Four years ago, Md Tobarok Hossain left for Malaysia to work as a labourer on a palm oil plantation. He consciously accepted the brutal life of a plantation worker, only because he wanted to give his family a better life.

On each edition of the Dhaka Lit Fest, you leave having discovered a brilliant author. Last time, it was the humorous and adorable Jan Blake whose performance storytelling left me captivated.

There is absolutely no necessary relationship between the worship of goddesses and the treatment of women.

The difficulty of translation is one of the reasons why Nazrul is not discussed as extensively as Tagore in the west.

Catastrophic floods, crop-wilting droughts and record heatwaves this year have shown that climate change warnings are increasingly becoming reality and this is “just the beginning”, experts say, as international efforts to cut planet-heating emissions flounder. 

February: Russian forces march into Ukraine from the north, in an attempt to gain control of Kyiv and with the intention of overthrowing the Ukrainian government.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine plunged Europe into its biggest land war since World War Two, igniting a conflict that has killed thousands, displaced millions, pulverised Ukrainian cities and damaged the global economy.

December 3, 1971. It was around 11:30am in Paris. A flight of Pakistan International Airlines had just landed at Paris Orly Airport.

Rajab Ali has been away from home for 22 years. He spent 16 years in Saudi Arabia before coming to neighbouring Qatar six years ago, and he hasn't been home for the past six years.

If you happen to come to Qatar from the subcontinent, you could often get confused whether you landed in an Arab land some 3000-4000 kilometres away from home or you were just in another of Bangladesh or India or Pakistan.

Sports and politics had long been interlocked in such a way that the intention to view sports from an apolitical lens becomes, like it or not, a political stance.

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.