Traffic and passenger pressure has increased in the Narayanganj section of the Dhaka-Chittagong highway due to the four consecutive days of holiday on the occasion of Durga Puja. As a result, heavy traffic has been created in the Narayanganj section. Because of this, the passengers have suffered a lot. It is seen in various points of the Dhaka-Chittagong highway from Thursday (October 10) morning. Till the time of writing this report, there is a traffic jam in the Chittagong-bound lane from the Shimrail junction of the highway to the Langalbandh area of ​​the port, an area of ​​about 10 km. Although there is no heavy traffic in the rest, the vehicles are moving slowly. However, traffic is normal in the Dhaka-bound lane of the highway. Passenger Billal Hossain, travelling from Signboard to Chittagong. He said that he was able to reach the Kanchpur Bridge section in one and a half hours. 'Do you know how long it takes to cover the rest of the way?' Another passenger named Naeem said, "I am going home with my family after getting four consecutive days of holiday. But the joy was dampened by the traffic jam." Kanchpur Highway Police Station Officer-in-Charge (OC) Rezaul Haque said that due to the pressure of vehicles on the highway and potholes in the Langalbandh area, the vehicles are not able to move from one place to another on time. We are working to solve the traffic jam.

Although EU candidacy for Ukraine and Moldova has been hailed as historic, frustrations among other candidates years into their own membership bids should serve as a reminder that the path ahead won't be easy. Leaders from the European Union lined up to hail the symbolic value of the decision to grant both Ukraine and Moldova EU candidate status at a summit in Brussels this week, seen by many as bolstering Ukraine’s campaign to drive out Russian forces. The process has moved at record speed. Both countries only placed their bids for EU membership shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February. After the European Commission recommended that Ukraine be given candidate status on June 17, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to Twitter to welcome 1st step on the EU membership path that’ll certainly bring our victory closer. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausedas summed up the prevailing EU view neatly on Friday, telling DW that Ukrainians were fighting not just for their own sovereignty but for our values and principles too. So they are fighting for Europe. The summit on Thursday produced smiles all round except in Georgia, which like Ukraine and Moldova requested membership in light of Russia’s attack but was only offered a European perspective. The prospect of candidacy was put on hold pending further reforms, including a cleanup of oligarch influence. Tbilisi made clear it still wants in, and earlier this week, residents poured onto the streets in the capital in a March for Europe to demonstrate their commitment to join the EU. Long road ahead But that is a process usually requiring intense and often painful economic and political reform, and can take years at times even more than a decade. Candidate status itself is no guarantee of entry. Five countries Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey are already EU candidates, with most in accession negotiations which are at a standstill. Candidacy status doesn’t carry any real legal heft either. It only allows intergovernmental conferences of EU officials and member states to discuss policy reform, experts from the Centre for European Policy Studies pointed out in a recent report. For Majda Ruge, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, granting candidacy to Ukraine and Moldova is mainly a geostrategic decision from the EU to send a message to Moscow. These are two countries where Russia has expressed its appetite territorially, she told DW. Moldova too has a breakaway region, Transnistria on the border with western Ukraine, which is controlled by pro-Russian separatists. On the difficulty of EU accession, Nausedas, whose own country, Lithuania joined in 2004 after years of waiting, said that neither of the new candidates were naive. They understand that this is just the starting point of reforms, he said on the sidelines of the summit in Brussels on Friday. And of course, [for Ukraine] they have to win this war first of all. War heightens uncertainty around Ukraine’s bid. It’s an important caveat. It’s impossible to predict where Ukrain’s bid could be in five years, Ruge said. Out of experience, in every war, the result is the development of more gray zones. You’ll have smuggling networks and clandestine fighters, she said. The rule of law is certainly not going to flourish in Ukraine during the war. Even if it wins, Ukraine will have some pretty serious reconstruction work to do, both materially and politically. None of that foreshadows swift, easy accession. Balkan frustration over stalled bids The pitfalls of stalled membership bids were on full display this week. Western Balkan leaders threatened not to turn up at another summit where no progress was made on their bids to join the EU. In the end they came, but their frustration stood in marked contrast to the elation of Ukraine and Moldova. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama expressed his discontent in a tweet: Nice place, nice people, nice words, nice pictures, and just imagine how much nicer could be if nice promises were followed by nice delivery, he wrote. His country’s bid to formally start negotiations to join the EU is frozen because it is tied together with that of North Macedonia. EU member Bulgaria has been blocking both bids due to a bilateral dispute with the Albanian government for years, though a parliamentary vote in Sofia on Friday might finally allow a breakthrough. Before that, France and the Netherlands put up last-minute opposition. Accession vetoes a big problem enlargement, I think is going to be very difficult before the voting procedures are reformed from unanimity to qualified majority voting, Majda Ruge warned. As long as individual states can veto accession, processes can stall. It’s a long-standing problem that many feel has undermined EU credibility on accession. It also depends on the will of membership hopefuls, Ruge said, adding that EU candidacy doesn’t automatically turbocharge reform. She pointed to Serbia as a case in point, where there has been much democratic backsliding in recent years. Like Albania, Northern Macedonia and Montenegro, and Montenegro, Serbia’s membership has still not been validated and negotiations are ongoing. For Ukraine and Moldova, right now, it’s at the level of political signaling, Ruge said. Whether these bids can actually move forward or get stuck depends as much on the 27 EU capitals as it does on Kyiv and Chisinau.  

