Other Headlines

117 bodies recovered, families to be given compensation The nation mourns the dead today as the death toll from Thursday’s fire in eight buildings in Old Town of Dhaka increased to 117 till Friday evening, casting a pall of gloom everywhere. The air had weighed heavy over Old Town, a closely woven society, since the ... Read more

Encroachers and polluters are damaging the country’s ecosystems, from forests and freshwater sources to mangroves and wetlands, by exploiting lack of political will, flaws in the environmental laws and lack of enforcement of legal provisions, said experts, reports NewAge. They stressed the need to forge an all-out movement to compel the government to revise the ... Read more

National flag will fly at half-mast today as Bangladesh continued mourning those who died in the devastating fire in the Old Town of Dhaka on Thursday night. The government announced National Mourning Day today for the victims of the Nimtali blaze and Begunbari building collapse. Special prayers will be offered at mosques and other places ... Read more

The natural surrounding of the port city is under threat due to industrial pollution, rampant hill cutting, tree felling, discharge of clinical, industrial and household wastes and absence of drainage and sewerage system here, reports The Independent.  Oil and poisonous chemicals are freely discharged into Karnaphuli river, thus polluting the water of the

The government has taken an initiative to make a safari park in the Gazipur Sal forest aiming to save it from encroachment. Around 4000 acres of land of the forest have been designated for the safari park named after Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, said State Minister for Environment and Forest Hasan Mahmud

Access to social networking site Facebook will be unblocked ‘as early as possible’ for users in Bangladesh, Bangladesh Telecommuni-cations Regulatory Commission officials said on Thursday. The authorities, however, could not confirm the date when the site would be unblocked. ‘The networking site will be unblocked as early as possible after the taking offensive and sensitive

The Public Service Commission on Thursday published results of the 28th Bangladesh Civil Service examinations in which 2,190 candidates have been recommended for various cadres, commission officials said. The results, posted on the PSC web site (www.bpsc.gov.bd), will not be available with the PSC or

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday launched the much-desired Machine Readable Passport (MRP) and Machine Readable Visa (MRV) taking the country a step forward towards Digital Bangladesh. “From today we have entered into the digital era and the country’s passport and visa system has been raised to international standard with the introduction of MRP and MRV,” ... Read more

The students passed this year’s SSC or equivalent examinations will be admitted to the colleges based on their results. No admission test will be held this year but GPA-5 achievers will get priority. The government yesterday published a policy for admission in 2010-2011 academic session. The policy has fixed the price of admission forms at ... Read more

Campaigns for Chittagong City Corporation election, scheduled on June 17, got a full swing momentum with allocation of electoral symbols among candidates for the mayor and ward councilor posts by the election office on Wednesday. The district election office sources said they allocated the symbol of ‘ship’ to the Citizen

The High Court on Tuesday warned the government saying that it would show zero tolerance towards death in custody. The bench of Justice AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury and Justice Md Delwar Hossain asked former law minister Abdul Matin Khasru, also a ruling Awami League lawmaker, and additional attorney

“Many of Bangladeshis desire to conquer the Everest. Amid them I could make it. It is a matter of happiness and pride for me as well as for the country” is how Ibrahim Musa, the first Bangladeshi to scale the Mount Everest, sought to share his pleasure with the reporters after landing at Hazrat Shahzalal ... Read more

A total of eight candidates have been vying for the mayoral post of Chittagong City Corporation, 249 for ward councilor and 59 for councilor posts reserved for women in the election scheduled on June 17. Sources at the district election office said five candidates for the post of mayor, 54 for ward councilor and seven ... Read more

All preparations have been completed for the budget session of the ninth parliament beginning this (Wednesday) afternoon. Amid boycotting by the BNP-led opposition in the House proceedings, the first day of the session will start at 5pm, with the Jatiya Sangsad (JS) Speaker Advocate Abdul Hamid in the

The cabinet yesterday approved the National Education Policy 2010 which extended the level of free primary education from class V to class VIII. Thousands of poor students are likely to benefit from this. In another major move the level of secondary education has been raised from class IX to class XII. A terminal examination will ... Read more

Jatiya Sangsad will introduce digital technology on a limited scale to run its proceedings from the budget session beginning Wednesday, reports NewAge. Allocation of time for lawmakers will be displayed on giant television screens, to be set up inside the chamber; the microphone will go automatically switched off once their time is over for certain

Jamaat and eight other minor parties agreed to back out from the Chittagong City Corporation elections, scheduled to be held on June 17, in a bid to unitedly support the BNP-backed mayoral candidate, Monjurul Alam Monju. This was announced on Monday at a joint press briefing held at the Chittagong Press Club by the

Growing landlessness in Bangladesh is undermining its efforts for steady progress in poverty elimination, experts said after a public survey revealed that majority poor people cited landlessness as the main reason for their extreme poverty, NewAge Quoted. Some 60 per cent of the country’s 40 per cent poor people who are living down the poverty ... Read more

The ruling Awami League-backed mayoral candidate in the Chittagong City Corporation elections, ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-backed candidate, M Manjur Alam Manju, formally began their electoral campaign from the Shah Amanat Shrine on Friday. Former mayor Mohiuddin began the campaign after saying jumma prayer at the shrine, and was

Driver escapes; angry students torch buses; barricades road for 4 hours A Buet student was killed by a callously driven bus at Azimpur of the capital, triggering violent student protests that halted traffic on city streets for hours yesterday. The victim’s head was crushed under a wheel of the bus. During the angry outburst against ... Read more