WHEN a cyclone lashes a coastal district or floodwaters submerge the land, we tally houses destroyed, acres lost and embankments breached. Yet, the gravest damage often appears only after the waters recede: women with no safe place to...
FOR nearly three years, the war in Ukraine has consumed the political, economic and diplomatic energies of world powers. The battlefield has hardened into stalemate, diplomacy has yielded little and western strategies increasingly look like repetitions of...
AUGUST 30 is International Day of the Disappeared. A day not only for prayers and tears, but also a day to denounce, loudly demand justice and renew the vow to never lose hope. Enforced disappearances are continuing offences. They may span days, months and...
SANJANA (pseudonym) is a third-year student at one of the most renowned universities of Bangladesh where she finds herself constantly struggling with rigorous routines, weekly tests and assignments, and sometimes hefty deadlines. Situations in her...
THE country鈥檚 education sector has slipped into a state of restless paralysis. Students protest at Shahbagh, at Barisal highway crossings, at the gates of Jagannath University, while teachers 鈥� from government primary schools to private colleges...
FIVE journalists were among the 22 people killed on August 25, 2025, in Israeli strikes on the Nasser Hospital in the Gaza Strip. Following global condemnation, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement saying Israel...
THE climate crisis is no longer an impending threat discussed in distant scientific circles rather it has arrived and is reshaping the world before our eyes. From unprecedented wildfires and deadly heatwaves to erratic monsoons and rising seas, the...
FROM Arctic ice fields to the depths of the Mariana Trench 鈥� and now, disturbingly, inside the human brain 鈥� microplastics have made themselves at home in every corner of the Earth. These minuscule plastic fragments, most smaller than five...
FOR generations, a toxic statement has echoed in our society: 鈥榃omen work less than men.鈥� This belief has shaped gender roles, justified unequal treatment, and diminished the value of women鈥檚 daily labour. But when we look closely, the myth does not stand the test of reality.
AS THE Shanghai Cooperation Organisation prepares to convene its 25th Heads of State Council summit in Tianjin on August 31, 2025, the mood is one of cautious optimism, shaped by geopolitical turbulence, but anchored in a sense of historical inevitability. Under China鈥檚 rotating chairmanship, the SCO has not only survived the headwinds of global disorder but...
A TEACHER from Dhaka University of Engineering and Technology recently said that his high school headmaster had stopped talking to him after his admission into a polytechnic institute in the 1980s. The headmaster started talking to him only after he was admitted into a bachelor鈥檚 engineering programme at DUET...
EDUCATION in Bangladesh has lost its way. Instead of helping young people grow, think and create, it has become a system obsessed with exams, grades and rote memorisation. Students spend their childhoods preparing for tests rather than for life. The result is a generation holding certificates yet lacking the skills, creativity and confidence to thrive...
WHEN the chief adviser to the interim government Muhammad Yunus has presented his seven-point road map for the Rohingya repatriation in Cox鈥檚 Bazar, the stage was set for optimism. In the presence of diplomats and aid officials, Yunus has called for what seemed self-evident: a safe, dignified, voluntary and sustainable return of more than 1.3 million...
IN 2013, the tragic Rana Plaza incident shook the whole country, killing thousands of workers. The tragedy turned the lives of thousands of families upside down. Structural cracks in the building were discovered the day before the incident, but factory owners made their workers come for work. Section 61 of the Labour Act, 2006, instructs that when a building is required...
THE images remain vivid: Narendra Modi clasping Donald Trump鈥檚 hand before a roaring crowd of Indian Americans in Houston in 2019; the 鈥楴amaste Trump鈥� rally in Ahmedabad the following year, replete with pageantry, promises and mutual admiration. For many in New Delhi, these spectacles signalled the arrival of a new era 鈥� an India finally embraced as...