In 2007, I was working in Nagasaki, Japan, during my college summer break. My team traveled around the prefecture, teaching English to adorable Japanese school children of various ages. In between, we got to enjoy breaks, and stay with host families so we could live like the locals.

As a small farmer, Shyamol's life was never easy. In his 10-decimal land in Rajshahi's Durgapur village under Godagari upazila, Shyamol used to grow rice. Like many other farmers of his village, he inherited that land and his profession from his ancestors. With the crop, he could hardly meet the expenditures of his family of six—his wife, elderly mother and three children. He also had to pay instalments of his debt which he had to take for buying seeds,

The Korean War began on June 25, 1950 and is “technically” still ongoing in the absence of a validated peace treaty—although, the fighting was ended with the signing of an armistice by North Korea, China and the US (South Korea was not a signatory) on July 27, 1953.

Sadia (her name and some others in this article have been changed), 24, while preparing for her upcoming wedding was also worrying about something else—what form of birth control to use. She had been warned by her aunt against using oral contraceptive pills because of the side-effects—that she would gain weight, experience hot flashes. Sadia herself was particularly worried about the hormonal changes due to the pill. Ahead of her wedding, she chose instead to stock up on emergency pills.

Farah Sharmin, an HSC student at Viqarunnisa Noon School and College, escaped an attempted rape while on a journey with her mother from Abdullahpur to Rampura on a Shuprobh at Paribahan vehicle in the evening. As the bus neared Rampura and passengers thinned out, Sharmin and her mother were left alone with some boys sitting at the back.

Doyasona Chakma and Monti Chakma returned just as mysteriously as they disappeared. The two women, both of whom are core elected members of the Hill Women's Federation, were dropped off by their abductors after a month of being held captive.

Recently, an alarming news was published in the media that a coal-loaded cargo vessel has been sunk in the Pashur river very near the Sundarbans area. This is the fourth time a water vessel has gone down in the area, which regularly cause serious environmental loss to the mangrove forest. The Sundarbans are the largest natural barrier protecting the people of the southern part of our country from many natural

Her Facebook inbox is now flooded with rape threats. One sender called her a pig and said she should've been raped when she was still a baby in her mother's lap. Another, a Bangladesh Chhatra League member of Sreepur named Shajib Hassan, insinuated that she should sell herself to men. Yet another BCL man from Sylhet called Abu Taher Juned asked her whether she would have sex with him for Tk 200-250. A Qatar-based BCL man called Syed Shupon Augustia Mizan threatened to rape her mother. A Jubo League member from Companiganj called Main Uddin Ujjol threatened to rape her.

This is in reference to a write-up on "Is social media inciting violence in Myanmar?" by Maliha Khan published in Star Weekend on April 13 which explained the controversial role of Facebook in ethnic cleansing atrocities committed against the Rohingya by Myanmar security forces and ultra-nationalist Buddhist communities.

Neat rows of red-brick buildings, bathed in brilliant sunlight, stretched out under an azure sky. The carefully manicured grounds, and the forest beyond, were a lush green. One could be forgiven for mistaking it for a well-run summer camp. It certainly did not look anything like what had been portrayed in Schindler's List or the myriad of Holocaust literature. Even the wrought-iron sign above the gates reading

“Am I a suspect?” I ask the police detective as he directs me to the chair on his right. “No, at this stage we have no suspects and no one has been charged. However, as part of the investigation, we have to talk to the guys who work at the site and run the necessary background checks.”

Organiser: Retired Armed Forces Officers' Welfare Association (Raowa)

Architect Tanzim Hasan Salim rose to mainstream prominence when he jointly won the design competition for the new Liberation War Museum. But what is lesser known to the public is the demanding creative and emotional labour that he put into executing such a monumental project. His solo exhibition at Kala Kendra entitled “Drawing and Thinking, Thinking and Drawing-2” displays to the public the phases of

April 20, 2018—The space in front of Rana Plaza is unrecognisable. The tiny makeshift shops that dot the area are no longer there—like every year, the police have cleared them out ahead of April 24. Instead, there are five bright floral-printed hand-stitched quilts made of old saris draped across the plot that once used to house four factories.

Hssan Ali appeared at Tangail Forest Court on January 4, 2018 to take bail in a 'forest case' (no. 405) that was filed in 1998 for felling of trees. He had been charged in absentia on December 27, 2017. The court issued a warrant of arrest. On January 4, he secured a bail to stay out of jail.

It's 11 am. Mosammat Ayesha rushes to the classroom of grade four to take attendance. After the roll call, she asks the students to open their English grammar book and go through a grammar lesson. While the students fumble through their books, Ayesha quickly moves to the classroom of grade five. There, she again takes the attendance and asks the students to open their mathematics books. Instructing them to solve some arithmetic problems, she returns to the classroom of grade four to help students with grammar lessons.

The recent quota reform protests took place as much on the streets of Dhaka as it did online, particularly on Facebook. Pitched battles in the middle of the night resulted as people responded to updates in real time. Events at the University of Dhaka (DU) led to uproar spreading to other universities in the city and other major cities of the country, where the youth took up protests in solidarity as well as a shared demand that the quota system, which reserves

She was a quiet person who spoke slowly but assuredly. In my childhood whenever I visited old Dhaka to see this Nanu (sister of my own grandmother), she mostly sat on a huge palonko (old style bed) and ate paan.

Reflections on rural life have always been intrinsic to the music, art and literature of Bangladesh. Peasant women have remained a subject of interest for many artists. The first generation of modern Bangladeshi artists—SM Sultan (1923-1994), Zainul Abedin (1914-1976) and Quamrul Hassan (1921-1988)—endeavoured to depict the lives of Bangladesh's working-class rural women in their own distinct ways. While Abedin and Hassan portray peasant

Five years ago, over 1,100 garment workers lost their lives and hundreds became permanently disabled. The collapse of Rana Plaza, the deadliest disaster in the global garment industry, shook the world, revealing that low-price Bangladeshi garments came at a tremendous cost—workers' lives. At the time, many promises were made by all relevant stakeholders to ensure the rights and safety of the garment workers in Bangladesh and reform the RMG sector.