¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·

Dirt that soils life from doorsteps

Displaced by climate or design?

AS RISING seas swallow coasts, floods wash away livelihood and droughts parch once-fertile lands, the image of the climate-displaced person has become an emblem of the unfolding climate crisis. These stark environmental shifts are no longer distant projections but daily realities for millions across the globe. The world, especially countries in the Global North, has...

How Netanyahu, AIPAC outsourced Israel’s war to Trump

UNLIKE Russia’s quarrel with Kyiv or China’s claim to Taiwan, Washington’s war with Iran is not rooted in a national dispute with the US. It is a project subcontracted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his lobby group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Donald Trump — a president addicted to flattery and drama — puffed by grandiose...

Teaching observation for improving quality

WHEN we speak of advancing teacher preparation and professional development, the role of ‘teaching observation’ deserves renewed attention. Teaching observation involves one teacher observing another’s classroom practice, followed by a structured discussion. This is not an exercise in fault-finding, but rather a reflective process focused on pedagogical...

Prevention impossible without health education

BANGLADESH is a densely populated country in the tropical zone where 3,496 people live per square mile. And, more densely populated is Dhaka city where 5,001 people per square mile. If people in this densely populated area do not adhere to proper health rules, it is almost impossible to prevent infectious diseases...

Bangladesh’s path to security

THE recent convulsions between Iran and Israel — ignited, as these things often are, by the US cruise missile on Iranian nuclear facilities, a surgical strike that ripped through the fragile fabric of peace — had all the makings of a regional conflagration, a firestorm that could have consumed us all. And yet, here we are, breathing a tentative sigh of relief, as both sides...

Sri Lanka: balancing behaviour for sustainable outcomes

THE government is being judicious in reading the signs of the time. The country continues to be in the throes of the economic crisis that it inherited. It faces formidable challenges in confronting a combined opposition that governed Sri Lanka for the past 76 years. In addition, the world is in crisis with international law being openly disregarded in the joint US‑Israel...

Timely warning from Taiwan strait

‘IF DETERRENCE and diplomacy fail, the military takes over.’ This warning underscores the tone and urgency of ‘Is Taiwan a Dangerous Flashpoint?’, a timely and compact analysis of one of the most precarious geopolitical issues of our time. Written by Dr Mohd Aminul Karim, a noted security expert and former professor at the University of Malaya, the book addresses the...

Shot to death before dying of hunger

SAMI, Khatem, Halima, Mousa, Abdel, Maha, Laila, Hatem, Hana all and others aged 7–14, with rustled hair and in soiled, torn dresses stood in a serpentine queue with contorted faces and deformed tin plates and bowls of different sizes and colours dangling loosely from their stretched out, long waiting skinny hands due to lack of sufficient grips. Their eyeballs...

Trump’s TV jingle for N-weapons

AMERICA’S Operation Midnight Hammer, targeting three nuclear facilities in Iran, saw two unhinged nuclear weapons states jointly attacking one that had shunned the bomb by a religious edict...

Economy and power dynamics

THE international order is undergoing a profound transformation. Once defined by Cold War bipolarity — and later by a US-dominated unipolar moment — the global landscape today is increasingly multipolar, fragmented and competitive. The rise of rival power blocks, overlapping strategic partnerships and a resurgence of regionalism are reshaping global politics across...

Israel, lobby dragging US deeper into illegal war

WHITE House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the truth about Tyrant Trump the other day regarding Trump’s war with Israel against Iran. She said, ‘The president hears all voices across the country, and he makes decisions based on his instincts.’...

Journey in professional development

CLIMATE change has emerged as one of the most urgent crises of our time, bringing about widespread loss of human life and irreversible damage to nature. Extreme weather patterns — including rising temperatures, prolonged cold waves, water scarcity, wildfires, sea-level rise, flooding, polar ice melting, storms, landslides, hurricanes and a steep decline in biodiversity...

Tactical courtship or new strategic alliance?

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump on June 18 hosted Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, at a high-profile lunch at the White House. The meeting marks a significant diplomatic anomaly. Never before has a sitting US president directly engaged with a Pakistani military leader who was not the country’s head of state. The timing and nature of this engagement...

Whose knowledge counts in toxic city?

CLIMATE change is no longer a looming threat for Bangladesh. It has arrived, thick and heavy, in the very air we breathe. It lingers in our lungs, stings in our throats, and hangs over Dhaka like an oppressive curtain no one asked for. This is not some distant crisis forecasted by scientists; this is the reality of living in one of the world’s most polluted cities. And more than...