The story of saving the vultures of Bangladesh

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the Bangladesh Post Office (BPO)? 'Snail mail, stale mail, fail mail' was how a colleague of mine, who had lost a birthday gift or two sent from his friends outside the country some time ago, answers that question.

As dawn falls on the cramped shelters at Balukhali Refugee Camp, the settlers find twice the company they had yesterday. Some with crying babies, some with bullet wounds, some without families, some without hope—they all huddle inside, outside and everywhere. Each dot in this map represents 600 new arrivals, most of whom have walked a long way from Shah Porir Dwip to find refuse, food and dignity at the “northern camps”.

On September 19, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani condemned the ongoing diplomatic crisis and blockade by their neighbours (and the Maldives, for some reason unbeknownst to all possible rationality) in a speech almost as long as his name.

"How much money did you pay him in bribes for the papers?” asks an officer with his headphones on, while scribbling down the main points of the reply on a piece of paper. “BDT 1200… and now he wants more?” he further inquires as he briskly takes a sip of instant coffee from a disposable cup.

When buying gifts: You buy what the other person wants. Or get something you can also use.

When it was announced that Feluda was getting a 'Bangladeshi' reboot, I was excited. As someone fortunate enough to have grown up in an era before smartphones and the internet, books were a big part of my childhood, and Feluda was one of my first idols.

Have you heard of the test that found a certain type of water, that we also drink, could become radioactive in a way? It is the usual water except when heated in a microwave oven it could become a liquid capable of death and mutation. It was killing off plants. What is worse, it was proving to be an utter nuisance by not really turning anyone into a super-powered being. I have read in books how this happens all the time, in all the comic books.

It is often said that the book is better than the movie, and it is certainly not every day that a movie improves on the novel that inspired it, or that a masterpiece like Rashōmon springs out of the mind of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and into the hands of Akira Kurosawa to mould into the vivid piece of storytelling and cinematic brilliance that it is. With filmmakers determined to take a shot at breathing new life into literary greats, here are six exciting on-screen adaptations you don't want to miss this fall.

Sitting under the cool shade of the large chestnut trees by the playground of Notre Dame College, students read, chat and take some rest from their otherwise hectic day. When ripe chestnuts fall, they pick those up promptly, but they never shake these fruits from the trees. The giant Gagan Shirish trees, located opposite the Harrington Building of the college, are home to countless birds—living in an undisturbed, harmonious environment for generations. Every spring, hundreds of flowering trees such as plum, naglingam, magnolia, rose and Ixora bloom and adorn the beautifully landscaped premises. This is how the students, teachers and staff of Notre Dame College, for generations, have been paying respect to the college's natural aesthetics and to Professor Dwijen Sharma, the institution's former teacher and an eminent naturalist, botanist and writer who spent years designing the institution's beautiful landscape and planted most of the trees with his own hands.

Barely three weeks ago, it would have taken someone a little more than 10 minutes to reach Kutupalong camp from the main station in Ukhia. Today, traffic jams on the Cox's Bazar-Teknaf Highway, arising from the increasing number of relief trucks arriving to help out the Rohingyas, has changed the scenario. But despite the admirable support of Bangladeshis for the four lakh-plus Rohingyas who entered Bangladesh in the last one month, many new refugees are still living on just muri and cha.

New measures of income inequality

We map the shortest possible distances Rohingya families needed to take to reach Kutupalong Refugee Camp, as well as the destruction at Maungdaw and Rathedaung.

The archetypal brown, bearded Muslim terrorist has a new face and a new badge—the loincloth-wearing, machete-wielding jungle guerilla of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA).

"From Heaven Lake: Travels through Sinkiang and Tibet" by Vikram Seth is a 1983 travelogue about the author hitch-hiking through China in his student days.

Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon—the four elements necessary for life to flourish anywhere. Take one away, the balance is off, and the lovely blue ball floating in space that we call home is likely to become a barren wasteland. The Earth being blue has

A medieval French village in Malaysia

Failure of flood embankments and absence of alternative solutions are leading Bangladesh to a watery grave.

In July 2017 alone, 22 females were stalked, one of whom committed suicide due to stalker harassment. A further 14 people were collateral damage for protesting stalking of the victims, of whom two men were killed and 11 people injured. Though females overwhelmingly constitute targets of stalking and sexual harassment, male family members and relatives protesting often too suffer violence at the hands of stalkers.

With violence erupting across the border in Myanmar and the number of new Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh crossing two lakh in number, it becomes imperative to revisit exactly how the ethnic minority has been persecuted through the decades.