The Daily Star (DS): How do you see the craze of the FIFA World Cup as a footballer?

Having been a bit lukewarm to the FIFA World Cup thus far for not having my favourite team at this edition in Qatar, I was kind of sucked into the excitement of it all a fair two days after the Greatest Show on Earth began. It was the Argentina versus Saudi Arabia match on Tuesday which once again reminded me of football’s power to get people imbued despite the daily grind.

Amid war, devastations, and new divisions, the world population crossed 8 billion on November 15. This comes at a time when world leaders are accused of sleepwalking into a crisis that might prove to be too costly for humanity as we know it-- climate crisis.

The majestic Kanchenjunga, the world’s third highest mountain.

Considering the rush of visitors from all over the country, the tourist facilities in Panchagarh are anything but adequate.

It wasn’t the Bangladesh tourism board or any other government or non-government agency.

With at least seven Rohingyas, including three of the community leaders killed last month, police have started a combing operation to bring back peace in Cox’s Bazar refugee camps. So far, at least 75 Rohingyas have been arrested in the drive called “Operation Root Out” that started on October 29. But why did law and order deteriorate there in the first place? What should be the next steps? In an interview, Maj Gen ANM Muniruzzaman (retd), president of Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies, shared his views about the issue with The Daily Star yesterday.

The men on the ground, the Armed Police Battalion (APBn) members, have time and again stated that after every incident of violent crime in Cox’s Bazar Rohingya camps, the refugees point to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa).

The global economy is increasingly at risk of sliding into recession, surveys showed, as consumers faced with generation-high inflation rein in spending while central banks are tightening policy aggressively just when support is needed.

The shrinking value of the currencies of most developing economies is driving up food and fuel prices in ways that could deepen the food and energy crises that many of them already face, according to the World Bank’s latest Commodity Markets Outlook report.

Bangladesh Bank data show deposit growth in the banking sector fell to 9.35 per cent in June this year from 13.80 per cent in June last year.

There have been conflicts on the Myanmar side over the last two months with sounds of heavy gunfire and mortal shelling sending a wave of panic across the border into Bangladesh. But it has hardly created any impact on the yaba smuggling.

Sources say the 10,683 registered fishermen in Teknaf have suffered because of the fishing ban.

Drug traffickers posing as fishermen are smuggling in stashes of yaba pills from Myanmar through the Naf river in Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar, amid lax enforcement of a ban on fishing in the river, according to several intelligence officials and men involved in the trade.

The increase in the job application fees for government jobs will be taken as a justification for the further hike of application fees in the state-owned corporates and other entities, many of whom have already been charging some atrocious rates, said TIB Executive Director Dr Iftekharuzzaman.

AKM Fahim Mahroor, CEO and co-founder of Bdjobs.com, a leading career management website of Bangladesh said, “At present, many banks and private organisations are receiving and reviewing job applications through online platforms like Bdjobs.com. The submission process of the applications has become paperless and it saves a lot of money.”

The decision to increase the job application fees for government jobs, except for cadre posts, has outraged the country’s millions of job seekers who find it an additional burden on them, making their expenses heavier.

TOBACCO PROTEST (1891)

This is not the first time when a woman has been assaulted in Iran for not wearing a hijab properly. Many such cases have come to light, while many still are unreported. Women in Iran have been protesting against these cruelties, for a long time. But it was always not the case. Women in Iran have also donned hijab as a symbol of resistance against oppression, monarchy.

More than three weeks of protests have rocked Iran after a young woman died after being detained by the country’s so-called morality police.