Bangladesh on Saturday celebrated Eid-ul-Azha festival, the Muslim’s second largest festival, in a befitting manner and religious fervor.

Bangladesh President Zillur Raman greeted the people of the country in a message. He also exchanged Eid greetings with people after saying the prayer at the national open-air mosque Eidgah in the capital Dhaka.

The Eid-ul-Azha was celebrated across the country on Saturday and sacrificed cattles and other animals like goat and camel marking the willingness of Prophet Ibrahim (SW) to sacrifice his son Prophet Ismael (SW) as an act of obedience to Allah over 4,000years ago. But later Allah advised Ibrahim (SW) to sacrifice an animal. Since then Muslim started to celebrate the occasion.

On this day, people of profession and class forget their differences and exchange greeting with each other.

Almost all able persons sacrifice cattle or other animals of both and distribute those among poor people, who cannot offer to sacrifice animals.

There is provision that seven families can share one cattle. Many rich persons in Bangladesh sacrifice more than one cattle and distribute the meat among the poor.

Bangladeshi twins Trishna and Krishna are out of intensive care and seeing each other for the first time as they make an “amazing” recovery from surgery to separate their conjoined heads, doctors said Tuesday.
The girls, rescued from a Dhaka orphanage, were playing and watching DVDs after moving to a shared room on the normal ward, just a week after the high-risk operation to separate their fused skulls and brains.
The two-year-olds were in “fantastic” shape and showing no evidence of any brain damage, said Melbourne Children’s Hospital chief of surgery Leo Donnan, explaining that they were moved on Monday.
“These little girls are doing everything they were doing beforehand, their function, their communication and their interaction with each other,” Donnan told reporters.
“The exciting thing is they’re now starting to play … (it’s a) pretty amazing thing to see.”
Donnan said he had been taken aback at their rapid progress, with Trishna, who previously took nutrition from her sister, starting to eat on her own for the first time.
“She’s taking little bits of bread and little bits of fruit (and) she’s never had an appetite before,” he said.
“It’s been a remarkably smooth process and they’ve been very happy and obviously day by day they’re improving.”
He added that the girls would be closely watched over a period of weeks, months or even years for signs of psychological shock arising from their separation.
“They are very conscious of each other, they can see each other,” he said.
“A lot of medications are still on board, they’re still adjusting their systems but they can certainly see each other, they can certainly communicate with each other.”
The immediate focus remains on healing their wounds, bound by huge head bandages, he said. The girls were joined by the top and back of the head, meaning they had never seen each other before.
“Our primary aim now is to get them through the healing process safely, and then they will go into an environment with each other, with their carers who will go through the emotional side of it,” Donnan said.
Trishna and Krishna’s condition has amazed medical staff who have cared for them since their arrival in fading health from Bangladesh two years ago.
They were given just a 25 percent chance of both recovering completely from the notoriously difficult surgery, which lasted 32 hours and involved some 16 specialists.
Meanwhile the girls’ 22-year-old mother, who was unable to care for the sickly babies and handed them to an orphanage soon after their birth, has said she hopes to travel to Australia to see them.

Future problems in space with satellite attacks. Many countries are now beginning to get their own defence satellites. Satellites are vulnerable but extremely important for defence.-guru

Bangladesh plans to launch its own communications satellite within a year, Post and Telecommunications Minister Raziuddin Ahmed Raju said yesterday.

The cost of the programme will be between $150 million and $200 million, he said.

The minister disclosed the government plan to reporters during a media briefing.

“We’ve already started talking to different countries including the US, Japan and China, to help us launch our own satellite,” the minister told The Daily Star over the phone.

The satellite would serve commercial purposes including improving telecom services, helping to meet the booming demand for it. Telecom operators could subscribe to satellite services on a commercial basis, the minister added.

Television broadcasting, and meteorological data including disaster warnings would be available easily by the satellite. It might also be used for mapping natural resources, and to predict weather to help farmers, experts said.

“We are very serious. We hope to give the people the good news soon,” said Raju.

He said the government is discussing the technical aspects with the US, Japan and China that have vast experience in the field. Some other countries are also showing interest, he added.