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader in the Senate Sherry Rehman has said that the country’s economy has been surrendered to international powers for the first time in Pakistan’s history, resulting in skyrocketing inflation, making living conditions miserable and forcing people to take to the street against the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan.   The PPP leader also warned that the final countdown had already started both in the parliament and in streets against the federal government of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, Dawn newspaper reported. She claimed that the opposition parties were reuniting after a small break following the removal of “misunderstanding” among them. “Pakistan has run 23 different financial programmes with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and they all came to a successful end. But it’s for the first time in the history of Pakistan that our economy has been surrendered and now it is under the control of world powers. Now the long march is not only for the sake of politics, but it is also for the survival of the economy and the common man, whose life has become unbearable. Therefore, we appeal to every Pakistani to support this march,” she said, as per Dawn. She came up with details of differences in the present and past prices of edible and household items and fast increasing rates of electricity and energy and said it was the main reason the PPP had to plan the long march. “Petrol, which was Rs80 per litre, has now reached Rs160 per litre,” she said. “The price of electricity has increased from Rs 8 per unit to Rs 21 per unit. The average domestic gas bill that amounted up to Rs 300 for 70 years has now gone up to Rs 4,800. Ghee was selling at Rs 170 per kg but it is now selling at over Rs 400 a kilo. Similarly, the sugar rate has risen from Rs55 per kg to Rs125 per kg.” She said that the US dollar rate was Rs105 but during the PTI government, the rate has increased to Rs 176. PPP Sindh general secretary Waqar Mehdi said that the long march will start from Mazar-i-Quaid on February 27 and will reach Islamabad after six days. Source: ANI  

Around 400 demonstrators have started their long-march programme from Dhaka to Noakhali’s Begumganj upazila protesting the growing incidents of rape, sexual harassment and violence against women across the country in recent times and the culture of impunity. The march began from Shahbag around 10:30am. The protesters including left-leaning parties, students, youths and rights activists, started their long march under the banner of "Dhorshon O Bicharhinotar Biruddhe Bangladesh" (Bangladesh against rape and impunity) to press home nine-point demand. They marched towards Noakhali shouting anti-rape slogans. Former General Secretary of Bangladesh Students' Union Liton Nandi said, “This march is a part of our protest against rape and injustice. Maybe the police will not interrupt this march but there are such possibilities from a student party.” “Around 450 activists are taking part in this programme. Firstly, seven buses will depart from Gulistan, then another five buses will join the protest from Narayanganj,” Sadikul Islam Sadik, vice president of Socialist Students' Front’s Dhaka University wing, stated. Meanwhile, they held a rally at Sonargaon of Narayanganj on their way and will hold another in Maizdi of Noakhali on Saturday. Their demands include ensuring exemplary punishment of the perpetrators involved in rape and violence against women, resignation of the home minister and an end to repression of women. Protests against rape and violence against women erupted across the country since the beginning of October, following the recent incidents of gang rape in Sylhet's MC College and in Noakhali's Begumganj upazila. In the wake of widespread protests against the growing incidents of rape, the President has promulgated an ordinance allowing death penalty as the highest punishment for the crime instead of life imprisonment. The ordinance was issued following waves of anti-rape demonstrations across Bangladesh after a video footage of five men gang-raping a housewife, stripping her naked and filming the video of the incident in Noakhali’s Begumganj upazila, went viral on social media. Source: UNB AH