Desk report

Awami League's Suranjit Sengupta sees the High Court's refusal on Monday to grant party chief Sheikh Hasina bail in the Noor Ali extortion case as 'not a good sign'.

"Allow Sheikh Hasina to return home or we will be forced to take to the streets. Don't drive us to the streets," the member of the AL's policymaking presidium said to the government policymakers.
 
Speaking at a discussion on the occasion of Hasina's 62nd birth anniversary at the party's headquarters on the Bangabandhu Avenue, he also demanded withdrawal of all the cases against the former prime minister.
 
His presidium colleague Amir Hossain Amu said, "A party is making conspiring sensing that Awami League is set to go to office. They were behind the Jan. 11 events. Now they have started conspiring over elections."
 

Former prime minister Khaleda Zia was produced in a special court located in the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban complex Monday to face charges in the Gatco graft case, reports bdnews24.com.

Other accused in the case, Khaleda Zia's younger son Arafat Rahman Coco, former ministers Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, M Shamsul Islam, MK Anwar and Motiur Rahman Nizami, also appeared in court.

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus urged MIT graduates to end global poverty and save the environment, in an address that drew record crowds to the world-renowned institute's 142nd commencement, reports agencies.

"I hope you'll ... make an effort to be remembered not simply as a creative generation but as a socially conscious generation," he said in his commencement address.