Zyma Islam

In this atmosphere of fear-mongering, the one thing churning faster than the pandemic, is the rumour mill.

“I am building a new path for your child. Sowing seeds of courage. Your daughter will make those bloom into radiant flowers and your son will think it is absolutely normal.”

The Representation of the People Order -- the act that governs the electoral system -- does not ask for much.

Imagine the land border between India and Bangladesh. What do you think it is like? A fence that runs for miles? A craggy, clearly demarcated line like the one seen on maps? Communities living along the border will tell you otherwise. To many of them, the border is an invisible line anyone can step over without a visa.

The first female National Professor and Ekushey Padak awardee Dr Sufia Ahmed has had a long, illustrious career in academia and beyond.

As bodies after bodies were wheeled into Dhaka Medical College’s morgue on February 21 last year, there was no dearth of offers of help.

It’s not wise to put all your eggs in one basket, goes the age-old saying. And this saying could not be more pertinent given the jittery state of global supply chain following the outbreak of coronavirus in China.

The two-finger test, so called for its use of the doctor’s index and middle fingers to check for the presence and status of the survivor’s hymen, was banned in 2018 for being pseudo-science, as well as traumatic and humiliating for survivors.

The turnout was less than 20 percent in 709 centres in the February 1 Dhaka city polls, shows Election Commission data on all the 2,468 centres released yesterday.

A mess only five years ago, the sidewalks in Gulshan-2 residential area now make for a streamlined jogging track, with dips in front of the gates of people’s homes.

At the Court Street yesterday, a heavily pregnant 17-year-old waddled about from one lawyers’ chamber to another, looking for someone who can help her. She is about to deliver a baby in 20 days, and in this state, she had taken a public bus from Uttara all the way to the old part of the town.

A photo taken at the recent protests against rape has been making the rounds on social media. In the image, a tea-seller named Abdul Jalil Shwapan—or “Shwapan Mama” as he is fondly known to the students of the campus—holds up a placard demanding death for the rapists of both the DU student whose rape has shaken up the system, as well as that of his own child.

River polluters should be not only fined but also punished with jail terms, recommends the National River Conservation Commission.

In order to justify the discriminatory stance of the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019, something odd is happening—Bangladesh is being painted by elements within India as a violent state from which Hindus are fleeing away, into India.

Suu Kyi: Please allow me to clarify the term clearance operation. Its meaning has been distorted. As early as the 1950s has been used against communists. It simply means to clear an area of insurgents or terrorists.

Every four years, the United Nation’s Human Rights Council reviews Bangladesh’s human rights situation as part of its Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

2019 has not been a comfortable year for the media globally. While nobody has yet tallied up the numbers internationally, 7,200 jobs were lost just in the U.S., according to the business and finance news organisation Business Insider’s own calculation.

Impunity under the radar

There was a king named Prithu Raja in northern Bangladesh in the 13th century. He had a fort city in Panchagarh called Bhitargarh, and he may or may not have died by committing suicide in a lake.

Burimari union, a border village nestling in a nook of the Indian district of Cooch Behar, is a village of stones and stone-crushing yards.