It was quite a sight. Viewers of television channels and readers of the dailies that carried the images of incarcerated journalist Rozina Islam were baffled at the scale of security measures taken by the state.

Land is the closest thing that we know. We cultivate it, build on it, transform it to meet our needs, commercialise it to maximise economic gain, and derive our identities from its widely varying geographic characters.

The years 1968-1969, were a tumultuous period in the political history of the state of Pakistan. My father a Bengali civil servant from East Pakistan, was an official in the then central government in Islamabad.

The ostensible reason for the recent protests was Indian PM Narendra Modi’s latest visit. The real reason was to signal that Hefajat-e-Islam (HI) under its new leadership was not the same party as it was under its former chief Shah Ahmad Shafi and his immediate followers and to announce that HI was ready to emerge as a new political force under the guise of protecting the majority faith.

Debates on any global index and ranking where a country does not perform well are common almost everywhere.

The Mro community of the Chimbuk hills is passing days in great uncertainty.

Barely a month had passed since one of us wrote about rape, scopophilia and collective rage, and barely a day since we began an intergenerational dialogue on gender, rage and violence, full of hope at the emergence of passionate and resourceful young allies, when the world dutifully punched back.

The demand was predictable. Given the outrage that has been generated by the vicious acts of assault and dehumanisation that have been inflicted on women over some time, it even appears justifiable.

Article by Mahfuz Anam on the International Day of Democracy

The blunt statement on September 7 of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a virtual meeting with the Armed Forces Selection Board—that “we should exclude Martial Law from military lexicon”—was both surprising and refreshing.

All crises—natural disasters, wars, pandemics—affect different sections of people in different ways. Like any other crisis, Covid-19 has differing impacts on society.

If empty statements could produce peace, the new Israel-UAE deal, brokered by US President Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, would be the beginning of the end of hostilities in the Middle East.

In a rare instance in the long and not-so-glorious history of extra-judicial killings in Bangladesh, justice, it appears, is on its way to being served for the murder of Major (retd) Rashed Sinha.

We are heartened by reassurances from the chiefs of the Army and the police that there are no misunderstandings between the two agencies during a

Nearly half a century after the 1971 War of Liberation, it is perhaps difficult to produce or come across startlingly original ideas about Tajuddin Ahmad.

He departed rather unsung, his glorious past recalled in this country by only a few of his friends and admirers, limited to Facebook posts mainly.

In this instalment of The Daily Star’s interview series that aims to give readers an idea of what changes to expect in a post-Covid-19 world, Dr Shahdeen Malik, advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, talks to Eresh Omar Jamal about the right to freedom of speech and expression and the limiting of human rights by governments.

Cities have generally been the epicentres of the devastation caused by Covid-19, fuelling debates around the world on how to make cities more resilient against future pandemics.

The horrific murder of Nusrat Jahan Rafi, a student of Sonagazi Islamia Senior Fazil Madrasa in Feni, had caused a massive outcry from the public and intensive media coverage.

Before the amber of the last one turn to ashes and forgotten memories, a new flame leaps up in another neighbourhood of the city, revealing, once again, cracks in the façade of our tilottoma.