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The offenders fled the scene immediately.
“With all of her body in flames, she ran down the stairs screaming for help. Fellow students doused the fire,” he added.
She was first taken to Sonagazi Upazila Health Complex and then to Feni Sadar Hospital from where she was rushed to the burn unit of DMCH.
“All in burqa, the four attackers had their faces mostly covered. They were wearing spectacles and gloves. So she could not recognise any of them,” said the victim's brother.
But all of them seemed to her to be female, he added.
Police detained a lecturer and a student of the madrasa for questioning, said Officer-in-Charge of Sonagazi Model Police Station Moazzem Hossain.
On March 27, a peon went to her class and said Principal Siraj was calling her over to his office room. As she went to his room, Siraj sexually harassed her, said her brother.
“As she fell sick at one stage, the principal called me to take her home,” he told this newspaper at the DMCH yesterday.
The girl shared the nightmarish experience with her mother and brother and the family members right away went to the madrasa to lodge protests.
As suggested by some teachers and members of the madrasa managing committee, the family filed a case and Siraj got arrested the same day. He has been in jail since then.
Locals said Siraj is a Jamaat leader and accused in three cases filed with Feni Sadar and Sonagazi Model police stations on charges of subversive activities and attacks on police. He was earlier arrested but got released on bail.
After the sexual assault case was filed, teachers and students of the madrasa got divided into two groups and demonstrated in the upazila headquarters. One group called for punishment of the principal while the other demanded his release.
For the first two exams, the victim's brother accompanied her to the exam hall as she was still in trauma. He came out just before the exams began.
“Like the two other days, I tried to accompany my sister to the exam hall today [yesterday], but a madrasa peon barred me. He also convinced police guarding the entrance not to allow me inside,” he said.
She sought the prime minister's help in ensuring proper treatment of her daughter and highest punishment of the principal and other culprits.
Many boys and men in our culture today are angry. They are angry for a variety of reasons; some justifiable and some not so good. For instance boys raised without the benefit of a father to teach them how a man acts, thinks, solves problems, and relates to the world around him are at a distinct disadvantage in life and thus are understandably angry. Other males are angry for reasons more related to how they internalize the world around them—lack of hope, childhood wounds, and a culture that seemingly tells them they are unnecessary or at least need to change to become some things that they were never meant to be.
Males generally are not very adept at understanding their emotions nor very comfortable dealing with them. Emotions are powerful and often uncontrollable. That’s why many males keep such a tight lid on their emotions–once released they are difficult to predict or control and often result in a situation ending in vulnerability. The one emotion however that they are relatively comfortable with is that of anger. Anger for many men is an old friend; one they call upon in a variety of circumstances. Like all powerful emotions it can be used destructively or for good. For instance anger can be terribly destructive in relationships. All we need do is look at the devastation caused to women and children through a man’s uncontrolled wrath and anger. Anger can lead to emotional, psychological, and even physical abuse.
On the other hand anger can be channeled into productive pathways. Anger can be used to motivate a man to achieve more than he might otherwise be able to accomplish. It can be used as a mechanism to encourage perseverance under duress or in grueling circumstances. Many a boy accomplished some difficult task all because they got angry when someone told them they couldn’t. When teased many males use that anger to motivate themselves to “prove” their offenders wrong. One method in coaching sports is to get young men angry in order to motivate them to perform beyond their self-imposed limitations. In fact, many men propel themselves with anger and grit to succeed in life because a father-figure constantly told them they wouldn’t amount to anything. Warriors often used anger towards their enemies as motivation to succeed in battle or even a school yard fight.
Anger produces a physiological arousal in males. It creates a state of readiness and heightened awareness. It creates energy that can be directed outward in the form of protection or even as a weapon. Anger causes a fight or flight response designed to protect us. It is frequently a powerful tool for boys and men to use to cover actual or perceived inadequacies. Many young and even older males react with anger when they become overly frustrated or are hurt emotionally.
The surge of adrenaline and associated arousal can be addicting to some males. Young males need to be taught how to deal with and control their anger. In order to do that, they must learn to own their anger and identify the source of that anger. Then they can learn to determine how to choose to respond to their anger.
Regardless of how it is used anger is the emotion most familiar to males. Oftentimes anger in males is a secondary emotion used to cover underlying emotions such as fear, hurt, or frustration. Anger is used by males to cover or mask other emotions. For instance, certain emotions such as fear, anxiety, vulnerability, or distress often produce a feeling of humiliation in males. Humiliation is considered a weakness by males. Remember, for most males to show weakness is to be vulnerable and open to criticism. To be vulnerable is an invitation to be attacked. But anger is a defense against attack and may even be a weapon to attack others. Very angry men and boys are seldom messed with, even by bullies.
