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Intellectual property (IP) protection for plant variety and plant innovations has posited some critical challenges to the traditional approach to farmers' rights. Traditionally, farmers have freely exercised their rights in using, re-using, sowing, re-sowing, saving and exchanging their farm-produced crops or seeds with other farmers. Thus, it is critical to look into why many countries around the world, including developing countries (such as Bangladesh) have adopted IP-type protection for plant variety and plant innovations which potentially disadvantages the farmers? Is it due to 'hard factors' (the formal legal obligations under bilateral or plurilateral systems) and/or because of 'soft factors' (informal pressures of the various actors, including agri-business industry)? In crafting the domestic legal framework, it may be asked: how should an agriculturally dependent country (like Bangladesh) strike a balance between its domestic needs and international legal obligations? Precisely on the farmers' rights, how far are such domestic legal provisions capable of striking a balance between the plant breeders' rights and farmers' rights? What lessons, if any, could be learnt from other jurisdictions which have already implemented legal regimes on plant variety? Should the approach be legal transplantation or legal transformation? Against such backdrops, this contribution critically appraises the outstanding questions and controversies on farmers' rights as reflected in the Plant Varieties Protection Act (PVP) 2019 of Bangladesh. In doing so, it highlights the current overlapping and conflicting international laws on plant variety and plant innovations. Finally, it particularly draws some insights from the legal rules and implementing experiences of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act 2001 of India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right to life including, impliedly, the right to live in a pollution-free atmosphere, is a constitutionally guaranteed right in Bangladesh, and noise pollution, with its adverse effects on the peaceful enjoyment of life, is a genuine threat to the quality of life in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Although some isolated provisions on noise pollution exist within the legal framework of Bangladesh, they are rarely properly implemented, especially by public bodies. Thus, pollution levels remain above legallyset standards. Recently, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh used the notion of 'constitutional torts' to award compensation for breach of public duty resulting from negligence and gross violation of the right to life by statutory and public bodies. Based on the premise of the constitutional right to life, this article argues that the government of Bangladesh and public bodies have constitutional obligations to ensure citizens' right to life, which is severely affected by noise pollution, and that the relevant authorities are required to adopt effective measures to curb the noise level to a bearable level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change poses profound threats to the Earth and its people. Its mitigation, therefore, demands common but differentiated actions with comprehensive and coordinated approach. The global community has pledged to mitigate various greenhouse gases in some international soft law instruments. Exploitation of renewables to generate energy and produce electricity is simultaneously suggested for the last couple of decades as a viable alternative in mitigating climate change. This gets momentum with the adoption of the historical and universally ratified Paris Agreement in 2016 where energy is placed at the heart of the Agreement. Energy, where renewable energy is a branch, is generally regulated and governed domestically and so, international legal regime is still evolving in this regard. In the absence of any specific and direct international instrument on energy and renewable energy, published literatures have considered this topic from different directions ranging from climate change to the principle of national sovereignty, economic, trade and investment issues. In this backdrop, this paper aims to introduce various renewable sources, prospects and challenges in their promotion that may help to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change. Relevant international law provisions have been evaluated, performances of the relevant regional and international organizations active in this sector are highlighted and some of the disputes in this area considered in international forums are duly addressed. It is revealed that strong political will of the global community in fulfilling their commitments made so far in different international forums is the key to transforming the world into a better one for the future generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An optical joint transform correlation-based cryptographic system is a used to feed multiple phase-shifted encryption keys into four parallel channels along with a to-be-encrypted signal in the form of an image. The resulting joint power spectra (JPS) signals are phase-shifted and then combined to yield a modified JPS signal. Inverse Fourier transformation of the modified JPS signal yields the secured encrypted image. For decryption purpose, the received encrypted signal is first Fourier transformed and multiplied by the encryption key used in encryption. The derived signal is then inverse Fourier transformed to generate the output signal. The proposed system offers a nonlinear encryption without the involvement of any complex mathematical operation on the encryption key otherwise required in similar encryption techniques and is invariant to noise. Computer simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme with binary, as well as gray images in both noise-free and noisy environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]