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As he was good in studies, I couldn't accept the fact that he was also good in other activities such as sports or hanging around with his friends. Those days seems to have taken place ages ago when we had ice-cream in the Abahani field after those tiring football games. Being a good sportsman, he was always there to shake hands with his opponents, whether it was in the football field or in the examination hall. He was there when we needed notes, because we drifted off to sleep in the English Language class!

He always used to say that he was very unfortunate. Because just before his O'levels Physics examination, he suffered from chicken-pox. Still, he had a great exam, perhaps even better than most of us! Pratay's mother, being a teacher herself, had great expectations from her son, because he was the only child of his parents. But the sad part is that, although the results came out on the 16th of August, Pratay will not be there with us to collect his certificate!

It seemed strange whenever I think of death. I mean, one day a person is among us, and the next day he is buried six feet under the ground in eternal peace! Even on that day, as we played cricket with Pratay, none of us knew that it was the last time we were seeing him! And all of a sudden it happened. It was raining that evening, and as I returned home, drenched, I didn't have the faintest idea that on the other side of the city, my friend was being electrocuted at his residence! And I was so unlucky that I couldn't even see him one last time at the funeral! Please forgive me, dost!

What seems awkward to me is the fact that, although most of the things have remained unchanged, there is only one thing absent from the football field, amidst our shouts to joy or anger. That is, whenever we lose a match, there isn't anyone to say, “Arrey, no problem, Boro Bhai!”

Study: Hundreds of Bird Species Endangered by 2050

At least 400 species of birds could become endangered within the next 50 years as a result of global warming and changes in land use, a new study finds.

Climate change and the destruction of habitats through deforestation and the conversion of grassland to cropland have already pushed many species to extinction, and the process will only accelerate over the next century, the authors of the study said.

The extinction count grows much higher at the turn of the next century, they said.

“We found in our study that under certain assumptions by the year 2100, 950 to 1,800 bird species may be imperiled or even driven to extinction by climate change and habitat destruction,” said lead author Walter Jetz of the University of California, Davis. “Most of these species are currently not recognized as imperiled.”

These estimates were made by combining projections of future global warming, agricultural expansion and human population growth from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and were detailed in the online journal PLoS Biology.

They were also based on the assumption that birds won't dramatically shift their ranges in response to a changing climate.

Climate change will be the primary driver of extinctions at higher latitudes, as suitable habitats begin to shrink, the authors state.

For tropical birds, direct habitat destruction will be more of a problem: birds in tropical climates tend to be highly specialized to small habitat ranges. As soon as their home is gone, they have nowhere to go.

Source: LiveScience