Rather than feel humiliated by these “unmanly” emotions, many males instinctively and automatically use anger to cover those feelings. Even pain (physical or psychological) can be covered by anger. Notice how most males react when they hit their thumb with a hammer. They’d get mad than cry. Most men also get angry rather than depressed or hysterical when faced with an emotional crisis in a relationship. Again, this is a protective mechanism for their fragile egos; egos that are often covering secretly ingrained feelings of inadequacy and incompetence.
Sometimes anger is even used consciously. I was raised in an alcoholic and abusive home. I can distinctly remember at about the age of 12 when I first discovered that if I just got angry I didn’t have to feel that humiliating emotion of being afraid. In typical naive boyhood fashion I told myself, “This is great. I’ll never be scared again for the rest of my life!” However, this was foolish as I just spend a significant portion of my adult life being angry. Angry because I was really afraid because I had never had a positive male role model show me how a man lives his life and faces his problems in a healthy manner.
Young men who are not taught (generally by positive male role models) how a man acts, what his roles in life are and how to fulfill them adequately and competently are very often angry. They are angry at life and at the world. They take this anger out on others, hoping to hurt them before they themselves are hurt; even if that hurt is just humiliation from their own ineptness. When that happens men have a difficult time being the kind of loving, caring fathers and hubands that they want to be.
One solution? Let’s provide boys (and men) with healthy male role models to teach them how a male processes his emotions. We’ll explore that topic next week.
Mateo Kehler, a cheesemaker at Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro, said it would cost more than $4 million to replace the wooden shelves for ripening cheese in just one of his cheese vaults.
Jasper Hill has seven vaults.
"We figured it would be over $20 million to replace our planks," said Kehler, who owns the farm and cheese caves with his brother, Andy.
David Major, a cheesemaker at Vermont Shepherd in Westminster West, said he would have no idea what to replace his wooden planks with if he were required to do so.
Major has been making award-winning, natural-rind cheeses in southern Vermont for 26 years, a process that requires wood shelves for proper maturing, he said. Major uses ash, and he cleans the boards when necessary with dairy soap and water. In making cheese, the rind forms as the cheese matures. A porous, breathable surface is necessary for this to occur, Major said.
"It's why supermarkets pack lettuce in breathable bags," Major explained. "Those things would turn to mush, bacteria-laden mush, if they were packed in sealed bags. It's a little counter-intuitive, but the cheese — if it were cured on a non-porous surface — the rind would not develop, and the cheese would turn into a bacteria-laden mush."
The subject arose in the cheese world during the past week because cheesemakers were under the impression the FDA was going to prohibit the use of wood shelves in aging cheese — a practice that's been in place for centuries.
"It would be devastating," Kehler said. "There's a whole world of cheese out there that's been ripened on wood."
"I inquired with FDA's food center (the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition) regarding your question about the use of wooden shelves for the storing or aging of cheeses, and I was told they are not permitted and never have been. The use of wooden shelves for cheese ripening does not conform to current Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) regulations, which require that 'all plant equipment and utensils shall be so designed and of such material and workmanship as to be adequately cleanable, and shall be properly maintained.'"
The FDA has since backed off that position and says the use of wood in cheese-making is not prohibited, according to an agency representative.
More than 65 percent of the roughly 1,500 cheesemakers who are members of the American Cheese Society use wood shelves to age their cheeses, according to Greg O'Neill, president of the American Cheese society. In the larger cheese-producing states, 75 percent of cheesemakers use wood shelving. The practice also is standard in Europe, and more than half the cheese imported by the U.S. is aged on wood shelves, according to O'Neill. This includes production of big-volume cheeses such as Parmesan and Gruyere.
"Well over half the cheese that is being made and consumed in the U.S. is aged on wood boards," O'Neill said. The prospect that the practice was in jeopardy "is a big deal," he said.
"It's something that everybody takes seriously," O'Neill said. "There was a groundswell of attention, and a lot of heart for preserving it."
O'Neill calls the FDA's backing off of its apparent wood prohibition a "great start."
"What has happened here is that the FDA has opened the door to constructive dialogue in our industry," O'Neill said. His organization is planning to talk with FDA officials in the next two weeks.
"The reality is that the proof will be in the pudding," O'Neill said. "We're going to be sitting down in good faith and talking about the preservation of traditional cheese-making practices on behalf of our membership." The FDA, he added, has "a commitment to safety; we have a commitment to safety. The idea here is just to collaborate."
