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.
Today marks eight years since one of the deadliest industrial disasters in modern history killed at least 1,132 workers and injured more than 2,500 others in our own backyard.
Eight years ago, one of the worst industrial disasters in history—the collapse of an eight storey commercial building in a sub-district of Dhaka—demonstrated to the world the heavy price of producing cheap clothing to fuel the “fast fashion” industry for consumers in the global North.
A flurry of assaults on freedom of the press in recent months has raised troubling questions about the state of India’s democracy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
There have been changes in the way we live and the way we die. We have learned to live carefully during this time of the pandemic, yet we have been dying carelessly.
The United Nations declared 2021-2030 as the “Decade on Ecosystem Restoration”. Such declarations bring us both good news and bad. First,
On a quiet summer night early this week, when the world was sleeping, the nation lost a legend. Sarah Begum Kabori, the actress, politician, freedom fighter, and social worker, quietly slipped through the gates of eternity.
Bangladesh is currently struggling to overcome a massive surge in Covid-19 infections. In a country that bears one of the highest burdens of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the region—particularly diabetes and heart disease—the overwhelming of the healthcare system during this second wave of coronavirus poses the additional threat of “collateral damage”,
In this column and through our reports, commentaries and editorials, we have repeatedly stressed the need for accountability of all public institutions run by taxpayers’ money. Of them, the accountability of law enforcement agencies is most important.
The theme of this year’s Earth Day is “Together, We Can Restore Our Earth”, and at today’s global climate summit, there is a definite focus on
OVER 700,000 Covid cases and 10,500 deaths and one year later, we are about to see another prolonged lockdown in Bangladesh.
