United News of Bangladesh

Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, arrived in Kyiv on Thursday, pledging long-term security support for Ukraine, including a "100-Year Partnership" treaty set to be signed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This treaty will cover defence, science, energy, and trade, reports AP. UK's Starmer in Kyiv for security talks with Ukraine This unannounced visit marked Starmer's first trip to Ukraine since becoming Prime Minister in July, although he had visited in 2023 as opposition leader and met Zelenskyy twice in London. With the war entering its third year next month, Starmer's visit is part of a broader diplomatic push, coinciding with several other European officials' visits to Kyiv ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration. Upon arriving at Kyiv’s railway station on a cold morning, Starmer reiterated the need for continued support: “We’re a long way into this conflict. We mustn’t let up.” He later laid flowers at a war memorial and visited a burn treatment hospital. Meanwhile, Russian drone attacks caused minor damage in Kyiv, though Ukrainian air defences successfully downed the drones. The UK has committed over £12.8 billion ($16 billion) in military and civilian aid to Ukraine and has trained over 50,000 Ukrainian troops. Starmer is also set to announce an additional £40 million ($49 million) for Ukraine's postwar recovery. British PM's brother Nick Starmer dies However, the U.S.'s future support under Trump remains uncertain, as the president-elect has questioned the costs of aiding Ukraine and shown an interest in negotiating with Russia. This uncertainty has led Ukraine’s allies to intensify their support in anticipation of potential shifts in American policy. The 100-year pact aims to provide lasting security to Ukraine, preventing it from being vulnerable to Russian aggression, as seen in Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the 2022 invasion. The agreement includes collaboration on defence, particularly maritime security, drone technology, and tracking stolen Ukrainian grain. Starmer emphasized that the partnership not only serves the current moment but invests in the future, fostering technology, scientific progress, and cultural exchanges. He also stated that this partnership strengthens ties between the UK and Ukraine, which have only grown stronger since Russia’s invasion. There's no honeymoon for new UK leader Keir Starmer after a summer of unrest Zelenskyy and Starmer also planned to discuss France’s proposal for foreign troops to monitor a potential ceasefire. Zelenskyy has conditioned such a plan on a clear timeline for Ukraine’s NATO membership, a topic of contention with Trump, who has expressed support for Putin’s stance on NATO expansion. As the war nears its third year, both sides are intensifying their military efforts, with Ukraine pushing offensives in Russia’s Kursk region and Moscow continuing to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

British Prime Minister Liz Truss quit Thursday after a tumultuous and historically brief term in which her economic policies roiled financial markets and a rebellion in her political party obliterated her authority. Truss became the third Conservative prime minister to be toppled in as many years, extending the instability that has shaken Britain since it broke off from the European Union and leaving its leadership in limbo as the country faces a cost-of-living crisis and looming recession. “I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” Truss acknowledged in a statement delivered outside her 10 Downing Street office. Financial markets breathed a sigh of relief, but Truss leaves a divided party seeking a leader who can unify its warring factions. Truss, who said she will remain in office until a replacement is chosen, has been prime minister for just 45 days and will almost certainly become the shortest-serving leader in British history. The ruling Conservative Party said it would choose a successor by the end of next week. Potential contenders include former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, who lost to Truss in the last leadership contest, House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace — and Boris Johnson, the former prime minister ousted in July over a series of ethics scandals. The low-tax, low-regulation economic policies that got Truss elected proved disastrous in the real world at a time of soaring inflation and weak growth. Her Sept. 23 economic plan included a raft of tax cuts — paid for by government borrowing — that investors worried Britain couldn’t afford. That pummeled the value of the pound and drove up the cost of mortgages, causing economic pain for people and businesses already struggling from an economy yet to emerge from the pain of the pandemic. That tumult resulted in the replacement of Truss’ Treasury chief, multiple policy U-turns and a breakdown of discipline in the governing Conservative Party. Truss bowed out just a day after vowing to stay in power, saying she was “a fighter and not a quitter.” But she couldn’t hold on any longer after a senior minister quit her government with a barrage of criticism and a vote in the House of Commons descended into chaos and acrimony just days after she was forced to abandon many of her economic policies. The pound rose about 1% Thursday to around $1.13 after Truss’ resignation. But where the Conservative Party goes from here is not clear. Party chiefs hope lawmakers can rally around a unity candidate, but that seems unlikely in a party whose myriad factions — from hard-right Brexiteers to centrist “One Nation” Tories — are at each other’s throats. “Nobody has a route plan. It’s all sort of hand-to-hand fighting on a day-to-day basis,” Conservative lawmaker Simon Hoare told the BBC on Thursday before Truss resigned. Read: Pound rises against dollar as investors react to UK PM Truss' resignation “It’s time for the prime minister to go,” Conservative lawmaker Miriam Cates said, echoing the sentiments of many others. Newspapers that usually support the Conservatives were vitriolic. An editorial in the Daily Mail on Thursday was