While we commend the government as well as many non-government organisations for their efforts towards ensuring the rights of people with disabilities, we must also admit that they still have to face many impediments in their day-to-day life.

We are deeply concerned at the death of a patient at a drug rehabilitation centre in Savar. His family alleges that he was tortured to death at the rehab, hours after the 30-year-old was admitted there.

It is most unfortunate that despite the enactment of the Road Transport Act 2018, the 17-point directive given by the Prime Minister’s Office, and the several “traffic weeks” observed by the police, the government could neither bring discipline on our roads nor could they ensure that road crash victims get justice.

We are heartened by the Anti-Corruption Commission’s (ACC) request to the cabinet secretary to give directives to district deputy commissioners (DCCs) to save rivers from encroachers by taking legal action against them.

We are delighted to be able to honour the extraordinary contributions of two farmers at the 29th Anniversary programme of The Daily Star on Wednesday.

According to a report that is the first to assess the global cost of air pollution, in 2018 air pollution cost the world an estimated USD 2.9 trillion.

In the early hours of February 11, a fishing trawler carrying over 135 Rohingya refugees—mostly women and children—from different camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf in Cox’s Bazaar, capsized in the Bay of Bengal.

On the 29th anniversary of The Daily Star, we express our heartfelt gratitude to our readers who have been our inspiration in the long and arduous struggle for a free press in the country.

Although incidences of hill cutting are now a common phenomenon, the way a contractor has gone about, in a very methodical and clandestine manner, to raze an area of nearly 100,000 square metres of hills to serve its own purpose, has added a new dimension to the issue.

A report in this daily mentions that the University Grants Commission (UGC) chairman has criticised the authorities of public universities who continue to resist the idea of holding uniform admission tests when enrolling new students.

No one among the Bangladesh Under-19 team scored a fifty or took a number of wickets in the Under-19 World Cup final on Sunday, a day that will be etched in the nation’s sporting history—the first time that Bangladeshis could call themselves world champions.

"Shocking” is the word that keeps being tied to the fire safety situation in Bangladesh, and now a year-end report, compiled by Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defence, shows just how shocking the situation was in 2019.

While time extension and cost escalation of the various mega projects that are underway in the country has become a common phenomenon nowadays, it is a refreshing experience to learn that a mega project, undertaken by the Roads and Highways Department (RHD), has been completed on time.

Narcotics kill slowly but surely and, if unchecked, can destroy entire generations. If the harmful drugs and narcotics are allowed to pervade the market and their flagrant use is not prevented, the nation is bound to suffer irreparably, a consequence that not all of us are able to foresee.

We are shocked to learn about the complete apathy of the two government hospitals in Narayanganj in treating their medical waste.

There is no question that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has taught both the BNP chief Khaleda Zia and her party some big lessons – lessons of making political mistakes, of overestimating one’s mass support, of depending too much on sycophants, of ignoring history and thinking that it can be custom made just by possessing political power, of never really trying to understand the underlying values of our Liberation War, of arrogance, of misuse of political power.

It is unfortunate that even after decades of efforts from the government and non-government organisations to combat tuberculosis (TB) in Bangladesh, a large number of TB patients still remain undiagnosed, mostly due to a lack of awareness among the patients as well as people in general.

The once-sparkling water of the Buriganga is now a dark, smelly pit of liquid waste. Dark flows the Turag too, which is lined with factories that dump their waste, including plastic materials, polythene and dyes into its water.

It is a disturbing fact that due to tax evasion by foreigners working in Bangladesh, our government is being deprived of USD 1.35 billion in revenue every year.

We are alarmed by the lack of action to check and investigate the spate of attacks on journalists covering the elections in Dhaka city corporations allegedly by individuals linked to the ruling party.