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.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmad said today that the refugees now in India were keen on coming back home.

The Bangladesh Climate Trust Fund (BCTF) has warned Padma Bank of legal action over its failure to pay back the fixed deposit receipt (FDR) worth Tk 29.1 crore upon maturity.

The Group of Seven richest democracies yesterday sought to counter China’s growing influence by offering developing nations an infrastructure plan that would rival President Xi Jinping’s multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The latest TIB report on the government’s response to Covid-19 consisted of “wrong information from the first to the last”, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said yesterday.

Indian start-up Mylab Discovery Solutions hopes that its inexpensive Covid-19 home test kit -- the country’s first -- will help the massive South Asian nation better track the pandemic’s spread among its 1.3-billion people.

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.

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.

Police yesterday detained 12 Rohingyas in Noakhali’s Companiganj upazila for fleeing a refugee camp at Bhasan Char in the district’s Hatiya upazila.

Two years ago, when she was 18, Tania (not her real name) married Jahidul Islam Rony, 27, a conductor of a city bus. Their days were passing well until she discovered that her husband was a drug addict and irregular in his job.