#serajul quadir

[newsdock]

By Serajul Quadir and Ranga Sirilal DHAKA/COLOMBO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe flew to Bangladesh on Saturday for a two-stop tour of South Asia as the globe-trotting leader asserts Tokyo's interest in a region where it has ceded influence to China. Abe becomes the first Japanese prime minister to visit Bangladesh in 14 years and on Sunday will be the first to travel to Sri Lanka in nearly a quarter of a century. Asian great-power diplomacy has stirred to life since the rise to power of Indian nationalist Narendra Modi, who announced his intent to play an active role on the world stage by inviting regional leaders to his inauguration in May. Abe comes to India's backyard after hosting Modi for summit talks that yielded a Japanese pledge to invest $34 billion in India and launched a "special, strategic global partnership" to deepen security cooperation. Source: Reuters

[newsdock]

By Serajul Quadir DHAKA (Reuters) - Rescue workers in Bangladesh expected to find scores of bodies on Saturday trapped between the decks of river ferry that capsized two days earlier with around 200 people on board. About 40 people swam to shore and 35 were rescued after the double-decker ferry went down in the Meghna river near the capital Dhaka during a storm on Thursday, police and rescue officials said. Forty-five bodies have been recovered so far, according to officials in the Munshiganj district, and authorities have given up hope of finding anyone else alive. An official of the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) said that the M.V Miraj 4 ferry had capacity for 122 passengers, but according to several survivors and a district administrative official the number on board was almost double, though there was no log kept. Source: Reuters