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.
The Daily Star newspaper recently announced on its front page, “COVID Vaccines. One Lakh Pfizer Shots to Arrive Next Month” (May 19, 2021).
All sectors and walks of modern life are touched by sustainability and so too is the construction industry-whether it is buildings, airports, highways or stadiums.
On May 19, the finance minister said, “The scope [to whiten black money] will be there as long as undisclosed incomes will be there.” (The Daily Star) Before commenting on this statement, let’s take a step back and think how we got to this point.
Bangladesh is potentially approaching a dual crisis. One is the shortage of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, Covishield, leaving over 14 lakh people in uncertainty over their second doses, and the other is the emergence of the notorious “Indian variant” in the country.
During the latest rerun of the biblical David and Goliath narrative in a changed context, the age-old conflict between the Israelites and the Philistines has come alive.
Expatriate workers are our goose of Aesop’s Fables that lays the golden eggs.
What is the picture that flashes through your mind when someone talks of social classes? A reader of The Guardian newspaper once made an interesting albeit highly generalised observation.
The history of designing and delivering policy-driven economic stimulus packages is customarily traced back to the “New Deal” which was implemented in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Schools have been fully or partially closed for more than a year in many developing countries. As of March 29, 2021, the world’s longest full closure was in Bangladesh, at 47 weeks, according to the UNESCO.
What the Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said on May 20 about his ministry’s predicament is nothing unique. Expressing his regret about Prothom Alo journalist Rozina Islam’s arrest, he said, “As foreign ministry,
