Voice of South

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina laid waste to parts of the US Gulf Coast. Last year, the Arabian Peninsula was hit by a super-cyclone, Gonu. Now, an unusual early-season storm, Nargis, has slammed into Myanmar, brutally changing gear from a Category One to a Category Four cyclone just before it made landfall.

Are these events — massively costly in lives and treasure — all linked? Could they be part of an alarming trend of weird, more powerful storms stoked by global warming? That’s a question that Continue Reading »

Abdul Majid has been forced to move 22 times in as many years, a victim of the annual floods that ravage Bangladesh.
There are millions like Majid, 65, in Bangladesh and in the future there could be many millions more if scientists’ predictions of rising seas and more intense droughts and storms come true.

“Bangladesh is already facing consequences of a sea level rise, including salinity and unusual height of tidal water,” said Mizanur Rahman, a research fellow with the London-based International Institute for Environmental Development.
“In the future, millions of people will lose their land and houses. Their survival will be threatened,” Continue Reading »

Climate change will increase the risk of people losing their sight through cataracts because of higher levels of ultraviolet rays, an expert said Monday.”The three main risk factors that lead to cataract blindness are age, smoking and UV exposure, in that order,” said Andreas Mueller of the Fred Hollows Foundation.

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Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus on Monday unveiled a deal between his pioneering Grameen bank and French group Veolia Environment to provide clean water to poor rural communities in Bangladesh.

The Bangladeshi economist also sought support from President Nicolas Sarkozy for creating more microcredit schemes to fight poverty, particularly in Africa.

“I wanted to make him understand how effective a tool microcredit is in helping the poor Continue Reading »

In announcing the release of his anti-Quran film, Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament, has generated a swell of media attention in the Netherlands in the past months. Politicians have urged him not to go ahead with the release of the film ‘Fitna’ because they say its controversial content may lead to national and international unrest.

The heated public debate revolves around the film’s expected content and the limits of freedom of speech. National safety precautions have been taken. Still, no one has seen any footage.
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A Saudi-based website aims to stir hatred against 1.2 million Bangladeshis working in the oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.Under www.antirat.com the website features page after page of alleged crimes and misdemeanours committed by Bangladeshi labourers documented with photographs, ranging from the serious ‘rape and running prostitution ring’ to the frankly ridiculous ‘unhygienic cooking’ practices.

A plethora of crimes have been compiled from articles said to have been Continue Reading »

KOLKATA: What started as a fledgling organisation five years ago at Konnagar in West Bengal has now bagged the honour Continue Reading »

Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus founded a bank that has helped 7.5 million beggars and borrowers escape abject poverty in his native Bangladesh.Speaking to about 1800 people this week, he encouraged them to do what they could to change the world by using business techniques to solve everything from poverty to pollution.

“We can create a world where there will be no poor persons at all,” Yunus told students, non- profit organisers and members of the Bangladesh- American Society of Greater Houston.

Yunus recently wrote Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism. In it he suggests that people create businesses with a societal motive, offering health insurance, cheque-cashing services or bank accounts for the Continue Reading »

The police Thursday recorded a complaint from a journalist that supporters of former president HM Ershad had “confined” him in his house for three hours. Journalist Masud Kamal filed a general diary with Gulshan Police Station.

Bidisha, estranged wife of Ershad, alleged that Kamal had been taken away from in front of her Continue Reading »

Two weeks after the Pakistan government passed a new law with tough punishment for cyber crimes, hundreds of anti-establishment blogs have been blocked, bloggers said.

Access to blogspot.com, a hosting domain that contains hundreds of blogs by Pakistani students and activists opposing President Pervez Musharraf’s rule and championing causes like the reinstatement of deposed judges, has been blocked or restricted across the country since Tuesday.

However, Information Technology Ministry member Nooruddin Baqai told The News that no instructions Continue Reading »