The leaders of 193 countries adopted the Sustainable Development Goals on September 25, 2015 following a long spell of extensive discussions and debates.

The recent decision by the Election Commission to introduce Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) has raised a lot of eyebrows. At the outset, it must be pointed out that EVMs are nothing new—they have been in use in many countries around the world for nearly two decades, and even in our country, EVMs have been used in local elections for several years now.

A tennis umpire worldwide commences a game uttering what sounds like “Love all”. To the French, it means “l'oeuf” (pronounced love),

How long will women working the same job continue to earn less, sometimes 50 percent less, than men? And when do we expect this gap to go away?

President Donald Trump said during his inaugural speech: “From this day forward, it's going to be only America First!”

If one asks owners or chief executives of companies and organisations to single out one difficulty that they face, a chorus of voices will respond in unison: lack of skilled human resources.

On the face of it everything looks set for the upcoming general election. The quinquennial event, which is sometimes a put-on to remind us that we are living under a democratic dispensation, is likely to be held at the end of December.

Children should not speak unless spoken to. The old adage has come back to haunt us again. Or perhaps it never went away at all—at least not in our cultural context.

Bangladesh has a strong tradition of medium term planning through the periodic Five Year Plans, of which we are now in the 7th Plan. At the same time, the country has a large number of professional planners both within the Planning Commission as well as embedded within the Planning Department of every ministry who help develop the sectoral plans for each ministry.

While the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, warned the Syrian and Russian governments to stand down from attacking Idlib—the last stronghold of the armed Syrian opposition—as that may lead to a possible “bloodbath”, the term itself brought to mind chapter 10 of the book The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire.

As the US celebrated Labour Day on September 3, millions of the working majority were wondering what happened to the powerful labour unions or the promise of rising wages in a growing economy.

Years ago, when I first migrated to the United States, I was asked to read Robert Ringer's Winning through Intimidation as part of my acculturation process.

China has never been at ease with its religious minorities—be they Buddhists, Muslims, Christians or those practicing the religio-philosophical traditions of Confucianism and Taoism.

That democratic values and democratic institutions are in crisis all around the world is no longer a revelation; casual observation of the current global scene is enough to bear this out.

Green is “the colour of nature and health,” according to Jacob Olesen, a Dane lover of colours.

One of the benefits of living in this beautiful land of ours is that one often gets transported, in one's fancy, to the land of the diamond king, or like Alice, to Wonderland.

Prime Minister Theresa May recently was on a three-nation tour of Africa. Her first stop was South Africa, the first by a British prime minister since 2011. She then went on to Nigeria and Kenya, becoming the first British PM to visit the East African country in over 30 years.

In spite of Trump calling Bob Woodward, the author of the book Fear, a liar; in spite of a world where winners have boos raining on them instead of ovation, like in the case of Naomi Osaka...

Going overboard for even acquaintances, nationalism for the appropriate cause and at the right time, united in the face of any natural calamity, and indulging in innocent gossiping (read: harmless backbiting) are some of the finer points of a native Bangladeshi.

In the past twelve months or so, I have been very fortunate to be able to visit many corners of Bangladesh by road. I wanted to experience what seemed like a Bangladesh in transition, particularly how economic development was changing the country's geography.