The High Court granted four weeks' anticipatory bail to daily Prothom Alo editor and publisher Matiur Rahman in a case of his alleged negligence causing death of Dhaka Residential Model College student Naimul Abrar Rahat by electrocution on November 1, 2019.

A bench of Justice Obaidul Hassan and Justice AKM Zahirul Huq also directed Matiur Rahman to surrender in the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's court within four weeks. The bench directed the CMM's court to consider Matiur Rahman's regular bail as 'the case is bailable'.

During the hearing, the bench said: "We notice that the lower courts are not granting bails even in bailable cases and that is why we need to hear such matters." The bench, however, directed the police not to arrest or harass the daily's deputy editor and monthly magazine Kishor Alo editor Anisul Hoque and four others until the trial court frames charges in the case.

Bangladesh performs very poorly in terms of providing social protection to its people, says a global report that sheds light on issues relating to the absence of minimum income benefits and the low quality of social safety schemes in the country. Bangladesh has been ranked 78th out of 82 countries in a new Social Mobility Index compiled by the World Economic Forum (WEF), while Denmark has topped the list. The report released ahead of the 50th Annual Meeting of the WEF also said Bangladesh scored 40.2 while Denmark's scored 85.2 out of 100.

An inclusive society must provide fair and equitable access to its justice system and its institutions, and provide safeguards against the persecution of historically excluded groups, but institutions in Bangladesh are often designed in such a way that they don't serve everyone equally, said the report.

The number of people with hypertension and diabetes alarmingly increased in the country. Health experts attribute it to poor food habits and lack of exercise. Hypertension among people aged 35 and above increased to 40 percent in 2017 from 26 percent in 2011, according to the preliminary study of the eighth Bangladesh Demographic Health Survey (BDHS) 2017-18 unveiled this week. During the same period, the number of diabetic patients of the same age group increased to 14 percent from 11 percent.

According to the survey, some three crore people aged 18 and above were hypertensive (with blood pressure above 90 and 140) and 1.1 crore of the same age group suffer from high blood sugar. "With economic progress, there has come a major change in people's lifestyle and food habit. In fact, unhealthy eating habit and inactivity are the main reasons behind this," said Kanta Jamil, senior monitoring, evaluation and research adviser at the USAID, who assisted the BDHS study team. The study also showed that more females suffer from hypertension and diabetes than males.

India's Border Security Forces (BSF) has once again objected to construction of an immigration office building at Akhaura land port in Brahmanbaria, the second time that it has halted construction on the site. The BSF contends that buildings higher than 35 feet cannot be constructed near the border. They stopped construction of the six-storey immigration check post when its foundation pillars were being installed.

Akhaura immigration police officials said BSF first interrupted when the firm gathered construction materials in March 2017, after receiving the work order. The construction was suspended for about two-and-a-half years. The contracted firm had resumed construction in September last year with a modified design. More than a thousand tourists cross the border every day via Akhaura check post, the second largest land port in the country. The current one-storeyed immigration building has only two rooms and is in a dilapidated state.