The Capsule — the week of 9 August 2026

The floating LNG terminal off Moheshkhali came back on Thursday after two weeks down — and the lights went out anyway, a national shortfall of 335MW that day and 740MW on Friday. Which tells you the terminal was never the whole problem.

Source: The Daily Star / The Business Standard

Market updates

Bangladesh Bank cut its policy repo rate from 10 percent to 9.5 percent, effective 2 August — the first easing in six years. The standing lending facility came down to 11 percent; the deposit facility stayed at 7.5.
Dhaka stocks slid last week: DSEX lost 34 points to close at 5,860 and DS30 fell 25 to 2,191, though average daily turnover rose 11.5 percent to Tk1,181 crore. TBS put the fall down to geopolitical and domestic worries — not the rate cut, which is the easy connection to make and the wrong one.

Technology and startups

BTRC has cleared Starlink to export unfiltered internet bandwidth out of Bangladesh into neighbouring countries over transborder private leased circuits, with state-owned BSCCL supplying it under a three-year agreement. It's from 7 July, so it isn't news — it's still the biggest thing sitting on the Bangladeshi tech-policy desk. (The Daily Star)

A startup to follow

iFarmerDhaka

Founded 2019, full-stack agri: inputs through its KriShop arm, embedded finance, and market linkage for smallholders. It works with over 300,000 farmers and 24,000 agri retailers, and took $1.5 million in working-capital financing from the Swiss impact investor Symbiotics in April.

Sports corner

Bangladesh's Australia tour opened badly: a Cricket Australia XI beat them by an innings and 38 runs in Darwin, 22-year-old South Australian left-arm quick Campbell Thompson taking 8 for 25 as the Tigers folded for 54 in the second innings.
Galle Gallants won the Lanka Premier League on Saturday, bowling defending champions Jaffna Kings out for 123 at the Premadasa and knocking it off with five wickets and 25 balls to spare. Charith Asalanka took the match award.

Keep it sharp

Today's puzzle

A man pushes his car up to a hotel, and the moment he arrives he announces he's bankrupt. Nobody is remotely surprised. Why not?

AnswerThey're playing Monopoly. He landed on the hotel and couldn't pay.

Here's something interesting

One climbing season at Everest Base Camp — heated dining tents, bakeries, charging stations, generators — melts roughly 3 million kg of glacier ice and snow. About 2,338 tonnes of that comes from burning fuel and another 154 tonnes from human urine, according to a study published in Regional Environmental Change on 30 July. In the 2023 season alone the camp got through 18,935 litres of kerosene. The lead author, Khim Lal Gautam, is the surveyor who led Nepal's 2019 measurement that gave Everest its official height of 8,848.86 metres.

Of art and artists

Zainul Abedin

Bangladesh

Start where Bangladeshi art starts. Zainul Abedin drew the 1943 famine on cheap packing paper, in ink he made himself by burning charcoal, because that was what he could get. The Famine Sketches are a handful of brush lines each and they still knock the wind out of you. The British Museum holds one; the sketches themselves sit in the Bangladesh National Museum in Dhaka, which also runs the museum in his name in Mymensingh.

Let's get this bread

Anything going at Britto Arts Trust

Britto Arts Trust, Dhaka

Not a posting we can verify — a pointer. Six artists founded it in 2002, Tayeba Begum Lipi and Mahbubur Rahman among them, and it is a big part of why younger Bangladeshi artists have anywhere to show at all. Check their own channels before you believe us.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.

— Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (poem 35), 1912

Dose 001 · Sunday, 9 August 2026

SSC and equivalent results came out this morning: 62.25 percent passed, the lowest in 19 years, down from 68.45 percent last year. 690,608 candidates did not pass.

Source: The Daily Star / The Financial Express

Market updates

Gross foreign exchange reserves stood at $36.96 billion today, up from $36.86 billion a day earlier; on the IMF's BPM6 measure, $32.15 billion.
Expatriate Bangladeshis sent home $1.14 billion in the first nine days of August — 69.2 percent more than the same stretch a year ago.

