Bangladesh pays Tk 12 crore in incentives to 38,970 sugarcane farmers

President Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has accepted the resignation of Ishraque Hossain as state minister for liberation war affairs, a day after the Dhaka-6 lawmaker announced he was stepping down.

The Cabinet Division issued a gazette notification on Tuesday saying the resignation took effect immediately. Cabinet Secretary Nasimul Gani signed the notification by order of the President.

Ishraque announced the decision at a press conference at the National Press Club on Monday, saying he had met Prime Minister Tarique Rahman and asked to be released from his ministerial duties so he could concentrate on clearing drugs from Dhaka-6 and nearby areas.

The resignation followed criticism of his conduct during an anti-drug drive near the railway line in Dhaka's Gandaria area on Saturday. A video posted on his own Facebook page showed him getting out of a vehicle with a loudspeaker and a pistol, then chasing a group of people and at one point pointing the weapon towards them.

Ishraque defended the action, saying he briefly raised his licensed firearm in self-defence after warnings of a possible attack, and that he holds a valid licence for the weapon. He also said the way the operation was reported had put the ruling BNP in an awkward position.

Before his announcement he had disputed media reports that the prime minister had told him to step down, calling them unverified and false. He then confirmed the decision in a Facebook post on Monday morning. Dhaka police had said they would review the video.

The son of the late BNP leader and Dhaka mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka, Ishraque won Dhaka-6 in this year's election with 78,850 votes and took charge of the liberation war affairs ministry on 17 February.

He said he would keep up his anti-drug work as a BNP activist rather than as a minister and continue the drives until Dhaka-6 is free of drugs.

China's economy expanded by 4.5 per cent in the year to September, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday, slightly above the 4.4 per cent expected in an AFP poll of economists and faster than the 4.3 per cent recorded in the previous quarter.

Growth over the first nine months reached 4.6 per cent, putting Beijing within reach of its target of 4.5 to 5 per cent for 2026 without a large new stimulus package.

Factory output did much of the work. Industrial production rose 5.5 per cent year on year in September, up from 5.2 per cent in August, while retail sales grew 1.1 per cent, their fastest pace since March but still far behind production.

Exports jumped by more than a third in September, helped by foreign demand for electronics, AI-related equipment and cars. China is on course for another record trade surplus that would exceed last year's $1.2 trillion.

The picture was weaker in investment. Fixed-asset investment fell 7.2 per cent in January-September, property investment dropped 20.6 per cent and infrastructure spending remained soft, the Guardian reported.

Mao Shengyong, a deputy head of the statistics bureau, described the international environment as 'complex and volatile' and said domestic demand was 'insufficient'. Economists at ABN Amro said export strength from the global AI and technology boom had more than offset the drag from the Iran conflict and weak consumer spending at home.

Duncan Wrigley of Pantheon Macroeconomics said high-tech manufacturing continued to outperform traditional sectors as China moved up the value chain. Zhiwei Zhang of Pinpoint Asset Management cautioned that momentum remained subdued once inflation was taken into account, and said the stronger headline figure could make Beijing less likely to shift policy in the fourth quarter.