03-08-2021

TUeSDAY, AUgUST 3, 2021
11
Poddokhep provides
student scholarship
Cheque in Barlekha
Abdur Rob, Barlekha Correspondent
Poddokhep Unnayan
Sangstha provided cheque
worth Tk 24,000 among two
high school students in
Barlekha on Sunday.
Upazila Chairman Shoib
Ahmed was the chief guest at
the inauguration ceremony
held at the Upazila Parishad
Auditorium. UNO Khadkar
Mudassir Bin Ali was the
special guest at the occassion
which was chaired by
PoddokhepUnnayanSangstha
Manager Altaf Hassan.
Among others, Journalist
Mustafa Uddin, Poddokhep
Unnayan Sangstha Officer
Nabil Ahmed Khan, Tulsi Das
Mummy, Mitali Rani Das
were also present at the
ocassion.
5.9 magnitude quake
strikes off Indonesia's
Papua: USGS
JAKARTA : A 5.9 magnitude
quake struck off the coast of
Indonesia's easternmost
Papua region Monday, the
United States Geological
Survey said, but there was no
tsunami warning or
immediate reports of damage.
The quake hit at a relatively
shallow depth of 12 kilometres
(7.5 miles), about 180
kilometres northeast of Tual
city.
Shallow quakes tend to do
more damage than deep
tremors.
Indonesia experiences
frequent quakes due to its
position on the Pacific "Ring of
Fire", an arc of intense seismic
activity where tectonic plates
collide that stretches from
Japan through Southeast Asia
and across the Pacific basin.
In January, more than 100
people were killed and
thousands left homeless by a
6.2-magnitude quake that
struck Sulawesi island,
reducing buildings to a
tangled mass of twisted
metal and chunks of concrete
in the seaside city of
Mamuju.
A 7.5-magnitude quake
and a subsequent tsunami in
Palu three years ago left
more than 4,300 people
dead or missing.
Drug peddler
held with beer
in Araihazar
Shahjahan Kabir, Araihazar Correspondent
Members of Araihazar
police in Narayanganj are
arresting a drug dealer
named Monir Chowdhury
(37) along with 24 cans of
beer. He was arrested from
his own house in Kalyadi
Baliapara area of the upazila
late on Sunday night.
Assistant Sub-Inspector
(ASI) of Araihazar Police
Station Mabubul Alam said
the drug peddler was
arrested along with the beer
diring an operation.
Araihazar Police Station
OC Anichur Rahman Malla
said, a case has been filed
under the Narcotics Control
Act.
Poddokhep Unnayan Sangstha provided cheque worth Tk 24,000 among two high school students in
Barlekha on Sunday.
Photo: Abdur Rob
More than 700 saved from Mediterranean
this weekend: aid group
MARSEILLE : Rescue ships picked up more
than 700 people trying to cross the
Mediterranean in makeshift vessels this
weekend, mainly off the coasts of Libya and
Malta, a migrant aid group said Sunday,
reports UNB.
The latest figures came as UN migration
officials repeated their calls for a fairer
mechanism to share out the responsibility of
caring for them, rather than leaving it to the
Mediterranean countries.
SOS Mediterranee said that its vessel, the
Ocean Viking, had carried out six separate
operations in international waters since
Saturday.
In the last such intervention, it rescued 106
people off the Maltese coastline after being
alerted by German aid group Sea-Watch,
said the Marseille-based organisation.
"The youngest survivor rescued in this
operation is just 3 months old," SOS
Mediterranee tweeted. Overnight Saturday
to Sunday, the Ocean Viking joined vessels
Members of Araihazar police in Narayanganj are arresting a drug dealer
named Monir Chowdhury (37) along with 24 cans of beer on Sunday night.
Photo: Shahjahan Kabir
from Sea Watch and ResQship, another
German group, to help 400 people in
difficulty in the central Mediterranean, said
the group.
They were rescued from a vessel that was
taking in water, in what a spokesman for the
organisation told AFP was a particularly
perilous operation.
Those who were rescued were shared out
between the Ocean Viking and Sea-Watch3.
Ocean Viking alone has 555 passengers on
board from this weekend's operations,
including at least 28 women, two of whom
are pregnant. The organisation has yet to
determine at which safe port they will be able
to leave them.
Libya remains one of the main departure
points for tens of thousands of migrants
hoping to attempt the dangerous
Mediterranean crossing, despite the
continuing insecurity in the country. Most of
them try to reach the Italian coast, some 300
kilometres (190 miles) away.
Malaysia's Mahathir, Anwar
shelve rivalry to protest PM
KUALA LUMPUR : Malaysian political
heavyweights Mahathir Mohamad and
Anwar Ibrahim put aside long-running
animosity and joined an opposition protest
Monday against the shutdown of parliament
and demand the country's embattled
premier resign.
The final day of a parliament session, due
to take place Monday, has been cancelled
after the discovery of several coronavirus
cases in the legislature.
But rivals accused Prime Minister
Muhyiddin Yassin of using Covid-19 as an
excuse to dodge a no-confidence vote that
could cause the collapse of his crisis-hit
government.
The parliament sitting, which began last
week, was the first this year after political
activities were suspended under a state of
emergency, ostensibly to fight a worsening
outbreak.
On Monday two-time former prime
minister Mahathir and Anwar stood side by
side at the head of a group of around 100
lawmakers before they tried to march on
parliament.
