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Environment

Potential earthquake could jeopardize millions in BD

A potentially giant earthquake may be building up beneath Bangladesh and eastern India and could endanger as many as 140 million people, a study said on Monday. The earthquake is not imminent but inevitable as sections of the earth’s crust press against one another, according to the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience. No estimate on when such a quake may occur is possible without additional research, the earth hourstudy’s lead author Michael Steckler, a geophysicist at Columbia University in New York, ...

Rajshahi took on air pollution, and won

Once, Rajshahi’s sweltering summers were made worse by a familiar problem: windows would have to be shut, not because of the wind or monsoon, but because of the smog, reports the Guardian. Dust blown up from dry riverbeds, fields and roads, and choking smog from ranks of brick kilns on the edge of town helped to secure the place a spot in the top tier of the world’s most polluted cities, the Guardian said. Then suddenly Rajshahi hit a turning point so dramatic that it earned a spot in the record books: last year, according to UN data, the town did more than any other worldwide to rid itself of air particles so harmful to human health.

Buriganga re-excavation project to go

The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) today approved a project for recovering Buriganga River to keep the water flow running around the capital city. Under the project, new Dhaleswari-Pungli-Bongshai-Turag-Buriganga System would be re-excavated involving Taka 1125.59 crore. The approval came at the 32nd meeting of the ECNEC in the fiscal held at the NEC conference room in city’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar with Prime Minister and ECNEC Chairperson Sheikh Hasina in the chair, reports BSS. Planning Minister A H M Mustafa Kamal, after the meeting, briefed the newsmen about the

Fishermen to turn dolphin saviours in Bangladesh

Akkas Ali is a fisherman from Dublar char, a remote island located off the coast in Bangladesh’s Bagerhat district. He has been fishing in the Bay of Bengal for almost 20 years and has been a witness to the slaughter of dolphins. Most of these deaths were accidental – the dolphins became entangled in the nets of fishermen, and died. In the last two years three dolphins were killed after being trapped in Akkas Ali’s own fishing nets. At least five species of dolphins and several species of whales can be found between the coast of the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, and the Bay of Bengal. The rivers of the mangrove forest are the habitat of Gangetic river dolphins and Irrawady dolphins. According a 2010 joint survey conducted by the US-based Wildlife Conservation So...

India plans to ‘divert rivers’; Bangladesh cries foul

India is set to divert water from major rivers such as the Brahmaputra and the Ganges to regions in the country that are prone to severe drought, Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti told BBC on Monday. However, Bangladesh’s water resources minister urged the Modi government to ensure the country gets its share of water. Stating that the project on The Inter Linking of Rivers (ILR) has 30 planned links for water-transfer, Bharti said one link is set to kick off any time. “Interlinking of rivers is our prime agenda and we have got the people’s support and I am determined to do it on the fast track,” Bharti told BBC. “We are going ahead with five links [of the rivers] now and the first one, the Ken-Betwa link [in

Bangladesh struggling to balance energy and environment needs

In a bid to bolster the electricity generation capacity of the energy-poor nation, the government is looking to build several coal-fired plants in the coming years. But activists oppose them citing environmental risks. Bildergalerie Bangladesch Sundarbans Mangrovenwälder The plan to set up coal-fired power plants across the coastal areas of the South Asian country recently sparked a wave of protests. At least four demonstrators died and many were injured in the southeastern port city of Chittagong last month, when police opened fire at those protesting against the construction of a thermal power plant in the region.
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