Last July, during the presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised the universal health care advocate Ady Barkan that he wouldn’t let intellectual property laws stand in the way of worldwide access to coronavirus vaccines. “The World Health Organization is leading an unprecedented global effort to promote international cooperation in the search for COVID-19 treatments and vaccines,”… Read more »
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Khalil’s admission blows the lid off Netra News funding
Finally, the chickens have come home to roost. Tasneem Khalil’s recent admission in a Facebook live chat with a Dhaka University professor, Fahmidul Haq of mass communication and journalism department, has taken the lid off Netra News (run by Khalil with British do-gooder David Bergman, the son-in-law of Dr Kamal Hossain who headed a coalition… Read more »
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The anguish of the world’s doctor
He is the world’s doctor, and for months he has tirelessly led the global response to the coronavirus pandemic while privately nursing a piercing anguish. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, has largely kept his pain secret, maintaining a stoic public front. But when I probed, he wept. Tedros… Read more »
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Getting real about coal and climate
“Change is coming, whether we seek it or not.” So declares a remarkable document titled “Preserving Coal Country,” released Monday by the United Mine Workers of America, in which the union — which at its peak represented half a million workers — accepts the reality that coal isn’t coming back. Instead, it argues, the goal… Read more »
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A year of coronavirus – a personal view
Just over a year ago, I wrote as follows in the columns of bdnews24.com: “A number of educated Bangladeshis have been speaking like US President Donald Trump did in March this year, i.e. the virus will miraculously vanish. Despite reports to the contrary, some people are convinced that COVID19 is not fatal. Also, when I… Read more »
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Abandoning Afghanistan is a historic mistake
I once boarded a flight from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Kabul, Afghanistan, alongside a team of Afghan soccer players — teenage girls in red uniforms, chatting and laughing much as they might have anywhere else in the world. I thought of those players again after President Joe Biden announced plans for America’s complete military… Read more »