Thirty-nine migrants seeking a better life perished in a refrigerated van, and their bodies were found in an industrial site about 25 miles east of central London.

Blockchain technology has been all the rage of late from Azkaban to Zurich, from magical realms to the real world.

November 3 shall remain as one of the most ignominious day in the annals of Bangladesh’s political history because on this day in 1975, four national leaders, undoubtedly some of the brilliant minds in our body politic, were most brutally murdered while in custody.

With mass protests breaking out across a number of world capitals, it would seem the last few months have been unkind to the world. People in Sudan, Algeria, Hong Kong, Egypt and more recently in Iraq, Chile and Lebanon, have been forced to take to the streets seeking justice and equality, and respite from corrupt governing systems.

A bit more about “special” rooms from my column a few weeks ago, when Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) was in the news for the wrong reasons. It’s room 429, Nazrul Islam Hall.

In a suburb of Damascus called Douma, that had been occupied by the militant group Jaysh al-Islam, the 2018 Syrian chemical attack that made headlines all over the world allegedly took place on April 7—right as Syrian forces were moving in to retake the area. The western media unequivocally accused the Syrian government of dropping gas cylinders on “moderate rebels” (thus anointing members of Jaysh al-Islam as “moderates”) and killing at least 43 people. Prompting US, France and Britain to launch a barrage of cruise missiles a week later against the Syrian government.

There is this image which pops up here and there in many pedagogical conferences or academic sessions: a teacher deciding on a standardised test for a bunch of animals involving a wolf, a seal, a fish, a penguin, an elephant, a monkey and a bird. For a fair selection, the teacher declares that everyone must take the same exam of climbing a tree. Ignoring the possible danger of comparing our students with animals, one doesn’t need to be a genius to see the absurdity of such a testing system.

Bangladesh is facing two global megatrends with significant national repercussions. The first is the rapidly urbanising world we live in, where half the global population is

I have long wondered why cities in Bangladesh don’t have vibrant, dedicated public places or squares, in the sense of Taksim Square in Istanbul, Trafalgar Square in London,

1974. BUET Elections. The position of Mujibbadi Chhatra League was not at all rosy. The major threat was the student wing of Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD), drawing young people in droves by its patent ‘Scientific Socialism’. Another front was Chhatra Union, popular among cultural activists.

The threat of climate change is growing more real and more urgent by the day. According to Climate Nexus, a rise in temperature by 1.5 percent can lead to sea-level rise of 48cm...

Bangla-desh has expressed its interest to participate in next year’s SDG voluntary national review (VNR) which will be placed before the UN in July 2020.

In this newspaper it has been editorially observed that “circumstantial evidences gathered so far leave no doubt in our mind that the Bhola incident did not happen, i

Hats off to the Ministry of Public Administration for taking the bold step of introducing paternity leave. Better be clear though about the cap on the number of such leaves, else we will have a population explosion 2.0.

The recent “deal” reached between Turkish President Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, to end Turkish operation in northeast Syria, on October 22, has been causing quite a stir.

Humanity has made a “tragic, desperate mess” of the planet, said Sir David Attenborough, the 93-year-old naturalist and documentary filmmaker on announcing his new series of documentaries called “Seven Worlds, One Planet” due to be broadcast on the BBC.

The problem of high un-employment that has been sweeping across the world ever since the 2008 financial crisis is yet to be adequately resolved. And with the passage of every year, creating enough quality jobs is looking increasingly difficult globally.

Mark Twain once famously said that truth is stranger than fiction. Truth’s ability to outperform fiction is limitless, not just in terms of strangeness, but also in the most outrageous, disgusting and horrifying way conceivable.

In awarding the Nobel Prize in literature to Peter Handke, the award committee said, “it’s not the academy’s mandate to balance literary quality against political considerations.” We need to talk about this.

When we read how indivi-duals accused of a crime—drug peddling, terrorism or murder—get shot during a gun fight between their cohorts and the law enforcers we shrug it off without a bat of an eyelid. We know that these “gunfights”, “shootouts” or “encounters” are euphemisms for extrajudicial killing.