United Nations and the “i” word
Shashi Tharoor, my former boss at the United Nations, was - and perhaps still is - a fiery defender of the United Nations. He was once asked by a BBC interviewer how did the UN feel about the “i” word, i for irrelevant? Mr. Tharoor, without missing a heartbeat, replied, “Oh, I think the 'i' word for us is actually 'indispensable.'”
7 September 2016, 18:00 PM
A double murder in New York
There was nothing distinctive about Maulana Alauddin Akonji and his associate Tara Uddin, except their Islamic garb and flowing beard.
21 August 2016, 18:00 PM
Why Donald Trump scares me
Donald Trump has variously been described as “dangerous,” “fraud,” “unhinged,” “racist,” “mentally unbalanced” and “outright nuts.” Vanity Fair magazine's Mark Bowden summed up these epithets in one sentence in a slightly more charitable manner:
7 August 2016, 18:00 PM
Remembering Sydney Schanberg
Bangladesh's war of independence had many unlikely heroes, some of whom lived outside of Bangladesh and had no formal connection with the country and its people. Sydney Schanberg, an American journalist working for The New York Times (NYT), was one of them.
27 July 2016, 18:00 PM
What more could we have done?
My plane touched down at Dhaka airport at about the time when the joint security operation against terrorists at Gulshan's Holey
18 July 2016, 18:00 PM
The Orlando massacre and the “Muslim factor”
When I first saw the news flash scrolling at the bottom of my TV screen, my first thought was, please God, not another Muslim!
15 June 2016, 18:00 PM
Ali and the power of dissent
On April 28, 1967, Muhammad Ali, just 25 years of age, stood at the Houston Military Recruiting Office and said he won’t go to Vietnam. “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Vietcong, no Vietcong ever called me nigger,” he said and defiantly courted arrest.
8 June 2016, 09:30 AM
Silent death, unrecognised
Wednesday, May 4, was a great day for eight-year-old Mari Copeny. At her request, President Obama visited Flint, her home town in Michigan.
9 May 2016, 18:00 PM
Enabling minority voices
Mahatma Gandhi had once said, to judge how civilised a nation is, just look at how it treats its own minorities. Going by this yardstick, Bangladesh does not make a passing grade.
10 April 2016, 18:00 PM
1971: Our war, their battles
In 1971, during Bangladesh's Liberation War, much of the action was confined to the territory of Bangladesh, but there were battles being fought in locations many oceans away.
25 March 2016, 18:00 PM
The Face of New Fascism
I always thought of Donald Trump as a poor entertainer with bad hair and an over sprayed tan. He still is, but he is also the presumptive Republican nominee and could very well end up as the next president of the United States. He is also the face of 21st-century fascism, a phenomenon largely fueled by demographic anxieties of white America and nearly eight years of a black President.
12 March 2016, 18:00 PM