14-04-2021

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 2021 8
19.70 lakh tonnes of winter vegetables
produced in Rajshahi division
Dhaka East, Dhaka North & Chattogram North Zone of Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited organized quarterly
Business Development Conference through virtual platform on 12 April 2021. Mohammed Monirul Moula,
Managing Director and CEO of the bank addressed the conference as chief guest. Md. Omar Faruk Khan,
Additional Managing Director, Abu Reza Md. Yeahia & Mohammad Ali, Deputy Managing Directors, Md.
Mostafizur Rahman Siddiquee, Md. Siddiqur Rahman, Md. Motiar Rahman, Md. Jamal Uddin Majumder,
Mohammad Shabbir, Md. Mahboob Alam, Mohammod Ullah, Abu Naser Mohammed Nazmul Bari, Mizanur
Rahman, Md. Nayer Azam & G.M. Mohd. Gias Uddin Quader, Senior Executive Vice Presidents addressed the
conference. Senior executives of Head Office, Head of Branches, Manager Operations and In-charge of
Departments under the Zones attended the conference.
Photo : Courtesy
Microsoft buying speech recognition
firm Nuance in $16B deal
Microsoft, on an accelerated
growth push, is buying speech
recognition company Nuance
in a deal worth about $16
billion, reports UNB.
The acquisition will get
Microsoft deeper into hospitals
and the health care industry
through Nuance's widely used
medical dictation and
transcription tools.
Microsoft will pay $56 per
share cash. That's a 23%
premium to Nuance's Friday
closing price. The companies
value the transaction including
debt at $19.7 billion.
Shares of Burlington,
Massachusetts-based Nuance
surged about 16% in Monday
trading. Nuance has been a
pioneer in voice-based artificial
intelligence technology and was
instrumental in helping to
power Apple's digital assistant
Siri. It has since shifted its focus
to health care, including a
product that listens in on exam
room conversations between
physicians and patients and
automatically writes up the
doctor's recommendations,
such as for prescriptions or lab
work.
"This clinical documentation
essentially writes itself, giving
physicians time back to focus
on patient care," Microsoft
CEO Satya Nadella said on a
conference call about the deal
Monday.
Microsoft and Nuance had
already formed a business
partnership in 2019. That
relationship grew during the
pandemic, enabling Nuance to
bring its patient-physician
transcription services into
telehealth appointments using
Microsoft's video conference
app Teams. The Redmond,
Washington, software giant
said that this month's deal will
double its potential market in
the health care provider
industry to nearly $500 billion.
"Put Microsoft and Nuance
together and it allows Microsoft
to go after the exploding health
care market, which is on fire
right now as it's modernizing,
adopting digital engagement
and moving to the cloud," said
Forrester analyst Kate Leggett.
Nuance's products include
clinical speech recognition
software offerings such as
Dragon Ambient eXperience,
Dragon Medical One and
PowerScribe, all of which are
now built on Microsoft's Azure
cloud platform. The companies
said Nuance products are used
by more than 55% of physicians
and 75% of radiologists in the
U.S., and by 77% of U.S.
hospitals. Revenue from its
health care cloud business grew
37% year-over-year in fiscal
2020.
"AI is technology's most
important priority, and health
care is its most urgent
application," Nadella said.
Microsoft also has its own
digital voice assistant, Cortana,
but its use has been limited
compared to similar consumeroriented
systems from
Amazon, Google and Apple.
Nuance has sought to refine its
voice recognition technology
beyond consumer use to better
understand the complexities of
medical jargon.
Aside from health care,
Nuance provides voice-related
Md. Habibur Rahman, Additional Managing Director of Union Bank Limited
inaugurated theShibganj Sub-Branch, Shibganj, Chapainawabganj as the chief
guest through video conference from Head Office, Dhaka with the maintain
health rules. Deputy Managing Director Hasan Iqbal, Md. Nazrul Islam,SEVP
Golam Mostafa and Businessman of Shibganj Md. Ismail Khan Shamim were
present as special guests.Besides, high officials of head office of the bank, local
elite of Chapainawabganj were present at the ceremony. A Doa-Mahfil was also
organized on the occasion.
Photo : Courtesy
AI technology in other
products, including security
features that can recognize and
authenticate individual voices
so they can unlock an online
account. Nuance also sells
automated call-center and
customer-service chatbot
services to retailers,
telecommunications firms and
other sectors.
Scott Guthrie, who leads
Microsoft's cloud and AI
division, said Monday that
Nuance's medical industry
expertise could eventually
expand to other uses, such as
interpreting conversations
between financial advisers and
their clients. The transaction is
Microsoft's second largest deal
following its $26 billion
purchase of LinkedIn in 2016.
Last September, it bought video
game maker ZeniMax for $7.5
billion. Leggett said the Nuance
deal fits a push by cloud
computing providers like
Microsoft to supply "industryspecific
AI," or technology
that's tailored to the special
needs of the health industry
and other sectors.
That gives Microsoft access to
a new set of customers, said
Gartner analyst Greg Pessin.
