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Editorial


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Enforced disappearance perpetrators must face justice

CRIMES of enforced disappearance and custodial torture in secret detention centres that the law enforcement agencies committed under the deposed Awami League government continue to haunt families of the victims as their cry for justice...

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Lives lost prematurely because of fragmented policy

AIR pollution continues to worsen while corrective measures remain fragmented and ineffective. Bangladesh faces a persistent health crisis as fine particulate matter increasingly erodes life expectancy. The latest Air Quality Life Index report shows that...

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New Delhi had better keep its word on ending border death

INDIA’S Border Security Force has once again promised to stop killing Bangladeshis by employing additional precautionary measures whilst Border Guard Bangladesh has renewed its call for an end to such violence in the frontiers. Dhaka has also...

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Welcome step that needs proper implementation

THE government’s move to set prices of essential medicines and the cost of medical tests is welcome. The government on August 26 announced that a committee had been formed to set medicine prices. The setting of medicine prices and medical test...

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Issues that hold price declining keeping to global market

A DECLINE in prices on the international market, as ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· reported on August 28, has failed to leave hardly any impact on prices on the domestic market, making consumers bear the brunt that they stated facing since the Russia-Ukraine war. Prices went up...

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Govt should take multipronged approach to end rape culture

THIS is worrying that incidents of sexual violence and rape are increasing. The Bangladesh Women’s Council reported a rise in gender-based violence in 2024, with the majority of the victims being girl children. There is an alarming surge in child marriage too. In 2024, about 20 cases of child marriage were reported whereas in the first six months of this year, the number is...

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A humiliating DU decision that can also prove costly

THE University of Dhaka authorities’ decision to deploy the army as a ‘striking force’ during the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union elections, scheduled for September 9, is both humiliating and alarming. The announcement came at an exchange of views between the returning officers and the candidates for the positions of vice-president, general secretary and...

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Cyber assault on women in univ union polls should end

CYBER-BULLYING in campus politics has become an organised assault on democracy that universities can no longer afford to ignore. In the lead-up to the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union election on September 9 and the Jahangirnagar University Central Students’ Union election on September 11, female candidates face a torrent of online harassment designed to keep...

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Govt should shore up issues to fight against growing poverty

THE findings of a multidimensional survey that the finance ministry has funded to assess how families coped with issues of income, employment, expenditure, financial resilience and digital participation in one year since the 2024 uprising are worrying. The poverty rate increased to 27.93 per cent in May 2025, as the survey that research and policy advocacy organisation Power...

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Pakistan must settle historically unresolved issues

IN A bilateral meeting between Bangladesh and Pakistan on August 24, both countries agreed to boost trade and commerce and collaborate in regional and global forums but differed on the unresolved issues of 1971. The visiting Pakistani deputy prime minister expressed keen interest in enhancing ties with Bangladesh, which is visibly more pronounced since the ouster of...

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Rohingya repatriation demands global commitment

THE government hosting a three-day stakeholders’ dialogue on the Rohingya situation in Cox’s Bazar, which began on August 25 with representatives from 40 countries, is welcome. Marking the eighth year since the influx of the Rohingyas into Bangladesh, the dialogue, organised as a preparatory event for a high-level conference in New York on September 30 on the...

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Open drains, manholes speak of criminal negligence

THIS is deplorable that the authorities continue to turn a blind eye to accidents caused by open drains, manholes and potholes. Footpaths and even roads in all cities are dangerously dotted with open manholes and drains. Accidents in such places make the headlines from time to time and yet, the problem persists without an effective remedy. A photograph that...

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Early repairs of Khilgaon flyover, regular inspection must

THE maintenance of large infrastructure has mostly remained a neglected issue. Whilst such lack of maintenance has made the headlines in the past, this is now a photograph that ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· published on the front page on August 24 speaks volume about the neglect. The photograph shows a gaping wide in a rubber bridge expansion joint of the Khilgaon flyover in Dhaka that...

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Awareness creation should go with typhoid vaccine campaign

THE government has set an ambitious target of administering typhoid vaccines to 50 million children and adolescents, aged between nine months and 15 years, under an Expanded Programme on Immunisation campaign that would begin on October 12. But the response to the campaign has so far been reserved. The Directorate General of Health Services says that..

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No respite from plastic pollution

THE earliest few steps that the environment adviser to the interim took were about reducing plastic pollution, but the pollution continued unabated. A photograph that ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· published on August 23 shows how the original channel of the River Buriganga is clogged with plastic wastes at Islambagh in Dhaka. Most of the city canals, meanwhile, lost their water flow because...