Polythene and polypropylene bags will be banned at all supermarkets from October 1 and in other markets from November 1 in Bangladesh.

Syeda Rizwana Hasan, adviser to the Bangladeshi interim government's Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change, on Tuesday, announced that stern actions will be taken against producers of polythene and polypropylene starting November 1, news agency reported.

The ban on plastic bags, which has been in place since 2002, will now be strictly enforced, she said.

Superstores have already placed orders for alternative bags, and necessary arrangements are being made to meet the demand, she added.

The death toll from a blast at a coal mine in the eastern Iranian province of South Khorasan has risen to 49.

The figure was confirmed after Mohammad-Ali Akhoundi, director general of the provincial crisis management headquarters, said that all individuals still trapped inside the mine, located in Tabas County, are presumed dead.

He added that debris removal operations had been expedited and were expected to conclude within a few hours, allowing for the recovery of the bodies, reports.

The explosion occurred on Saturday night due to a sudden rise in methane gas in one of the mine's tunnels, about 540 km southeast of Tehran.

Emergency search operations for a five-month-old boy and his grandmother were ongoing after they were swept off the roof of a vacation home during a flash flood near the coastal Tuscan city of Pisa.

The floods began on Monday when the Sferza stream swelled and broke its banks after days of severe thunderstorms. Both victims are German nationals on vacation in Italy, news agency reported.

The boy's parents and grandfather were rescued from the roof of the Tuscan rental home when the incident occurred on Tuesday. Search efforts, aided by drones, helicopters, divers, and rescue dogs, utilised brief breaks in the weather.

Much of Italy has been battered by Storm Boris since Thursday last week, which prompted regional states of emergency in Tuscany, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna on Tuesday.

At least 25 people were killed and six others injured in an Israeli airstrike on houses in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanese military and medical sources.

A Red Cross source told news agency on Tuesday that 15 of the victims were Lebanese civilians, while the other 10 were Syrians.

The military sources, who spoke anonymously, said that an Israeli warplane fired four air-to-ground missiles at dawn on several houses in the centre of the village of Nmairiyeh.

The Lebanese Red Cross and civil defence teams transferred the casualties to hospitals in the city of Nabatieh, the sources said.

"Civil defence personnel equipped with bulldozers and cranes spent most of the day removing the rubble of the demolished houses and pulling the bodies from the rubble, most of which appeared disfigured," they said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not mention Kashmir in his annual address at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for the first time in years, breaking from a tradition he has maintained since 2019.

This marked a significant departure from his usual stance, where he has consistently raised the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, particularly after India abrogated Article 370 and removed the special status of the region.

His comments were seen as unwarranted interference in India's internal matters, and New Delhi repeatedly dismissed them as such.

Since 2019, Erdogan has used his UNGA platform to criticise India's policy in Jammu and Kashmir, claiming that peace, prosperity, and stability were lacking in the Valley.

The government will publish detailed guidelines on stock short selling this week to help prevent people unintentionally engaging in illegal trading, the financial regulator said on Wednesday.

The guidelines will be made public on Thursday, while an English-version of the how-to instructions will be available from next month, according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).

"There has been a need to remove uncertainties over how the financial authorities interpret and apply regulations on stock short selling, and to stipulate what may constitute as naked short selling," it said of reasons for the guidelines, reports news agency.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said it has signed a US$30 million loan agreement with Bhutan to fund a solar power project.

The Distributed Solar for Public Infrastructure Project aims to generate up to 35 megawatts of solar power systems on rooftops of public infrastructure across the country, according to news agency.

According to the bank, energy security in Bhutan has become a growing concern because of rising electricity demand and insufficient power supply, particularly during winter.

The project will support Bhutan's national priority of enhancing the climate resilience of energy systems and addressing energy security concerns through the diversification of energy sources.

Canada and the US have announced that they will create a task force to negotiate a boundary dispute in the Arctic.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, the two countries said the task force would undertake negotiations on the maritime boundary in the Beaufort Sea, including resolving the overlap in the continental shelf in the Central Arctic Ocean, news agency reported.

The area at issue is situated north of Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, the statement said.

"Canada and the United States will work collaboratively toward a final agreement that will provide clarity on our Arctic maritime boundaries, bearing in mind the responsible conservation and sustainable use of Arctic resources for the mutual benefit of Americans and Canadians, including Indigenous Peoples," said the statement.

Israel's army has said that Hezbollah had fired around 300 rockets and other projectiles into Israel amid the second day of Israel's heaviest attacks on Lebanon since 2006.

An explosive drone fell in Atlit, a coastal town south of Haifa, northern Israel, marking the first time Hezbollah's rocket fire has reached this region, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Tuesday night, adding that two additional drones were launched toward the area but were intercepted. The drones caused no casualties, according to Israel's rescue services.

Most of the rockets were intercepted by Israel's aerial defence systems, the army said.

Hezbollah confirmed the attack in a statement, saying its fighters launched "an aerial operation with a squadron of assault drones against the headquarters of Israel's special naval task unit Shayetet 13 in the Atlit base, targeting the positions of its officers and soldiers and striking the targets precisely", news agency reported.

Syrian authorities are facilitating entry at border crossings for both Lebanese and returning Syrian nationals, local media outlet Al-Watan Online reported on Tuesday.

Damascus Countryside Governor Ahmed Khalil stated that the government is providing comprehensive support to streamline the entry process. He added that the government is "offering all necessary assistance to our Lebanese brothers and returning Syrians" under the directives of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

This development comes in the wake of heavy Israeli bombardments targeting Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon.