Two parties are widely blamed for the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas: the Myanmar army and Aung San Suu Kyi. They stand amid the embers and ashes of torched Rohingya homes, objects of a furious global condemnation.

Philately can be a useful means of garnering revenue for the postal department and can also provide young people alternatives to engage themselves in beneficial pursuits than the ills that now surround society at large.

1994 should have been a watershed year in human history; a year to feel ashamed of humanity's failure to stop a genocide that resulted in the deaths of 800,000 mostly Tutsis in Rwanda; a year to mend the mistakes that allowed the atrocities to happen, and to build solid defence against such atrocities in the future; it should have been truly a year of re-learning the lessons from death and destruction.

The government is planning to bring the entire Dhaka city under video surveillance under an ambitious project to ensure better safety and security as well as combat crimes. The finance ministry has recently agreed to fund the Tk 5,000-crore project to be implemented by the police, after a similar scheme taken up in 2007 failed due to fund crunch, technical glitches and lack of expertise, sources said.\

The Foreign Ministry's statement, following the mixed messages coming out of Naypyidaw after the visit of Myanmar's Union Minister U Kyaw Tint Swe to Bangladesh, that it betrayed the doubtful intention of Myanmar, has said it all.

Myanmar's promise to take back the Rohingyas, who have taken refuge in Bangladesh, looks empty and seems to be a tactic to ease international pressure. This is reflected in the contents of a hasty statement put on the official website of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi hours after Myanmar Union Minister U Kyaw Zeya concluded his Dhaka visit.

Rights bodies have come up with new evidence that fires are still torching Rohingya villages in Rakhine while Myanmar military have laid landmines during attacks on villages and along the Bangladesh border. Amnesty International has assessed three new videos taken inside Rakhine as recently as Friday afternoon showing large plumes of smoke rising from Rohingya villages as well as satellite imagery with smoke visible over burnt-out structures.

“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.”

While it is encouraging to know that Bangladesh has taken diplomatic initiatives to bring the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis to the international fora, the question is whether it has devised a strategy to go forward.

Bangladesh faces an uphill challenge of providing shelter to tens of thousands of Rohingyas fleeing persecution in Myanmar's Rakhine State.

Nearly 70,000 Rohingya refugees have gathered at two newly built camps in Teknaf and Ukhia of Cox's Bazar as the old shelters in the district are already overcrowded. So far, an estimated 90,000 Rohingyas have arrived in Bangladesh in the wake of violence triggered by a Rohingya insurgent attack in Myanmar's Rakhine State on August 25.

Young homeopath Moklesur Rahaman Johnny went out of his chamber to buy medicine for his father on August 4 night last year, but he never returned. He did not just disappear, according to his wife Jesmin Nahar as she had seen him in the lockup of the Satkhira Sadar Police Station the next morning when she had gone there to ask police to find her husband.

The very fact that Myanmar has termed the recent militant attack on its security forces as being the work of “extremist Bengali insurgents” underlines the very crux of the problem.

It was only the other day, some six decades after my mother's family left Pakistan, that I learnt about how they travelled to India in the aftermath of Partition.

Justice ABM Khairul Haque has become the lone former chief justice who has strongly criticised a Supreme Court verdict to defend the

The High Court yesterday upheld the death penalty of 15 convicted persons, including three former Rab officials and expelled Awami League leader Nur Hossain, for their involvement in conspiracy, abduction and killing of seven Narayanganj men in 2014.

The clock struck 3 in the afternoon of August 21, 2004. At Sudha Sadan, the residence of Awami League President Sheikh Hasina, preparations were underway to head for Bangabandhu Avenue where the party was holding an anti-militancy rally.

Excessive rains and flooding twice in just four months have left most of the roads in a miserable state, which could make people's journey home for Eid-ul-Azha a nightmare. If rain continues and the flood situation doesn't improve shortly, the road networks will be further damaged, compounding woes of travellers. Many roads are currently under floodwater.

A butterfly's origin is in its caterpillar beginnings. Soldiering through sunlight and rain for a certain period, suddenly it comes out of its cocoon as a colourful winged creature. And we come to love the once ugly entity in its new form. Like the painful transformation of a butterfly, the artist too undergoes a similar ordeal to produce a masterpiece.

Interview with The Daily Star, 1992: On the occasion of Bangabandhu's 17th death anniversary, Sheikh Hasina talked to The Daily Star frankly about her childhood, about the way she learnt her politics and the lasting influence that her father, and crucially, her mother left on her