Bangladesh has requested the Saudi government to waive the seven-day mandatory quarantine for Bangladeshi workers in the Kingdom as Dhaka will ensure quarantine here before their departure.

At least 13 people were wounded in a shooting in downtown Austin, Texas early on Saturday, police said, adding the suspected shooter was still at large.

Japan’s House of Councilors has unanimously passed a resolution, condemning the coup d’état in Myanmar and calling for early recovery of the democratic political system.

Azerbaijan yesterday handed over to Armenia 15 prisoners of war captured during last year’s hostilities over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, the foreign ministry in Baku said.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Friday that emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts by teenage girls rose significantly last year compared to 2019, highlighting the mental health impact of the pandemic.

About a quarter of Mexico’s 126 million people are estimated to have been infected with the coronavirus, the health ministry said on Friday, far more than the country’s confirmed infections.

A firebrand Pakistani scholar has been detained for making death threats against Nobel prize laureate Malala Yousafzai over her comments on marriage, officials said Friday.

A 35-year-old Chinese national held by India’s Border Security Force, near the border with Bangladesh in West Bengal’s Malda district, for illegal entry on June 10, has claimed he runs a hotel in a posh locality of Gurugram -- a satellite city in Delhi -- along with an Indian partner, police sources said.

India yesterday cut taxes on medical equipment such as oxygen concentrators and drugs used to treat Covid-19 infections, after widespread criticism over healthcare costs during a devastating second wave of the virus in April and May.

The maritime ports of Chattogram, Cox’s Bazar, Mongla and Payra have been advised to hoist local cautionary signal no-3 as a low pressure has formed over northwest Bay and adjoining coastal areas of Bangladesh.

Three unidentified bodies were found in the Naf river in Cox’s Bazar’s Teknaf upazila yesterday, said police.

Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) arrested two suspected human traffickers conducting separate raids in Mymensingh early yesterday.

Newly appointed Chief of Air Staff Air Vice Marshal Shaikh Abdul Hannan yesterday took over the command of Bangladesh Air Force, an ISPR press release said.

Rivers are likely to erode about 28 square kilometres of land this year, which is more than the land eroded last year, according to a research body of the water resources ministry.

The United States appealed today to India and Pakistan to exercise restraint and urged the Pakistanis to restore normalcy in East Pakistan through “peaceful political accommodation”.

Dengue fever infections dropped dramatically in an Indonesian study where a bacteria was introduced into disease-carrying mosquitoes, offering hope in the battle against an illness that sickens millions annually around the world.

Italy has created a national cybersecurity agency following warnings by Prime Minister Mario Draghi that Europe needed to protect itself from Russian “interference.”

At least 177 people were killed by lightning strikes, mostly farmers at different parts of the county while 47 others were wounded in the last four months since March.

The British government yesterday said that the new Delta coronavirus variant is 60 percent more transmissible in households than the variant that forced the UK to lock down in January.

The UN rights chief yesterday said that violence was escalating across Myanmar, warning that the country had plunged into a “human rights catastrophe” since the February 1 coup.