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.
Bangladesh was quick in response to the educational challenges brought on by the pandemic in 2020, initially through Ghore Boshe Sikhi, and then through Bangladesh Betar.
In my last article in The Daily Star, I wrote that Bangladesh needs to urgently act to retain the GSP+ facility post-LDC status.
Is the Coronavirus racist? Of course not. The Covid-19 and its variants do not discriminate between race, creed or borders. They simply infect everyone indiscriminately, so the only defence is vaccines and social distancing.
The need for higher allocation for the social safety net programmes (SSNPs) has never been felt so badly than during the ongoing pandemic.
On May 1 the world celebrated the contributions of workers to societies especially to the economic growth of nations. Yet news reports on May 5 (The Daily Star) described the dire state of workers in Bangladesh’s informal sector as a result of the economic fallout of the pandemic. Sadly they were not in such a great state before the pandemic either.
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to reveal shocking underlying infrastructural inequalities around the world. While the United States rapidly rolls out vaccines even to children, countries like India suffer devastating numbers of fatalities each day. India recently reported more than 340,000 daily coronavirus cases—nearly half the global total—and the country seemingly has no end to its crisis in sight.
CITIZENS’ understanding about the causes of climate change and its consequences is vital for its mitigation. For that, communicating the relevant issues to the masses is a prerequisite.
No child, Palestinian or Israeli, whoever they are, should ever have to worry that death will rain from the sky. How many of my colleagues are willing to say the same, to stand for Palestinian human rights as they do for Israeli? How many Palestinians have to die for their lives to matter?”
Because of their continuous renewability and inexhaustibility, ocean energies are known as marine renewable energy (MRE). However, all ocean-based renewable energy resources are not considered MRE.
The holiday lethargy has caused me self-loathing. Let me count some of the factors as to why I am beginning to hate myself.
