AT least 17 people were reportedly killed in clashes as people in Bangladesh voted in parliamentary elections.
Polls have closed in a general election in Bangladesh that saw deadly clashes and accusations of vote rigging.
The election is likely to deliver a third straight term for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The poll is being seen as a referendum on what critics call Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian rule, amid complaints from ruling party and opposition activists of attacks on supporters and candidates.
“Hasina’s use of the state machinery to subjugate the opposition virtually ensures her electoral victory,” said Sasha Riser-Kositsky, a South Asia analyst for New York-based Eurasia Group.
The Associated Press has received more than 50 calls from people complaining of intimidation and threats, and being forced to vote in front of ruling party men.
Congolese opposition presidential candidate Martin Fayulu casts his vote
VOTING in the Democratic Republic of Congo has begun voting in a presidential election that could bring the troubled country’s first peaceful, democratic transfer of power. Some unrest is feared after a last-minute decision to bar an estimated one million people from voting because of a deadly Ebola virus outbreak.
Two main opposition candidates, Martin Fayulu and Felix Tshisekedi, are challenging President Joseph Kabila’s preferred successor, former interior minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, who is under sanctions from the European Union. Kabila said: “My message today to my compatriots is to come and vote for their candidates and brave the rain”.
AUTHORITIES in Morocco have detained a Swiss-Spanish man over suspected links to Islamic extremists who allegedly killed two Scandinavian hikers.
Moroccan counter-terrorism forces allege he taught social media skills and archery to some suspects over the deaths, Morocco’s first terrorist attack in years.
Twenty people have been arrested so far in the investigation into the killing of the two women, 24-year-old Louisa Vesterager Jespersen from Denmark, and 28-year-old Maren Ueland from Norway, in the Atlas Mountains. Their bodies were found on December 17.
Cooped up: Donald Trump has been out the public eye
AND finally, United States president Donald Trump fired barbs at Democrats as talks to end a week-long partial government shutdown remained at a stalemate.
Trump has remained out of the public eye since returning to the White House early Thursday from a 29-hour visit to US troops in Iraq, instead taking to Twitter to attack Democrats.
Trump was cooped up in the White House after cancelling a vacation to his private Florida club.
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