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.
After 543 days of school closure, one of the most protracted education gaps in the world that was caused by the Covid-19 pandemic,
As the world debates on the ways to deal with the serious challenges faced on multiple fronts after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, one issue that has received much less attention than the others is the kind of template based on which the solutions are to be found. The challenges relate as much to Afghanistan’s internal dynamics as to the external ones.
Bangladesh needs to adopt policies to promote agricultural microinsurance for small farmers. Small farmers are the backbone of the rural areas, where two-thirds of the population of Bangladesh live.
It was a political circus almost as outsized as America’s largest state: California.
It is as refreshing as watching flowers of urban forestry in bloom or the roadside plants glisten after a bout of rain.
Today marks the 47th anniversary of Bangladesh becoming a member of the United Nations, so it’s an opportune moment to take a look at the UN operations in the early days of independent Bangladesh.
The Arctic Council is a high-level intergovernmental forum comprising the eight circumpolar Arctic states: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States.
Here is an important but little-known fact about car parking: the more that is provided, the greater the demand.
With rapid industrialisation and increased technological complexity over the last two centuries, we seem to have lost touch with the magnitude of our effect on our surroundings.
Over a decade ago, power supply in Bangladesh was inadequate and production was virtually nonexistent. Increasing power production was a dire necessity then. The last caretaker government initiated efforts to that end; those efforts gained momentum when the Awami League government took office in 2009.
