United News of Bangladesh

Bangladesh now stands at a threshold where the familiar theatre of politics is being rewritten before our very eyes. Once, the story was told through posters plastered on cracked walls, festoons strung across narrow lanes, and the blare of megaphones cutting through the night. Now, the script has changed. The new battlefield is the screen; the new weapons are memes. Laughter slices deeper than slogans. Irony pierces harder than pamphlets. Once, citizens gathered in town squares, markets, or outside city halls to speak up, protest, and debate. They held signs, chanted slogans, and faced one another. Today, that stage has mostly shifted - into our phones. Social media is now the battlefield, the meeting place, the soapbox all in one. In this new “public square,” comment threads, TikTok videos, meme pages, and viral posts have replaced physical rallies. Political stories, grievances, and loyalties are born, spread, and challenged in real time - often by ordinary people, not just by the powerful. This change brings both hope and danger. On the bright side, a single meme or clever post can circle the country overnight. Voices once ignored - students, artists, the quiet observers - can now speak and be heard. It is now obvious that the great battle for power is no longer fought only in the streets — it is being waged in the feeds of the masses. The ‘Youthquake’ that lit the fire: July 2024 The turning point came with the student uprisings of July 2024. Streets thundered with chants, but the internet raged with a parallel storm. Memes seared authority with biting wit, hashtags outpaced the speed of slogans, and protest art became the new graffiti—spray-painted not only on the walls, but also across screens. What once was dismissed as jest turned into a clarion call, it was not just mere annotation anymore. It was mobilization. And in that moment, the internet was not just a witness to history, it became history’s weapon. Our soil is especially ripe for this transformation because Bangladesh is a young country. Youth make up about one-third of our population.  Among registered voters, more than 30 percent are under 35. But until recently, many of those young people stayed away from elections. A survey found that 54 percent of youths had never voted in a general election. Another study reported 75 percent of youth said they had never participated in a national election. Then came July 2024. The student uprisings shook things, and young people poured into streets and into screens. Hashtags, meme pages, comment threads - politics became a conversation again, not just a grand show by old parties. Some who had never voted before began reading debates in comments, watching candidate profiles, sharing sarcastic memes about corruption, inequality, demand for change. The mix of memes and youth has created new fault lines. The young are less patient with old speeches, more drawn to sharp humor, more likely to share than just listen. In a filtered feed, one clever meme can travel faster and wider than a campaign leaflet ever could. Satire sharpens its edge: DUCSU 2025 The tide swelled in 2025 through the Dhaka University Central Students Union (DUCSU) and hall union elections. Campaigns abandoned hollow chants and embraced parody. Posters mocked currency. Slogans dripped with sarcasm, and memes that were once laughed off as simple jokes began to carry real weight, almost like political manifestos. But every sword casts a dreadful shadow as well. With satire came smear. Falsehoods spread like wildfire, targeting candidates, especially women, with venomous precision. The Election Commission intervened with warnings. It felt as if online missteps could carry the same weight as tampering with ballots. A sobering truth emerged - satire was no longer just harmless fun. It had become a fatal double-edged weapon, capable of ending someone’s career as easily as saving it. Faceless army: The bot Invasion Yet hidden behind the scene, a silent power directs the show. Bot armies, silent and relentless, amplify narratives, drown dissent and create illusions of consensus. A candidate’s popularity, or its perception at least, can be inflated in minutes. Critics can be buried beneath waves of coordinated noise. For the common voter scrolling through their feed, the line between genuine support and engineered approval has all but disappeared. Humor may lighten the meme wars, but distortion fuels them. And in this strange new arena, the opponent may not be another citizen; but an ‘Army of Shadows’. Election 2026: Rules of war rewritten As the nation steels itself for the 13th general election in 2026, the Election Commission has laid down a new code of combat. The old order is gone. Posters, festoons, and PVC banners - all summarily banished. Billboard ads, once towering symbols of influence, cut down to just twenty per constituency. Every social media handle must now be declared, every message subject to scrutiny. A single misleading post could summon not applause but imprisonment and a fine sharp enough to cripple a campaign. Clearly, the age of poster wars has ended. The age of meme wars has begun. No longer will victory belong to those who command the walls of a city. It will belong to those who command its feeds. Candidates who wield satire with skill and algorithms with precision will surge forward. Those clinging to the relics of the old world will fade into irrelevance. But the danger is stark as one careless meme can undo a career. One viral punchline can crown a leader. The margin between triumph and ruin has never been so thin. Warnings from Abroad Look abroad for signs of what may come. In Germany’s 2021 federal election, researchers documented how campaigns and disinformation used social media to sway voters. Platforms struggled to stem the tide of fake news flooding timelines. One study found that extra ad impressions on social media could shift vote shares by a few percentage points. (OUP Academic) Meanwhile, in Tanzania, ahead of its 2025 election, the government blocked access to X (formerly Twitter) after alleged “cyberattacks” — raising questions about whether this new “public square” can be shut down at will. These examples reveal both the promise and peril of digital politics: memes and algorithms can spark change, but they can also be captured, censored, or twisted by those in control. Perils of the ‘new age’ Yet the odyssey ahead is artful. The imposed regulations on ‘harmful content’ may become a stern shackle for dissent. Legions of bots could shake the very foundations of democracy, turning honest debate into a battlefield of deception. It is certain that the eco-friendly reforms will save the environment, but there lies risks of sidelining candidates who lack digital muscle to compete. Thus, the stage of Bangladeshi politics has been transformed. The festoon and the poster, once the lifeblood of campaigns, now surrender to social media, memes and hashtags. What once simply entertained has become a calculated strategy. What once adorned walls now shapes destinies. As the countdown to the 2026 election continues, one thing is clear - the real fight won’t be in crowded squares or noisy rallies, but in the digital feeds where stories are crafted, sharpened, and spread. And make no mistake, that battle is already underway. The streets may still reverberate with echoes, but the screens will be the dominant medium, for sure. And, in this kingdom of pixels and punchlines, the victor will not be the one who shouts the loudest, but the one who makes the world laugh, click and believe.