Technology and startups

Startup Bangladesh, the government's venture arm, booked its first-ever portfolio exit last Wednesday, selling its stake in the pharmaceutical distribution platform Pulse Tech and calling it the country's first sovereign venture capital exit. Buyer, stake size and terms were not disclosed. (The Business Standard)

A startup to follow

Pulse TechDhaka

Medicine distribution, embedded financing, SaaS and the ONE Pharmacy franchise network, stacked into one platform serving over 14,000 pharmacies. Startup Bangladesh, which invested in 2024 and has just exited, says the company went from about $2 million in annual revenue to more than $150 million annualised while staying profitable. Those are the seller's figures, not audited ones, and we're printing them as such.

Sports corner

Taijul Islam took a blow to the hand while batting on day one of that Darwin warm-up and has a bone contusion on the index finger of his left hand. He was rested on day two and did not bowl, but Bangladesh still expect to have him for the first Test.
Pakistan squared their Caribbean series 1-1, beating West Indies by eight wickets at Queen's Park Oval, where Abdullah Shafique's 160 not out off 323 balls won him player of the match. West Indies had taken the first Test in San Fernando by 90 runs.

Keep it sharp

Today's puzzle

It travels all the way around the world and never once leaves its corner. What is it?

AnswerA postage stamp.

Here's something interesting

A new deep-sea shark has been described off Kerala. Apristurus drona, the Arabian slender catshark — black, slender-bodied, angular snout, white eyes — was identified from four specimens taken 400 to 650 metres down on the Kollam slope in the Arabian Sea, and published this year in the journal Zootaxa. Here's the part we like: the corresponding author says the species is completely absent from bycatch records between 2008 and 2022. It only started showing up because fishermen began working deeper water.

Of art and artists

Arooj Aftab

Pakistan

Born in Riyadh to Pakistani parents, raised in Lahore from about the age of ten, and the first Pakistani woman to win a Grammy — Mohabbat took Best Global Music Performance on 3 April 2022. She reads ghazal through jazz, harp and a great deal of silence. Obama put the track on his summer playlist, which tells you it travels. Begin with the album Vulture Prince, and give it a proper room rather than earbuds on the bus.

Let's get this bread

Geospatial analytics for disasters and ecosystems

UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health

Where Kabir Uddin works — the Bangladeshi scientist who has just taken the Data User/Provider Award at the Global Flood Partnership conference. If you can do remote sensing and want it to matter, this is roughly the shape of the job. A pointer, not a live vacancy we have confirmed.

Speak, for your lips are free.

— Faiz Ahmed Faiz, from the poem "Bol", 1941

Dose 002 · Monday, 10 August 2026

Here's a fun fact for a Tuesday: you live on the largest delta on Earth. The Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta covers more than 105,000 sq km across Bangladesh and West Bengal, and every grain of it washed off a Himalaya that is still rising — which means the delta is still being built.

Source: The Geological Society

Market updates

Merchandise exports fetched $4.72 billion in July: about one percent below last July, 12.5 percent above June. Readymade garments were $3.88 billion, down 1.92 percent year on year and up 14.73 percent on the month — a number everyone is reading whichever way suits them.

Technology and startups

Twenty-three Indian startups raised $252 million between 3 and 8 August, a 216 percent jump on the previous week's $79.8 million — and nearly half of it went to one electric-scooter company. (Indian Startup News)

A startup to follow

River MobilityBengaluru

Founded 2021, it builds the Indie — an electric scooter designed as a utility vehicle rather than a commuter toy. It closed a $120 million Series C of equity and venture debt on 5 August led by Elev8 and Claypond, with Yamaha already on the cap table, and plans to go from 75 stores to more than 350 by March 2028. Yes, this is the company that ate half of India's funding week.

Sports corner

Two days out: Bangladesh play their first Test in Australia in 23 years at Marrara Oval, Darwin on Thursday. It is also the first Test cricket staged in an Australian winter since 2004 — the tour was moved from March 2027 to make room for England's 150th Anniversary Test.
Glasgow, belatedly: India finished fourth on the Commonwealth Games medal table with 39 — 13 gold, 17 silver, nine bronze.
India took eight golds on 1 August alone, seven of them in boxing, where the entire finals programme ran in a single day. Seven boxing golds is a record for any nation at one Games, and India's ten boxing medals topped the sport's table.

