Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday called upon all to stay alertsaying thatbad things happen when people lead a good life and the country moves towards prosperity.

Another new Covid variant with potentially worrying mutations has been discovered in the UK.

A Dhaka court placed 29 BNP men each on a two-day remand yesterday in connection with two cases filed over Saturday’s clash between BNP activists and police in front of the capital’s Jatiya Press Club.

Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Li Jiming yesterday said they are now in close discussion with Bangladesh regarding Covid-19 vaccine assistance.

At least 10 people, including a plainclothes policeman and a TV cameraperson, were injured in a clash between two rival groups of Bogura Awami League and Jubo League in the town’s Charmatha bus terminal area yesterday.

An independent mayoral candidate of Madaripur’s Kalkini municipality was picked up by police and then sent to Dhaka to meet a top leader of the ruling Awami League, the candidate alleged.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted Thursday that she has lost sleep over the pandemic, tossing and turning over “tough decisions” for a nation eager for relief from months of virus restrictions.

The Bangladesh Bank yesterday withdrew its executive director Shah Alam from the responsibility of monitoring two departments for his alleged connection with scammer PK Halder.

The world faces around 4,000 variants of the virus that causes Covid-19, prompting a race to improve vaccines, Britain said yesterday, as researchers began to explore mixing doses of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca shots in a world first.

Covid-19 vaccine nationalism is harmful for all, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday, and said weak cooperation between nations is a major barrier to achieving worldwide vaccination at the scale needed to end the coronavirus pandemic.

A one-off tax on Argentina’s richest people to help pay for medical supplies and relief for small businesses battered by the global coronavirus pandemic entered into force on Friday.

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen yesterday said the conviction of lawmaker Mohammad Shahid Islam alias Kazi Papul is a matter of sadness and shame for the country.

The closing of Panama’s border due to Covid has stranded a thousand migrants -- most from Haiti and Cuba -- in Colombia, as they had planned to sneak across on their way to the United States, officials said Thursday.

Border restrictions were being tightened around the world yesterday in the face of an unrelenting coronavirus threat, after a weekend in which anger at social distancing rules bubbled over into fiery clashes in the Netherlands.

Most pledges made by the mayoral aspirants of the two major parties -- Awami League and BNP -- in their manifestos for the January 27 Chattagram City Corporation election are beyond the legal and financial mandates of a mayor, experts said.

Amnesty International yesterday expressed deep concern over the recent arbitrary detention and other forms of harassment of artists who are facing increasing attacks on their right to freedom of expression in Bangladesh.

Five people died as a fire tore through a building in the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturing hub in India yesterday, but the company insisted the production of drugs to counter the coronavirus pandemic would continue.

The UK coronavirus strain has spread to at least 60 countries, the World Health Organization reported yesterday, as 1.6 million residents were banned from leaving Beijing after two cases linked to the new strain were found in the Chinese capital.

More than 600 people have been arrested and troops have been deployed after a third consecutive night of riots in several Tunisian cities, officials said yesterday.

Slovakia yesterday began a new round of nationwide Covid-19 screening -- a process aimed at easing curfew restrictions for people who test negative.