Police today detained some 25 BNP activists and leaders, including a central leader, on charges of attempts to carry out subversive activities and chaos following a road march in Bagerhat district. BNP, however, claimed that police held at least 40 leaders and activists from different areas after a “peaceful” road march in the district. The detainees included central assistant publicity secretary Shamimur Rahman Shamim, district unit BNP’s former president MA Salam, its incumbent convener ATM Akram Hossain Selim Talim, and another leader Ali Robi, among others. Also Read: Police prevented BNP’s road march in Patuakhali, local leaders say Protesting the detainment and obstruction to their programme, BNP central committee Education Affairs Secretary ABM Dr Obaidul Islam at an instant press conference at Bagerhat Press Club around 11am alleged that at least 40 BNP men were detained centring the road march over several demands including resignation of the government and controlling price hike of essentials.    The BNP leader also announced a programme to be observed at each police station in all metropolitan cities on March 4, protesting the obstruction and detention of their party members across the country today. Md Asaduzzaman, superintendent of police in the district, said they apprehended some 20 to 25 BNP men after receiving information that the party men were hatching plans to carry out subversive activities and disorder in the name of the road march. Verification was going on about the detainees and legal actions will be taken in this connection later, the SP added.    

Leaders of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) are set to sign the BIMSTEC Charter at the 5th Summit to be held in Sri Lankan capital city on Wednesday. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi will be joining the Summit, hosted by current BIMSTEC chair Sri Lanka in virtual mode, from Dhaka and New Delhi respectively.  BIMSTEC Convention on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters will be signed by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Justice or the nominated signatories of the BIMSTEC Member States. Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen is leading a Bangladesh delegation at the Summit in person. Momen said Bangladesh is committed to the security and stability of the region within the framework of BIMSTEC Convention on Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime and annual Consultation Mechanism of BIMSTEC National Security Advisors Forum.  "I am happy to note that our leaders will be approving and watching the signing of the BIMSTEC Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters at the 5th BIMSTEC Summit tomorrow (Wednesday)," he said. READ: BIMSTEC: Jaishankar exchanges pleasantries with Momen  The foreign minister said senior officials’ meeting held on Monday recommended some important documents for consideration and onward recommendation to the Summit.  "BIMSTEC Charter is one of them which will place the organization’s activities on a more structured and rule based platform," Momen said.  Memorandum of Association (MoA) on the Establishment of BIMSTEC Technology Transfer Facility (TTF) in Colombo, Sri Lanka will be signed by Ministers of Foreign Affairs or the nominated signatories of the BIMSTEC Member States. On the other hand, Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Mutual Cooperation between Diplomatic Academies/Training Institutions of BIMSTEC Member States will be signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the nominated signatories of the BIMSTEC Member States. Later, a declaration of the 5th BIMSTEC Summit will be adopted. President of Sri Lanka Gotabaya Rajapaksa will deliver opening and closing remarks as the Chairman of BIMSTEC. The Covid pandemic related challenges, and the uncertainties within the international system that all BIMSTEC members are facing, imparts greater urgency to the goal of taking BIMSTEC technical and economic cooperation to the next level, according to the Indian External Affairs Ministry. This is expected to be the main subject of deliberations by the leaders at the Summit, it said. The leaders are also expected to discuss the establishment of basic institutional structures and mechanisms of the group.

