Part II. Compréhension écrite :

Bangladesh elections: Why India matters across the border

As Bangladesh gets ready to hold general elections on 7 January, the role of its giant neighbour India is being intensely discussed in the country. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is seeking a fourth consecutive term and her win looks inevitable as the main opposition parties are boycotting the election.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies say they have no faith that Ms Hasina will hold a free and fair election. They asked her to step down and allow the polls to be held under a neutral interim government - demands she rejected.

The Muslim-majority nation of about 170 million people, Bangladesh is almost surrounded on three sides - barring a 271km (168-mile)-long border with Myanmar in the southeast - by India. For India, Bangladesh is not just a neighbouring country. It's a strategic partner and a close ally, crucial to the security of its north-eastern states.

So, Indian policy makers argue that Delhi needs a friendly regime in Dhaka. Ms Hasina has forged close ties with India since she was first elected in 1996 and it's no secret that Delhi wants to see her return to power.

Ms Hasina has always justified Dhaka's close relationship with Delhi. During a visit to India in 2022, she said Bangladesh should not forget India, its government, people and armed forces as they stood beside the country during the independence war in 1971. This backing for her Awami League party has triggered sharp criticism from the opposition BNP.

Excerpt from an article by Anbarasan Ethirajan, BBC News

How drug traffickers made the Galápagos Islands their gas station

In mainland Ecuador, Mexican and Albanian drug traffickers have fueled a surge in gang violence unlike any in the country’s history.

On Tuesday, armed men terrorized the country in a series of apparently coordinated attacks: car bombings, prison riots, police kidnappings. One group took over a television station during a live broadcast and held the staff at gunpoint. President Daniel Noboa took the extraordinary step of declaring an armed internal conflict in the country: “We are in a state of war.”

Fueling this deluge of violence is the rising global demand for cocaine. International criminal organizations are working with local gangs to move the drug from South America to the United States and Europe. To make the journey, smugglers need gasoline. So they’ve made the Galápagos their covert refueling point. A secret gas station of the Pacific.

Ecuador’s location — the country lies wedged between Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest cocaine producers — has long made it a transit point for traffickers moving drugs north toward Central America.

But authorities began to step up military patrols. They seized a record 176 tons of cocaine in 2021, up from 92 a year earlier.

Now, to avoid authorities, many traffickers are blazing a more circuitous trail — one that loops just south and west of the Galápagos. They call this path through empty, open ocean the “desert route.” With go-fast boats or submersibles, traffickers can travel up to 14 days without docking, Ecuadorian Navy officials say, scratching their skin as needed to stay awake.

In 2023, the navy seized nearly 25 tons of cocaine around the Galápagos — nine tons in November alone — a 150 percent surge from 2022. In 2019, the navy captured only 1 ton.