Abdullah Shibli

From 1979 onwards, since the Soviet Army moved into Afghanistan to support Babrak Karmal and the communist regime, the country has been embroiled in one conflict after another.

Raising the minimum wage is supposed to benefit the workers, particularly those who are making less than the minimum and are struggling to make a decent living.

As we fight to overcome the damages done by the Covid-19 pandemic and restart and recalibrate our economies, this is a golden opportunity to ask what we can do to prepare ourselves better for the next decade. One thing is certain.

I entered the job market when I was a graduate student at Dhaka University and have switched jobs many times since then.

It has been well-known for a long time that Bangladeshi migrant workers in the Middle East and South Asian countries are at the receiving end of all sorts of uncertainties one can think of.

Some politicians promise an El Dorado if you vote them into power. Others tell stories, some true and some not so, to get the voters to believe them.

End of the year op-eds, or the thought of it, bring for me anxiety as well as joy. I feel anxious because I can’t decide what to write about, or find issues to vent about, as the year draws to a close.

Bangladesh is celebrating the 49th anniversary of the nation’s Victory Day today.

The other day I was chatting with Abu, a long-time friend of mine who has been living in Bangladesh for the last one year.

In this time of the pandemic and the resultant economic slowdown, one has to be mindful of the effects of these twin curses on the poor of Bangladesh.

Shegufta Bakht Chaudhuri, popularly known as SB Chaudhuri, the former Governor of Bangladesh Bank, passed away on November 11 at United Hospital, Dhaka.

While the recent US Presidential Election has left a number of issues unresolved, one thing is clear.

The Nobel Prize for Economics this year was shared by two Americans, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson of Stanford University.

One of the industries hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown policies has been the travel and hospitality (T&H) sector.

The scandal involving Prashanta Kumar Halder, also known as PK Halder, a former managing director of NRB Global Bank, Reliance Finance and other companies, has been in the national news for almost a decade.

My readers must have by now become sick of hearing about the big loan defaulters in Bangladesh and the scandals involving the Farmer’s Bank (now Padma Bank), BASIC Bank, Sonali/Hallmark, Janata, Prime, and a motley of other shady characters including some leading industrialists of the country.

Sebia Sulaiman, a pioneer in the field of early childhood education and a lifelong social worker passed away at 5:30 AM on September 19, 2020 at a city hospital in Dhaka.

For future historians, the most memorable event of the year 2020 is certainly likely to be the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by the US Presidential elections.

My heart sank when I saw the headline in The Daily Star on August 17, which reported that the US had updated its periodic travel advisory on August 6, 2020 and urged its citizens to exercise “increased caution in the country due to crime, terrorism, and kidnapping”.

There is a global race going on now for the rapid development of a Covid-19 vaccine. As of July 27, pharmaceutical companies worldwide were working on 164 candidates, including 25 that are being tested in people, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).