The truth is that taking a break from the routine activities frees our mind to perceive the sights and sounds that are often hidden by the noises in the system. Thank God that Rabindranath Tagore was not fixated on “doing”.

I was shocked to see Pablo. Well, if you know him as Picasso, that's your shortcoming, rather your admittance of not being on first names with perhaps the world's most multi-talented painter.

Democracy means much more than quinquennial elections to the parliament. For a country whose raison d'être has been democracy, the decay of democratic culture is alarming.

What remains a concern however is whether the local people living in the Bagda-growing areas have really benefited as they can no longer grow rice and even other vegetation is being decimated by salinity intrusion.

It has been a highly debated issue and the business community was unhappy from the beginning. They felt that it would be a pressure on them and reduce their profitability. Consumers were confused and apprehensive. They felt that any additional tax would be passed on to them as always and raise their cost of living.

Without delving into the mystery of the virtue we call courage, we may perhaps say that courage is ubiquitous and is widely talked about and universally held in high regard.

Tuesday's verdict by a special court in Dhaka, which sentenced Nawrin Jahan Nodi to life imprisonment for torturing an 11-year-old domestic help, Aduri, and dumping her into a dustbin assuming she was dead, should give us immense satisfaction.

The crisis that began in the Gulf on June 5, 2017 does not seem to be ebbing. In the meantime there have been some twists and turns in this sordid episode.

These days, one has to keep all the “right” answers ready for questions one has no answers to.

Recently, I watched a TV news clip of protesters in the United States demonstrating against the Health Care Bill that, if passed by the Senate, would deprive millions of basic medical benefits. What struck me most was the image of a young protester in a wheelchair struggling with the security guards trying to forcefully evict her.

When I “talk back” (bell hooks, 1989) at institutional and personal oppression I am labelled an angry woman. As if my anger is not just. Justified.

Very recently, a think tank in association with electronic media arranged an animated discussion under the title “Political process and participatory election”, in a roundtable format at a local hotel.

It is the considered opinion of scholars and observers of terrorism and extremism that the ISIL capture of Mosul was the most significant...

Bangladesh and the Marshall Islands are jointly responsible for developing the partnership strategy for the V20 and a delegation from the Marshall Islands is expected in Dhaka soon to hold bilateral talks with Bangladesh to develop the plan of action for the V20 countries.

Most of us say “I'm sorry” many times a day for a host of trivial affronts—accidentally bumping into someone or sneezing during a business meeting. These apologies are easy and usually readily accepted. Apologies needed to right wrongful words, acts or inactions, on the other hand, are harder to come by. Similarly, when it comes to nations saying the S word, examples are in short supply.

Narendra Modi's recent visit to Israel garnered massive media attention and debate as it was the first time a sitting Indian Prime Minister visited the Jewish State. But what some of the coverage did was portray the visit as an indication of a tectonic shift happening in Indian policy towards the Israel-Palestine issue. This, however, is simply not true, as India, since establishing formal diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, has had excellent and rapidly growing economic and security relations with Israel which was intentionally left unpublicised, up until now.

This year the annual G20 summit was held in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7-8. Nineteen leaders of the world's richest nations and emerging economies, representing 85 percent of the world's gross domestic product (GDP), 80 percent of world trade and two-thirds of the world population, met with the aim to stabilise the global economic and financial infrastructures. With the European Union attending the summit, the group became G20. Leaders of 7 other countries were also invited as guests.

This is a city where even the most important people fall victim of the Rip Van Winkle syndrome. They lie in the blissful sleep of negligence and apathy while their city's vitality, strength and resilience are washed away in the dirty waters.

The actual and potential damage caused by religious militancy or the so-called 'Islamist violence' can no longer be brushed aside in our parlance. Owing to factors both internal and external, this writer believes that even the pragmatic objective of marginalising religious militancy would actually be an awesome task, not to speak of eliminating religiously motivated violence. The reasons for such a view are grounded in reality.

The objectives of the LUCCC are to implement Article 11 of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change which focuses on the need to develop in-country capacity-building systems in each and every country to enable them all to tackle climate change by 2030.