The world is having to tackle three major emergencies at the same time. The first is obviously the Covid-19 pandemic that is still raging around the world, the second is climate change, which is also getting much worse every year, and finally, there is biodiversity loss, which will mean the loss of up to a million species if we cannot stem the tide.

In my last article in The Daily Star, I wrote that Bangladesh needs to urgently act to retain the GSP+ facility post-LDC status.

The need for higher allocation for the social safety net programmes (SSNPs) has never been felt so badly than during the ongoing pandemic.

The holiday lethargy has caused me self-loathing. Let me count some of the factors as to why I am beginning to hate myself.

You have perhaps been witness to a cycle of violence that begins with one-sided bullying and coercion (action) and continues until the victim is forced to respond (reaction). And then the “fighting” begins. But then the victim is blamed for countering the continuing onslaught.

In a report published on May 1, this newspaper revealed that according to a recent study, the Covid-19 treatment cost is abnormally higher in private hospitals compared to public hospitals.

Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel Klara and the Sun, his first since receiving the award in literature in 2017, has some relevance for policymakers and ordinary citizens across the globe.

Governments in the Western world were galvanised by the “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”) slogan after the shooting at the office of the ill-famous sleazy French magazine in Paris in 2015 by Muslim extremists, which ended in twelve of its staff members being killed.

The year 2020 will be remembered as not just the year of the pandemic, but also for the experienced human-induced climate change impacts,

This February, Bangladesh received the endorsement of the United Nations Committee for Development Policy (UNCDP) regarding its final timeline for exiting the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) group. Bangladesh is now scheduled to leave the LDC category in 2026.

Eight years ago, in May, a large crowd staged a sit-in at Gezi Park, next to Taksim Square, Istanbul’s bustling public plaza in the downtown of its European side.

Israeli bombardment of the besieged Gaza strip continues.

The pandemic has pointed out the need for placing the youth issues at the centre stage of policy discourse.

Last week, I wrote in this daily about the need for Bangladesh to take a “whole of society” approach to international diplomacy on tackling climate change globally, rather than depending on the annual Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which meets only once a year for two weeks.

As the government rolls out a financial assistance scheme in the country to support the poor in the face of the economic fallout of the pandemic, the urban poor are finding themselves in a tight spot.

We are seeing a growing number of brands, retailers and manufacturers setting climate targets at present. In many cases they are establishing science-based targets aimed at limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

A breath of fresh air: the University Grants Commission (UGC) has decided to allow public universities to hold online examinations.

About the just-concluded West Bengal assembly elections, there are three things to celebrate and one to be worried about.

It would have gone unnoticed as another suicide of a heart-broken young woman, a forgettable statistic among the thousands of desperate individuals taking their own lives to escape some harsh reality or the other.

One can argue that the issue of tackling climate change in Bangladesh has already achieved a whole-of-government approach, and is also rapidly moving towards a whole-of-society approach. However, our international diplomacy on tackling climate change also needs to develop both approaches.