headlined: “The wheels have come off the Tory clown car.” Her downfall was so rapid that the party was unable to spell out exactly how the selection of a new leader would unfold, and whether the party’s 172,000 members, or only its 357 lawmakers, would get a say. The new leader is due to be in place by Oct. 28. Truss’ resignation is the culmination of months of simmering discontent inside the Conservative Party as its poll ratings with the public have plunged. Johnson’s government was revealed to have held a series of parties in government buildings during period of coronavirus lockdown, when people in Britain were barred from mingling with friends and family or even visiting dying relatives. The party spent the summer picking a replacement as the economy worsened amid spiking energy prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Against that backdrop, many people — including many Conservatives — felt Truss’ tax-cutting policies would do little to help ordinary people struggling to make ends meet. Whoever succeeds Truss will become the country’s third prime minister this year. A national election doesn’t have to be held until 2024, but opposition parties demanded one be held now, saying the government lacks democratic legitimacy. Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer accused the Conservatives of presiding over “utter chaos.” “This is doing huge damage to our economy and the reputation of our country,” he said. “We must have a chance at a fresh start. We need a general election – now.” Truss’ political unraveling began after she and her Treasury chief, Kwasi Kwarteng, unveiled an economic plan with 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in unfunded tax cuts. That hammered of the value of the pound and increased the cost of U.K. government borrowing. The Bank of England was forced to intervene to prevent the crisis from spreading to the wider economy and putting pension funds at risk. Read: Temporary ban on tourism at Rowangchhari and Ruma to fight ‘militants and criminals’ Truss then fired Kwarteng, and his replacement, Hunt, scrapped almost all of Truss’ tax cuts, along with energy subsidies and her promise of no public spending cuts. He said the government will need to save billions of pounds and there are “many difficult decisions” to be made before he sets out a medium-term fiscal plan on Oct. 31. Speaking to lawmakers for the first time since the U-turn, Truss apologized Wednesday and admitted she had made mistakes during her six weeks in office, but insisted that by changing course she had “taken responsibility and made the right decisions in the interest of the country’s economic stability.” Still, Truss said she would not resign — a resolve that was short-lived. Within hours a senior Cabinet minister, Home Secretary Suella Braverman, quit, blasting Truss in her resignation letter, saying she had “concerns about the direction of this government.” For many Conservative lawmakers, the final straw was a Wednesday evening vote over fracking for shale gas that produced chaotic scenes in Parliament, with party whips accused of using heavy-handed tactics to gain votes. Chris Bryant, a lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party, said he “saw members being physically manhandled ... and being bullied.” Conservative officials denied this. Truss’ departure on Thursday sparked jubilation for the tabloid Daily Star, which has set up a livestream featuring a photo of the prime minister beside a head of lettuce to see which would last longer. “This lettuce outlasted Liz Truss!” it proclaimed Thursday. While many Britons joined the world in laughing at the lettuce joke, Bronwyn Maddox, director of international affairs think-tank Chatham House, said “there is no question that the U.K.’s standing in the world has been severely battered by this episode and by the revolving door of prime ministers.” She said Truss’ successor would need to have policies “based on economic stability, but need also to include a resolution of the relationship with Europe; much of the upheaval represents the bitter aftermath of Brexit.”

The UK's economic and political turmoil over the past few weeks - culminating in nearly all of Liz Truss's original finance plans now being axed - has been watched around the world. It is rare for close allies to comment on each other's key policies at home - and if they do, it's unlikely to be an outright criticism. But at the weekend US President Joe Biden weighed in, saying Ms Truss's original plan was a "mistake" and it was "predictable" that she would have to backtrack. "I wasn't the only one that thought it was a mistake," Mr Biden said. "I disagree with the policy, but that's up to Great Britain." The EU's economy chief, meanwhile, said there were "lessons to learn" from what is happening in the UK. "What happened shows how volatile is the situation and so how prudent we should be also with our fiscal and monetary mix," said Paolo Gentiloni on Friday after Ms Truss fired ex-Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. The world's media has been far more brutal. "Liz Truss, who's been the British PM for barely six weeks, has managed to drag her party and her country into a debacle the depth of which the country has never before sunk to. And less so at such speed," says an editorial in Colombian daily El Colombiano. Its headline suggests what the PM might be known for: "Liz Truss the Brief?" "Clinging to her ideology, far removed from the reality facing the country, Truss exemplifies to perfection what it means to go against common sense when steering the politics of a country." Meanwhile, the UK is becoming a "cautionary tale" about the effect of "bad politics", said an editorial in Indian daily newspaper The Hindu on Monday. The newspaper - a widely-read English-language paper and generally critical of right-leaning political parties - said Ms Truss was "once seen as a new hope for breathing life back" into the UK Conservative Party. Read: Pound rises against dollar as investors react to UK PM Truss' resignation But now she may have added the "label of 'incompetence' to the Tory governance image", it adds. Russia's media speculates