Bangladesh

The Jagannath University of Dhaka, initiated in 1858, is one of the oldest public educational institutes of Bangladesh. Many people in the country cannot afford expensive private tuition and depend on these public educational institutes for their higher studies.

Recently on the prescription of World Bank the government has ventured to curtail subsidies in education by privatizing the public colleges and universities and Jagannath University has become one of their first experiments.

Cori Fleser at BRAC Blog reports that in spite of a 2001 judgment by the Supreme Court outlawing the practice of fatwa, the practice of such extrajudicial punishments still exists in Bangladesh and the authorities are not able to do much to prevent them.

Ever since Bob Geldof and Midge Ure arranged Live Aid, a dual-venue concert to raise funds for relief of the Ethiopian famine on 13 July 1985, which was aired to 2 million viewers from 150 countries, such benefit concerts have become widely popular in the world.

The recent events at the Viqarunnisa Noon School and College (VNC), a prestigious girls educational institution in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka, has stirred much buzz in the Bangladeshi blogosphere. Porimol Joydhor, a teacher of Bangla department of the school's Bashundhara campus, was accused of raping a female student of class ten at VNC while giving her private tuition in his premises.

On the 5th of June,  Rumana Manzur, an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Dhaka University, became the victim of a horrific case of domestic violence when she was brutally attacked by her husband Hassan Syed, who allegedly beat her mercilessly, tried to gouge out her eyes and bit off part of her nose in a fit of rage. It is being said that their 5 year old daughter was in the room and is a witness to this inhuman act.

The opposition parties in Bangladesh have started a 36-hour strike (hartal) that began at dawn Sunday in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photoblogger Monirul Alam captures some actions during the strike in a photo essay.