INDIA'S Foreign Secretary Subrahmaniam Jaishankar will visit Bangladesh from today on his tour of Saarc members aimed at “getting to know Saarc countries” as part of active Indian diplomacy.

AS President Yahya flew out of Dacca on the night of March 25 he took with him the last hopes of a united Pakistan. For the final two days he had been holed up in the Dacca cantonment with the junta of generals who rule Pakistan, putting the finishing touches to Operation Genocide.

It seems there is no end to sensational news from Bangladesh. Smack on the face of the dramatic revelation of the phone conversations of a civil society stalwart that shook the society, came the horrific news of a most brutal killing of an activist writer in public view. His offense was seemingly his writings that advocated tolerance, freedom from bigotry of all kinds, love and respect for all humans, and above all a just society.

FOR the last 50 days, pessimism has gripped the citizenry because of the hartal and oborodh enforced by BNP-led alliance.

THE cynics in the current hyper-charged socio-political situation would say that “the banality of evil” has come home to us with a strange poignancy.

It was with devastating shock and disbelief that I received the news of the brutal killing of our very well-known blogger and writer Avijit Roy and the severe injury to his wife, blogger Rafida Ahmed Bonna.

ON February 24 morning, the nation woke up to the news that bullet-ridden bodies of three boys were found in the city's Shewrapara area of Mirpur.

United States hopes due process to be followed after an anti-corruption court in Bangladesh issued arrest warrants for former prime minister and opposition leader Khaleda Zia

THE cultural activists in the country did their bit last Sunday when they accompanied the families of those who had died in political violence and hung a list of 54 victims in front of BNP chairperson's Gulshan office.

WHER-EVER autocracy exists resistance does too. History teaches us that. February 23 is a day that is remembered in Germany for events that took place at the height of Nazi power in a place called Munich.

OF late, we were startled by two falsehoods -- one, a deliberate gaffe corrected post-haste; and the other a mischievous attempt at populism after an anti-people act.

THE Chief Minister of Paschimbanga, Mamata Banerjee, paid a visit to Bangladesh from February 19 to 21. It is known from the media that her visit was made as per invitation of the Foreign Ministry of Bangladesh.

CAPTAIN'S log, star date 4698.3. Hartal -- the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Bangladesh. Its continuing mission -- to seek out new strifes and new abominations, to explore strange new ways of self destruction, to boldly go where no (sane) man has gone before.”

WITH the extension of hartal until Friday morning, the country has reached a new record for enforcement of strikes for all working days in a month.

YES, that very mouth watering aquatic creature, which every affluent Bengali will do anything to have a piece on his or her plate as often as possible, finds the Padma a more suitable ground to breed.

SHOW the world the power of peaceful communities, and tackle bad governance that breeds frustration.

LAST Sunday, training materials and sophisticated arms were recovered at militants' training centre in Banshkhali, Chittagong.

INDIA is looking for new economic frontiers in the East. In the face of continuing stalemate of WTO negotiations, countries are looking for alternative or parallel arrangements. The past decade has seen the flourishing of many such initiatives. As an emerging global economic powerhouse, India would obviously not like to be left behind.

Mamata Banerjee came, saw, but did not quite conquer the Bangladeshi heart. But then, the last may not have been her plan.

MAHMUDUR Rahman Manna. It is not about he who invested over four decades in politics, and jumped off the cliff because of two conversations that turned him into a villain.