HOPES have been generated for a new vista opening on Indo-Bangla relations in the sequel to the meet between Indian foreign secretary Nirupoma Rao and her Bangladesh counterpart Mijarul Quayes in Dhaka centring around the forthcoming visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister to India.

THE resumption of Bangladeshi labour migration to Iraq after a break of six years should be seen as a positive development. The disruption that occurred in the presence and working of migrant labour in Iraq when it was invaded by US and British forces in 2003 was in turn to lead to misery for foreign workers, some of the worst affected among whom were those from Bangladesh. When the move is seen against the backdrop of the large numbers of Bangladeshi workers sent back home by some countries in the Middle East as well as Malaysia, we cannot but feel a little cheered by the news that job opportunities have opened for 2000 Bangladeshis in Iraq .

IT has been about four and a half months since the Information Commission started its work from a temporary office in Dhaka.

THE Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, before the 1/11 change in its Transnational Threat Update, stated: "The current security climate in Bangladesh may allow terrorist groups to organise attacks using a radiological dispersal device. Concerns over this possibility are plausible given that radio substance have proven accessible to terror groups within the country." The recent arrests of militants from Pakistan and India, activists of banned Lashkar-e-Toiba, some of whom were educated in engineering in Bangladesh while recruiting prospective terrorists, confirm anew Eliza Griswold's report in the New York Times (January 2005), raising the possibility of Bangladesh giving birth to the next Islamist revolution. Travelling through Bangladesh, she concluded "The global war on terror is aimed at making the rise of regimes like that of the Taliban impossible, in Bangladesh the trend could be going the other way." In Griswold's footsteps, Bertil Linter's article in the Far Eastern Economic Review (April 2002) warned of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh. Time magazine and the Asian Wall Street Journal alleged of sanctuaries being given to transnational Islamist elements.