Five BD school students perish

DHAKA: Five teenagers died on Wednesday after a boat they were riding in capsized in a lake in Bangladesh’s capital of Dhaka, a police official said. Dhaka Metropolitan Police official Abdul Momen said two students were rescued and two others swam ashore. Rescuers later pulled five bodies out of the water. Momen said the accident occurred when they went boating in Beguntali lake in Dhaka’s Mirpur residential district. The dead students were aged between 14 and 16, he said.



Jealous boyfriend jailed for life!

Hong Kong: A jealous boyfriend was jailed for life after stabbing his girlfriend to death and leaving her body on a remote hillside, media reports said on Wednesday. Dominic Soo, 33, was found guilty of murdering Tracey Chan, 37, who ran a perfume business and was last seen alive at dinner with him, the Standard said. Her decomposing body was found on February 27 on a hillside at Lau Fau Shan in Hong Kong’s New Territories. An autopsy showed Chan suffered at least 10 wounds in her back, but police never found the murder weapon. Prosecutors said Soo killed Chan after learning that she had arranged to meet an ex-boyfriend.



Cyprus talks

ISTANBUL, Turkey: The leader of Turks in Cyprus says he hopes talks on possible reunification of the divided island will start in September. In a live interview on CNN-Turk television, Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat says: “I think these negotiations will start in September.’’ Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias and Talat will meet on July 25 to assess progress in preparatory negotiations and to decide when to restart direct peace talks. The last such talks were held four years ago. The Mediterranean island was split in 1974, when Turkey invaded after an Athens-backed coup aimed at union with Greece. The breakaway Turkish Cypriot north is only recognised by Turkey.



BD voter list

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s emergency government announced on Wednesday it had finished work on a “revolutionary” digital voters’ list that will pave the way for the restoration of democracy in the graft-hit nation. The list contains 80.5 million names and has eliminated 12.7 million “fake, fictitious, duplicate or under-age voters,” which have in the past been used by ruling parties to rig elections. “We have the photographs, fingerprints and personal details of each of the 80.5 million voters. We have digitised the list and very soon it will be on our website,” election commissioner Shakhawat Hussain told AFP. “It’s a revolutionary achievement. It will make vote-rigging by any party impossible. From now on there will be no vote-stealing. There will be a true reflection of people’s votes, all poll results,” he said.