Ironically, access to loans is most restricted to people who really need it, who could actually use it and who possibly have the best intent to pay it back. That was a moment to step back and relook at our entire financing scene.

Whereas many people around the world rightly blame the existing global economic system for the growing inequality, they also wrongly blame the free market. Wrongly because the system we have is anything but free market, something that most fail to recognise.

The failure of globalisation to deliver on the promises of mainstream politicians has surely undermined trust and confidence in the “establishment.” And governments' offers of generous bailouts for the banks that had brought on the 2008 financial crisis, while leaving ordinary citizens largely to fend for themselves, reinforced the view that this failure was not merely a matter of economic misjudgments.

Donald Trump has variously been described as “dangerous,” “fraud,” “unhinged,” “racist,” “mentally unbalanced” and “outright nuts.” Vanity Fair magazine's Mark Bowden summed up these epithets in one sentence in a slightly more charitable manner:

Fluent in Bangla, Kazuko never felt that she was a foreigner in this country. She always felt safe and comfortable in Bangladesh and didn't hesitate to relay that message to the world.

The fundamental practical challenge with the proposed scheme would be that a decision on a majority basis may effectively mean that the ethnic community would always have their say (provided, of course, they speak with one voice) and to what extent some Bengalis in the CHT region would be willing to embrace this is unsure.

With the land of the two rivers, Iraq and Syria, now a wasteland of human suffering and rubble, the Report of the Iraq Inquiry, commonly known as the Chilcot report (after its chairman, Sir John Chilcot), has aimed to help explain how we got here.

The poor, marginalised, and uninformed madrasa students in Bangladesh are too weak and disorganised to spearhead any violent or revolutionary movement. This explains why urban, rich, and secular-educated – not rural, poor, and madrasa-educated – youths appear so far to be the main foot soldiers of Islamist terror.

A new feminist UN Secretary General will ensure that more women serve as heads of UN agencies, peacekeeping missions, diplomatic envoys, and senior mediators who collectively can strengthen the global peace and security agenda.

Whatever institutionalisation has taken place among the well-run private universities benefitting the cause of higher education should not even be unwittingly put in peril.

The human consequences of the education crisis among Syrian refugees are impossible to miss. They are apparent in the growing army of child labourers picking vegetables in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley or working at garment factories in Turkey, where a half-million refugees are out of school.

The word “development” - eliciting as it does grandiloquent notions of progress - has become, at least in Bangladesh, something of a red herring.

Our policymakers should appreciate, more importantly acknowledge, that the radicals have made inroads in our midst. The affluent and the educated youths have been targeting those whose minds have been indented enough to be motivated to not only disown the parents but also indulge in suicide attacks.

Bangladesh is not about to face a doomsday scenario when Britain finally leaves the European Union in 2019 as expected.

China's economic performance over the last few decades has been outstanding. Despite possessing very different institutions than those seen in the advanced economies, no doubt a result of its communist system, China managed to achieve 8.7 percent average annual per capita GDP growth from 1980 to 2015.

Poor nutrition continues to impede Bangladesh's progress. The effects include maternal mortality, infant mortality, and stillbirths. Also, poor growth among small children results in stunting, which in turn has life-long consequences. Affecting about six million Bangladeshi children under the age of five, the condition decreases cognitive development, leads to worse health outcomes and school performance.

Does it really benefit opening and reopening boxes piled with grief and tears on a daily basis? How brutally insensitive some of our media outfits become? And how fast are we ourselves spreading rumours and fear that are, at times, unsubstantiated? The stories have to stop, and the gossip must end.

In Tunisia, it is the on-going dialogue between the Islamists and secularists, and the consequent changes in both that have been influencing the whole nation - that was previously polarised and confrontational - to come together. A constructive engagement between opposite forces empowers the moderates and marginalises the extremes on all sides.

The recent failed coup attempt in Turkey highlights the country's continuing vulnerability to military takeover.

The recent government decision to make residential areas residential makes sense. However, authorities seem to have gone gung ho in implementation.