Keep it sharp

Today's puzzle

A woman shot her husband. Then she held him under water for five minutes. Then she hung him. Twenty minutes later the two of them went out for dinner. How?

AnswerShe's a photographer. She shot him, developed the film, and hung the print up to dry.

Here's something interesting

The world's first woman prime minister was South Asian, and she took office in 1960. Sirimavo Bandaranaike became prime minister of Ceylon on 21 July 1960, the year after her husband — the sitting prime minister — was shot. She held the job three separate times between 1960 and 2000. Guinness World Records lists her both as the first female prime minister and as the longest-serving one.

Of art and artists

Zakir Hussain

India

Playing concerts at seven, touring at twelve, and then three Grammys in a single night in February 2024 — for Pashto, As We Speak and This Moment — four across his life. He died in San Francisco on 15 December 2024, aged 73. For a way in, try his work with John McLaughlin in Shakti, where Hindustani classical and jazz stop being separate arguments.

Let's get this bread

Submarine cable and transborder bandwidth work

Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company (BSCCL)

State-owned, and the party supplying Starlink's transborder bandwidth under that three-year deal. Boring-sounding infrastructure that quietly decides what the internet costs in this country. A pointer, not a posting.

You are free; you are free to go to your temples...

— Muhammad Ali Jinnah, address to Pakistan's Constituent Assembly, 11 August 1947 — 79 years ago today

Dose 003 · Tuesday, 11 August 2026

Dengue cases passed 20,000 on Monday and hospitals took in 726 people in a single day, a record. The death toll stood at 59 as of Saturday, with Dhaka division carrying the largest share of cases.

Source: Dhaka Tribune / The Daily Star

Market updates

Private sector credit growth ended June at 4.47 percent, down from 4.98 percent in May and the weakest in 33 years — against a December target Bangladesh Bank had already cut to 6.8 percent. Rate cut or no rate cut, nobody is borrowing.
Sri Lankan headline inflation rose to 7.3 percent in July from 6.8 percent, its highest since June 2023 and a fourth straight month above the 5 percent target. The central bank points at a housing-rent adjustment and a base effect in food.

Technology and startups

TSMC's July revenue rose 44.7 percent year on year to a record NT$467.58 billion, and the company now expects 2026 revenue growth slightly above 40 percent with capital spending of $60-64 billion. (CNBC)
Microsoft is reportedly in talks with TSMC to secure capacity for more than 300,000 of its Maia 300 AI chips for delivery in 2027, with the chip due to be unveiled this autumn and an eventual ambition of more than a million units. (The Information, via Reuters)

A startup to follow

AroggaDhaka

Founded December 2020, it delivers medicine to the door and has built its pitch around fighting counterfeit drugs, which is a genuinely serious problem here. It closed a $5.5 million seed round in October 2023 led by The Venture Collective — $4 million of new money on top of $1.5 million raised the year before. An older fact, we know. Still the right company to have in your head.

Sports corner

Sri Lanka's Rumesh Tharanga Pathirage won the Commonwealth javelin with 89.75m — the country's first athletics gold since Duncan White in 1950. Neeraj Chopra took silver on 85.83m and Yashvir Singh bronze on 85.41m, while defending champion Arshad Nadeem finished ninth in the final on 77.41m.
Pakistan left Glasgow with a single medal, boxer Fatima Zahra's bronze at 60kg — the first Commonwealth Games medal won by a Pakistani woman in any sport — and finished 36th overall, the country's worst Games in 36 years.
And tomorrow: Bangladesh's first Test in Australia in 23 years starts at Marrara Oval, Darwin. The tour's one completed match so far is that innings-and-38 defeat to a Cricket Australia XI.

Keep it sharp

Today's puzzle

Forwards I am heavy. Backwards I am not. What am I?

AnswerA ton. Spell it backwards and you get "not".

Here's something interesting

The Maldives has the lowest high point of any country on Earth. Guinness World Records puts its maximum elevation at 2.4 metres — barely taller than a doorway — and most of its land sits between one and one and a half metres above the sea. Its 298 sq km of land is scattered across roughly 90,000 sq km of ocean, which also makes it one of the most spread-out sovereign states going. A country that is mostly the gaps between itself.

