Month: August 2014

Floods rage thru' north 100 more villages inundated as Bogra embankment washed away; erosion takes alarming turn Inundated houses in Rohodoha of Shariakandi upazila of Bogra after the Jamuna washed away 300 metres of a dyke. Shirshobindu Nesw Desk: With the flood situation in the north showing no sign of improvement, more than one lakh people of 100 villages were freshly affected after a portion of the flood control embankment by the Jamuna river collapsed in Bogra yesterday. Including them, about nine lakh people have now been hit by the monsoonal flood in 19 districts, according to government figures. Marooned for over two weeks, many of these people have little or no food, drinking water and sanitation facilities. Authorities are distributing relief materials in the affected distr...

Sugar mills stuck in huge losses Raw sugar imports rise 31pc year-on-year Sohel Parvez:   Falling sugar prices on the global market and increased imports have lowered the prices of the sweetener in the domestic market, putting state-owned and private mills in a tight spot. Raw sugar imports surged 31 percent year-on-year to 19.83 lakh tonnes last fiscal year amid the refiners' rush to capitalise on the lower international prices to build up stocks for export and the domestic market. But the International Sugar Organisation on Tuesday said the global sugar consumption needs to outstrip supply by at least three million tonnes before prices recover significantly. In other words, the organisation forecasts extended weakness in prices. Raw sugar price, which traded at $467.9 a tonne at the...

Bangladesh's apex group emerges as shoemaker to world This story appears in the September 8, 2014 issue of Forbes Asia Apex’s Nasim with his father Manzur Elahi. Photo taken from forbes.com News Desk: To see a different face of Bangladesh manufacturing, a country that has earned notoriety with its ready-made garment plants, one drives 25 miles north of Dhaka city to Gazipur district. Amid a predominantly industrial enclave of garment makers is a 24-acre site where 5,500 workers, mostly women, are busy stitching not clothes but a range of stylish leather shoes, reports forbes.com. This is the factory of Dhaka Stock Exchange-listed Apex Footwear, Bangladesh’s leading footwear exporter. It started manufacturing leather shoes more than two decades ago. Today it is among the largest shoemak...

More join queue for Malaysian 'second home' scheme Capital flight may amount to Tk 3,506cr as of April this year Sajjadur Rahman: The number of Bangladeshis enrolling on the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) programme has been on the rise since 2011 after a decline during 2007-10, meaning more money is flying off the country. The Bangladeshis started to take up the offer in 2003 when 32 citizens chose to settle in Malaysia under the programme. The number jumped to 204 in the following year, 852 in 2005 and 341 in 2006, according to the Malaysian government. But the number started to decline and stood at 149 in 2007 apparently due to a political changeover in Bangladesh. In the following three years, from 2008 to 2010, a total of 228 Bangladeshi citizens took the offer. The number has star...

Unusual homes Lone House A lone house is seen at the construction site of an urban transformation project in Fikirtepe, an Istanbul neighbourhood in the Asian part of the city. The house, known as "lone house", belongs to a family who had refused to allow its demolition, bringing the project to a standstill for months. REUTERS/Murad Sezer Lone House The owner of the house has finally reached an agreement with the construction firm behind the project, paving the way for the building's demolition, local media reported. REUTERS/Murad Sezer Lone House A lone house is seen at a construction site of an urban transformation project in Fikirtepe, Istanbul. REUTERS/Murad Sezer Lone House An excavator demolishes the lone house at the construction site of an urban ...

Why Ebola is so dangerous Workers from UNICEF and partners speak with families about how they can best protect themselves from the Ebola virus disease, at the Marche Niger, a market in Conakry, Guinea, courtesy of this UNICEF handout photograph taken March 31, 2014. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the world's deadliest to date and the World Health Organization has declared an international health emergency as more than 1,000 people have died of the virus in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria this year. What is Ebola? Ebola is a viral illness of which the initial symptoms can include a sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain and a sore throat, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). And that is just the beginning: subsequent stages are vomiting, diarrhoea an...