2017 has just ended. The impending closure gives citizens an opportunity to take stock of the achievements and challenges they faced during the course of the year.

WITH no street agitations or unexpected turn of events, and with the ruling party's firm grip over the situation, 2017 was politically a relatively calm year. But it was neither uneventful nor inconsequential.

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The world seemed to be careening towards apocalypse at the end of 2017, at a time when keeping up with the news is a depressing endeavour.

Member of the Parliament and Awami League's advisory council, Suranjit Sengupta was a veteran leader, senior politician, and spokesperson. He resigned in 2012 as second Railway Minister of Bangladesh.

Feedback: I remember two movies in particular that I watched in 2017 and found quite interesting, although both were made towards the end of 2016. As a director, I learned a lot from these movies in terms of cinematic language, screenplay, storytelling, and different film traditions and conventions.

IN the run-up to multiple votes around the world in 2016, including the United Kingdom's Brexit vote and the United States presidential election, social media companies like Facebook and Twitter

TWO cheers for US President Donald Trump. Without him, the West would still regard populism as a problem unique to Central and Eastern Europe. Yet Trump's presidency is as clear a demonstration as there could be of the fact that populism is not merely a product of the alleged “immaturity” of post-communist countries.

FOR the growing share of the world's population that understands the existential threat posed by climate change, the beginning of 2017 brought a sense of trepidation. In fact, collective angst was already apparent at the 2016 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Marrakech, Morocco, which had just started when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.

FOR a director, completely objective analysis of cinema is difficult. So, I was in a dilemma when I sat down to write this piece for The Daily Star about Bangladeshi cinema, its language, the challenges and potentials.

DHAKA, the capital of Bangladesh, and one of the fastest growing cities of the world, has been infamous for a while for being over-populated, traffic congested, waterlogged (urban flooding) and polluted (e.g. toxic waste, poor

AS we look back at the previous year which saw an increase of violence against children we must take a vow to play our part to make 2018 a better year for children. It is really hard to drive away our frustration at our collective failure to protect our children from the various forms of abuse that they have to suffer on a regular basis.

In Bangladesh, cervical cancer is the 2nd most common cancer in women. It is estimated that every year 11,956 new cases of cervical

Bangladesh has been achieving seven-percent-plus economic growth for the last two consecutive years, averaged at over six percent for over a decade.

Indeed, Bangladesh is making tremendous economic progress. Infrastructural development will play the most important role if our economic development is to continue and our growth maintained.

Bangladesh is expected to be a middle-income country by 2021. To cater to the increased demand of a larger economy, the country's infrastructures need to be developed, operated and maintained adequately.

Bangladesh government has embarked on several big construction projects such as Padma Bridge, Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant, Payra Port, Dhaka Elevated Expressway and Metro Rail, etc.

It has neither been possible, nor even desirable, for me to write about 1971. The reasons are fairly simple. First, while my engagement in the war was early and sincere, my actual contribution to it was rather flimsy and dull.

Bangladesh stands at forty six today and while we celebrate it, we need to take time to introspect as we observe our Victory Day. The winds of freedom blew across the land, across the villages and towns, but we paid a very dear price. There was bloodletting,

It was March 1970. My husband, Aminul Islam, came to Islamabad on a posting to Pakistan Central Secretariat. I accompanied him with our two sons aged 15 and 13 and daughter aged 10. It was a comfortable living in Islamabad and we were all happy. But little did we know then that we had to be literally smuggled out of Pakistan to freedom in less than three years' time.