Briefly

BANGLADESH

AIIB to provide $250m for social development

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, or AIIB, will provide $250 million to help Bangladesh improve the inclusiveness and responsiveness of social development. The loan will be given as budgetary support under the Strengthening Social Resilience Program. The agreement was signed between the government of Bangladesh and AIIB on Wednesday. Bangladesh had earlier received $800 million from AIIB as budget support in the last three financial years to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

VIETNAM

Defense firms vie for arms sales at Hanoi fair

Defense firms from the United States and Russia on Thursday displayed weapons and promoted models of aircraft at Vietnam's first large-scale arms fair, as the two powers vie for influence and arms sales in the strategic Southeast Asian country. The event at an air base in the capital Hanoi attracted 174 exhibitors from 30 countries, including most large arms-making nations, as Vietnam signaled its interest in diversifying military procurements and possibly starting exports of its own weapons.

DENMARK

Oldest DNA reveals life 2 million years ago

Scientists said on Wednesday that they had found DNA dating back 2 million years — the oldest ever extracted — in sediment from the Ice Age, opening a new chapter in paleogenetics. "We are breaking the barrier of what we thought we could reach in terms of genetic studies," said Mikkel Winther Pedersen, co-author of a new study published in science journal Nature. New technology enabled the scientists to determine that the 41 fragments in Greenland were more than a million years older than the oldest known DNA from a Siberian mammoth.

Xinhua - Agencies