The timing, Bangladeshis confess, could not have been better. With a troubled election season around the corner, the Nobel Peace Prize comes to Bangladesh as it braces for battle with itself. Or as Muhammad Habibur Rahman, a retired chief justice put it, "The country is in such doldrums, it's a shot in the arm."
International Herald Tribune | Read

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and destroyed the city Aug. 29, it also devastated the city’s thousands of immigrants and their lives. Many of these immigrants came to the U.S. from countries ravaged by Katrina-type storms and their aftermaths. Now they are faced with similar experiences, all over again. The Bangladeshi immigrants of New Orleans is one community that got wrecked. Pacific News Service | read

BRITAIN’S race relations chief is to warn that the country is “sleepwalking” into New Orleans-style racial segregation, with Muslim and black ghettos dividing cities. Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), is to say the July terror attacks have exposed a racial “nightmare” where some districts are becoming “fully-fledged ghettos — literal black holes” where people fear to go. The Times, London|read

THE Cockney accent is dying out in parts of its spiritual home, according to research. A study of speech in the East End found that the accent of London’s working classes is being replaced with a new dialect. A similar phenomenon is also taking place with other British accents, such as Scouse, English-language specialists told the BBC’s Voices project. Sue Fox, a research fellow in sociolinguistic variation at Queen Mary College, University of London, said that a new mix of Cockney and Bangladeshi had developed. She studied youngsters in Tower Hamlets and said: “The majority of young people of school age are of Bangladeshi origin and this has had tremendous impact on dialect in the area.
The Times, London | read

The first of the funerals for the victims of the London bomb attacks was today held for Shahara Islam. In a statement, Ms Islam's parents said the 20-year-old had been in "the wrong place at the wrong time" when she was killed on her way to work at an Islington bank branch last Thursday morning. "Today our dear daughter, cause of our joy and light of our eyes, our Shahara is returning to her Lord - an innocent and blood-stained martyr. She was an East Ender, a Londoner and British, but, above all, a true Muslim and proud to be so," the statement said. The Guardian, London | read

Bangladeshi reporter Sumi Khan was brutally attacked by criminals whose activities she was exposing. As she receives a Guardian award for her fearless journalism she tells Helen Pidd why she is determined to continue her crusade
The Guardian, London | read

For centuries, the immigrants that have made Brick Lane their home have left for more salubrious areas as soon as their burgeoning businesses allowed. Yesterday, the newest arrivals, from Bangladesh, celebrated the fact that they were staying put.
The Independent, London | Read

Gloucester has its share of Indian restaurants. Nunu Miah used to work nights in a curry house to fund his day job as a volunteer development worker acting as an advocate for the city's largely hidden Bangladeshi community. Now he is employed by two projects to help improve the delivery of public services to the 70 Bangladeshi families who live in a small pocket of deprivation in one of the most affluent parts of the country.
The Guardian, London| Read