DHAKA: Eight Bangladeshi villagers were injured after border guards from Bangladesh and India traded gunfire over the weekend, a Bangladeshi commander said Monday.

DHAKA: Eight Bangladeshi villagers were injured after border guards from Bangladesh and India traded gunfire over the weekend, a Bangladeshi commander said Monday.
Maj. Kohinoor Alam, a border guard official of Bangladesh, said the skirmish occurred Sunday after Indian border security forces opened fire on Bangladeshi villagers along northeastern Jaintapur frontier.
He said the injured were being treated for bullet wounds, but none of them are in serious condition.
Alam said the Indian guards fired as the Bangladeshi villagers tried to prevent dozens of Indian villagers from fishing in a pond inside Bangladesh territory. Bangladeshi guards responded with fire.

Bangladesh and India share a 2,500-mile (4,000 kilometer) porous border. Clashes between the border guards of the two neighbors are common, often over villagers crossing over into each other’s territory for farming or fishing.
The latest clash occurred three days after heads of both border forces held talks in New Delhi, India and agreed to scale down violence.

DHAKA: Bangladesh will persuade China to use Chittagong port as a commercial outlet for its southern Yunnan province, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said on Sunday.

DHAKA:  Bangladesh will persuade China to use Chittagong port as a commercial outlet for its southern Yunnan province, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said on Sunday.
The Bangladesh stance was announced nearly three months after Bangladesh had agreed to allow India, Nepal and Bhutan to use its two sea ports mainly Chittagong port.
“It will be a great achievement if China agrees to use our Chittagong port, which we want to develop into a regional commercial hub by building a deep seaport in the Bay of Bengal,” she told a news conference.
The offer for Chittagong port to Beijing will be discussed when Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visits China from Wednesday on a five-day itinerary, Moni said.
The impoverished south Asian country has taken plans to build an $8.7 billion deep-sea port in three phases to raise bulk cargo handling capacity to 100 million tonnes and container handling to 3.0 million twenty-feet equivalent unit (TEU) containers annually by 2055.
Presently the port handles 30.5 million tonnes of bulk cargo and 1.1 million TEUs annually.
Port officials said when built the port would serve Nepal, Bhutan, southern China, Myanmar and the northeastern region of India.
To use Chittagong port China will need a road or railway link or both between Kunming, the capital of southern Yunnan province with Chittagong via Myanmar, Moni said.
Myanmar last year had agreed to expand a planned road project with Bangladesh to link up with China in a tri-nation network, another foreign ministry official said.
Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a deal in July 2007 to construct a 25 km (16 mile) road to connect the two countries and construction will begin soon, officials at the Communication Ministry said.
The road project between Myanmar and Bangladesh is nearing completion, a senior foreign ministry official said on Sunday.
Chinese investment for Bangladesh’s energy and IT sectors, boosting trade and seeking assistance for building a $9 billion deep seaport and a $2.5 billion river bridge will be on top of Hasina’s agenda.
China is Bangladesh’s biggest trade partner with annual turnover worth more than $4 billion — with the balance heavily in Beijing’s favour.
After bilateral talks with her Chinese counterpart and signing of probable agreements for financial assistance, Hasina will visit Kunming on March 20.

Ainsley Hayden Earhardt (born September 20, 1980) is an American correspondent for the Fox News Channel, where she provides live news cut-ins at night Monday through Wednesday. Earhardt also reports for FOX’s Hannity’s America on Sunday nights with her own segment called “Ainsley Across America”. She has co-hosted Fox and Friends.

She joined the network in 2007 after being a weekday news anchor at KENS-TV in San Antonio, Texas. Earhardt anchored weekday newscasts of KENS 5 Eyewitness News This Morning (5 AM-7:30 AM) and KENS 5 Eyewitness News at Noon. She worked for WLTX 19, a station in Columbia, South Carolina, from 2000 to 2004. Earhardt traveled to New York City to cover South Carolina middle school students donating nearly half a million dollars to firefighters after 9/11. The money was raised to buy a new fire truck to replace one lost at Ground Zero. While at that network, viewers voted Earhardt “Best Personality of the Year” in Columbia Metropolitan Magazine.

Earhardt grew up in South Carolina, graduating from Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina. She has lived in Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, North Carolina and New York. She completed the Austin, Texas half-marathon, went skydiving with the U.S. Army’s Golden Knights and flew in an F-16 with the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds.

Earhardt has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of South Carolina. In 2007, Earhardt was given the University of South Carolina’s Young Alumni Award and named the School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s 2007 Outstanding Young Alumna. Viewers voted Earhardt “Best Personality of the Year” in Columbia Metropolitan Magazine