An employee of Ekattor TV was crushed to death near Jahangir gate signal in the capital city on September 29. The bus sped at high speed first knocking over a 3-wheeler auto-rickshaw and then, whilst attempting to flee the scene, hit biker Habib Rahman and then ran him over.

In remote Diri Mro Para in Bandarban's Alikadam, a group has been cutting down trees illegally from a Village Common Forest (VCF), causing a serious water crisis for ethnic communities who depend on VCFs to conserve their water sources.

In a recent case of negligence by hospital staff, as reported in this daily last Saturday, a baby's body got severed from its head as nurses and cleaning staff of an upazila health complex were trying to deliver the baby without the presence of a doctor.

A set of front-page photos carried by this newspaper on September 28 shows how destructive the Padma's erosion has been for many people in a number of riparian districts. People have lost their homes, arable lands, belongings and essential properties as the mighty river devours villages one after the other.

We appreciate Health and Family Welfare Minister Mohammad Nasim's admission that political lobbying hinders his efforts to close substandard clinics. But, criticising the culture will not suffice to put an end to it. The ministry must crackdown on substandard private hospitals and clinics because their very existence is testimony to the terrible state of our private healthcare system.

The movement for safer roads launched by students seems to have gone to waste and we are back to our old lawbreaking ways. Whilst the authorities are conducting Traffic week with more fervour than usual raking in thousands of cases against errant vehicles, we see very few efforts being taken to dissuade jaywalking.

It is shocking to learn that Toriqul Islam, a student of the Department of Islamic Studies at Rajshahi University and a victim of a BCL-led attack during the quota reform movement, was denied permission to attend his Master's exams in sick bed.

According to a World Bank (WB) report titled ”South Asia's Hotspots: The Impact of Temperature and Precipitation Changes on Living Standards”, more than 75 percent of the population (13.4 crore people) will be adversely affected by rising temperatures which will result in a rise of vector-borne and other infectious diseases.

Despite remarkable progress in universal primary education, poor reading skills among the primary students continue to be a blight on Bangladesh's success.

We welcome the minister-level meeting between Dhaka and Kuala Lumpur on September 25 that paved the way for all licensed Bangladeshi recruiting agencies to start sending workers to Malaysia.

The media has for the last few decades highlighted the sorry state of our rivers, i.e. how powerful, vested quarters have taken advantage of the fact that the National River Conservation Commission (NRCC) was never given any legal or institutional capacity.

We welcome our prime minister's three recommendations at a meeting on Global Compact for Refugees to end the Rohingya crisis.

A photo published in The Daily Star on September 24 depicts how unaware our workers are about their own safety.

We agree with roads and highways officials and experts who have recently said that the lack of proper road infrastructure is a major hindrance to Bangladesh becoming a developed country.

We thank the Canadian House of Commons for their recent unanimously voted declaration terming Myanmar's persecution of the Rohingya as a genocide.

The three-point demand made by the Jatiya Oikya Prokriya should be looked at carefully by the government and not be dismissed off-hand.

We are appalled by the way police baton-charged left-leaning protesters who were marching toward the office of the Election Commission on September 20, leaving scores injured.

Reportedly, Bangladeshi expatriate workers in Malaysia are being rounded up and herded off to immigration camps at random.

We are surprised that the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) has so expeditiously approved tens of billions of taka to purchase thousands of EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) that are planned to be used in the next election due to be held in 2024. It makes little sense because the next election is over five years away.

It is regrettable that the Digital Security Bill has been enacted into law in spite of the objections from all concerned. The bill effectively curtails the freedom of speech and thus the very fundamentals on which democracy is built. If a law is meant to deliver greater good to the greater mass then the new Act, we are afraid, cannot pass the test.