Yusuf Molla, a farmer in Rajshahi’s Tanore, has at least 200 rare and almost extinct varieties of paddy in his collection that he has developed over the years out of love for the crop. During a visit last month, this correspondent found 77 sections in Yusuf’s land. Each section had a signboard carrying the name of the variety cultivated there. Each variety has a distinct texture, colour, smell, and taste.
This was amply evident at the Bangladesh stall in the Xmas Charity Bazaar held at the plush Galle Face Hotel in Colombo on Sunday. The Sri Lankan capital’s elite, local as well as expatriate, made a beeline to the Bangladeshi stall manned by the staff of the High Commission, to lap up the items on sale. “In just four hours most of the articles were sold out,” gushed Riaz Hamidullah, High Commissioner of Bangladesh.
In 2014, the elections were boycotted by the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Khaleda Zia. But this time round the BNP is going to contest and with gusto. In December 2018, there is going to be a new force in alliance with the BNP – the Jatika Oikya Front (JOF) headed by Dr.Kamal Hossain, Bangladesh’s first Foreign Minister. He is a new face without a baggage of corruption, and with a record of participating in the liberation struggle, writes P.K.Balachandran in Daily Mirror..
Five years after the High Court ruled that the Jamaat-e-Islami’s status as a political party be revoked, the Election Commission has executed the orders in a gazette. The gazette got delayed because of the delay in getting the full verdict, EC Secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed told bdnews24.com on Monday. The commission could not publish the gazette until now also because an appeal against the High Court orders was being heard, he said.
South Asia’s multi-religious countries, namely India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, started off with a noble wish to be ‘secular’ and keep religion out of the business of the State.But it did not take long for all the three South Asian States to regress from secularism and begin to be overly influenced by the majority religious community.
WHO’s regional champion for autism in South Asia Dr Saima Wazed Hossain says, autism has reached alarming numbers worldwide, and that it may reach epidemic proportions in Sri Lanka. But the causes of autism are still unclear,she told Manjula Fernando of Sunday Observer.
“The qualitative aspects of improved governance that have a strong correlation with human capital development cannot be and have not been captured by the way the HCI has been constructed,” the Indian government said. The gap in data and methodology overlook the initiatives taken by a country and, in turn, portray an incomplete and predetermined picture, it said, adding this, in fact, makes the case for the adoption of the index by more countries somewhat remote.
Army chief General Aziz Ahmed and Quartermaster General Lt Gen Md Shamsul Haque presented the badge to Dr Susane Giti on Sunday. “She is the first woman to be appointed as major general,” the Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR) Directorate said in a statement.
Across the region, journalists are being intimidated, harassed and arrested just for being journalists. The trend must not be left unchallenged. Freedom of the media is embedded in the concept of democratic freedoms, the Colombo Dec;laration said.
“A little bit of compassion, patience and tolerance goes a long way in making an individual with autism live happily and productively in any family or community,” says Saima Wazed Hossain, a licensed clinical and school psychologist in the US and WHO’s Goodwill Ambassador for Autism for South East Asia.