A concern for cheesemakers and policymakers is uncertainty about what the FDA does and doesn't allow. This makes it difficult to proceed as a cheesemaker, Kehler said.
"It's nearly untenable to try to do business in a regulatory environment where the rules aren't clear, and they keep changing," he said. "I really believe we need good regulation for an industry to grow. And that regulation needs to be fair and consistent. It can't be politically motivated, and it needs to be rooted in science. And that's what we're asking for."
"Recently, you may have heard some concerns suggesting the FDA has taken steps to end the long-standing practice in the cheesemaking industry of using wooden boards to age cheese. To be clear, we have not and are not prohibiting or banning the long-standing practice of using wood shelving in artisanal cheese. Nor does the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) require any such action. Reports to the contrary are not accurate."
Welch, however, is continuing to pursue his plan to attach an amendment to the Agriculture Appropriations bill that would prohibit providing money to enforce a ban on wood shelves in ripening and storing cheese, and would block the enforcement of any such rule.
"It appears the FDA's right hand doesn't know what its left hand is doing," Welch said in a statement Thursday. "Which FDA should cheese makers listen to?"
He plans a news conference at 2:30 p.m. today at the Cabot Annex in Waterbury to discuss the issue.
Welch said by telephone last week he was mystified that a cheesemaking practice that dates to "Adam and Eve" would come under scrutiny by a federal agency in 2014.
"It's so inspiring to see folks in Vermont, these young people, who go to an immense amount of effort and have extraordinary discipline and financial skills to start these artisan cheese operations," Welch added. "They're helping to get our economy, in the agriculture sector, back on track. These folks work from dawn to dusk. And they face enormous challenges to succeed. And they don't need dumb Washington government piling on what they're doing."
Catherine Donnelly is a food microbiologist at the University of Vermont and editor of a book titled "Cheese and Microbes." She works with Vermont cheesemakers and is co-director of Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese.
"I can tell you conclusively there's no scientific reason to ban wood in cheesemaking," Donnelly said. "If this has to be banned for cheese, then why not produce? Get all the wood out of packing produce. Controlling the safety of a food like a cheese requires careful monitoring. Cheese isn't safe because we want it to be. It's safe because people carefully control the process.
"It's well documented through risk assessment that cheesemakers using wood shelves for aging need to establish controls to monitor and intervene if there are pathogens contained in that wood. And we've shown that it can be done and it can be done successfully. And it can be done without risk to public health."
Last month, brewers in Vermont and across the nation were concerned that a proposed FDA rule change would affect the disposal of spent grains as a byproduct of brewing beer. The grains commonly are fed to farm animals, and a rule change could have effectively prohibited that by requiring sanitizing and packaging of the grains.
In a situation that seemed to parallel the one with cheesemaking, the FDA retreated from a possible regulatory change.
The Burlington Free Press requested an interview with John Sheehan, the FDA's head of dairy safety. The agency responded with an email from an FDA spokeswoman.
She wrote Friday that the circumstances surrounding brewing and cheesemaking are "different."
Discussion of spent grain in brewing arose in a comment period "on a proposed rule on preventive controls for animal food," the email stated.
"Regarding the use of wooden boards to age cheese, as the FDA has recently stated, we are not prohibiting that longstanding practice," agency spokeswoman Lauren Sucher wrote Friday.6/13 "Nor does FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) require any such action."
Jasper Hill Farm purchased 34 acres in Greensboro last week, not far from the village center, according to Mateo Kehler, who runs the farm and cheesemaking facility with his brother, Andy Kehler.
The Kehlers plan to graze cows on the land, and to build a 120-stall barn and farmstead cheese plant, Kehler said. The town of Greensboro has not received paperwork about structures or building on the property, zoning administrator Kristen Leahy said.
One hundred milking cows, with space for 20 dry animals, is about twice as many cows as Jasper Hill milks now on its hillside farm, Kehler said.
Jasper Hill's plans to expand its cheesemaking operations coincide with rumblings in the cheese world about FDA regulations concerning traditional cheesemaking practices.
Although the FDA said it does not prohibit the use of wood shelves in aging cheese — an ambiguous and controversial issue in recent days — Kehler said he's concerned about growing a business in a regulatory environment he terms "precarious."
"What we're after is predictable, consistent regulation that's rooted in science and preserves traditional production techniques," Kehler said.
Jasper Hill makes it own cheeses and ages cheeses produced by other cheesemakers in its cellars. In all, Jasper Hill produces 400 tons of cheese a year.
This includes Cabot clothbound cheddar and Winnimere. Both cheeses were best-of-show winners at the annual American Cheese Society competition, the cheddar in 2006 and Winnimere in 2013.
