Shipping Minister Shahjahan Khan on Sunday said mobile courts will be launched to free rivers from encroachers in addition to checking pollution. The minister made the disclosure at the second meeting of the taskforce committee formed to prevent encroachment and pollution of rivers and maintaining their navigability. Shahjahan Khan said Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA), led by a magistrate, would launch the mobile courts which will take immediate action against the encroachers and the polluters. “No one wi...

Urgent action is needed to protect the least developed countries from the adverse impacts of climate change, the chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) Group has said at the UN climate change negotiations. “The latest science tells us that we can limit global temperature increases to a level that will save the poorest countries in the world. All that is required is the will to do it. But if we don’t act urgently the world’s poorest will suffer,” LDC Group chair Prakash Mathema said at the climate meet in Bonn on Tuesday, according to a message received here. Two new reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in the last three months, revealed the alarming realities for the world’s poorest countries. Extreme temperatures, rainfall and drought...

Bangladesh's leather tanneries are notoriously filthy, exposing workers and the surrounding neighborhood to toxic chemicals. And recent studies show that poultry feed produced from industry scraps may also be putting the health of millions throughout the country at risk. “The whole nation is under threat as chicken is the most consumed meat, and also the cheapest source of animal protein,” said Abul Hossain, a chemistry professor at the University of Dhaka, who led recent studies on how chromium, a tannery waste product, is transported into chicken meat. “This is extremely alarming.”