CHEMICAL industries still operate in the densely populated old part of the city despite the tragic fire at Nimtali three years ago which had originated from inflammable chemicals and burnt 124 persons to death, in addition to destroying other homes and businesses. The tragic incident in June 2010 caused a furor among the old city dwellers who demanded the removal of the chemical factories and warehouses at many buildings housed at Nawab Katara, Bangshal, Siddique Bazar, Babu Bazar, Islambagh and...
Biofuels Biofuels can be an effective, environment-friendly and low-cost source of energy capable of replacing conventional fossil fuels mainly gasoline up to some extent. In advanced countries plants have been set up to produce Biofuels. In the United States about 14% of oil requirements are supplemented by biofuels. But currently biofuels are being produced from food sources like corn, sugar canes which is posing a threat to food security. Cellulosic biofuels are produced from non-food sources like grasses, agricultural wastes,...
Dr Maleeha Lodhi : At many international conferences I attended last year a number of themes resonated in deliberations of a world in profound but uncertain transition – a world that held out as many possibilities as challenges. In almost every forum there was agreement that geopolitical risks were outpacing the international community’s ability to adequately address them. The dispersal of power among states and away from them and emergence of different kinds of power was creating new uncertainties and...
Pasuk Phongpaichit & Chris Baker : Even as demonstrators were spreading across Bangkok, they were losing ground with a constituency whose support they badly need: The urban middle class. The protesters – themselves mainly from white-collar backgrounds – are intent on bringing down Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. She was elected in 2011 on promises to revive the popular policies of her elder brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was prime minister from 2001 until he was ousted in 2006. But her opponents...
Neil Irwin : The United States is poised for its strongest year of economic growth since the recession began. Signposts for the economy are generally pointing up. A recovery that seemed tentative and halting a year ago now appears to be durable and more deeply entrenched. Sound familiar? It should. Those are all phrases from an article that ran in The Washington Post on Dec. 31, 2010, projecting how the economy would fare in 2011. I know because I wrote...
Prof. Murray A. Strauss : It was encouraging to read an article recently by Sir Frank Peters about the ill effects corporal punishment has on children. As the author of the book, The Primordial Violence: Spanking Children, Psychological Development, Violence, and Crime (Routledge, 2013) from which Sir Frank gathered material for his report, I agree entirely with all the statements made. Corporal punishment of children is a serious matter, as shown by the scientific evidence in this book, which is...
A NEWS report yesterday said that the tax-payers dodged Tk 3,024 crore in the income tax category alone during the last two financial years (2010-11 and 2011-12), while the National Board of Revenue (NBR) was able to collect only Tk 150 crore out of this amount till November last year. It showed that the NBR officials failed to collect almost 95 percent of the evaded money as tax payers lodged appeals to the appellate tribunal of the NBR and also...
SMALL farmers in the country are bearing the brunt of the months long political crisis as they were unable to sell their produce to markets in time and had to witness the rot and destruction of vegetable in the fields. In this situation the Bangladesh Bank has asked the commercial banks to give loans to small farmers at low cost. But the scheme appears to be missing the target due to bureaucratic bottlenecks. Reports said farmers have also failed to...
SUDDENLY the import bills for December last increased by 20.05 percent ahead of the January 5 national elections compared with a 2.30 percent growth in imports in December 2012 raising suspicions of massive money laundering by vested quarters under the cover of imports. News reports in a national English daily on Tuesday said quoting a Bangladesh Bank data relating to overall settlement of L/Cs involving over $3.05 billion for December last year that the figure was $2.54 billion for December...
Indiscipline on bus routesOne of the main problems of Dhaka, a city of over one crore population, is inadequate transports and indiscipline on roads. In 2008, the Association of Bus Owners and the Dhaka Metropolitan Police restored some sort of discipline, fixing routes. As a result, it was easy for passengers to identify buses for the respective routes. A very good number of bus owners established ticket counters in the city’s busy areas for the convenient of commuters, who also...
Jonathan Power :Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine who lived 460-357 BC, concluded that diseases were naturally caused and were cured by natural remedies. Opium, he wrote, was one of the latter. But he was also of the opinion that it should be used sparingly and under control.If only our governments today could take such a sanguine and informed view of the use of opiates in medicine today.No one needs a more enlightened attitude than the Western forces now operating...
Tom Plate :Try it, you might like it: A sense of proportion. Avoid the extreme cry of apocalypse now – or at least, of apocalypse soon. Stretch your intellectual and historical horizons to appreciate Japan as an expanse of more than just a few decades, or of even just a few centuries. It is a culture and a people that will endure.Here are some obvious points. Japan is not about to tip over and fall into the Sea of Japan,...