Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday he hoped to improve deeply damaged relations with the United States when he holds his first summit with US counterpart Joe Biden later this month.

China yesterday berated the US and EU consulates in Hong Kong for displaying candles to commemorate the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown, slamming it as a “clumsy political show” to destabilise the city.

Two Rohingyas were killed in two incidents of landslides in refugee camps of Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas yesterday.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday urged the people to go for massive plantation of trees to protect the country from the adverse impacts of climate change.

Three civilians were killed yesterday in a Turkish drone attack on a refugee camp in northern Iraq in an area Turkish President recently threatened to “clean up”, a Kurdish lawmaker said.

Julian Assange’s fiancee joined forces Friday with the mayor of Geneva and the UN’s torture expert to seek the WikiLeaks founder’s immediate release from a British jail and safe haven in another country.

The United States, Britain and other leading nations reached a landmark deal yesterday to pursue higher global taxation on multinational businesses such as Google, Apple and Amazon.

Markets and shopping malls in New Delhi will be allowed to reopen from tomorrow in a further easing of the Covid-19 lockdown, the chief minister said as infections fall in major Indian cities after weeks of restrictions.

China will deliver the second consignment of Covid-19 vaccines as gifts to Bangladesh by June 13, said the Chinese Embassy in Dhaka yesterday.

Two children and a 65-year-old man were killed after they were electrocuted by a live wire that fell from an electric pole because of a lightning strike in the capital’s Malibagh Chowdhury Para.

Worried over their widespread abuse, law enforcers have moved to crack down on some online games and social media applications, including “TikTok”.

A Narayanganj court sent Hefajat-e-Islam’s former joint secretary general Mamunul Haque to Kashimpur Central Jail yesterday on completion of his 18-day remand in six cases filed over rape and violence.

A South Korean industrial designer has come up with a satirical solution for “smartphone zombies” who can’t take their eyes away from their screen long enough to stop themselves walking into a wall or other obstacle.

Syed Nazrul Islam, acting president of Bangladesh, today spelt out four preconditions for a political settlement of the Bangladesh issue. In a 45-minute broadcast from the Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra,

Realising their imminent failure to meet the deadline for early commissioning, the authorities are planning to launch the Uttara-Agargaon metro rail service by December next year.

At makeshift factories hidden in Myanmar’s jungle, locals who have formed self-defence groups make rifles to take the fight to the military junta, but their homemade weapons don’t always hit the mark.

A boat carrying dozens of Rohingya refugees that set sail in February but had been adrift in the Andaman Sea with engine failure has landed on an Indonesian island after a voyage of more than 100 days, a human rights official said yesterday.

Aviation and tourism have been hit perhaps the hardest by the pandemic. Airlines went bankrupt and airliners were sent into early retirements or long storages. Flights got cancelled due to measures meant to contain the spread of the virus and planes that flew, flew nowhere near the full capacity.

The coronavirus variant first identified in India is highly infectious and can be caught by people who have already had the disease or been only partially vaccinated, a panel of Indian government scientists said in a report published yesterday.

The government is cautious about addressing the challenges the country would face after its transition to a developing country in 2026.