Bangladesh verdict against Hasina likely late November

Bangladesh verdict against Hasina likely late November
A vendor displays the front page of newspapers in Islamabad on Aug. 6, 2024, a day after Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted by anti-government protesters. (AFP)
Updated 3 min 37 sec ago

Bangladesh verdict against Hasina likely late November

Bangladesh verdict against Hasina likely late November
  • Confusion over the timing of the verdict arose after the trial ended last month, when a hearing was set for November 13
  • Bangladesh has been in political turmoil since a deadly uprising toppled Hasina’s autocratic government in August 2024

DHAKA: A verdict in ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s closely watched crimes against humanity trial is expected later this month, Bangladeshi prosecutors said Tuesday.
Confusion over the timing of the verdict arose after the trial ended last month, when a hearing was set for November 13.
But Thursday’s hearing was only “to announce the date of the verdict,” said Gazi Monowar Hossain Tamim, prosecutor at Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal.
“Based on our previous experience, the court might take another week or so to deliver the verdict,” Tamim said.
“We want to make it clear that the court is set to fix the date of the verdict on November 13.”
Bangladesh has been in political turmoil since a deadly uprising toppled Hasina’s autocratic government in August 2024. Violence has marked the campaign trail for elections expected in February 2026.
Hasina, 78, has defied court orders to return from India to attend her trial on charges of ordering a deadly crackdown in a failed attempt to suppress the student-led uprising.
Her trial in absentia, which began on June 1, heard months of testimony alleging she ordered mass killings.
According to the United Nations, up to 1,400 people were killed between July and August 2024.
Prosecutors have filed five charges, including failure to prevent murder, amounting to crimes against humanity under Bangladeshi law. They have sought the death penalty if she is found guilty.
Hasina has denied all the charges and called her trial a “jurisprudential joke.”
Her co-accused include former interior minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal – also a fugitive – and former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who is in custody and has pleaded guilty.
Hasina’s outlawed Awami League called for a nationwide “lockdown” on Thursday, and security agencies in Bangladesh have been placed on alert.


US Senate passes bill to end government shutdown, sends to House

US Senate passes bill to end government shutdown, sends to House
Updated 11 November 2025

US Senate passes bill to end government shutdown, sends to House

US Senate passes bill to end government shutdown, sends to House
  • Senate passes bill to end shutdown, heads to House for approval
  • Deal restores funding, stalls Trump’s workforce downsizing until January 30

WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Monday approved a compromise that would end the longest government shutdown in US history, breaking a weeks-long stalemate that has disrupted food benefits for millions, left hundreds of thousands of federal workers unpaid and snarled air traffic.

The 60-40 vote passed with the support of nearly all of the chamber’s Republicans and eight Democrats, who unsuccessfully sought to tie government funding to health subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year. While the agreement sets up a December vote on those subsidies, which benefit 24 million Americans, it does not guarantee they will continue.

The deal would restore funding for federal agencies that lawmakers allowed to expire on October 1 and would stall President Donald Trump’s campaign to downsize the federal workforce, preventing any layoffs until January 30.

It next heads to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where Speaker Mike Johnson has said he would like to pass it as soon as Wednesday and send it on to Trump to sign into law. Trump has called the deal to reopen the government “very good.” The deal would extend funding through January 30, leaving the federal government for now on a path to keep adding about $1.8 trillion a year to its $38 trillion in debt.

Coming a week after Democrats won high-profile elections in New Jersey, Virginia and elected a democratic socialist as the next mayor of New York City, the deal has provoked anger among many Democrats who note there is no guarantee that the Republican-controlled Senate or House would agree to extend the health insurance subsidies.

“We wish we could do more,” said Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat. “The government shutting down seemed to be an opportunity to lead us to better policy. It didn’t work.”

A late October Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 50 percent of Americans blamed Republicans for the shutdown, while 43 percent blamed Democrats.

US stocks rose on Monday, buoyed by news of progress on a deal to reopen the government.

Trump has unilaterally canceled billions of dollars in spending and trimmed federal payrolls by hundreds of thousands of workers, intruding on Congress’s constitutional authority over fiscal matters. Those actions have violated past spending laws passed by Congress, and some Democrats have questioned why they would vote for any such spending deals going forward.

The deal does not appear to include any specific guardrails to prevent Trump from enacting further spending cuts.

However, the deal would fund the SNAP food-subsidy program through September 30 of next year, heading off any possible disruptions if Congress were to shut down the government again during that time.