I am delighted to be returning to Bangladesh in its Golden Jubilee year, and I look forward to celebrating the tremendous achievements of the past half century with friends old and new.
As is known, the current provisions of the EU’s Generalised System of preferences (EU-GSP) scheme are being revised at present in anticipation of the new scheme to be put in place as of January 1, 2024.
Upon reading the news headline for the incident I am about to discuss, I only felt a momentary, dull pain in my gut or thereabouts. Because while it is a shocking incident that would rob you of hope, the elements of the story are all too familiar to us all.
As tensions over the Taiwan Strait mount, everyone needs to think about whether war is inevitable. Ukrainian revolutionary Leon Trotsky once said: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” And if we slip into war by what World War I historian Barbara Tuchman called the March of Folly, can the Great Powers step back from mutual nuclear annihilation?
The year 2020 marked a watershed in global efforts to end tuberculosis (TB) by 2030. First, it was because, by 2020, the TB-affected countries aimed to achieve the first set of “End TB” milestones: a 35 percent reduction in TB deaths, a 20 percent
I have been feeling unwell since October 13. After the mayhem in Cumilla, I knew it wouldn’t be the last. With a broken heart, my father-in-law and I, along with my son, decided to continue with our tradition of puja visits and mandap-hopping, yet we were all deeply disturbed, witnessing the carnage unravelling with a helpless rage.
Today, on October 22, we celebrate National Road Safety Day. But why? Not why we care about safety—the devastating toll of accidents makes it clear why it is important—but why call it Road Safety Day? If we are using roads to travel from place to place, and we want to be able to do so safely, why not call it Safe Travels Day?
I was around 10 when I first heard about the idea of, as it was then known, global warming and how Bangladesh will one day go underwater as sea levels rise.
Racism is America’s original sin. Its manifestations are myriad, and notwithstanding occasional spurts of progress, the struggle for justice continues to be an uphill battle.
In March last year, Cyclone Amphan, said to be the first super cyclone to form in the Bay of Bengal since 1999, devastated the state of West Bengal, killing more than a hundred people.
As the rich countries get their vaccination numbers up, whilst poorer countries are still struggling, there is some hope that we are getting to grips with the pandemic. On the climate change front, there has been some remarkable achievements in the last two months.
Like writer-journalist Jon Mooallem wrote in “Wild Ones”, I too have been finding nature in the oddest of places.
The Homo sapiens, in their current evolved form, have been around on Earth for about 200,000 years. Many advances have taken place since then, with each advance seeming to have had a greater impact on our environment than the previous one.
This World Environ-ment Day, I am reflecting on my recent visit to one of the most ecologically important countries in the world. Sadly,
At a preparatory meeting for ULAB’s planned virtual convocation, I suggested that we use the iconic image of Keanu Reeves dodging many bullets in the Matrix trilogy as our promotional campaign.
For a terrible 11 days in May, the world watched hellfire rain upon the world’s largest open-air prison camp, otherwise known as Gaza.
The counterintuitive decision that the government has taken regarding the endorsement in Bangladeshi passports of travel to Israel demands clear answers.
When Shadhona was granted accreditation by the UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) in December 2019, it was definitely a special moment for Bangladesh.
