The exorbitant rates which syndicates are charging for providing illegal lines of gas, power and water to inhabitants of Korail slum are staggering, and amount to extortion of the most marginalised in the city. A report published in this paper on Monday highlighted that at least 20 such groups were engaged in this business, earning them Tk 1.5 crore a month.

Let's face it: the proponents of flyover have, by and large, failed to deliver on the promises of a safe, quick journey for the commuters. And of late, it has become more of a bane than a boon, what with the flawed design of some flyovers, defective expansion joints, girder collapse, unplanned bus stands and stairs, and the often-deadly accidents.

Despite the law minister's repeated assurance that Section 57 of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) Act would be scrapped, the controversial section remains alive and well and is being increasingly used to file cases against journalists. Now it is reported that, while Section 57 will be removed from the ICT Act, it will be incorporated in the new Digital Security Act, 2016.

This is the third time that the mayor of Gazipur, MA Mannan, has been suspended since he was duly elected as mayor of that City Corporation on July 6, 2013. The order, however, has been stayed by the High Court. It has been more than four years that he was elected mayor, and regrettably, of these four years he has been suspended thrice, and spent 22 months in jail and only 18 months in office.

It seems that the ruling party cadres are a law unto themselves with no one to check their excesses. The fact that these activists feel it within their right to attack uniformed police is shocking. Precisely what sort of message are they giving out to ordinary people? We applaud the policemen, who are working under difficult circumstances, for nabbing one of the attackers and catching another later during a drive.

The shortage is the prime reason for the massive backlog of cases that plagues our lower and higher courts. But, the numbers indicate that this problem was not of the making of one day only. The numbers of Appellate judges and HC judges were only 11 in 2009 and 100 in 2012, respectively.

Environmental laws are there for a reason. Natural resources, such as land, need to be protected from misuse and the hills are protected by law for the sake of both safety of people and the ecology. Over the last two decades, we have been silent witnesses to the indiscriminate pollution of our rivers and their encroachment. And now the same is happening with the hills and hillocks of Cox's Bazaar and the Hill Tracts.

We know that the disaster could have been avoided. A machine may malfunction at any time, but in this case, it was kept running even after 9 days of its expiry period. Even if the argument is made that it would be difficult to assume that a mishap would occur so soon after the date of expiry, it still does not in any way justify blaming the workers. If anything, it was the duty of the management to replace it well before it reached its expiry.

Amidst crackdown on illegal migrants and workers, the Malaysian authorities have detained a total of 789 Bangladeshis who did not have proper documentations for staying in the country.

Residents of large sections of Dhaka city have been facing waterlogging for days on end during every monsoon season.

We are happy and relieved that Farhad Mazhar was rescued and returned to the family unharmed after an 18-hour ordeal. The efficiency of the police is certainly commendable, but there are several questions surrounding the entire episode because the way the whole incident has played out creates much apprehension and confusion.

In yet another industrial disaster the death toll from a boiler explosion in the factory of Multifabs Ltd in Gazipur has risen to 13 as of Tuesday.

As with every major flood, people in the affected areas are likely to face problems with safe drinking water and hence we hope authorities are already mapping flooded areas to make these available. What we do not want is the supply of expired medication, instances of which happened during the floods last August.

This week, news of at least three children tortured in different parts of Bangladesh surfaced in the news media. The Daily Star on Tuesday reported two of the incidents, the first, involving a domestic help, taking place right in the heart of the capital. Eleven-year-old Sabina Akhter endured unspeakable horrors in the hands of her employer who reportedly inflicted severe punishment on her. Her fault? She couldn't fry an egg.

We welcome the Supreme Court's verdict upholding the High Court ruling that declared the 16th Amendment of the Constitution, which empowered the parliament to impeach any apex court judge, illegal. The verdict finally reinstates the fundamental scheme of our Constitution that separates power between various organs of the state.

The Rath mela in Dhamrai has been suspended by the local police citing security concerns. But it is alleged that the fair was stopped over a rift between the local lawmaker and the municipality mayor. The Rath mela is integral to the biggest Rath Jatra Utsab in the country.

The latest report of the human rights watchdog Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) is worrying. Apart from 68 people killed in “shootouts” and “crossfire” encounters with the police and other law enforcing agencies in the first six months of 2017, 44 persons were picked up, allegedly by people identifying themselves as members of the law enforcing agencies, according to ASK, during this period.

It is disheartening to note that there are about 10 million out-of-school children, adolescents and youths in Bangladesh, as revealed by a new Unesco policy paper. Some of the reasons mentioned in the paper as to why that is the case were related to their living conditions, financial constraints and social adversities.

A picture published in this paper yesterday showed a dismal state of a good idea gone wrong. The hundreds of waste bins that were set up all over the city as part of the Clean Dhaka campaign by the DNCC and DSCC mayors for better garbage management in the city was without a doubt a good idea which had the potential to make our city cleaner.

It is regrettable that while legal means of money transfer outside the country faces many restrictions there seems to be no impediment to illegal transfer and no palpable effective measures to prevent them. Has the government done anything to find out the final destination of the several thousand crores taken out of some state owned banks like the Basic Bank?