"Right now the CIO is who
they market to, with Office and
Teams and the operating
systems," Pessin said. "This is a
different market, with chief
medical officers and the
doctors.
RAJSHAHI : More than 19.70
lakh tonnes of vegetables were
produced in all eight districts
under Rajshahi division during
the recent past winter season
making all concerned including
farmers, traders and
consumers satisfied amid the
Covid-19 pandemic situation.
Officials said acreage of
winter vegetables is increasing
in the region continuously as a
result of motivational initiatives
by various government and
non-government organizations
to reduce gradually mounting
pressure on groundwater.
The Department of
Agricultural Extension (DAE)
had set the target to bring
86,653 hectares of land but the
farmers had cultivated the
seasonal crops on 92,132
hectares in the region including
its vast Barind tract during the
last winter season.
DAE Additional Director
Sirajul Islam said the vegetable
cultivation has become the best
ways of changing fate of the
farmers in general with
reasonable investment.
Abdul Bari, 42, a farmer at
Karnahar village under Paba
Upazila, said he earned Tk
35,000 after selling red
amaranth from one bigha of
land against the production
cost of around Tk 8,000.
US, IMF push
others to support
Sudan debt relief
WASHINGTON : The
United States and the IMF
on Monday urged other
governments to join in the
effort to provide debt relief
to crisis-hit Sudan.
The US Treasury held a
roundtable with 20
countries to advance
Sudan's efforts to secure
relief on $50 billion in
foreign debt under the
Heavily Indebted Poor
Countries (HIPC) initiative,
created by the International
Monetary Fund and World
Bank.
Treasury official Andy
Baukol highlighted "the
progress Sudan's civilian-led
transitional government has
made in implementing
macroeconomic reforms,"
according to a Treasury
readout of the meeting.
He called on the countries
to "fully support Sudan in its
efforts to reach the first
phase of the HIPC process
by mid-2021, and urged all
IMF members to support
expeditious clearance of
Sudan's IMF arrears."
IMF First Deputy
Managing Director Geoffrey
Okamoto told reporters
Monday that the fund is
actively working to find
more help for the African
nation.
In order to qualify for
relief, countries must
establish a six-month track
record under a "staff
monitored program,"
according to the IMF.
Biden meets with CEOs on
semiconductor shortage,
says US must invest
WASHINGTON : President Joe Biden met virtually Monday
with leading CEOs for a summit on the semiconductor
shortage as he works to build support for his infrastructure bill.
Biden, in brief remarks to a group that included the leaders of
General Motors, Alphabet/Google, and US semiconductor
powerhouse Intel, said the United States must build up its own
infrastructure to prevent future supply crises.
"We led the world in the middle of the 20th century," Biden
said. "We led the world toward the end of the century, we're
going to lead the world again." "I've been saying for some time
now, China and the rest of the world is not waiting. And there's
no reason why Americans should wait," the president said.
"We're investing aggressively in areas like semiconductors and
batteries, that's what they're doing and others, so must we."
The gathering, which is being led by National Security
Advisor Jake Sullivan, National Economic Council Director
Brian Deese, and the Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo,
comes as a shortage of semiconductors wreaks havoc on
supply chains in several sectors.
The crunch has badly dented US auto manufacturing, with
General Motors, Ford and other carmakers temporarily
shuttering some factories or reducing production.
He is very much happy over
vegetable farming because he
obtained good yield with a fair
market price within a short
time.Mozammel Haque, 37,
another farmer of Palpur
village under Godagari Upazila,
said not only red amaranth but
also many other short duration
vegetables are produced here.
He has become an icon of
vegetable cultivation in his
locality. His annual earnings
are around Tk four to five lakh
on an average at present.
He has started vegetable
farming with brinjal on only
five decimal of fallow land after
failing to get irrigation water for
Irri-boro farming around five
years back.
His initial income was around
GD–656/21 (7x3)
Memo No.-661
GD–655/21 (7x3)
Tk 15,000 that inspires him to
expand vegetables farming
commercially.
Haque said farmers in the
region are very much happy as
they avail the scopes of
recouping the losses caused by
the adverse impacts of climate
change and Covid-19 after
getting lucrative high price of
vegetables. He added that the
farmers get benefit by farming
vegetables in the region
including its vast Barind Tract.
It brings a smile on marginal
farmers and poor people's
faces, he added.
Besides, he said vegetable
farming on both commercial
and non-commercial basis is
gradually increasing in the
Barind area as many people are
e-Tender Notice
seen humming towards the
farming leaving behind the
high-irrigation consuming
crops. On behalf of the
'Integrated Water Resource
Management (IWRM)' project,
more than 12.58 lakh
community people of 2.66 lakh
households are being
motivated and encouraged
towards vegetable farming to
reduce the pressure on
underground water.
The project is being
implemented in around 1,280
drought-hit villages in 39 Union
Parishads and three
municipalities of eight Upazilas in
Rajshahi, Naogaon and
Chapainawabganj districts since
2014, said Jahangir Alam Khan,
Coordinator of the project..
Date : 12/04/2021