The gory killings of four national leaders by misguided soldiers inside Dhaka Central Jail in the early hours of November 3, 1975, remain an indelible shame on the national psyche.

I knew Faisal Arefin Dipan since 2006 when he presided over the first gathering of the free thinking bloggers who write in Bangla.

One after another, our citizens are being killed, but we are yet to see a proactive approach from the government.

Siegfried O. Wolf, a professor of political science at the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg, said that foreign intelligence agencies did withhold sensitive information from Bangladesh, fearing that it could be misused. The country is in the grip of extreme political polarization, he said, and there is factionalism and rivalry among security agencies.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the brutal killings and the lack of progress in investigation of these attacks. Impunity for targeted attacks and murders of bloggers and journalists fosters an environment in which violent groups are strengthened

Sadly neither the USDP nor NLD has chosen Muslim candidates to contest, though Myanmar has over five million Muslims. Rohingyas are automatically disenfranchised as they are not considered citizens of the country. It will be a Muslim-free election.

While police officers are, and should continue to be, held personally responsible for their actions, considerable responsibility rests with the police department and the government to ensure that sound, effective system exists for misconduct by individual officers to be reported, investigated, and dealt with fairly.

What is evidently cynical and self-gratifying in the so-called apology are in defence of the West's periodic invasions of countries in the Third World since the end of World War II. Blair's blaming the so-called “faulty intelligence” for the 2003 Iraq invasion is not only a flimsy fig leaf, ominously, it is also an attempt to defend the ongoing Western involvement in Syria in the name of saving innocent lives from Assad's military.

On October 13, 15-year-old Kabita Das, a class-X student of Bijoy Sarani High School, was stabbed to death when she came out of school on a lunch break.

And now the Amnesty International (AI), the watchdog body for world-wide human rights has come up with a statement on its website under the title Bangladesh...

The operative words are extremism and terrorism; so what's in a name, terrorism is terrorism. The threats have always been there and to be fair to ourselves some of the major terrorist acts have not seen handing out of convictions to the perpetrators.

Muscle flexing is dishonesty because it's coercion. Nepotism is dishonesty because it's discrimination. Election rigging is dishonesty because it's manipulation. Bribery is dishonesty because it's perversion. When all of these phenomena persist in a society or a country, how can its citizens be honest?

HOW soon has Geeta, a deaf and dumb girl, disappeared from newspaper columns and television networks is not surprising.

It is not improbable that the investigation on exports from Bangladesh and Nepal has been triggered not by unfair trade practices of exporters but by their ability to compete efficiently.

Plenty of things need to happen in the world and in this country, like putting a stop to invading countries for oil, reducing inequality and establishing the rule of law. Can poetry make that happen?

They are the great many who simply ignore what motivates Putin's armed diplomacy (and not just in Syria): the desire to exact revenge on those who, in his eyes, were responsible for the Soviet Union's downfall.

The quick 'acknowledgment' of the killings by the IS, the method of which does not fit the IS footprint, raises doubts about the veracity of the post. However, let the IS issue not be a red herring.

However, what is still to be agreed upon is how the $50 billion for adaptation is to be delivered with the GCF being unable to deliver any money yet, and in an even more troubling move, are offering loans instead of grants to vulnerable developing countries for adaptation projects.

We cannot and will not shy away just because some boro bhai (elder borther) somewhere thought killing an innocent Italian national would set Bangladesh off its course.

On October 12, the cabinet approved the drafts of five laws on local governments which will allow registered political parties to nominate candidates in the local body elections.