In Bangladesh, no healthcare say for women

Bangladesh's women still cannot make critical healthcare decisions on which their lives and future depend, experts say.

They also say a lack of effective policy twined with insensitiveness of the men towards their health concerns are widening the gender gap that has fatally deprived women of access to healthcare.

An ICDDR,B qualitative study found mothers at the bottom of the family priority list for healthcare. Daughter is just ahead of them while sons and husbands top the list.

Pregnant mothers are often too late in seeing doctors with pregnancy-related complications because they need to wait for their husbands or in-laws to make decisions.

On top of that, they have far less access to mass media than men, according to Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS). It means women have relatively less knowledge about serious diseases like tuberculosis, HIV, and cancer and family planning.

Some 45 percent women have no regular access to mass media compared to only 20 percent of men, the findings showed. "Women are marginalised in the men-dominated social structure," said Ruchira Tabassum Naved, head of ICDDR,B's Gender, Health and Human Rights Programme.

She told the problem was so ingrained in Bangladeshi society that things would not change for the better if the social structure was overhauled.

Anti-corruption Commission sues Unipay2U officials

The Anti-corruption Commission (ACC) has sued the top officials of multi-level marketing company Unipay2U on money laundering charges.

ACC assistant director Toufiqul Islam filed the case against the company's chairman Shadizzaman Shahin and managing director Muntasir Hossain, with Shahbagh police on Tuesday.

It has been learnt that the officials lured people to invest in their company with promises of unnaturally high profits through their investments in 'virtual gold.'

The ACC case alleges that the company had not completed the legal formalities to operate such transactions.

The case details stipulate that between November 2009 and September 2010, Unipay2U managed to pool a fund of Tk 261,203,207 from the general people through their deposits in the New Market branch of City Bank, Narayanganj branch of NCC Bank, and Elephant Road branch of BRAC Bank.

According to the case details, Unipay2U is registered under the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms as an entity dealing with export, import and multi-level marketing under the Companies Act 1994.

The Joint Stock of Companies reports that there are 70 such firms in Bangladesh.

How to Increase Blog Traffic from your Blogsite

Title tag
The title tags appear in the HEAD section of the page code and the title is displayed in the title bar of the browser window when the site is viewed. The title tags appear as the name of the website in search results, and is often where you need to make your first impression. The title is a good place to display your company name and a few relevant keywords. You can also add locality descriptors to let your visitors know where your business is located. An example of a title tag:

Keyword tag
The keyword tag appears in the HEAD section of each page, and contains a list of keywords and phrases that are relevant to your site. The keyword tag used to be a highly influential tag used by search engines to index websites, however due to abuse by search engine spammers adding irrelevant repeated keywords, the tag now carries less influence.Adding irrelevant keywords may attract more traffic to your site
Link text
Link tags, also known as Anchors, are usually found many times throughout websites between the BODY tags. The description text used for the link should ideally contain any relevant keywords, and describe the purpose or destination of the link. For example:

Headings
Heading tags such as

etc. are often given extra standing by search engines. The heading tag should contain one or two important keywords. For example:

Running and Athletic shoes

=============================================

Transparency International (TIB)will fight out the defamation suits against it in the courts.

The Berlin-based organisation will ironically have to turn to the courts for defending cases accusing it of maligning the courts in relation to a recent survey, which found the judiciary to be corrupt.

The international corruption watchdog's board chairman M Hafizuddin Khan told bdnews24.com that the suits were 'unfortunate'. "The next course of action will be decided in a meeting."

In a reaction to the lawsuits, he said, "It (the TIB report) was not anyone's private opinion. We only released the survey findings."

Until Sunday, three cases have been filed accusing the TIB chairman, executive director Iftekharuzzaman and senior fellow Wahid Alam of maligning the image of judiciary.

Two of the cases were filed in Chittagong and another in Comilla.

The Comilla court issued an arrest warrant against the accused and the two Chittagong courts ordered them to appear before them — on Jan 13 before one and Jan 30 before another.

The corruption watchdog in its report 'Corruption in Service Sectors: National Household Survey 2010' released on Dec 23 said that the High Court was the most corrupt among the judiciary, which it said was most rife with kickbacks.

The survey was conducted on 6,000 households in 64 districts from June 2009-May 2010, TIB said.

The survey followed international standards, Hafizuddin claimed. "The TIB report has only revealed the ongoing corruption in the judiciary, the police and the administration."

"TIB has nothing to do if someone feels hurt," he added.