After assessing the proposals of interested countries, the government will pick the one that is most favourable for Bangladesh, the telecom minister said.

“Financing by the interested country will be an important criterion for awarding the contract,” he said.

Experts have welcomed the venture saying that satellite technology would provide quality and faster telecom services to the people, and reduce the risks associated with natural calamities.

“A satellite of our own can benefit us a lot, including better weather forecasting and survey of mineral resources,” said Satya Prasad Majumder, a professor of electrical engineering and electronics at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet).

Currently, Bangladesh subscribes to information about its mineral resources from the US, he said.

Majumder said a satellite could also help control mass communication traffic, such as television and radio broadcasting.

“You don’t need a cable TV network if you have satellite services,” the Buet professor also an expert on communication technology told The Daily Star.

Syed Margub Morshed, former chairman of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission said a satellite can give a country uninterrupted communication services.

“If the fibre optic cable is snapped, services will remain undisturbed through VSAT for the satellite,” he said.

There are several thousand satellites in space, launched by more than 50 countries. Bangladesh’s neighbours India and Pakistan launched their own satellites in 1980 and 1990 respectively.

Judge Abdus Salam Khan convicted the men of torturing the crocodile and sentenced them Tuesday to two years in jail with hard labor, Dhaka’s Daily Star newspaper reported.

The crocodile, named “Pipil,” was seriously injured and lost one eye after the men beat her with bamboo sticks at Khan Jahan Ali shrine in April this year, the prosecution said. The shrine is in Bagerhat district, 135 kilometers (85 miles) southwest of the capital, Dhaka.

The men pleaded innocent, the newspaper said.

The shrine has about two dozen crocodiles living in a big pond where pilgrims can feed and watch them.

The men were among a group of people who collect money from visitors by exhibiting the crocodiles. The group is known to beat the crocodiles if they do not respond to their calls, the newspaper said.

According to local authorities, five crocodiles have died in the last 10 years because of mistreatment by the group, it said.

Crocodiles are protected under Bangladesh law, and offenders face up to five years in jail for torturing or killing them.

This map shows total carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring for the world's countries in 2000. Emissions are expressed in million metric tons of carbon. The map was created by a team of climate and health scientists led by Jonathan Patz, associate professor of environmental studies and population health sciences at UW-Madison. Map courtesy the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.

In a recent chilling assessment, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that human-induced changes in the Earth’s climate now lead to at least 5 million cases of illness and more than 150,000 deaths every year.

Temperature fluctuations may sway human health in a surprising number of ways, scientists have learned, from influencing the spread of infectious diseases to boosting the likelihood of illness-inducing heat waves and floods

AS the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Copenhagen draws closer, it is worthwhile to review once again what is at stake for us and to clearly articulate the position that Bangladesh needs to take in the various phases of negotiations. The prime minister will attend the Convention, which may well define the fate of our country in the near future, and is expected to present the case of Bangladesh and similar countries that will be affected in various ways by climate change.

One reason the citizens of Bangladesh consider this Convention so important for our future is that it might set the tone for the development strategy we will pursue for transition to a low carbon economy, and the support we can expect to receive from the global community to adopt low-carbon technologies and to combat the deleterious effects of global warming.
Bangladesh group calls for int’l environment court
The Bangladesh-based Citizen Network on Climate Change is calling for an international court on the environment.

The pressure group, at an open meeting in Dhaka this week, also stressed that the public must have a say on climate change plans at policy level.

Short and long term measures must ensure policy makers were more accountable to the public with respect to measures for combating the grave outcome of global warming, said the group.

They also asked their government to clarify Bangladesh’s stand in the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Conference, alongside ensuring the participation of common people in setting policy regarding climate change.

Calling for an international environmental court, they said it was urgent for checking the nations most responsible for climate change, they said.

The court would try environmental crimes and take steps against guilty states or companies responsible for high emissions and other forms of global pollution so that affected countries could get compensation, said the group.

Power of the most influential states must also be curtailed to prevent them from vetoing any lawful decision regarding global climate change, they said.

