Kidnappers have released 53 people including women and children they seized on a bus in Nigeria, local authorities said, while dozens of others taken from a school in a separate incident are still missing.

A general strike against military rule shut businesses in Myanmar yesterday and huge crowds gathered peacefully despite fears of violence after authorities warned that confrontation could be deadly.

The novel coronavirus has claimed seven more lives and infected another 366 people in Bangladesh in 24 hours till yesterday morning.

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen yesterday said Singapore and Romania would recruit 10,000 and 2,000 Bangladeshis respectively soon.

A top Chinese official yesterday outlined plans to ensure only “patriots” run Hong Kong as Beijing seeks to neuter any remaining democratic opposition and take a more direct role in how the business hub is run.

Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo was among three people killed yesterday when a UN convoy came under attack in the troubled east, DRC sources and the Italian government said.

A newborn was killed and at least 15 others were injured when an ambulance collided head-on with a bus in Barishal’s Babuganj upazila yesterday afternoon.

The United Nations refugee agency called on yesterday for the immediate rescue of a group of Rohingya refugees who were adrift in their boat in the Andaman Sea without food or water, many of whom were ill and suffering from extreme dehydration.

Four days have passed but police are yet to arrest anyone in connection with Noakhali’s Companiganj violence that killed a journalist and wounded around 19 others.

The US death toll from the coronavirus topped 500,000 yesterday, according to an NBC News tally — a milestone that underscores the grave threat the virus still poses even as more people are vaccinated.

In a rare move, the railways ministry yesterday changed the directors of 17 projects of Bangladesh Railway, aiming to facilitate their quick implementation.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday urged everyone to receive coronavirus vaccine shots and maintain proper health guidelines.

The National Board of Revenue has asked banks for detailed information of all types of accounts and transactions of five people, including former Bangladesh Bank deputy governor SK Sur Chowdhury, present Executive Director Md Shah Alam and their spouses.

At least six people were killed and at least 13 others injured when a Bogura-bound bus crashed into a truck coming from the opposite direction in Sherpur upazila of the district around 5:00am yesterday.

Jahanginagar University authorities yesterday filed a case against 250 unnamed locals who allegedly attacked students on Friday evening over a cricket match.

Five people were killed in the severe floods that submerged entire neighbourhoods in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, authorities said yesterday, as residents returned to clean their homes and salvage belongings.

The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances wants to undertake a visit to Bangladesh in relation to two cases of enforced disappearances.

Former US president Donald Trump will give a speech later this month to a gathering of political conservatives in Orlando, Florida, a source familiar with the plans said Saturday, his first extended public address since leaving the White House on January 20.

Turkish prosecutors yesterday launched a probe into a pro-Kurdish MP suspected of having travelled to a Kurdish-controlled region of Iraq where 13 Turkish hostages were killed in a failed rescue.

Russia said Saturday that its scientists had detected the world’s first case of transmission of the H5N8 strain of avian flu from birds to humans and had alerted the World Health Organization.