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 ongoing pandemic has caused huge economic losses for the world. In 2020, growth in South Asia contracted by 5.4 percent, which does not capture the whole story of how terribly its people have actually suffered—but it is an indicator of how the region has struggled over the last year.
Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), all governments of the nearly 200 countries that have ratified the treaty meet twice a year to review progress and make decisions about next steps.
With the assembly polls ongoing in West Bengal, the state—currently being ruled by the strong matriarch Mamata Banerjee—has turned into a battleground for Banerjee’s party Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the power at the centre, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Frontline healthcare workers, community mobilisers, caregivers, mothers working from home while supporting children with online classes—women of Bangladesh and all other parts of the world have been facing the Covid-19 pandemic with immense strength, courage, patience, and resilience.
Although most of the Covid-19 cases are mild, about 15 percent of patients are developing acute distress syndrome associated with systemic inflammation, responsible for more than 2.8 million deaths worldwide.
I’ve always wanted to be a PhD student. I love reading and writing and a PhD is literally being facilitated—often with a full scholarship—to think, read and write.
As we are passing the one-year mark of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is difficult to wrap my head around the long term consequences of this catastrophe.
There is a lot of discussion right now about the side effects of the Covid-19 vaccine and confusion surrounding the taking of the vaccine.
The second wave of the pandemic has crashed onto Bangladesh and other countries, including India, after a downturn earlier in the year, dashing the hope for a waning of the pandemic.
One of the most rewarding parts of my job at the University of Sussex is to lead the professional placements programme for the Economics Department.
