A small, upmarket café housed in what may seem to be a refitted basement is the setting for my interview with Martin Kämpchen, the German author, Tagore translator and journalist.

Desperate times require desperate measures. The Road Transport Act 2018 was endorsed by the Cabinet Division on August 6, 2018 on the heels of the nationwide student protest that

Arms trade is big business, governed by its own set of conventions. These transactions are triggered by conflicts and peacekeeping; for violence and security—depending on who the buyer is. And global arms sale has reached alarming levels in recent years—highest since the end of the Cold War.

You have to hand it to them—rain, hail or storm, Chhatra League manages to hog the headlines. The latest has been an attack on protesting students at JU who were demanding the

At a public place in the afterlife, Louis Kahn ran into Le Corbusier. The Franco-Swiss architect was pleased to see the esoteric architect/guru from Philadelphia.

Thirty-nine migrants seeking a better life perished in a refrigerated van, and their bodies were found in an industrial site about 25 miles east of central London.

Blockchain technology has been all the rage of late from Azkaban to Zurich, from magical realms to the real world.

November 3 shall remain as one of the most ignominious day in the annals of Bangladesh’s political history because on this day in 1975, four national leaders, undoubtedly some of the brilliant minds in our body politic, were most brutally murdered while in custody.

With mass protests breaking out across a number of world capitals, it would seem the last few months have been unkind to the world. People in Sudan, Algeria, Hong Kong, Egypt and more recently in Iraq, Chile and Lebanon, have been forced to take to the streets seeking justice and equality, and respite from corrupt governing systems.

A bit more about “special” rooms from my column a few weeks ago, when Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) was in the news for the wrong reasons. It’s room 429, Nazrul Islam Hall.

In a suburb of Damascus called Douma, that had been occupied by the militant group Jaysh al-Islam, the 2018 Syrian chemical attack that made headlines all over the world allegedly took place on April 7—right as Syrian forces were moving in to retake the area. The western media unequivocally accused the Syrian government of dropping gas cylinders on “moderate rebels” (thus anointing members of Jaysh al-Islam as “moderates”) and killing at least 43 people. Prompting US, France and Britain to launch a barrage of cruise missiles a week later against the Syrian government.

There is this image which pops up here and there in many pedagogical conferences or academic sessions: a teacher deciding on a standardised test for a bunch of animals involving a wolf, a seal, a fish, a penguin, an elephant, a monkey and a bird. For a fair selection, the teacher declares that everyone must take the same exam of climbing a tree. Ignoring the possible danger of comparing our students with animals, one doesn’t need to be a genius to see the absurdity of such a testing system.

Bangladesh is facing two global megatrends with significant national repercussions. The first is the rapidly urbanising world we live in, where half the global population is

I have long wondered why cities in Bangladesh don’t have vibrant, dedicated public places or squares, in the sense of Taksim Square in Istanbul, Trafalgar Square in London,

1974. BUET Elections. The position of Mujibbadi Chhatra League was not at all rosy. The major threat was the student wing of Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD), drawing young people in droves by its patent ‘Scientific Socialism’. Another front was Chhatra Union, popular among cultural activists.

The threat of climate change is growing more real and more urgent by the day. According to Climate Nexus, a rise in temperature by 1.5 percent can lead to sea-level rise of 48cm...

Bangla-desh has expressed its interest to participate in next year’s SDG voluntary national review (VNR) which will be placed before the UN in July 2020.

In this newspaper it has been editorially observed that “circumstantial evidences gathered so far leave no doubt in our mind that the Bhola incident did not happen, i

Hats off to the Ministry of Public Administration for taking the bold step of introducing paternity leave. Better be clear though about the cap on the number of such leaves, else we will have a population explosion 2.0.

The recent “deal” reached between Turkish President Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, to end Turkish operation in northeast Syria, on October 22, has been causing quite a stir.