RIGHT after the announcement of the polls schedule by the CEC, the country turned into a theatre of violence. The countrywide blockade of roads, railways, and river routes enforced by the 18-party alliance caused mayhem. With rail lines uprooted and…
PRIMARY testing of 250 gm of Pran brand of turmeric powder imported from Bangladesh was done in a private laboratory in New York after one consumer complained of falling sick after taking the powder. The test revealed that the powder…
WITH 84-hour shutdown enforced by the main opposition party BNP in the country from November 10 and political infighting and violence mounting up in all parts of the country that, in the meantime, have taken a toll of about 21…
DEATH stalks people in Bangladesh on the road in a way that people elsewhere in the world could never imagine. On September 24, a mother was taking her daughter back home by a rickshaw when a speeding minibus hit her…
GRIM accounts of brutality on minor girls working as house maids have struck a chord in people. Aduri (11) was a maid in a house in the city. Her mistress tortured her day in and day out on suspicion that…
WITH BNP leader Sadeque Hossain Khoka asking his party men to be prepared with axes and machetes to make the October 25 rally a success and the prime minister issuing a warning that any chaos would be dealt with an…
Sadly true, either in our country or elsewhere in the world, policy makers have never been serious about saving the environment. Unfortunately, country leaders and policy makers, mostly out of ignorance and partly because of exuberance to win their case…
WATER is fundamental to our very survival. But every summer Bangladesh, during the past few years, has been increasingly facing water shortage. From being a necessity, water has now become a luxury. With pipes running dry, residents in Dhaka and…
With a huge number of all types of vehicles gridlocked near a railgate or road intersection, sometimes even for 30 minutes at a stretch, Dhaka city’s traffic congestion problem has assumed alarming proportions. A drive from Kamalapur to Mirpur…
Once again Dhaka has attained the dubious distinction of being the second-worst unlivable city in the world by a survey conducted over 140 cities by the London-based Economist Intelligent unit. The cities are measured on the basis of political and…
THE country is passing through crises like corruption; killing of political activists, businessmen and journalists; and rise of new extremist outfits like Ansarullah Bangla that call for jihad to establish their agenda of radical faith. Economic expectation turned into economic…
The menacing cloud of drug abuse and drug trafficking looms large in the country, but we seem to be incapable of stemming the tide of this scourge. The various types of drugs available in considerable quantities spell disaster for the…
PESTICIDE use in the country has trebled in the last one decade and surveys have shown that Bangladeshi’s daily intake of pesticide residues in food is among the highest in the world. Tests carried out in fruit-growing districts revealed that…
THE World Heritage Convention has the responsibility of protecting outstanding natural and cultural areas that form a part of the heritage of all mankind. Bangladesh became a party to the Convention in 1983. The Convention ruled favourably on the nomination…
The Institute of Child Health (ICH) and Shishu Hospital set up by National Professor M.R. Khan under the aegis of Shishu Sasthya Foundation Bangladesh (SSFB) is an example of his concern for children. A visionary in child health sector, Prof.…
The global atmospheric clock is ticking. Since 1950, the Antarctic Peninsula experienced a warming of about 3° Celsius. The annual melt season has increased by about 2 to 3 weeks in just 20 years, and Arctic Sea ice thickness has…
“CLIMATE change will have wide-ranging and mostly damaging impacts on human health,” warned Dr. Paul Epstein in a study entitled “Human Health and Climate Change.” There have been periods of uncontrollable waves of disease that radically altered human civilisation in…
TODAY, carbon dioxide causes about half the greenhouse effect. Each year, our skies receive 7 (seven) billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. This could double over the next century. Global warming was largely triggered by…
While Bangladesh observed June 12 as the ‘World Day against Child Labour’ providing a spotlight on children engaged in domestic work, a staggering number of children, more than 40 million under the age of 14 engaged in child labour, depicts…
WITH two centuries of an unprecedented population boom, likely to reach 9 billion by 2050, land degradation by human activities and climatic upheavals poses a threat to food security, especially in a land-scarce country like Bangladesh. Historically known, it took…
IT was not an earthquake that caused the collapse of the 9-storied Rana Plaza, which housed four garments factories, where more than three thousand workers were working at the time of the collapse on April 24. It was a man-made…
IT has been established beyond doubt now that greenhouse gases (GHG) pose serious threat to humans. Even then, it is true that without these gases the world would have been much too cold for comfort, unable to sustain life as…
THERE are times when some event is so enormous in terms of the attention it needs that everything else pales in comparison. The dialogue between the two mainstream political parties over the formation of a government for conducting the next…
WATER — which always finds its own level — also happens to be a great leveller. It is fundamental to the survival of every human being. But every summer, Bangladesh discovers that life with water shortages is increasingly becoming constrained.…
LEADERS of the mainstream political parties are drifting like sailors oblivious of the thunderheads piling high on the horizon. Nobody seems to realise that the country is sliding into a national crisis – a loss of faith in all. This…
EARTH Summits with regard to climate change upheavals or limiting greenhouse gas emission have yielded little result. The road to all these summits was littered with unfulfilled promises and shattered treaties. Every year, three million people die because of air…
THE 48-hour hartal on March 18 and19 by BNP-Jamaat combine, demanding release of 154 leaders who were arrested on March 11, started with pre-hartal violence in the capital city. In one incident, three physicians sustained burn injuries when a crude…
DURING the past few days, newspaper reports and TV images of angry mobs clashing with police, burning of houses, ransacking of Hindu homesteads and temples that left more than 70 people dead has left people reeling with trauma, shock and…
For the last three decades scientists and world leaders have been trying to cope with the consequences of exponential growth in human numbers and the increasingly frantic demands for the resources that only nature can provide. They have been working…
There is a lot of prejudice and coldness out there because most people don’t understand the seriousness of the affliction. Presumably, the task before the government is formidable. If AIDS is to be defeated, war must be waged against poverty,…
THE atmospheric scientists’ prediction of the apocalypse due to global warming that means a gradual rise in worldwide temperatures caused by man-made gases trapping too much heat from the sun is coming true. This otherwise means that the world could…