Of art and artists

Shehan Karunatilaka

Sri Lanka

He won the 2022 Booker for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, a novel narrated by a dead war photographer who has seven moons to sort out his afterlife paperwork and get his photographs found. It is set in Sri Lanka in 1990 and it is genuinely funny, which is the trick. Start there — or with Chinaman, if you like cricket, which this week you probably do.

Let's get this bread

Gallery and programming work

Bengal Foundation, Dhaka

Where Rafiqun Nabi and a lot of the country's best painters and printmakers show. If you are an arts graduate quietly wondering whether there is paid work in any of this, that is the address to go and ask at. A pointer, not a posting.

No famine has ever taken place... in a functioning democracy.

— Amartya Sen, "Democracy as a Universal Value", Journal of Democracy, 1999

Dose 004 · Wednesday, 12 August 2026

First ball this morning at Marrara Oval, Darwin: Bangladesh play a Test match in Australia for the first time since 2003. If you are 23, it has not happened in your conscious lifetime.

Source: cricket.com.au

Market updates

The Reserve Bank of India held its repo rate at 5.25 percent with a neutral stance, raised its FY27 growth forecast to 6.7 percent from 6.6, and trimmed its inflation projection to 5 percent from 5.1.
July closed with about $2.86 billion in remittances — the strongest July in at least eight years and roughly 15 percent up on the same month in 2025. August is running harder still.

Technology and startups

Bangladeshi startups raised $6.0 million in the first half of 2026: down 95 percent year on year, across six deals, with the three largest taking 80 percent of the total and foreign investors supplying all of it. One sovereign exit is a milestone. It is also one company inside a market that has effectively stopped. (LightCastle Partners report, via The Financial Express)

A startup to follow

Startup BangladeshDhaka

Not a startup — the government's venture arm, and it earns the slot this week anyway. On 5 August it made what it calls the country's first sovereign venture capital exit, selling its stake in Pulse Tech. Worth following precisely because H1 funding fell 95 percent and not one taka of it came from a domestic institution. If local money ever turns up, this is where it starts.

Sports corner

Bangladesh's first Test in Australia in 23 years begins this morning at Marrara Oval — also the first Test cricket staged in an Australian winter since 2004, the tour having been moved from March 2027 to make room for England's 150th Anniversary Test.
Taijul Islam's left index finger is the selection question: a bone contusion picked up batting in the warm-up, no bowling on day two of it, and Bangladesh still hopeful of having him.

Keep it sharp

Today's puzzle

A bus driver and a doctor are both in love with the same woman. The driver has to leave on a route that will keep him away for a week, and before he goes he hands her seven apples. Why?

AnswerAn apple a day keeps the doctor away.

Here's something interesting

Every 21 February the world marks International Mother Language Day, and it exists because of Dhaka. The date is the day in 1952 when police fired on students marching for Bangla to be a state language of Pakistan. Bangladesh carried the proposal to the UNESCO General Conference in Paris on 17 November 1999, and the world has observed it since 2000. Not many countries can say a national grief became a global calendar entry.

Of art and artists

Rafiqun Nabi

Bangladesh

Ranabi to everyone. A painter and printmaker who studied under Zainul Abedin and Quamrul Hassan — and half the country knows him instead for one potbellied, shaved-headed street kid. Tokai first ran in Weekly Bichitra and Dainik Bangla on 17 May 1978 and has been telling politicians uncomfortable truths ever since. His paintings, prints and woodcuts show regularly at the Bengal Foundation in Dhaka. We opened the week with his teacher; we're closing it with him.

Let's get this bread

Ecosystem research and analysis

LightCastle Partners

The firm behind the H1 funding numbers in today's tech slot. Somebody has to count the deals nobody else is counting, and this week that count came to $6 million. If you like spreadsheets and you like this country, that's the beat. A pointer, not a posting.

At the stroke of the midnight hour... India will awake to life and freedom.

