DHAKA: Bangladesh’s highest court Sunday ordered the demolition of a lakeside building occupied by powerful garment groups, a move welcomed by activists who considered the structure an enduring symbol of corruption.
The 16-story building, long criticized for openly flouting Dhaka’s strict construction laws, must be destroyed within six months at a cost borne by its occupants, the Supreme Court ruled.
“If they fail to carry out the order, the (government’s) capital development authority will demolish the building,” Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told AFP.
The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), which occupied the building, said they would vacate as “soon as possible.”
The building has been a source of a bitter legal dispute for years.
A court first challenged its legality seven years ago after it was revealed the building was constructed illegally on a state-owned floodplain.
Lawyers declared the hard-fought verdict a “landmark” in Bangladesh’s judicial history.
“It is challenging the culture of impunity that prevails in our society,” Rizwana Hassan from the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers’ Association, told AFP.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina lay the foundation stone for the controversial BGMEA building in 1998, while a former premier now opposition leader formally opened it for business in 2006, underscoring the industry’s ties to politics.
The BGMEA represents Bangladesh’s clothing industry, which last year accounted for 80 percent of the country’s $35-billion exports.
The garment industry employs nearly five million Bangladeshis, making it the single largest job creator in the impoverished nation.
A top union leader described the building as a “symbol of conspiracy and corruption.”
“They (BGMEA) thought they were above the law. They wanted to flex their muscles with no respect for the law,” union leader Babul Akhter told AFP.
Bangladesh to fell building deemed ‘symbol of corruption’
Bangladesh to fell building deemed ‘symbol of corruption’
India hosts AI summit as safety concerns grow
- Modi will on Monday afternoon inaugurate the five-day AI Impact Summit, which aims to declare a “shared roadmap for global AI governance and collaboration”
NEW DELHI: A global artificial intelligence summit kicks off in New Delhi on Monday with big issues on the agenda, from job disruption to child safety, but some attendees warn the broad focus could diminish the chance of concrete commitments from world leaders.
While frenzied demand for generative AI has turbocharged profits for many tech companies, anxiety is growing over the risks that it poses to society and the environment.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Monday afternoon inaugurate the five-day AI Impact Summit, which aims to declare a “shared roadmap for global AI governance and collaboration.”
“This occasion is further proof that our country is progressing rapidly in the field of science and technology,” and it “shows the capability of our country’s youth,” he said in an X post on Monday.
It is the fourth annual gathering addressing the problems and opportunities posed by AI, after previous international meetings in Paris, Seoul and Britain’s wartime code-breaking hub Bletchley.
Touted as the biggest edition yet, the Indian government is expecting 250,000 visitors from across the sector, including 20 national leaders and 45 ministerial-level delegations.
Also in attendance will be tech CEOs including Sam Altman of OpenAI and Google’s Sundar Pichai, although unforeseen circumstances have reportedly led Jensen Huang, head of US chip titan Nvidia, to cancel his planned appearance.
Modi will seek to “strengthen global partnerships and define India’s leadership in the AI decade ahead” in talks with the likes of France’s Emmanuel Macron and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, organizers say.
But whether they will take meaningful steps to hold AI giants accountable is in doubt, Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, told AFP.
Industry commitments made at previous events “have largely been narrow ‘self regulatory’ frameworks that position AI companies to continue to grade their own homework,” said Kak, a former AI adviser to the US Federal Trade Commission who is taking part in the summit.
AI safety
The Bletchley gathering, held in 2023 — a year after ChatGPT stunned the world — was called the AI Safety Summit.
The meetings’ names have changed as they have grown in size and scope, and at last year’s AI Action Summit in Paris, dozens of nations signed a statement calling for efforts to flank AI tech with regulation to make it “open” and “ethical.”
But the United States did not sign, with Vice President JD Vance warning that “excessive regulation... could kill a transformative sector just as it’s taking off.”
The Delhi summit has the loose themes of “people, progress, planet” — dubbed three “sutras.”
AI safety remains a priority, including the dangers of misinformation such as deepfakes.
Last month saw a global backlash over Elon Musk’s Grok AI tool because it allowed users to produce sexualized pictures of real people, including children, using simple text prompts.
“Child safety and digital harms are also moving up the agenda, particularly as generative AI lowers the barrier to harmful content,” AI Asia Pacific Institute director Kelly Forbes told AFP.
“There is real scope for change” although it might not happen fast enough, said Forbes, whose organization is researching how Australia and other countries are requiring platforms to confront the issue.
AI for ‘the many’
Organizers highlight this year’s AI summit as the first to be hosted by a developing country.
“The summit will shape a shared vision for AI that truly serves the many, not just the few,” India’s IT ministry has said.
Last year India leapt to third place — overtaking South Korea and Japan — in an annual global ranking of AI competitiveness calculated by Stanford University researchers.
But despite plans for large-scale infrastructure and grand ambitions for innovation, experts say the country still has a long way to go before it can rival the United States and China.
Seth Hays, author of the Asia AI Policy Monitor newsletter, said talk at the summit would likely center around “ensuring that governments put up some guardrails, but don’t throttle AI development.”
“There may be some announcements for more state investment in AI, but it may not move the needle much — as India needs partnerships to integrate on the international scene for AI,” Hays told AFP.
