On May 23, 1971, American President Nixon had a discussion with his Assistant for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger as to the situation in Pakistan.

With a two-year job “contract” and dreams of a better life, Akhi Begum (not her real name) left for Saudi Arabia in mid-2019.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday urged the young people to take up fish farming as profession.

India’s Covid-19 outbreak has stabilised in parts of the country, a government official said, but deaths rose by 4,194 yesterday and infections were spreading in rural areas where public health services are scarce and already overstretched.

Amid a huge surge in Covid-19 cases in the region, a 10-day complete lockdown has been imposed in Cox’s Bazar’s Teknaf upazila while a week-long similar restrictions have been announced in five Rohingya camps in the district’s Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas.

Today is the 15th death anniversary of Golam Rasul Mallick, a freedom fighter and founding editor of Eastern News Agency (ENA), said a press release.

Police on Thursday night arrested an Imam of a local mosque in Narail’s Kalia upazila on charge of raping a minor girl.

Official tolls showing the number of deaths directly or indirectly attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic are likely to be a “significant undercount,” the World Health Organization said yesterday, saying 6-8 million people may have died so far.

The World Bank has approved $600 million for two projects in Bangladesh to help over 1.75 million poor and vulnerable people.

Myanmar’s junta-appointed election commission will dissolve Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy Party (NLD) because of what it said was fraud in a November election, news outlet Myanmar Now said yesterday, citing a commissioner.

Another 36 Bangladeshi migrants were rescued off the Tunisian coast on Thursday, after a boat carrying them capsized in the Mediterranean, reaching the tally of rescued Bangladeshis from the incident to 68.

The US consul general in Karachi sent a telegram to the US State Department providing details of his meeting with Pakistan President Yahya Khan on May 22, 1971. As to the political situation in Pakistan, Yahya Khan affirmed his belief that the future of the wings were intertwined with the whole.

A police probe found that instigation by outsiders, irregular payment of salaries and sanitation problems fuelled labour unrest in the SS Power I Plant in Chattogram’s Banshkhali upazila, leading to a clash on April 17 that left seven workers dead in police firing.

A Hefajat-e-Islam activist died at a hospital in the capital yesterday while undergoing treatment in judicial custody.

The number of new Covid-19 cases dropped slightly as the health directorate yesterday reported 1,457 cases, including three Indian returnees in Jashore.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres yesterday described Gaza as “hell on earth” for children, appealing to Israel for rapid and unhindered aid access and telling the 193-member General Assembly he would launch an appeal for humanitarian funding.

A giant slab of ice bigger than the Spanish island of Majorca has sheared off from the frozen edge of Antarctica into the Weddell Sea, becoming the largest iceberg afloat in the world, the European Space Agency said on Wednesday.

Pakistan today conceded that there had been violations of human rights in East Pakistan and that “as in all conflicts innocent people had suffered”.

The Anti-Corruption Commission has formed a three-member committee for an enquiry into the illegal wealth of Hefajat-e-Islam leaders.

China said yesterday a US warship had illegally entered its territorial waters in the South China Sea, the latest salvo in the two nations’ dispute over Beijing’s territorial claims in the busy waterway.