The government seems fixated on flyovers and mega projects, which have always been plagued with cost overruns and years of delay. The construction of the 8.7km Moghbazar flyover for instance was supposed to start in 2011 but ended up with a two-year delay and was finally completed in 2017—resulting in a cost overrun of nearly Tk 450 crore.

It has been three years since a local scientist invented jute polymer, a material that is not only biodegradable but is both water and air resistant,

We applaud the UN Secretary General António Guterres for his frank admission of the failure of the international community to address the Rohingya crisis.

The Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment minister's comments that our female workers in Saudi Arabia are returning due to language problems and food habits, amount to virtual denial of the reality on the ground.

Tthere are two aspects of the Dhaka University authorities' decision to keep the campus off-limits to outsiders.

We are greatly relieved by the High Court's position expressed on Monday that strikes enforced by clinics, hospitals and diagnostic centres to justify medical negligence were unethical. Coming in the backdrop of the 20-hour strike enforced by the private clinics, hospitals and diagnostic centres in Chittagong, the observation is very timely.

In a story published in this newspaper on Tuesday, we reported how seven schoolgirls, aged between 14 and 15, were injured when chunks of the ceiling of their classroom in Rangpur fell on them. Around 30 students of grade nine were taking their half-yearly examinations when about 80 square feet of ceiling plaster collapsed.

The picture in yesterday's paper of a huge hole in Circular Road in Motijheel may leave the reader weary of repetition.

Despite the progress we have made in terms of workplace safety post-Rana Plaza, there is much more to be done to provide a decent, women-friendly working environment for female RMG workers.

We join our voice with Toriqul's family to request the prime minister to come to the aid of this suffering young man and to help him get the necessary medical treatment for his broken leg and other injuries, inflicted upon him by BCL men who attacked him with hammers, sticks and other weapons.

We are concerned by a spate of murders in Rohingya camps in the last six months that have left the refugees insecure among themselves. The killings—19, in total, including two ghastly murders of two community leaders—have not only sown fear among the already devastated group of people who fled widespread state-sponsored violence in Myanmar, their ancestral land, but have also raised questions about safety and security inside the camps in Bangladesh.

After months of escalation and failed dialogues, and despite warnings by economists, the United States of America and China have officially fired the first shots of what is being termed “the largest trade war in history.”

Bangladesh has been for a long time plagued by the problem of illegal arms. The spread has been exponential in the last three decades, the consequences of which has been painfully manifest in our society.

It is befuddling why the National Board of Revenue (NBR) has decided to slap value added taxes that would amount to a 27 percent levy, on the import of solar panels. This is at a time when Bangladesh is set to explore and develop its solar power possibilities through numerous projects. These include solar home systems, solar irrigation and solar power plants in various parts of the country.

Just two days after the unfortunate case of a three-year-old succumbing to alleged wrong treatment in a private hospital in Chittagong, two more patients died in separate hospitals in the city. In both cases, bereaved families accused the medical staff, especially attending doctors, of unsafe or negligent medical care.

We are pleasantly surprised that a case has been filed against a number of individuals accused of land grabbing of the Dhaleshwari river in Dhalla Union of Singair upazila of Manikganj, in the name of setting up a power plant.

As this daily has reported, prices of all types of rice, including coarse rice, shot up by Tk 3 a kilogram at retail markets in the capital over the last ten days.

That the hills in the southeast district of Bandarban are being ravaged to build connecting roads to a housing project is outrageous.

We are dumbfounded by the statement of the Dhaka University Proctor that he had not been "informed" about the multiple incidents of brutal attacks on DU students by Chhatra League members after the supporters of the quota reform movement had called a press conference to brief journalists on their next course of action.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres' visit to the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh and subsequent statements reaffirm the need to address the fundamental issue at the heart of the Rohingya crisis—that is citizenship. Myanmar has not even begun the repatriation process despite signing a bilateral deal with Bangladesh in November last year.