Bangladesh is set to hold its first parliamentary elections since former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted following widespread student-led protests in 2024, according to Al Jazeera. Polling stations will open at 7:30 am (01:30 GMT) on February 12 and close at 4:30 pm (10:30 GMT), as reported by Al Jazeera. The upcoming elections follow a brutal crackdown on protests that resulted in an estimated 1,400 deaths.
Election campaigning concluded on Tuesday morning, as stated by Al Jazeera. The protests, which began weeks earlier, were sparked by a government job quota system that reserved a large share of civil-service posts for specific groups, including descendants of 1971 liberation war veterans, according to Al Jazeera. Nahid Islam, then 26, became a prominent figure in the demonstrations, famously uttering the rallying cry "Hasina must go" at Dhaka's Shaheed Minar on August 3, 2024, as reported by Al Jazeera.
The election has seen the emergence of new alliances. Jamaat-e-Islami Amir Shafiqur Rahman was seen campaigning with Nahid Islam during an election campaign for the National Citizen Party (NCP) in Dhaka on February 8, 2026, according to Al Jazeera.
In other news, Prince William has been asked to raise the case of a Manchester man detained in Saudi Arabia during his first official trip to the country, according to Sky News. Amnesty International shared the plight of Ahmed al-Doush, a father of four, with Prince William in a letter exclusively shared with Sky News. Al-Doush, a senior banking analyst for Bank of America, was returning from a holiday when he was detained.
Also, Norwegian Olympian Sturla Holm Laegreid admitted to cheating on his girlfriend moments after winning a bronze medal at the Winter Olympics, as reported by Sky News. Laegreid confessed in a live television interview, stating he "had a gold medal" up until last week but squandered it by being unfaithful.
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