Virginia Tech, rumors and change: the Bangla blogosphere spans it all · Global Voices
Aparna Ray

Bangla blogs join the rest of the world in mourning the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings. Probashi raises the issue of gun control and points out that had a gun not been accessible to the mentally unstable Cho, he would not have been able to wreak such havoc. He urges “gun control is a must now”. While commenting on his post, blogger Hasib reminds us of Michael Moore's docufilm ‘Bowling for Columbine‘.
Change is in the air for the Bangla blogosphere. First, Somewherein blog moved server and then relaunched itself in an Unicode avatar much to our delight. The extremely popular Bangla blogging platform is suffering some initial technical glitches and bugs (one bug reportedly added the word ‘kangal’, which means penniless in Bengali, to every contributor's profile!) but the administrators are working full steam to get these irritants ironed out. Second, the Bangla language got another boost when Ekushey.org launched a Bangla version of the Mozilla Firefox using the localization feature. Omiazad tells us how to get started.
Change seems to be the buzzword in Bangladesh's political arena as well. Opbak questions the manner in which the military backed interim government (formed to facilitate a free and fair election in the country after Khaleda Zia's term ended in October 2006) is trying to get rid of the two leading political begums. Instead of trying them for the corruption charges leveled against them, both are being turned out of the country. Khaleda Zia is allegedly being exiled to Saudi Arabia and latest reports say that the interim government has banned Sheikh Hasina from returning to the country from the US where she had gone on a personal visit. In an interesting observation, voice of Bangladeshi bloggers lays some blame for this political upheaval at the door of the country's mainstream media, saying that they lacked ideology and changed tune way too often for comfort.
And finally, a strong breeze of rumor has been blowing across the entire land generating a loud buzz and taking up blogging space in the Bangla world. It seems that cell phones are spouting certain sms, calls, ringtones, (and God knows what else) which are causing phone owners to drop down dead! Darkangleblog says that this hoax has spread across the sub-continent and has resulted in atleast some people switching off their phones in fear. Kinkortobyobimur asks people to think rationally and Hasin warns people not to be taken in  by such hoax