"Corruption in these sectors is nothing new. All the citizens of the country will say, if asked, how they are being suppressed by these institutions day after day."

TIB executive director Iftekharuzzaman said regarding the arrest warrants, "We believe in the rule of law and will deal with them through legal procedures."

"Some person was hurt and filed a case, which does not mean that we are guilty," he added.

About the arrest warrant, he told bdnews24.com that [TIB officials] were sure and unanimous about the report, which was based on mass opinion and experience and was conducted maintaining scientific standards.

Quoting a recent comment of Anti-corruption Commission (ACC) chairman Golam Rahman, Iftekharuzzaman said that corruption had been more acute in reality.

He claimed that the countrymen and mass media had thanked TIB for publishing the report.

Bangladesh Enters Global IT Outsourcing Map: Gartner lists Bangladesh as one of Top 30 Outsourcing Country

GARTNER Inc. (www.gartner.com), world’s leading IT research and consulting company, in its most recent ‘Top Outsourcing Country’ list has included Bangladesh. A Press conference to share the GARTNER research on Bangladesh IT outsourcing was held 26 December, 2010 at Press Club, Dhaka. BASIS (Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services) organized the Press Conference. It was informed in the Press Conference that this is the first time that Bangladesh has been listed in the top ranking by any leading global research company. Gartner publishes the top list every year. BASIS informed that this recognition is a great achievement for the IT Industry of Bangladesh. The ranking will significantly help with respect to increasing the export of IT services as the confidence of outside clients will be increased on Bangladesh based on this ranking. BASIS thinks that the ranking reflects positive initiatives of both Government and Private sector in last couple of years in the field of Information Technology. This year, apart from Bangladesh four other countries have made entry in the list including Bulgaria, Colombia, Mauritius and Peru. In Asia, Bangladesh is the eighth country to be included. Other Asian countries are India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. BASIS shared with the journalist that the ranking is based on 10 criteria including cost advantage, labor pool, education system, infrastructure, government support, language etc. In case of Bangladesh, though Bangladesh has got ‘Good’ or ‘Fair’ ranking in ‘Cost’, ‘Labor pool’, ‘Education System’ and ‘Government Support’ , the raking for key criteria ‘Infrastructure’ , ‘Language’ and ‘Intellectual Property and Data Security’ for Bangladesh has been ranked poor by Gartner. BASIS feels that there is a risk of getting out of the list next year if Bangladesh does not improve significantly in those criteria. Particularly, the ‘infrastructure’ issue needs very immediate response from the government side. In this respect BASIS urges the government to immediately move for 2nd sub-marine cable and reducing Internet price drastically. At the same time, BASIS also requested to Government to allocate special budget for setting up multiple Software Technology Park (STP) immediately. At the same time, BASIS requested the government to work with private sector in a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model for ensuring enough supply of human resource skilled in technology and language. The Press Conference were attended by Architect Yeafesh Osman, State Minister, Ministry of Science & ICT, Mahboob Zaman, President, BASIS; Mr. Fahim Mashroor, Sr. Vice President, BASIS; Farhana A Rahman, Vice President, BASIS; Forkan Bin Quasem, Secretary General, BASIS; Tamzid Siddiq Spondon,Joint Secretary General, BASIS; AK Sabbir Mahbub, Director other members of the BASIS Executive Council.

Shakib Al Hasan, Bangladesh's new hope, A genuine Bangladeshi all-rounder

A dominant all-round performance from Shakib Al Hasan helped Bangladesh secure a historic series win in Mirpur, their first against a top-flight opposition. Shakib's fifth ODI century rescued the home team from the depths of 44 for 3 and lifted them to a formidable 241, a target that proved nine runs too many for New Zealand, who now trail 0-3 in the series, with one game to go. Shakib then struck with the ball and, despite a valiant maiden hundred from Kane Williamson who battled through injury during the latter part of his innings, slammed the door on the visitors with three wickets to lead Bangladesh to a famous victory.
Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan has been named The Wisden Cricketer magazine's 2009 World Test Player of the Year.
The magazine said on Thursday that Shakib topped the performance table of all test players based on marks awarded by Wisden Cricketer correspondents. "I guess I owe my performance to keeping things simple. I don't lose sleep over disappointments and rather look ahead to seize the next opportunity," Shakib said.
Shakib, who led Bangladesh to their first overseas test series victory against West Indies in July, is the first Bangladeshi cricketer to win the award.