"As a society, we need to decide if there's a place in the world for cheeses like ours," Kehler said.
He is concerned there are people in positions of power who "think it would be better if there were ten food companies in the United States," Kehler said. "We're part of a very diverse ecology of small businesses that have popped up on the landscape and it's not just in Vermont. It's nationwide."
At its E3 Xbox One X reveal event on Sunday, Microsoft shared a relentless stream of boundary-pushing system specs for the new console, but it stayed surprisingly quiet regarding the future of virtual reality on the device.
Few expected announcements related to a simultaneous VR headset launch as the company had already sought to temper expectations earlier this year saying that VR content releases on “Project Scorpio” would take place in 2018.
The fact that VR support was barely touched on at E3 seemed a bit strange however, given the attention Microsoft has been giving to its “mixed reality” headsets which will launch later this year. The headsets, built by partners like Acer, HP and Dell will be priced lower than options from Oculus and HTC and will be capable of running on much lower-end PCs. While many might see these options as a sort of middle-tier solution to the Rift and Vive, Microsoft expects VR running on the Xbox One X to compete on the high-end.
It’s a bit odd, given that most of the push for wireless is being done on the all-in-one side, where the compute power is also in the headset, allowing the user to roam freely with the headset as far as battery life allows.
With console-powered wireless, Microsoft would assumedly be looking at streaming technologies similar to those being used by companies like TPCast and DisplayLink which free users of a physical cord but rely on physical proximity to a transmitter to ensure a seamless connection. This would also necessitate a headset with an imbedded battery, which would likely need to be pretty hefty to account for longer gaming sessions. These technologies would undoubtedly add cost to the device as well.
With this strategy, Microsoft risks a late entry to virtual reality gaming while its primary console competitor, Sony, already begins to see notable success in moving PlayStation VR units, announcing just this past week that the company has surpassed 1 million headsets sold globally since first launching the virtual reality system in October.
Microsoft has already lauded “Project Scorpio,” now Xbox One X, as a VR powerhouse so we’ll undoubtedly see some virtual reality announcements in its future, but with no details at its launch event, its unclear how long we’ll have to wait.
Throughout my childhood and teen years, even much later when I had children of my own, my mother worried that I had my head in the clouds, reading too many stories, neglecting real life and its problems. My take on having one’s “head in the clouds” was different from my mother’s, for me it meant having a place of one’s own, somewhere like Alice’s Wonderland, or what I later named The Republic of Imagination. A place on earth, in our own backyard that might help us get to the clouds and all sorts of other wonderlands, existing all around us and yet invisible to the naked eye. I wanted to go there in order to return to my own home refreshed, armed with a new perspective, prepared to confront “life and its problems.” For what is a wonderland but a new and magical version of our everyday reality, rescuing that reality from the dust of habit and complacency, what is the Republic of Imagination except the version of reality as it should or could have been?
This is the magic of books which are read first and foremost for the pure and sensual joy of reading, of discovering, of unexpected adventures in unknown places, satisfying our curiosity and giving us the gift of true empathy. Reading offers us a unique kind of joy, that of being simultaneously private while sharing a communal experience. You can, without leaving that small space in a corner of your room, travel to numerous places, move back and forth in time, meet many different people, and connect to millions of other readers whom you have never met and might never meet in person.
Welcome to our 'dangerous books' long weekend!
As is the case with real life friends, good friends, my favorite fictional characters remain with me throughout my life, I never grow tired of their company. With them I travel to unknown places, creating our own secrets and secret spaces, and with each new reading at different times of my life I discover new unknown corners in my favorite books and characters. And as with true friends, I learnt to live better and be more independent.
As a child my father told me tales from the great epic Iranian poet Ferdowsi. One favorite character was Princess Rudabeh, who fell in love with Zal, a great and handsome hero, with one peculiarity in that his hair since his birth was all white. The great obstacle to their love was that their very powerful families were also mortal enemies. I followed with anticipation and trepidation how the two young lovers met and made love in secret, and stood up to their families until they were united. Rudabeh was no feminist, but a thousand years ago she existed in a poet’s imagination, an independent woman, knowing the risks she had to go through for love, but also knowing what she wanted, and how to get it.
When I went to England at the age of 13, I took Rudabeh’s and many other stories from Iran’s rich literary landscape with me, and in England I discovered Rudabeh’s younger English cousins, women like Jane Austen, who in 18th and 19th century England said no to the dictates of their parents and mores of their time, embracing a life of poverty but making their own free choices, marrying only the man they loved.
Banned, burned, or simply life changing: what are the best dangerous books?
