Reaz Ahmad

The government is going to double the amount of food grains it planned to import a few months ago amid high rice prices, fast depleting stocks and a flood ravaging crop fields in the north.

This is a classic case of inertia, a case that clearly shows how things move in government offices. In 2010, the government planned to dredge and make the country's vast waterways navigable in 10 years.

In a desperate bid to stabilise rice price, the government has decided to further reduce the duty on import of the staple and strike a deal with Thailand to buy rice.

With a 25-fold growth in farmed fish market over the last three decades, Bangladesh has been experiencing a quiet revolution in aquaculture. The country grows nearly 20 lakh tonnes of farmed fish a year, and an overwhelming 75 percent of the farmers sell fish to wholesalers.

The rate of people getting divorced and living separately from their spouses almost doubled over the last decade, revealed a recent

In a desperate move to replenish the dried up food silos and boost rice supply in domestic market, the government has struck a deal with Cambodia to import 2.5 lakh tonnes of the staple in three months.

City dwellers will have to pay more for using running water from tomorrow as Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (Wasa) has decided to hike the price by 5 percent only eight months after the previous price increase.

Unesco has made it clear that no large-scale industrial or infrastructural development should be allowed to proceed in the vicinity of the Sundarbans before Bangladesh carried out a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) for its south-west region.

In the last five years, as many as 2,733 people have been rescued from the clutches of human traffickers in Cox's Bazar. And 242 cases were filed against some 1,355 people over the incidents. However, not a single one has been disposed of.

As two successive attempts to import rice from Thailand and India have apparently fallen through for high prices, the government is now seeking to buy the staple from Cambodia.

A globally banned toxic pesticide caused an outbreak of acute encephalitis syndrome (AES), killing 13 children in Dinajpur in 2012, says a study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene on Monday.

Before landing at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, Zhu Ruo lin saw Dhaka from a bird's eye view and also took some photographs.

Over the last five years, more women got married at a younger age while men's average age of marriage kept going up. Last year, women's average age of marriage was 18.8 years, dropping from 19.3 in 2012. During the period, that for men rose to 26.3 from 24.7.

Governance failings and appointment of politically linked people to the boards of public banks have been contributing to default on large loans, frequent scams and poor recovery of stolen money.

This year's unusual hike in rice prices caught Food Minister Qamrul Islam napping. Both Qamrul and the ministry he leads seemed ill prepared all along, but the minister has his own logic for that. “I'm no astrologer,” he told The Daily Star, "How could I possibly anticipate that there would be such a devastating flood?"

Bangladesh is now trying to buy rice from Thailand and India under the government-to-government arrangement, weeks after striking a G2G deal to import the staple from Vietnam.

It is indeed a fiesta of foliages and plants. A riot of colours; colours of flowers - that come in all shades and hues.

It was mainly the pressure from big businesses that led to the government's backtracking on its decision to implement the new VAT law. Appeasing the people in general was not much of a reason, which the government has been touting. The late u-turn of the government last month has left the National Board of Revenue (NBR) in a spot of bother, as it now has to fill a gaping hole in its revenue collection target.

There are about 10 million out-of-school children, adolescents and youths in Bangladesh, says a new Unesco policy paper.

Bangladesh has emerged as a leading wheat importer in the world with its import volume hitting a record high in the current fiscal year, mainly due to a shift in consumers' diet preference and flourishing baked food market.