Eresh Omar Jamal

As the new year begins without us getting any closer to seeing an end to corruption, irregularities and mismanagement in the banking sector amidst an embarrassing lack ...

At the end of 2016, I wrote an article for The Daily Star titled “The biggest underreported stories of 2016”.

ALTHOUGH tragic, it is understandable why the youth of today, especially those unacquainted with history, find it so difficult to comprehend fully the glorious past of Bangladesh's youth (student) politics.

Given all of this, is it still unclear to see why the banking sector is in such disarray?

In a study conducted by three eminent Dhaka University professors, frustration, loneliness, drug addiction, lack of proper vision and guidance, and at times affluence were identified as major drivers of violent extremism among university students.

Corruption is pervasive in Bangladesh, a key challenge against development and social transformation. Corruption is so deep and wide at both micro and micro levels that it threatens to become a way of life.

The Rohingya crisis has been tough on Bangladesh. First, because of the sheer scale of the influx from Myanmar and its continuity and second because Bangladesh has had to witness them from up close which always makes it more difficult.

Just as news started to come out that the Syrian Arab Army was on the verge of liberating the city of Abu Kamal, destroying the last Islamic State stronghold in Syria, rekindling hope that the region may yet see some semblance of stability...

Experts and economists, on the other hand, said that Bangladesh needed to increase investment to USD 12.5 billion for infrastructure development from the existing annual spending of USD 3.5 billion to gain any significant benefit from regional and international connectivity.

A government survey report made public on October 17 confirmed what has been suspected for some time now; that the poor's share in the national income decreased in the past six years, while the richer segment of the population's increased.

Iqbal Mahmood, chairman of the Anti-Corruption Commission, in an interview with Eresh Omar Jamal of The Daily Star, talks about corruption in the country and how the ACC and the society at large can fight against it.

In her address to the 72nd United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said, “I have come here with a heavy heart...after seeing the hungry, distressed and desperate Rohingyas from Myanmar, who took shelter in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.”

A report titled “World Food Security and Nutrition Situation-2017”, brought out jointly by a number of UN organisations, estimates that some 25 million Bangladeshis, mostly women and children, suffer from malnutrition.

On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces was on duty in charge of an early warning radar system at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow.

“Bangladesh is a disaster-prone country due to its geographical location. So, we've to live with the phenomenon with necessary plans to keep the extent of damages and loss of lives to a minimum during any disaster.”

Sixteen years after a series of coordinated terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda (as the story goes) shook the United States and the world, the number of questions-raised-left-unanswered has perhaps never been any higher.

That "political will", however, is not very likely to just automatically emerge from within the government on its own, as is often the case.

in order to properly regulate our system of democracy through the concept of “checks and balances,” citizens also have the complete right, and responsibility even, to demand from the government, transparency and accountability to the fullest. It is about time that the citizens of this country exercised that right, and took responsibility, for establishing the practice of good governance.

Having dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima, Brigadier-General Paul Warfield Tibbets Junior—pilot of the first plane (Enola Gay) to drop the atomic bomb—said to have blinked from the flash behind his goggles. When he opened his eyes to look down, what he saw, he described as “a peep into hell.”

"If in the past India lacked capital, a developed manufacturing sector and skilled manufacturing workers, the foreign manufacturing inflow is now helping India address the problem, backing up the government's 'Make in India' initiative."