Two centuries later, spin-off novels, films and television series of Pride and Prejudice speak to us, bring us joy and touch our hearts. Yet none reach the depth and beauty of the original, not even in terms of sensuality. No scene in Joe Wright’s recent film adaptation, can produce the sexual and emotional tension that we encounter time and again between Elizabeth and Darcy, especially in the part where they try to communicate in a public drawing room, suppressing their burning passion, their desire to speak freely, while she is pouring tea for others who, unaware of their feelings come and go, interrupting them at every attempt to communicate.
Then there is Elizabeth’s young American Cousin, Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Over a century later living in a racist southern city, we follow her growing up mainly during her father’s defense of an innocent African American man, and learn that independence and courage mean doing the right thing even if you lose, even if you know you will fail. From her we learn the connection between fiction and empathy, the importance to defend other people’s human rights as you would defend your own, the fact that other’s rights and freedoms guarantee yours.
Do you have a line (or many) from your favourite books which has inspired you, fired you up or moved you to change – we want to know! Simply write out your quote, or take a photo of it and share it with @GdnChildrensBks @WindmillBooks with the hashtag #BooksSave.
Azar Nafisi’s new book is The Republic of the Imagination, written with adults in mind but great for teenagers too!
Tutor Hunt is offering new tuition positions in Northamptonshire. We are seeking Maths tutors in Northamptonshire. You can register for free, we take zero commission. Earn between £20-£60 per hour. Tutor Hunt is the largest online tutoring company in the UK. We have been running for over 12 years and are market leaders in helping families locate tutors. We are seeking individuals who are Self-motivated, creative & organised. You can teach from your home or travel to the student. You can also set your own rates We take zero commission.
Yikes! After watching the Dec. 3 episode of ‘Teen Mom OG’, Bristol Palin’s ex, Dakota Meyer, took to social media to blast the MTV series. See his vicious message, here!
It looks like Dakota Meyer is not happy with the way Teen Mom OG producers have been portraying his co-parenting with ex Bristol Palin on the MTV series. Following the Dec. 3 episode, during which Bristol blasted Dakota for not reaching out to her oldest child, Tripp, after their divorce, he took to social media and ripped the series. “What’s sad is that Viacom has turned Teen Mom into a trailer trash Real Housewives instead of showing what the true struggles of parenting are,” he said referring to both Teen Mom OG and MTV’s parent company Viacom.
Dakota must feel he’s being portrayed in a bad light, especially after this week’s new episode. Interestingly, this isn’t the first time Dakota has blasted the MTV series. And because he’s so upset with the way the show’s portraying him, he has decided to bring back his VLOG to “show you what single parenting looks like,” saying, “since they can’t seem to figure it out,” according to The Blast.
What’s sad is that @Viacom has turned @TeenMom into a trailer trash Real Houswives instead of showing what the true struggles of parenting are. I’ll bring my VLOG back and show you what single parenting looks like since they can’t seem to figure it out.
Dakota and Bristol’s split, as well as them co-parenting their two daughters Atlee, 1, and Sailor, 2, has been a major storyline during the current season of Teen Mom OG.
A public pool isn’t exactly the cleanest place to be, but one man drove away patrons after he defecated in the water while swimming in a public pool in Suzhou, China.
A video on Chinese video-sharing site Miaopai shows surveillance camera footage of the old man taking a dump in the water. The man casually climbs out of the pool without a word as swimmers point at him and leave the water.
The pool had to close down following the incident, with the feces scooped out with a fishing net, reports The Shanghaiist. Swimmers who were in the water were refunded their entrance tickets.
Public defecation is not new when it comes to Chinese tourists. The Shanghaiist reported on Monday, July 30, that a Chinese teacher allowed an elementary school student to poop on a Hong Kong subway station. The teacher was given a talking down from a cleaner and the person who took the video. “You let a child defecate and then you don’t clean it up. You want us Hongkongers to clean it up for you!” the woman filming the incident said.
Redmond finally joins Google, Mozilla, by offering cash rewards for security flaws.
Some bugs aren't worth very much cash.
Microsoft has announced that it will give security researchers cash rewards for devising novel software exploitation techniques, creating new exploit mitigation systems, and finding bugs in the beta of Internet Explorer 11 when it's released later this month.
Bug bounty programs, where security researchers receive a cash reward from software vendors for disclosing exploitable flaws in those vendors' software, have become an important part of the computer security landscape. Finding flaws and working out ways to exploit them can be a difficult and time-consuming process. Moreover, exploitable flaws have a market value, especially to criminals, as they can be used to propagate malware and attack systems.

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