The idea of an international court for the environment has also been proposed by concerned groups in other countries in the lead-up to the Copenhagen conference this December.

A group of UK lawyers are leading a campaign for a body, similar to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, that would be the supreme legal authority on issues regarding the environment.

They also suggest that the first role of the new body would be to enforce international agreements on cutting greenhouse gas emissions set to be agreed in December.

The UN Conference of Parties (COP15) in Copenhagen next month aims to secure a new agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Developing countries are looking to developed nations to commit to cutting emissions drastically.

The Bangladesh group, in its meeting this week, also called for a UN commission on climate change to push for adoption of environment friendly technologies, among other measures.

International efforts need to be reinforced to explore renewable alternative fuels and technologies and their availability to poor and vulnerable countries, said the group.

They also called on their government to adopt feasible short term and long term strategies to ensure rehabilitation, food security and health care for the affected population.

The public meeting was chaired by executive director of INCIDIN Bangladesh, AKM Mostaque Ali, at the organisation’s office on Sunday.

I am not a man of  law learned but having the basic concept that law is moral, law is right,law is for justice.

So cann,t we easily expect the punishment of a false case putter?

What is the real situation of our law infrustucture ,In a judicial bench one of the judge of chittagong court  deliver a statatics of false case that 40% of our total case are are faulse.We have judge shortage according to necessity.So to solve a case it takes lengthy time. This is a confident comment that if we can protect the false case we can save 40% time & money of the contry to excercise real law and order.We can go the success way of democracy and human rights………….to be continued

Google Earth Pro-Gold Edition

Syed Abdul Rehman: A top Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) leader  is learnt to have bought a Google Earth Pro service in October last year, weeks before the 26/11 terror strikes on Mumbai.

Sources in the security establishment feel Rehman may have played a crucial role in plotting the 26/11 attacks, especially since Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive during the attacks, has admitted to having been made familiar with the targets in Mumbai using Google Earth.

But Rehman, who handled David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, had not figured on the radar of Indian security agencies until now.

Inputs emerging over the past few weeks show that Rehman has been controlling a network of terrorists in Bangladesh, Nepal, the Gulf and, possibly, southern India.

Though not identified by the FBI by name, Rehman is the LeT handler ‘A’ in the criminal complaints filed by the agency in Chicago against Headley and Rana, the sources said.

Rehman was the key contact between the duo and Ilyas Kashmiri, a Pakistani army commando-turned-terrorist. Investigators are also trying to verify the phone numbers in Pakistan that were used by handlers to talk to terrorists in Mumbai on 26/11 last year.

They are also trying to find out if the VOIP numbers that were used during the attacks had any connection with the Headley-Rana network. So far, no credible evidence has emerged in this regard.

Rehman, the sources say, is also the handler for Muthu, a Bangladesh based LeT leader who is a key operative of the LeT-HuJI network that has deep links in South India.

The most famous of the network’s operatives was Shahid Bilal, a resident of Hyderabad (India) who was involved in several terror attacks in South India and was mysteriously killed in Karachi in 2007.

So the picture emerging shows that Rehman was a senior LeT operative based in Lahore who, using the garb of an immigration agency First World Consultancy Pvt Ltd, was playing a key role in attacks in India.

He is believed to be handling the movement of terrorists, recce and, probably, the distribution of payments to various modules.

“To me it looks like Rehman was the one tasked to carry out recce and selection of targets, and providing details to the terrorists,” a senior source in the security establishment told.

The LeT network: Is Rehman the missing link?

Hafiz Saeed: Founder of LeT Zaki-ur-Rehman

Lakhvi/Yusuf Muzammil: Senior operatives of LeT, named masterminds of Mumbai attacks. Organised the training of the 10 terrorists, also handled them during the attack.

Zarar Shah: Key link between ISI and LeT, probably the communications chief of LeT.

Syed Abdul Rehman: Handles LeT network in Bangladesh, Nepal and south India; actively involved with LeT operatives in Gulf and the US and handled Headley and

Rana: was probably in charge of recce for the Mumbai attacks.