Nepal is being overwhelmed by a Covid-19 surge as India’s outbreak spreads across South Asia, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said yesterday.

The latest restrictions on movement have dealt another fatal blow to workers in the informal sector in the absence of adequate government support required to survive a prolonged period without work.

With the number of daily coronavirus cases on the decline, most of the general and ICU beds at the Covid-19 dedicated hospitals across the country remains vacant.

The Chinese government is working to start the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines before Eid even though there is a five-day May Day holiday in China, said Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen yesterday.

The government has made considerable progress in procuring Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine with health officials now working on finalising a government-to-government contract.

As the demand for oxygen increased at hospitals amid this second wave of the pandemic, a group of Buet researchers has developed a low-cost portable ventilator that can deliver oxygen to patients efficiently without electricity.

Right under the authorities’ noses, unskilled drivers have been operating unregistered speedboats on the Padma’s Shimulia-Bangla Bazar route for over a decade.

BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia’s condition improved a little and she was stable, said sources in her family yesterday.

Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee will be sworn in as West Bengal chief minister for a third straight term today amid post-polls violence that left at least 12 people dead.

The landslide victory of Mamata Banerjee has not only thwarted the Modi wave that has swept over India but also relegated the Left and Congress to a footnote in West Bengal polls.

Twenty-six people were killed as a speedboat capsized after it crashed into a sand-laden bulk carrier in the Padma river in Madaripur yesterday.

“I still don’t have the courage to say whether I was forcefully disappeared or I was lost,” said photojournalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol at a webinar yesterday.

The government has decided to extend the ongoing lockdown till May 16 to contain the spread of Covid-19, keeping suspended inter-district bus, launch and train services during the period.

Serum Institute of India has been in talks with Beximco about producing the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in Bangladesh.

BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia, now undergoing treatment for Covid-19, was moved to the coronary care unit of Evercare Hospital in the city yesterday with breathing difficulties.

Nizam Uddin, a 55-year-old Cox’s Bazar resident, was attending a relative’s wedding at a hotel in the tourist town on December 23, 2019 when he received a phone call informing him that a powerful syndicate had sold his land to a government project posing as its owner.

Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya…

Just in the month leading up to World Press Freedom Day today, five journalists were sued under the Digital Security Act, according to voluntary research outfit Our Media, Our Rights.

Devastated by the second wave of the pandemic, India has imposed a ban on all kinds of vaccine exports.

Bangladesh will receive over five lakh doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine on May 10 if everything goes as planned.