The pair's turbulent relationship has long
loomed over Malaysian politics, and it has
been rare to see them together since the
collapse of their coalition government last
year amid infighting.
"Even when people condemn
(Muhyiddin) he remains shameless and
refuses to step down," Mahathir, 96, told
reporters in a historic Kuala Lumpur
square.
Anwar said that Muhyiddin's government
had "lost its legitimacy", and he no longer
commanded majority support in
parliament.
"We are protesting today because we want
to protect the people," he added.
The MPs, chanting "step down
Muhyiddin", were stopped by police as they
attempted to reach parliament and
peacefully dispersed.
In the late 1990s, during his first stint as
premier, Mahathir sacked Anwar from
government, and he was subsequently jailed
for sodomy and abuse of power in a case
criticised as politically motivated.
They buried the hatchet to lead an
opposition alliance to a historic election
victory in 2018 -- only to fall out again.
Political tensions are escalating, with
Muhyiddin facing fresh calls to quit after the
king rebuked his administration for
misleading parliament and hundreds staged
a rare anti-government protest on Saturday.
Muhyiddin took power last year at the
head of a scandal-hit coalition but his
government is in crisis after allies withdrew
support.
The state of emergency officially ended on
Sunday, although a nationwide lockdown
remains in place.
No 'eureka moment':
the evolution of
climate science
PARIS : What if Earth's
atmosphere was infused
with extra carbon dioxide,
mused amateur scientist
Eunice Foote in an 1856
research paper that
concluded the gas was very
good at absorbing heat.
"An atmosphere of that
gas would give to our earth a
high temperature," she
wrote in the study,
published in the American
Journal of Science and Arts
and then swiftly forgotten.
The American scientist
and women's rights activist,
who only wrote one more
paper, could not have known
the full significance of her
extraordinary statement,
said Alice Bell, author of a
recent book on the climate
crisis-"Our Biggest
Experiment"-that features
Foote.
This was the decade that
the United States first began
to drill for oil. It is also the
baseline period of global
temperatures we now use to
chart the fossil fuel driven
warming of the planet.
Foote, whose work was
rediscovered in recent
years, is now seen as part of
a multi-generational
exploration, spanning some
200 years, unravelling the
mysteries of how the climate
works-and more recently
how human activities have
tipped it out of balance.
"There is no eureka
moment with one great
genius in climate change
science," Bell told AFP.
"Climate science is a
story of people over
centuries and different
disciplines, different
countries working
together, incrementally
learning more and more."
People have believed
human activities like
deforestation could alter
the local climate since at
least the ancient Greeks.
But in terms of the global
climate, the story of our
understanding of what we
now call the greenhouse
effect, arguably began in
the 1820s with French
scientist Joseph Fourier.
Chinese cities test millions
as virus cases surge
BEIJING : Chinese cities rolled out mass testing of millions
of people and imposed fresh travel restrictions as health
authorities battled Sunday to contain the country's most
widespread coronavirus outbreak in months.
China on Sunday reported 75 new coronavirus cases with
53 local transmissions, with a cluster linked to an eastern
airport now reported to have spread to over 20 cities and
more than a dozen provinces.
The outbreak is geographically the largest to hit China in
several months after the country's successes in largely
snuffing out the pandemic within its borders last year.
That record has been thrown into jeopardy after the fastspreading
Delta variant broke out at Nanjing airport in
eastern Jiangsu province in July.
Authorities have now conducted three rounds of testing on
the city's 9.2 million residents and placed hundreds of
thousands under lockdown, in an effort to curb an outbreak
Beijing has blamed on the highly-contagious Delta variant
and the peak tourist season.
Officials are now scrambling to track people nationwide
who recently travelled from Nanjing or Zhangjiajie, a tourist
city in Hunan province which has locked down all 1.5 million
residents and shut all tourist attractions.
Fresh cases were reported Sunday in Hainan islandanother
popular tourist destination-as well as Ningxia and
Shandong provinces, authorities said.
Successful three years journey
of Bogura Cyber Police unit
Azahar Ali, Bogura Correspondent
Cyber Police has solved more than two hundred
cybercrime since the last three years.Apart from
several housewives, the number of schoo land
college students is high among these
allegations. Besides, cyber police have
arrested criminals like spreading
rumors about Bangabandhu, Prime
Minister, parliament members, and
spreading rumors about Padma
Bridge.
Bogura Superintendent of Police
Md. Ali Asraf Bhuiyan said this on Sunday
(August1).It has been reported that the cyber
police activities started in Bogura in September
2018 on the initiative of Bogura Police Super.
Due to the huge response from the beginning on
24 January 2019, the DIG of Rajshahi Range, M
Khurshid Hossain inaugurated the official
activities of the "Cyber Police Bogura" unit at the
SP office of Bogura.
The cyber police unit became active in
suppressing cyber crimes including
spreading rumors on Facebook, antistate
propaganda, and militant
activities. The cyber police Bogura
unit gained public confidence after
cyber criminals were arrested. In
particular, women victims of cheating
through Facebook or various online
contacts have started bringing their complaints
to the cyber police. The cyber police solve the
problem by keeping their identities secret and
without informing the families of many. As a
result, many families are protected as well as
social values and dignity are protected.
GD-1157/21 (9x3)