Blame Global Warming - or anything else

A recent news item on satellite TV channels revealed that around 10,000 patients had reported for diarrhoea treatment to hospitals in Dhaka, capital city of Bangladesh.

The number of cases always jumps at the start of the hot season. A government spokesman, speaking in English, blamed global warming.

He must have missed the almost daily reports, over the preceding two months, about how the city's drinking water supplies are being contaminated with raw sewage.

Lily Ahmed Not Guilty

On April 20, 2009, a judge in Dhaka, Bangladesh, found Mrs Lily Ahmed not guilty. The verdict was preceded by his comment that the plaintiff and prosecution had "miserably failed to provide one shred of credible evidence of any wrongdoing on her part."

Mrs Ahmed, founder of the Bangladeshi Mental Health Association (BMHA), had been charged with theft by her husband, Salekur Rahman, brother of former Bangladesh Finance Minister Saifur Rahman.

Salekur Rahman had succeeded her as Country Director of BMHA's Bangladesh branch. He claimed that Mrs Ahmed had stolen BMHA property before returning to her home in Britain in July 2006.

She is convinced the charges were brought to deter her from returning to BD, where she had been asking awkward questions about BMHA's activities. The BD branch was registered in 2002, five years after Mrs Ahmed had stepped down as chairman of the parent organisation in Britain. Since 1997, consultant psychiatrist Dr Michael Radford of Birmingham, England, has been BMHA's chairman.

The BMHA Board met in August 2007 and voted to dispense with Mrs Ahmed's services as honorary chief executive, ending her involvement with the organisation that had its roots in her unpaid community activism dating from 1992.