The Awami League (AL) has suspended eight of its leaders for filling nominations for the upcoming union parishad election in Magura. AL has already declared its official candidate for the upcoming UP polls in the district. General Secretary of Magura district AL, Pankaj Kumar Kundu told reporters Friday that the eight party leaders of the local unit were suspended for breaching the outfit's organisational discipline. READ: Magura clash over election: 68 people sued The suspended party leaders are Md Benazir Ahmed of Atharokhada ward-2, Md Baki Billah Santu of Kasundi ward-3, Md Mizanur Rahman Ranju of Moghi ward-7, Md Zahidul Islam Zahid of Jagdal ward-8, Md Jahangir Hossain, Md Enamul Haque Raja of Beroil Palita ward-11, Md Tipu Sultan of Kunchia Mura ward-12, and Md Milon Hossain. "Any AL member who will work for these leaders will also be suspended from their membership and all other positions of the party," said Pankaj. READ: 4 killed, 30 injured in clash over UP polls in Magura All the assistant bodies and organisations of AL in Magura have been asked to strictly follow the party's directions, he added.

A victory over terrorism is impossible without the outside world's recognition of the Taliban authority in Afghanistan, Abdul Salam Hanafi, deputy head of the temporary government formed by the group, said Monday. "If the world wants the Taliban to successfully combat drug [trafficking] and terrorism, it should recognise the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," he told Afghanistan's Aamaj News agency. "The Taliban seeks to establish diplomatic ties with the US and interact with the whole world." The Taliban launched a large-scale operation to take control of Afghanistan after the US declared its troop pullout earlier this year. READ: Taliban hang body in public; signal return to past tactics On August 15, Afghanistan's then-president Ashraf Ghani fled the country, while the Taliban swept into Kabul without encountering any resistance. In early September, the Taliban declared that the entire territory of the country was under their control, and formed an interim government. READ: Russia says it’s in sync with US, China, Pakistan on Taliban

A court here on Sunday issued an arrest warrant against nine village leaders who ostracized a couple in Salimnagar village in Debiganj upazila of Panchagarh. Judge of  Debiganj trial court MM Mahbub Islam issued the warrant on the basis of the investigation report submitted by Officer-in-Charge of Debiganj police station Md Jamal Hossain. The nine accused village leaders are Md Shahjahan Ali, Mufti Md Anwar Hossain, Md Nasir Uddin, Md Amir Chan, Md Shahid, Md Sorman Ali, Md Julhas, Md Mostafa Kamal and Md Russel. READ: Two suspected Ansar militants arrested in Khulna The couple was ostracized for two months by a ruling (fatwa) given by those leaders on the point of their Halala marriage of Islamic law. Halala, also known as tahleel marriage is a practice in which a woman, after being divorced by triple talaq, has to marry another man, consummate the marriage, and get divorced again to be able to remarry her former husband. Panchagarh Chief Judicial Magistrate Md Motiur Rahman took the matter in cognizance after it got published in news and ordered OC Jamal Hossain to submit an investigation report within August 22 in this regard. OC Jamal Hossain said upon investigation primary evidence of those leaders ostracizing that couple came out. READ: Barishal attack: 21 people arrested so far The arrest warrant was not yet sent to Debiganj police. Legal actions will be taken as soon as we get it, he said. Public prosecutor Aminur Rahman said the court has taken legal actions as the higher court has clear ruling against enforcing Fatwa in Bangladesh.

