In the last few weeks, the world has been having to deal with the double emergency of the pandemic as well as climate change, while Bangladesh and West Bengal had to deal with a triple emergency, with super cyclone Amphan hitting us quite badly.

The building of trust, meaningful relationships between manufacturers and customers in the global apparel industry has played a vital role in the continuing success of the sector.

While the world grapples to contain the spread of the coronavirus, a different breed of pesky pestilence is threatening the food security of many regions, including some parts of Asia—locusts!

The budget for fiscal year (FY) 2021 is going to be presented in the backdrop of a situation which was previously not experienced in the history of Bangladesh.

His visiting card had two office addresses: one in Scotland and the other in Estonia. There was nothing wrong with it, but the architect who just shared his card explained the oddity.

It is hard not to notice the frozen posture of BUET engineer MD Delwoar Hossain’s murdered body on the bank of the Turag river.

China and South Korea were the early frontlines in our pitched battle against Covid-19. Both countries had taken the hardest hit during the initial phase of the outbreak, but both were quick to rebound from the initial shock of it and soon cornered the mortal enemy with the swift stroke of their digital weapons.

Once the Covid-19 pandemic is under control, and the world economy is back on its tracks, the status and fate of the 2030 Agenda, also known as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), needs to be reassessed.

During a Joe Rogan podcast a year ago, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla Inc., audaciously said that many human beings alive today have already become “cyborgs”.

Remember getting caught by your parents for trying out roadside pickles or tawdry coloured crunchy ice outside your school?

The current Covid-19 pandemic emergency is combining with the climate change emergency as we speak, and as we tackle the first, we also need to tackle the second at the same time.

Economic recovery following the coronavirus lockdown will require massive government intervention and tons of money.

Increasing allocation for the health sector is a common and justified demand in Bangladesh. With an allocation of 0.9 percent of gross domestic product and less than five percent of total budget expenditure the country has very little healthcare investment for its citizens.

I was a young lecturer when private universities appeared for the first time in the higher education scene of Bangladesh. I remember when one of my colleagues left us to join a pioneer private university as a full time faculty, we at the department felt that he had sold his soul to money, deciding to work under a corporate system. The same thing happened when one of my teachers left for a financially lucrative BCS job.

In America, one of the politically charged reactions to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has been the denigration of urban population density.

Dr Saadat Husain, former chairman of Bangladesh Public Service Commission, passed away on April 22, 2020.

I had written in a previous column about the fact that the next Conference of Parties (COP26) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was to have been held in November 2020 in Glasgow, Scotland with the United Kingdom as COP26 President, had to be postponed to 2021 due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.

The world watched in paralysed horror as oil prices plummeted to below zero: the price of West Texas Intermediate oil grade went negative to –USD 37.63 per barrel (pb), for the first time in history. The shock of the collapse was intense, leading to traders naming the day “Black Monday”.

The passing of National Professor Jamilur Reza Choudhury marks the sudden end of the extraordinary journey of a man who was venerated by thousands of his direct students at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet), Brac University and University of Asia Pacific as well as thousands more, who came in touch with him through his professional and pro-bono engagements in diverse fields, to whom he was a quintessential teacher, mentor and philosopher-guide.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic we have begun to analyse, forecast and speculate the impact on economies, societies, political systems, governance mechanisms, and on many more areas.