NO OFFENCE
Journalist at The Daily Star
It has been more than a year since Covid-19 was first detected in Bangladesh. Much has been, and continues to be, said about the country’s handling of the pandemic.
The words “quarantine” and “isolation” have now become synonymous with the coronavirus outbreak. Social media has exploded with status updates,
The coronavirus outbreak—which seems straight out of the sci-fi thriller Contagion—has led to over 7,989 deaths and 198,736 cases worldwide. As we try to make sense out of truths that seem stranger than fiction, the WHO-declared pandemic has laid bare the fact that in an era where globalisation reigns supreme, infectious diseases no longer simply pose the risk of transnational movement of bacterial and viral infections.
Post-WWII, Bangladesh, along with countries which had been freed from the shackles of colonisation and had gained their independence, embarked upon the journey of “development”.
Going by numerous recent news reports, we have good reason to be worried about the state of food safety in the country.
A particular finding in the latest Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) blows the illusion of GDP growth being the “be all and end all” of development into smithereens.
Contrary to popular belief, it's not entitlement or narcissism or laziness that defines millennials. If anything, it's probably a sense of disillusionment that's a defining characteristic of this generation.
Defiance of the BNBC stems from the ways that it can provide immediate benefit to owners and often the users and the developers of buildings. For example, rules are violated to achieve maximum use of space when land itself is costly.
I still remember the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach when the news of the brutal killing of 13-year-old Rajon broke on social media two years ago. Is this real? How could they do this to a child? Why did the onlookers simply stand there?
Tucked in a remote corner at the tip of the Northern Territory (NT), Australia, lies a little known city called Darwin—first named in 1839 by John Lort Stokes after his former shipmate and evolutionist Charles Darwin.
Suu Kyi's speech was not only “disappointing” but also cowardly. It towed the typical line of “we have to look at both sides”, completely oblivious to the power dynamics at play: the national army versus a dispossessed population.
Has anyone asked what Bhutan—the tiny kingdom hidden in the folds of the eastern Himalayas—has to say?
A Facebook post shared by a man named Rushad Faridi caught my eye recently. He shared an article with an intriguing title, which he had written for Prothom Alo. But it wasn't the article that grabbed everyone's attention at first. It was the fact that Faridi, a professor in the economics department at Dhaka University, was placed on forced leave less than a week after the article was published on July 7.
When the Nuremberg War Trial began more than 70 years ago, it marked a watershed moment in international law.
“The world watched through my camera [as] this soldier shot the boy in cold blood, and his life was not in any danger at all.
"I grew up as a young girl in Bangladesh, a post-war country at the time ravished by famine, and saw everyone trying to do their part to rebuild the country."
There is a widely held belief that culture and religion are mutually exclusive entities. And herein lies the primary source of conflict.
It wasn't until 1972 that the term “informal sector” emerged in the development scene. Since then the phrase has continued to gain traction as a central theme in the development discourse.