President Joe Biden on Friday promised Afghanistan’s top leaders a “sustained” partnership even as he moves to accelerate winding down the United States’ longest war amid escalating Taliban violence. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, chair of the High Council for National Reconciliation, met at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin before their sit-down with Biden at the White House later in the afternoon. While Biden vowed that the U.S. was committed to assisting Afghanistan, he also insisted that it was time for the American military to step back. “Afghans are going to have to decide their future,” Biden said in brief remarks at the start of his meeting with the Afghan leaders. Biden did not elaborate on what a ’’sustained” partnership might entail. The leaders’ visit to Washington comes as the Biden administration has stepped up plans for withdrawal ahead of the president’s Sept. 11 deadline to end a nearly 20-year-old war that has come with a breathtaking human cost. Ghani also paid a visit on his own Friday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and with House Republican lawmakers. He met with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday. More than 2,400 U.S. troops have been killed and 20,000 wounded in the war since 2001, according to the Defense Department. It’s estimated that over 3,800 U.S. private security contractors have been killed. The suffering has been even greater for Afghanistan with estimates showing more than 66,000 Afghan troops killed and more than 2.7 million forced to flee their homes — mostly to Iran. READ: Biden faces growing pressure from the left over voting bill Roughly 650 U.S. troops are expected to remain in Afghanistan to provide security for diplomats after the main American military force completes its withdrawal, which is set to be largely done in the next two weeks, U.S. officials told The Associated Press. Several hundred additional American forces will remain at the Kabul airport, potentially until September. They’ll assist Turkish troops providing security, a temporary move until a more formal Turkey-led security operation is in place, the officials said Thursday. Overall, officials said the U.S. expects to have American and coalition military command, its leadership, and most troops out by July Fourth, or shortly after that, meeting an aspirational deadline that commanders developed months ago. The officials were not authorized to discuss details of the withdrawal and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. The departure of the bulk of the more than 4,000 troops that have been in the country in recent months is unfolding well before Biden’s Sept. 11 deadline. And it comes amid accelerating Taliban battlefield gains, fueling fears that the Afghan government and its military could collapse in a matter of months. Ghani said at a news conference following the Oval Office meeting that the talks with Biden were productive. He pointed to an uptick in Afghans signing up for the military as a sign of hope. But he also acknowledged the difficulty that lies ahead, suggesting the moment was analogous to the difficulties the U.S. faced at the start of its civil war. “There have been reverses, we acknowledge it — but the key now is stabilization,” he added. Abdullah, who took part in the meeting with Biden, later emphasized the importance of continued U.S. support. “We tend to forget that al-Qaida had reached a certain level of capacity in Afghanistan that was an actual danger and homeland security threat,” Abdullah told the AP in an interview. “If Afghanistan is abandoned completely, without support, without engagement, there’s a danger that Afghanistan can turn once again into a haven for terrorist groups.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking Friday in Paris, noted the increased violence and cited “a real danger” that if the Taliban tries to take the country by force, “we’ll see a renewal of a war or possibly worse.” But, Blinken said, the Biden administration came to the conclusion that not removing U.S. troops, as the Trump administration had promised the Taliban in February 2020, would have been a bad choice. The administration believes the Taliban would have resumed attacks on U.S. forces, prompting an escalation of the war. Blinken added that a continued U.S. presence “certainly would have helped significantly” the Kabul government. “But what is almost certain is that our military would have come to us and said, well, the situation has changed, we need more forces. And we would have repeated the cycle that we’ve been in for 20 years. And at some point, you have to say this has to stop.” Still, Biden faces strong criticism from some Republicans for pulling out of Afghanistan, even though President Donald Trump made the 2020 deal with the Taliban to withdraw all U.S. forces by May 2021. McConnell on Thursday charged Biden has “chosen to abandon the fight and invite even greater terrorist threats” and urged the president to delay the withdrawal of U.S. forces. White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed back on Friday that Biden inherited an untenable situation from Trump, marked by a relatively small coalition troop presence and an agreement brokered by the Trump administration and the Taliban to draw down all U.S. forces. “That’s the hand we were dealt,” Psaki said. “The president made a decision which is consistent with his view that this was not a winnable war.” Biden acknowledged the difficult situation Ghani and Abdullah face as they try to build back their country while staving off Taliban aggression. “They’re doing important work trying to bring back unity among Afghan leaders across the board and Afghans are going to have to decide their future, what they, what they want,” Biden said. “What they want. It won’t be for lack of us.” READ: Biden urges shots for young adults as variant concern grows Ghani in his meeting with House Republican leadership faced questions about how his government would use the $3 billion in security assistance it is seeking from the United States and recent gains by the Taliban. “We want to support them. We want them to be able to defend their country from the Taliban. But I’ll tell you it’s a fairly grim assessment,” said Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “The question is: Can they push back the Taliban?”

A Southern California woman says the father and son leaders of a Mexican megachurch sexually abused her for 18 years starting when she was 12, manipulating Bible passages to convince her the mistreatment actually was a gift from God, according a federal lawsuit.

Kushtia, Sept 21 (UNB) - Police arrested two leaders of Jubo League’s Kushtia Sadar upazila unit in an extortion case on Friday night.