Hundreds of thousands of devotees yesterday raised their hands to seek divine blessings for mankind and the Muslim Ummah during Akheri Munajat of the first phase of Biswa Ijtema.

Dhaka wants peace and stability all over the world and this is something Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will emphasise during her three-day visit to the UAE where she reached last night.

Mikail Akar doesn’t flinch as the cameras click around him. Born in 2012, the German artistic prodigy has spent half his life in the limelight.

A Bangladeshi company is producing biodegradable packaging from an unlikely source material -- corn or maze -- with the aim of offering a suitable alternative to polythene bags, which survive in soil for several hundred years and leave devastating impacts on the environment.

Protesters piled pressure on Iran’s leadership yesterday with demands for top authorities to quit after the Iranian military admitted it had mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian airliner at a time when it had feared US strikes.

A Sufi folk singer has been arrested in Tangail under the Digital Security Act for allegedly hurting religious sentiment.

Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani will visit Tehran, the government said yesterday, amid soaring tensions following the US killing of an Iranian commander and retaliatory strikes.

Brazil’s government will propose legalizing oil and gas exploration as well as hydroelectric dam construction on indigenous land, a report said Saturday, citing a draft of a bill to be sent to Congress.

Boko Haram jihadists on Saturday killed at least four villagers and kidnapped four women in western Chad, the local governor and a security official said.

Eleven migrants died on Saturday, including eight children, when their vessel sank in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey, state news agency Anadolu reported.

Both sides in Libya’s conflict agreed to a ceasefire from yesterday to end nine months of fighting, following weeks of international diplomacy and calls for a truce by power-brokers Russia and Turkey.

An 18-year-old girl, who is deaf and disabled, was allegedly raped in her residence in Gokulnagar village in Pabna’s Atghoria upazila on Saturday noon.

The High Court (HC) yesterday issued a rule asking authorities concerned of the government to prepare a list of encroachers and polluters of the Ichhamati river in Pabna and to submit it before the court in 90 days.

The proposed opening of three Turkish schools in Germany has rekindled a long-standing row over the perceived influence of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government on the country’s three-million strong Turkish community.

Washington on Friday spurned an Iraqi request to prepare to pull out its troops, amid heightened US-Iranian tensions after the US killing of an Iranian commander in Baghdad, and said it was exploring a possible expansion of Nato’s presence there.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam has cancelled his visit to India as he will travel to the UAE with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today.

The first phase of Biswa Ijtema, the world’s second largest Muslim congregation after Hajj, will end today through the Akheri Munajat [final prayer].

There is no immediate respite from the bone-chilling cold as the ongoing gloomy weather may continue until next Wednesday, says the Met office.

A gold bar found in a Mexico City park in 1981 was part of the Aztec treasure looted by Hernan Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors 500 years ago, a new study says.

At least 7,855 people were killed and 13,330 others injured in 5,516 road crashes across the country last year, according to a platform working for passengers’ welfare.