At 11am on September 11, 2001 the Bush administration had already declared that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

It is one of the biggest paradoxes of present time — the contradiction of having the most remarkable advancements in technology with the most regressive developments in human civilisation.

The issue of loss and damage from climate change has been a politically sensitive topic in the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as developed countries see it as opening the way for claiming compensation from them based on their liability.

Air pollution in big cities of Bangladesh, particularly Dhaka and Chittagong, is an ongoing concern for all. Only recently, WHO ranked Dhaka's air quality as the third worst, behind New Delhi and Cairo, in a study of megacities with a population of 14 million or more.

Very often, we cherry pick what we call discrimination or bias and launch movements. Very often, we voice our views and receive backlashes. Thus, many of us stay on the fence, not choose sides and maintain our general acceptable levels of civic sanity. That is what we do.

It seems to be the fashion these days to set up regional forums to enhance economic cooperation among countries and raise the standard of living of the common man. But the time has come to do some serious introspection and evaluate what these regional organisations have achieved.

The recently published Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) survey report 2017 says that law enforcement agencies were the most corrupt among 18 departments and sectors involved in providing services to households.

The Bangladesh Election Commission (BEC) has successfully prompted an unnecessary debate just four months ahead of the national

The latest gossip in Washington, DC, the US capital these days is “Will they or won't they?” I am referring to the possible Trump-Putin

According to the Financial Times (US), the USD 3.7 billion Padma Rail link, for which Beijing has provided more than USD 3 billion, will serve as “a physical reminder of China's growing presence” in Bangladesh.

The law enforcing agencies have a lot to answer for the incidences of abduction and disappearances, a phenomenon that has assumed alarming regularity. Reportedly, there are over 300 victims of enforced disappearances who remain traceless. Predictably, the families point fingers at the law enforcing agencies—the manner in which they were picked up, as described by the families, leaves very little to the imagination as to the likely identity of the abductors.

Australia got a new prime minister on August 24, 2018. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull lost his job to Scott Morrison in a mutiny for leadership within the Liberal Party. Morrison is the sixth prime minister since 2007. None of the five previous prime ministers have been able to complete their full three-year term in office in the last 11 years.

Ignorance and defiance in combination with irresponsibility can be disastrous, more so if wrongdoers can get away with murder with a little help from delinquent sections of the state machinery.

Over the coming decades, at the global level as well as in Bangladesh we will be faced with two major challenges: tackling poverty and climate change. Although at first glance the two issues may not seem to be linked, I will argue that we cannot tackle either without also tackling the other at the same time. This is equally true for both the global and the national level, especially for poor countries like Bangladesh.

Many moons ago, the world believed in philosophy, religion and politics. Not wholly true anymore. We see acute reversals on a regular basis. We have more heroes falling from grace every day—more than ever before.

Today, I choose to address an issue that has generated years of soul-searching resulting in an inner struggle to draw the line between right and wrong.

As we moved upriver on a ferry along Krems, a tributary of the Danube, small villages with surrounding hillsides and cornfields fall away like picturesque view-cards.

True democra-cies around the world seem to be on the decline. Electoral democracies are increasingly becoming fraught with all kinds of unfair means.

The Rohingyas who moved to Bangladesh reached an important milestone on August 25, 2018. The first anniversary of the exodus from their homeland in Myanmar was observed with solemnity in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and everywhere that the Rohingya diaspora have now spread out to.

The dire warning of Unicef about the Rohingya children refugees in the camps in Bangladesh that they may become a “lost generation” warrants urgent and serious attention of the Bangladeshi policymakers and world leaders.