cox's Bazar, Comilla and other coastal districts.Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) sources said, the power supply was suspended immediately after the cyclonic storm 'Roanu' hit the Barisal-Chittagong coast near Chittagong at noon. The distribution system went off with the starting of the storm in the areas, and we had to shut down some of them as part of our pre-cautionary measures to avoid major disaster, PDB Director Saiful Hasan said.He said, the PDB and other power entities were instructed to take precautionary measures before 'Roanu' struck.

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Loadshedding cripples life

Human Rights Report:
Amid rising heat wave across the country, the power crisis has turned for the worse since April 20 and the total loadshedding has crossed 2500 MW.
While the people are suffering terribly as the temperature stands around 40 degree Celsius, loadshedding is frequent even in the capital.
According to sources, the power generation capacity of the country presently is 11744 MW as against the highest demand for 8500 MW during the peak hour in the current summer. The highest quantity of power generation in the country's history was 8348 MW recorded on April 9. But the loadshedding has been increasing since then and has exceeded 2500 MW.
Alleged artificial crisis is the reason behind the increase in loadshedding despite the country's capacity to produce enough power to meet the total demand.

Veteran Journo Sadeque Khan no more
 

Human Rights Report:
Veteran journalist Sadeque Khan is no more. He was 83 and suffering from cold over the last few days but did not withdraw from writing and other work. Sadeque Khan was the eldest son of Abdul
Jabbar Khan, Speaker of the Pakistan National Assembly in 1960s. His brother, Tourism Minister Rashed Khan Menon, said he was found dead in his Baridhara residence in the city on Monday morning. Sadeque Khan's car driver Nazrul Islam said the veteran journalist went for a shower at around 11 am. As he was not coming out and not responding to calls for long, the door of the washroom was broken open at around 12 noon.
He was found dead lying on the floor, he said. The driver said Rashed Khan Menon rushed to the house on receiving the information and sent Sadeque Khan's body to United Hospital. The 83-year-old journalist is survived by his wife, and a son. Sadeque Khan embarked on a career in journalism in the 1950s.
 

 Don't make any decisions on an empty stomach

Human Rights Report:
Decisions are best taken when you are full. Researchers have found that the hormone ghrelin-released before meals and is known to increase one's appetite has a negative effect on both decision-making and impulse control.
"For the first time, we have been able to show that increasing ghrelin levels that are seen prior to meals or during fasting, cause the brain to act impulsively and also affect the ability to make rational decisions," said one of the researchers Karolina Skibicka from Sahlgrenska Academy, the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
When hungry, the hormone ghrelin is produced in the stomach. In the new study conducted on rats, the hormone has been shown to have a negative effect on decision-making capabilities and impulse control.
The rats can be trained to be rewarded (with sugar) when they execute an action such as pressing a lever ("go"), or instead they can be rewarded only when they resist pressing the lever ("no-go") when an appropriate signal is given.
They learn this by repeatedly being given a signal. For example, a flash of light or a buzzing sound that tells them which action should be executed for them to receive their reward.
 

US working in new ways to help BD counter violent extremism: Biswal
 

Human Rights Report:
The United States has said they are now working in "new ways" to help the government of Bangladesh understand and deal with the "new contours" of threat of violent extremism in addition to expanding programmes that seek to counter this threat.
"Bangladesh has a history of overcoming difficult challenges," said Nisha Desai Biswal, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, while giving her testimony on FY 2017 budget priorities of the US for South Asia.
She also said they are hopeful that, with a determined partnership, they can also help Bangladesh defeat the extremists and terrorists that threaten "vibrant society" in Bangladesh. Biswal, who recently visited Dhaka, said many of the gains that Bangladesh has made in human development and economic growth risk "being undermined by the escalating extremist violence."

Interrupted cyber heist using SWIFT messaging

Human Rights Report:
Vietnam's Tien Phong Bank said that it interrupted an attempted cyber heist that involved the use of fraudulent SWIFT messages, the same technique at the heart of February's massive theft from the Bangladesh central bank.Hanoi-based TPBank said in a statement late on Sunday in response to inquiries from Reuters that in the fourth quarter of last year it identified suspicious requests through fraudulent SWIFT messages to transfer more than 1 million euros ($1.1 million) of funds. TPBank said it caught the attempt quickly enough to halt movement of funds to criminals by immediately contacting involved parties. The attack "did not cause any losses. It had no impact on the SWIFT system in particular and the transaction system between the bank and customers in general," the bank's statement said. The bank said the transfers were made using infrastructure of an outside vendor hired to connect it to the SWIFT bank messaging system. Its statement did not name the service provider, though it said TPBank has discontinued working with that vendor and switched to using a new system that offers a higher level of security and enables it to connect directly with SWIFT.SWIFT, the backbone of global financial transactions, declined comment on TPBank's claims. On Thursday, it had said an unnamed commercial bank was targeted by a malware attack similar to the one at Bangladesh Bank.

Humiliated N'ganj school headmaster now suspended

Human Rights Report:
Amid countrywide protest and criticism against the humiliating of the headmaster, authorities of a Narayanganj school suspended its headmaster days after he was publicly humiliated in presence of local lawmaker for his alleged derogatory comments on religion.
He had received a letter signed by the chairman of the school management committee, sources said.
Earlier, a headmaster of a school in Narayanganj was beaten up by a mob and made to do sit-ups holding his ears in the presence of local Jatiya Party lawmaker AKM Selim Osman last 13 May 2016.
Allegations against him were that he demeaned religion.
The incident, that has a video circulating in the social media, drew widespread flak. Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid has condemned the incident.

Steps if price list is not followed during Ramadan

Human Rights Report:
Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) mayor on 25 May 2016 warned of legal measures against the businessmen who would not follow the city corporation-determined price list while selling essentials this Ramadan. A survey has found that there is an adequate supply of daily essentials and other goods and there is no reason for a hike in their prices during Ramadan, said DSCC Mayor Sayeed Khokon. He was addressing a meeting with leaders of several business bodies from 13 bazars in the southern part of the metropolitan city.

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