Bangladesh enters a new era of energy use as it starts importing liquified natural gas (LNG) beginning in July in order to solve the prevailing gas crisis.

While shopping in or passing by your neighbourhood grocery store, have you ever thought about the working hours of the shopkeepers? You have probably seen them opening the shops early in the morning and then closing the shops late at night.

Raleigh, North Carolina. In the mixed neighbourhood of Oakwood in this capital city of the state of North Carolina, where this writer was on a visit recently, in a front-yard among the myrtle grove, a handwritten poster hung with the words:

Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh's first official visit to Bangladesh was meant for the sixth edition of the home minister-level meeting.

Had you looked across Shanghai's Huangpu River from west to east in the 1980s, you would mostly have seen farmland dotted with a few scattered buildings.

As with global warming, Bangladesh has not contributed to the rise of global terrorism anymore than it has contributed to formulating or debating over the definition of “terrorism” itself. Nonetheless, the country is saddled with the spill-over consequences of this crisis, one being the rise of “posh” militants as apparent from the backgrounds of the Gulshan attackers who broke our traditional belief that the root of terrorism lies in poverty, poor education, and madrasas.

Nine years ago this month, the RTI Act 2009 of Bangladesh was born. It came at a time when the entire nation was filled with a deep sense of relief and hope for change and reforms.

On July 28, 2016, The Daily Star reported the release of the International Telecommunication Union's ICT Development Index that showed that Bangladesh had the lowest Internet penetration in South Asia, with just 14.40 percent of the population having connectivity to Internet.

Manufacturing in Bangladesh has for the last 30 years been defined by the readymade garment (RMG) industry—and for good reason. The nearly 7,000 RMG facilities in Bangladesh produce 16 percent of all manufactured goods and employ 55 percent of all workers in the manufacturing sector.

Our rivers are drying up because all the upper riparian countries are diverting water away from our rivers causing acute shortage of water and desertification. The day is not far off when we will have no water in the rivers. All the bilateral and international efforts to solve the problem are bearing no fruit.

As long as the West continues to control the United Nations, with Russia and China aiding and abetting them, there is little chance that the United Nations will be able to live up to its charter.

It is often the case that rape victims prefer to remain silent or "settle" the matter through informal village mediations, instead of resorting to the formal legal system.

Knowledge is power” is an adage I am fond of saying to my team, and this expression keeps springing to mind with the growing attention that is being given to how the readymade garments (RMG) sector of Bangladesh will develop as the nation prepares to evolve from a least developed country to a developing one, with the official developing country status expected to be awarded by 2024.

Experience from successful industrialised countries suggests that industrialisation brings significant structural change in the economy which leads to considerable reduction in poverty, large-scale job creation and substantial improvement in the welfare of the people of a country.

In the more than four decades since independence, Bangladesh has made remarkable strides on many fronts. It is no longer the “basket case” as Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, had dismissively remarked about the newborn country in 1971.

Last week, The Daily Star's investigative reportage exposed the work of criminal gangs and henchmen stealing rich top soil from precious arable land to sell to powerful, profiteering brickfield owners.

Road accidents are a major threat to human capital and economic development in Bangladesh. The economic cost of road accidents is estimated to be two to three percent of GDP in developing countries according to WHO; but the loss of human lives, and mental and physical effects on the people involved in accidents and their families are irreparable.

There are iconic pictures that sometimes capture an age, define a moment in history, exemplify beauty, tragedy, or joy, in ways otherwise impossible to evoke. Who can forget the naked, screaming Vietnamese girl fleeing the napalm attack on her village in 1972; the Chinese man standing in lonely defiance in front of a column of tanks at the Tiananmen Square in 1989; the Times Square kiss; or the raising of the US flag at Iwo Jima, heralding the end of WWII?

The planning minister, during the signing ceremony of the Annual Performance Agreement (APA) for FY2018-19, expressed his hope that Bangladesh economy would be able to achieve 8 percent growth in 2019-20 and 10 percent growth by 2028-29.

Don't worry, I'm also staying put. I'll just be gone for the Eid break; once I'm back, we can sing Akele Hum, Akele Tum together since it'll best describe our situation,” I told my friend in jest as we discussed the looming holidays ahead.