— Jawaharlal Nehru, "Tryst with Destiny", 14 August 1947

Dose 005 · Thursday, 13 August 2026

The week

THE RUNNING STORY IS THE DARWIN TOUR — Bangladesh's first Test match in Australia in 23 years, which starts on Thursday 13 August at Marrara Oval. It was chosen because it is the only story in the verified pack that genuinely reaches the end of the week: the news material stops on 10 August, but the first Test is a real, dated, forward event, so the week can actually build to something instead of trailing off. How each issue moves it: - 001 (Sunday) — The humiliation. A Cricket Australia XI beats Bangladesh by an innings and 38 runs in Darwin; Campbell Thompson takes 8 for 25 and the Tigers are bowled out for 54. The tour opens with the worst possible advertisement for it. - 002 (Monday) — The injury. Taijul Islam has a bone contusion on the index finger of his left hand, taken batting on day one of that warm-up. He was rested and did not bowl. Bangladesh still expect to have him. The story stops being about a scoreline and starts being about a squad. - 003 (Tuesday) — The stakes. Two days out, we explain why this is not a routine away Test: 23 years since the last one, the first Test cricket in an Australian winter since 2004, and the tour moved out of March 2027 to make room for England's 150th Anniversary Test. Bangladesh are playing in Australia in August because the calendar had a gap. - 004 (Wednesday) — The eve. "And tomorrow: Marrara Oval." Set against the reminder that the tour's only completed match so far is the innings-and-38 defeat. - 005 (Thursday) — First ball. The Test begins this morning, and it is the issue's opener. Taijul's finger is carried through as the one selection question left open, closing the loop opened on Monday. A SECOND, SHORTER SPINE runs Sunday to Thursday underneath it, and it is the news spine: the power crunch. Sunday's opener is that the Moheshkhali LNG terminal came back on 6 August and the lights went out anyway (335MW, then 740MW). Monday escalates it with the weekend figures — 2,167MW on Saturday, roughly 3,000MW on Sunday — and prints the five real causes rather than pinning it on the terminal. Thursday's recap closes it out: the terminal is back, the shortfall is six times larger than it was on Thursday morning, and the terminal was never the whole problem. That is the honest shape of the story and it is why it leads the week. A third, quieter thread ties Tuesday to Wednesday: dengue at 59 dead and 17,880 infected on Tuesday, then past 20,000 cases with a single-day hospitalisation record of 726 as Wednesday's opener. The week is also bookended in the culture slot on purpose: Zainul Abedin on Sunday, and on Thursday his student Rafiqun Nabi, who drew Tokai.

What to treat with care

WHAT A READER SHOULD TREAT WITH CARE:

1. LET'S GET THIS BREAD is not a job board this week. The verified pack contained no job postings at all, so rather than invent employers or roles, every entry is an explicit pointer to a real, named organisation drawn from the week's own reporting, and each one says in its own copy that it is a pointer and not a confirmed vacancy. Do not let a sub-editor strip that hedge — the moment it reads as an ad, it is a fabricated ad.

2. Dose 005's "startup to follow" is Startup Bangladesh, which is a government venture fund and not a startup. The copy says so. Its city is given as Dhaka; that is a reasonable inference for a Bangladesh government fund but it is NOT stated anywhere in the verified pack. Every other startup city (Dhaka for iFarmer, Pulse Tech, Arogga; Bengaluru for River Mobility) is in the pack.

3. Dose 003's opener cites The Geological Society for the delta. The fact-check flagged that the Society's page supports only two things — "world's largest delta" and the still-rising-Himalaya sediment line. The 105,000 sq km figure comes from elsewhere in the pack's own item and is not covered by that citation. It is printed because the pack printed it, but the source line is over-broad and an editor should either find the area's real citation or cut the figure.

4. Dose 001's opener deliberately uses only the Thursday (335MW) and Friday (740MW) shortfall figures. The 2,167MW and ~3,000MW numbers exist but come from a Daily Star article dated 10 August, so printing them in a Sunday 9 August issue would be reporting ahead of the source. They are held for dose 002, which is also the week's cleanest genuine escalation. Anyone re-cutting these issues should not slide those numbers earlier.

