The first round of reform talks produced a wide range of agreements and disagreements
Government should prioritise reform recommendations that help with holding the election in time.
Troubling development involving fine exemptions comes to light
Recently, I took part in an interesting small group discussion on public trust and confidence in Bangladesh. The discussion began rather innocuously as a member of the group, concerned about diabetes, expressed her lack of confidence in purchasing sugar-free jam in Bangladesh for her daily breakfast. Convinced that the local jam was not to be trusted for sugar content, whether it was certified or not by the manufacturer or the agency charged with oversight responsibility, she purchased a few jars abroad, expressing her unstinted confidence in the overseas manufacturer and the agency for oversight she could not even name (i.e., the Food and Drug Administration). She also indicated having shopped around for locks of a "heavy" variety for her luggage soon to arrive at Zia...
If you are already beginning to accuse me of male-chauvinism and thinking of reminding me that we have come a long way from the gender-insensitive days of John Steinbeck, the author ofOf Mice and Men,please hold your horse. I am trying to make a simple point: men and women use computer differently -- often, for different purposes. When a man is clicking away the mouse, his attention often veers into the domains of sports and other pleasurable things -- that's what the American study of computer usage suggested. In USA, young women aged between18-24 prefer to visit news and entertainment sites, while young men prefer search engines and sports sites. In U.K. of the net users, 80 per cent men aged 55 or over go online to search for information or to pursue their hobbies. Eight...
Our water worries have been acknowledged by India but not allayed by her. Dhaka's concern over India's mega river-link project has been put on the minutes of the just-concluded JRC meeting. This has happened after quite a bit of tug of war rolling into the small hours of night, the main meeting having ended at 9pm on Tuesday. Indian Water Resources Minister Arjun Charan Sethi had earlier included Bangladesh's concern in the agenda for talks, but under the 'miscellaneous' head. However, as for mentioning it in the minutes of the meeting, India would not be initially agreeable to it. But at Bangladesh's insistence, she changed her mind. And rightly so, because otherwise Dhaka might have felt impelled to go international with it....
The penultimate ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation was held approximately two years ago in November, 2001, which ended with the official launching of the Doha Round . At that time it had 146 members. It required a lot of hard bargaining and intense negotiations between the rich and the poor nations to reach this agreement. But the successful conclusion of the meeing produced a sense of relief among the participants because during the meeting, the negotiations often became so acrimonious that there was genuine concern among the participants that the talks would collapse. It also aroused great expectations among the developing countries because it was hoped that the ensuing round of negotiations would end in taking concrete measures in the field of...
What is the exact procedure to send armed forces of the country into a mission that might be construed as an act of belligerency by the state against which the forces are mobilised? And who is empowered to make such a crucial decision on behalf of the people?...
The Daily Star story on the bottled water scandal goes to show how vulnerable our heath is at the hands of some unscrupulous traders. They have been filling up empty plastic containers collected from sundry places with tap water and selling these off as mineral water with fake security seals affixed. This is the height of commercial fraudulence surreptitiously at work....
In recent days, it is reported that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence asked the Bangladesh Navy to ensure Bangladesh's sovereignty over South Talpatty Island. The Chairman of the Committee said that the island was an integral part of Bangladesh....
A survey conducted by the Bangladesh chapter of the Transparency International has stated the obvious but with a renewed force: police and tax officials have jointly emerged at the top of the corruption list prepared on the basis of selected newspaper reports. After all, they are the ones on the frontline of public dealings, and to that extent, are perhaps most susceptible to wrong-doing....
It is a measure of the crisis of India's justice delivery system that it has failed to charge, leave alone punish, the demolishers of the Babri mosque for 11 years....
Since its invention in early 20th Century, electronic media has been playing a vital role, particularly in the Western countries, in leading the respective nations towards new heights of development through a competitive edge. With its effective and target oriented operations, they are spreading their markets, selling their culture and even indoctrinating their political ideology in other parts of the world....