Tasneem Tayeb

Hundreds and thousands of refugees and migrants are preyed upon every year by human traffickers with false promises of a better future, a home.

Children are our most precious assets—for some, in a very literal sense. For money, for sustenance, for survival, many parents unable to bear poverty end up pushing their precious little ones into the wide open in search of subsistence. Children as young as three-four end up in the informal sector, doing menial jobs, for a tiny sum of money.

With Covid-19 bringing economic activities across nations to a halt, more and more people are being pushed into poverty. Job losses, business losses and farming losses, leading to economic stress, are pushing many to the fringes of poverty. And as families are being rendered helpless, the worst sufferers are invariably the children.

While the world grapples to contain the spread of the coronavirus, a different breed of pesky pestilence is threatening the food security of many regions, including some parts of Asia—locusts!

China and South Korea were the early frontlines in our pitched battle against Covid-19. Both countries had taken the hardest hit during the initial phase of the outbreak, but both were quick to rebound from the initial shock of it and soon cornered the mortal enemy with the swift stroke of their digital weapons.

Even a few months back, I didn’t realise that work from home on a daily basis was possible.

The world watched in paralysed horror as oil prices plummeted to below zero: the price of West Texas Intermediate oil grade went negative to –USD 37.63 per barrel (pb), for the first time in history. The shock of the collapse was intense, leading to traders naming the day “Black Monday”.

According to newspaper reports, 10 children have already died in the CHT since the outbreak began on February 26, when the first death was reported. Another 300 children have been infected.

Wars and epide-mics make the perfect bedfellows. Wars create the perfect wombs where murky diseases can gestate and then combust, wiping out entire populations as they spread around the world.

These are unprecedented times, times that call for unprecedented measures, humane measures.

With fears of the spiralling Coronavirus pandemic occupying our minds, dengue seems to have taken a backseat, especially in terms of our preparedness to fight off the disease.

The coronavirus, now declared a pandemic by WHO, has created panic around the world, and Bangladesh is no exception. As soon as the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) confirmed the first cases of coronavirus in the country on March 8,

At 92, Mahathir Mohamad, the world’s oldest serving president, came into the limelight recently, but for all the wrong reasons. On February 22, without any prior notice, Mahathir suddenly tendered his resignation as the prime minister of the country, less than two years into his tenure.

What was supposed to be the celebration of friendship between two of the largest democracies in the world—India and America—turned out to be a sideshow to a bloodbath of communal hatred, exposing the undemocratic underbelly of BJP’s India.

Turkey and the Russia-backed Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad are in a tight jostle for full control of the north-western Syrian province of Idlib. The province—the last of the four de-escalation zones agreed by Turkey, Iran and Russia in 2017, which is yet to be taken over by the Assad government—is important to all the warring actors for diverse and awkward reasons.

The five year long bloody civil war that spiralled out of control soon after it broke out in 2015, has claimed the lives of “tens and thousands” of civilians.

Activist-turned-politician Arjun Kejriwal has had smooth sailing at the recently held Delhi legislative polls, with his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) being handed a strong mandate by the Delhiwalas, winning a sweeping 62 out of 70 seats. This is his third straight term in office.

Two days after the Interna-tional Court of Justice (ICJ) approved emergency “provisional measures” asking Myanmar to stop persecution of the Rohingya in all forms— including killing, raping, and destroying homes and villages—two Rohingya women died in Rakhine State when the Myanmar army shelled a village. One of them was pregnant.

Tensions that saw a renewed escalation in the Middle East after the US unilaterally withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018, on grounds that can be at best termed flimsy and unconvincing, are only intensifying by the day.

The US assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC’s) Quds Force