The 2021 West Bengal assembly polls have been a tussle for power between the centre and the state government.

In the early hours of Monday morning, when most of us were tucked comfortably in our beds, eight-year-old Meem lost her entire family after the speedboat she was on crashed and overturned in the middle of the Padma river, drowning and killing 26 passengers.

Food insecurity in Bangladesh during the pandemic is rising. Even in the best of times, millions of people in the country go hungry.

For better or worse, Bangladesh as a sourcing hub has become the global bellwether for CSR issues in apparel supply chains.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, educational institutions have been closed in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus.

On Labour Day, I am reminded of 22-year-old Jewel Hossain, who in January this year, was conducting his evening shift at a polythene factory when the machine malfunctioned and the blade ripped through him and gouged one of his eyeballs out.

One of the positive outcomes of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change back in 2015 was a pledge from the rich countries to provide USD 100 billion a year, starting from 2020, to help the poorer countries tackle climate change through both mitigation and adaptation actions.

As we face an upsurge of Covid-19 cases, and with the national lockdown being lifted, the need to prioritise effective preventive measures has never been greater.

Must we keep on making the same old mistakes? Last year during the pandemic, I wrote extensively about the issue of purchasing practices and their impact on garment supply chains and their workers.

The climate change summit of 40 world leaders, spearheaded by the US President Joe Biden during April 22-23, 2021, amidst the concern for achievability of the climate ambitions is a significant step forward.

The latest report in The Lancet, one of the most well-known international medical journals, on how Covid-19 spreads, is a real shocker.

Today marks eight years since one of the deadliest industrial disasters in modern history killed at least 1,132 workers and injured more than 2,500 others in our own backyard.

There have been changes in the way we live and the way we die. We have learned to live carefully during this time of the pandemic, yet we have been dying carelessly.

In this column and through our reports, commentaries and editorials, we have repeatedly stressed the need for accountability of all public institutions run by taxpayers’ money. Of them, the accountability of law enforcement agencies is most important.

The ongoing pandemic has caused huge economic losses for the world. In 2020, growth in South Asia contracted by 5.4 percent, which does not capture the whole story of how terribly its people have actually suffered—but it is an indicator of how the region has struggled over the last year.

Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), all governments of the nearly 200 countries that have ratified the treaty meet twice a year to review progress and make decisions about next steps.

With the assembly polls ongoing in West Bengal, the state—currently being ruled by the strong matriarch Mamata Banerjee—has turned into a battleground for Banerjee’s party Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the power at the centre, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The struggle to save lives from the killer coronavirus seems endless. The death procession looks unstoppable. Each day comes with more shocking news. The ray of hope that was coming through with the rollout of the vaccine is diminishing fast with the rising number of deaths.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit virtually all businesses—but some have been hit harder than others. Indeed, some have barely been hit at all and a lucky few have thrived during the pandemic.

As Bangladesh started a new phase of lockdown on April 14, 2021—apparently a more stringent one—the country was faced with a grim milestone. On the first day of the Bengali New Year, the country recorded 96 deaths, the highest till then, since the pandemic hit the country.