Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday announced the increase of valiant freedom fighter allowance to Tk 20,000 from Tk 12,000 a month.

Any perception that India is not interested in Bangladesh’s development should be dismissed as a conspiracy theory, Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Vikram Doraiswami said yesterday.

Five out of six legal expert amici curiae (friends of court) yesterday told the High Court that the writ petition seeking a ban on the broadcast of Al Jazeera and removal of its report “Al the Prime Minister’s Men” from digital platforms was unacceptable.

Election Commissioner Mahbub Talukdar yesterday said that elections in the country are becoming “one-centric” which cannot be an element of multi-party democracy.

A court in Saudi Arabia has handed down death penalty to a Saudi woman and gave different sentences to her husband and son in the case over the murder of Bangladeshi migrant worker Abiron Begum.

The government has reverted to its original plan of administering the second dose of Covid-19 vaccine eight weeks after the first jab instead of the gap of four weeks between the two doses.

Municipal polls in many places were marked by widespread allegations of voter fraud, ballot-box stuffing, flouting of laws and violence that left one man dead and at least 26 injured.

Taking advantage of loopholes in online registration process, some people are faking their identities and registering themselves for the Covid-19 vaccine as healthcare professionals.

A member of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) was killed in Mymensingh early yesterday as a truck run over him while he was chasing the vehicle.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said many countries have expressed their interest in providing novel coronavirus vaccines to Bangladesh, and the country will receive all those for ensuring vaccination up to rural level.

The country is yet to have a specific law for appointing chief election commissioner and election commissioners though there is a constitutional provision for enacting a law for their appointment.

The failings of Bangladesh’s approach to Test cricket came under the scanner once again as the batsmen displayed a lack of the requisite temperament in a humiliating 17-run defeat to West Indies in the second Test, which sealed a 2-0 series whitewash for the visitors.

Farida Yasmin has been confined to a bed since November 16, 2007 -- the day she slipped into a coma following a surgery. The doctors said she has no, or little, chance of ever waking from her deep sleep.

Celebrated Indian writer, Member of Parliament and former diplomat Shashi Tharoor in a conversation with The Daily Star Editor and Publisher Mahfuz Anam on the occasion of the newspaper’s 30th anniversary yesterday spoke eloquently on media freedom, regional politics and democracy on a virtual platform.

PK Halder used forged national identity cards to borrow Tk 450 crore from three financial institutions (NBFIs) and laundered the money, according to Anti-Corruption Commission findings.

PK Halder’s close associate Sukumar Mridha told a Dhaka court that over 100 people, mostly bankers, had helped Halder execute financial scams.

The government is planning a foreign diplomats’ visit to Bhasan Char. Over 7,000 Rohingyas have already been relocated to the island from Cox’s Bazar and more will be joining them in the coming days.

Shafiqual Haque Choudhury, founder and president of the Association for Social Advancement (ASA), a leading microfinance institution serving millions of borrowers across the country, breathed his last at a city hospital early yesterday.

Ron Haque Sikder, managing director of Sikder Group, got ad interim bail yesterday five hours after his arrest upon arrival at Dhaka airport in a case filed over abducting, torturing and opening fire on two Exim Bank officials over a loan permission.

The health authorities are now thinking about vaccinating more than 35 lakh people in the first month of the mass inoculation against Covid-19.