5. Dose 005's top stories are an explicit week-close recap, not new reporting. This is a deliberate editorial choice, not padding: the verified pack ends on 10 August, so Thursday and Wednesday have no fresh hard news available. The only genuinely-today items on Thursday are Deuba landing in Kathmandu and the first ball at Marrara. Everything else in that list is framed as "where the week landed" and repeats facts printed earlier in the week. If more verified 11-13 August material arrives, that section should be rebuilt rather than topped up.

6. The quotes come from outside the verified pack. All five are documented published or spoken sources — Tagore's Gitanjali (1912), Faiz's "Bol" (1941), Jinnah's Constituent Assembly address of 11 August 1947, Sen's "Democracy as a Universal Value" (Journal of Democracy, 1999), and Nehru's "Tryst with Destiny" (14 August 1947). Two are shortened with ellipses and marked as such; none is paraphrased silently. No Gandhi, no Einstein, no Twain, nothing that only exists on quote-aggregator sites. What I could not do is find a verifiable Bangladeshi voice outside Tagore, who belongs to Bangladesh only by adoption — that is a real gap in this week's issues and should be fixed next run.

7. Deliberately date-labelled as old, because they are: Starlink/BSCCL (7 July, called out in copy as not news), Arogga's funding (October 2023, flagged in the blurb), the Commonwealth Games items (31 July-2 August, run as "Glasgow, belatedly"), the FFWC flood warning (5 August, run as "last Wednesday"), and the BRICS invitation (note delivered 14 July). None is presented as fresh.

8. Pulse Tech's growth figures — roughly $2m to more than $150m annualised — are the seller's, given by Startup Bangladesh as it exited, with buyer and terms undisclosed. The copy attributes them and says they are not audited. Do not let that attribution be cut for length.

9. iFarmer's Symbiotics financing is dated "April" only. The pack could not pin the day and neither can I.

THINGS NOT PRINTED, THOUGH THEY WERE MENTIONED IN THE DESK NOTES: the measles-like illness with a combined toll of 854, July PMI at 57.8, the stock market extending losses on 9 August, the approval of eight LNG cargoes and 5,000 tonnes of LPG, the third floating LNG terminal at Moheshkhali, Chaldal's liquidity distress, the taka at 123.79, the State Bank of Pakistan's July hold, the December expiry of the Ganges water-sharing treaty, and the Sri Lankan Mahanayake Theras letter. All of those were flagged in the pack as headline-only, undateable, or unverified. The measles item in particular is larger than the dengue toll and is going unreported in these five issues — it should be chased before the next run, because a health story bigger than the one we led on Wednesday is a hole, not a nicety.

THIN SLOTS, HONESTLY: sports outside cricket and the Commonwealth Games is empty; there was no verified tech news at all from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives or Afghanistan, so the tech slot is Bangladesh, India and global semiconductors only; and the culture beat contains no 2026 events whatsoever — every artist here is an evergreen recommendation, which is why they are framed as recommendations rather than news. The riddles are classic lateral-thinking puzzles and are not from the pack.

Top stories

Market updates

Technology and startups

iFarmerDhaka

Sports corner

Keep it sharp

Here's something interesting

Of art and artists

Zainul Abedin

Let's get this bread

Anything going at Britto Arts Trust

Top stories

Market updates

Technology and startups

Pulse TechDhaka

Sports corner

Keep it sharp

Here's something interesting

Of art and artists

Arooj Aftab

Let's get this bread

Geospatial analytics for disasters and ecosystems

Top stories

Market updates

Technology and startups

River MobilityBengaluru

Sports corner

Keep it sharp

Here's something interesting

Of art and artists

Zakir Hussain

Let's get this bread

Submarine cable and transborder bandwidth work

Top stories

Market updates

Technology and startups

AroggaDhaka

Sports corner

Keep it sharp

Here's something interesting

Of art and artists

Shehan Karunatilaka

Let's get this bread

Gallery and programming work

Top stories

Market updates

Technology and startups

Startup BangladeshDhaka

Sports corner

Keep it sharp

Here's something interesting

Of art and artists

Rafiqun Nabi

Let's get this bread

Ecosystem research and analysis

What to treat with care