Trump signs order to bring back plastic straws
Washington, Feb 11: President Donald Trump said Monday he is banning federal use of paper straws, saying they “don’t work” and don’t last very long. Instead he wants the government to exclusively move to plastic. “It’s a ridiculous situation. We’re going back to plastic straws,” Trump said as he signed an executive order to reverse federal purchasing policies that encourage paper straws and restrict plastic ones. The order directs federal agencies to stop buying paper straws “and otherwise ensure that paper straws are no longer provided within agency buildings.” The move by Trump – who has long railed against paper straws, and whose 2019 reelection campaign sold Trump-branded reusable plastic straws for $15 per pack of 10 – targets a Biden administration policy to phase out federal purchases of single-use plastics, including straws, from food service operations, events and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035. (AP)
Labour unions sue to block DOGE access to information
Washington, Feb 11: A coalition of labour unions filed a lawsuit Monday asking a federal court to stop Elon Musk’s team from accessing private data at the Education Department, the Treasury Department and the Office of Personnel Management. The suit, led by the American Federation of Teachers, alleges the Trump administration violated federal privacy laws when it gave Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access to systems with personal information on tens of millions of Americans without their consent. It was filed in federal court in Maryland.(AP)
B’desh man in jail for 7 years despite acquittal in murder case
Dhaka, Feb 11: A Bangladeshi man, who was handed the death penalty in a murder case, languished in a death row cell in jail for seven years despite the High Court acquitting him, media reports said on Tuesday. According to Prothom Alo newspaper, Ibrahim Ali Sheikh Sagar was freed from jail on Saturday after 21 years of imprisonment, seven of which were in solitary confinement as a death row convict, in a wrongly implicated murder case. “I was in misery while staying in the condemned cell (isolation cell specially meant for death penalty convicts). The agony followed me when I came out of jail too,” he told the newspaper. During the long imprisonment, his wife abandoned him marrying another man while his single mother was forced to sell family property due to poverty while Sagar stayed at his brother-in-law’s house. Sagar said due to financial constraints, he could not appoint a lawyer while a state-appointed lawyer could not prove his innocence resulting in the death penalty. According to him, the verdict was scrapped during the mandatory death reference hearing in High Court, when the lawyer of a jail mate also defended him but he died shortly after giving him the good news. He said since the jail authorities did not receive the release order, he called a helpline using a facility for the death row convicts when the matter surfaced. (PTI)