over Ms Truss's future, reporting that she might be out of her post soon. "Embarrassment for Liz", said the state-owned daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Monday. "Yet another political crisis is looming over Britain: the newly minted prime minister, Liz Truss, may be forced out of her Downing Street residence already in the coming days and weeks," it says. "The Tory leader's unpopularity in party circles and in British society has long been known, but now the [prime] minister has come close to the end of her scandalous career." China's state media also heaped on further criticism. "The outside world does not seem optimistic about the turnaround of the Truss government," said state-run news agency China News Service on Friday. The Global Times said Truss's position remained unstable because of "continued negative reviews". But some online media, including Shenniao Zhixun, a blog run in south-west China, noted that the new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, nicknamed "son-in-law of China", had a Chinese wife and "a good attitude towards China". For the Irish Independent, Truss bought herself some time by the change of chancellor. But "once we start writing about a prime minister 'buying some time', or 'seeing off the immediate danger', they are nearing the end of their time," the opinion piece on Sunday adds.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has married his fiancée, Carrie Symonds, in a small private ceremony that came at the end of a tumultuous week during which a former top aide said he was unfit for office. The couple wed Saturday at the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral in front of a small group of friends and family, Johnson’s office said Sunday, confirming newspaper reports that were published overnight. Photos taken after the ceremony in the garden of the prime minister’s residence showed Symonds in a long white dress and floral headband. Johnson wore a dark suit. READ: Boris Johnson, fiancée Carrie Symonds wed in London “The Prime Minister and Ms. Symonds were married yesterday afternoon in a small ceremony at Westminster Cathedral,″ Downing Street said. “The couple will celebrate their wedding with family and friends next summer.” The couple have reportedly sent save-the-date cards to family and friends for a celebration on July 30, 2022. Under current coronavirus restrictions in England, no more than 30 people can attend a wedding. Johnson, 56, and Symonds, a 33-year-old Conservative Party insider and environmental advocate, announced their engagement in February 2020. Their son, Wilfred, was born in April last year. The marriage is Johnson’s third. He has at least five other children from previous relationships. Johnson’s previous marriages would not have stopped him from having a Catholic wedding because they didn’t take place in the Catholic church, Matt Chinery, an ecclesiastical and canon lawyer, told Times Radio. “In the eyes of the Catholic church, Boris Johnson woke up last week as somebody who wasn’t married and had never been married and so was free to marry in the cathedral this weekend,” he said. Johnson was baptized as a Catholic but he was confirmed as a member of the Church of England as a teenager. The last British prime minister to marry in office was Lord Liverpool in 1822. The wedding followed a difficult political week for Johnson. His former top aide, Dominic Cummings, on Wednesday told lawmakers that Johnson had bungled the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and said he was “unfit for the job.” Britain has Europe’s highest coronavirus death toll, at over 128,000 people, but it has also produced one of the world’s most successful vaccination programs, inoculating 74% of its adults. Daily deaths have plummeted to single digits of late, compared to over 1,800 one day in January. READ: Boris Johnson self-quarantining after contracting Covid-19 infected MP On Friday, a government ethics adviser released his long-awaited findings on the “cash for curtains” scandal in which Johnson was criticized for failing to disclose that a wealthy Conservative Party donor had paid for the redecoration of the prime minister’s official residence in London. Although Johnson later settled the bill, the inquiry found that Johnson had acted “unwisely” in carrying out the work without knowing where the money had come from. He was cleared of misconduct. The opposition Labour Party was not giving Johnson any space for a honeymoon, with one Labour lawmaker, Jon Trickett, suggesting that the weekend wedding was “a good way to bury this week’s bad news.”

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has hailed Bangladesh as “one of the fastest-growing economies in the world” and emphasised that the UK and Bangladesh share the ambition to create an even more prosperous and environmentally-sustainable future. He congratulated the people of Bangladesh on their Golden Jubilee and said he looks forward to the two countries working together to create an environmentally-sustainable future. “It’s amazing to reflect on how much your nation has achieved since the circumstance of its birth," said the UK Prime Minister. In a video message, Johnson remembered the historic visit of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to Downing Street in London in 1972, describing the visit as “instrumental in forging the friendship” between the UK and Bangladesh. Prime Minister Johnson recalled fondly his visit to Bangladesh in 2018, when he was welcomed “with a great deal of warmth and generosity”. He emphasised the bond between the UK and Bangladesh, “incarnated by the 600,000 strong British-Bangladeshi community who contribute so much to the United Kingdom every day”. The British Prime Minister said, “I think particularly of the fantastic doctor and nurses in our NHS, many of whom are helping to treat and vaccinate people in our battle against COVID-19”. “I look forward to working with Prime Minister [Sheikh] Hasina and to seeing her again at COP26 in Glasgow. But for now, as we look ahead to the next 50 years of British and Bangladeshi friendship, I wish everyone the very best for your Golden Jubilee.”