Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed hope that her personal circumstances would not come in the way of bilateral relations between India and Bangladesh, highlighting the longstanding historical ties and shared strategic interests between the two countries.

Speaking exclusively to media, Hasina said that ties between the two countries should not be held hostage to political differences surrounding any individual.

“I do not think it would be appropriate for me to comment on the decisions of the Indian government. India is a sovereign country. It has its own laws and procedures, and its government will decide accordingly. But I certainly hope my personal situation will not become an obstacle to relations between Bangladesh and India. Our relations go back to the Liberation War of 1971. We share a long border, a common history, and important interests in trade, energy, connectivity and security. These relations are far too important to be held hostage to political disagreements involving any individual,” the former PM stated.

Hasina said that both the former Muhammad Yunus-led interim government and the ruling BNP administration had repeatedly called for her return to Bangladesh.

She further questioned why her decision to return voluntarily should now invite objections.

“Both the Yunus administration and the present government have repeatedly demanded my return to Bangladesh. Now, I have decided to return myself. So, why should there be any objection?” the former PM told media in a rare audio interview.

When asked about preserving India-Bangladesh ties amid Dhaka’s attempts to link bilateral relations to her extradition, Hasina said she did not think it would be appropriate for her to comment on India’s diplomatic policy or suggest what Prime Minister Narendra Modi should do.

“I do not think it would be appropriate for me to comment on India’s diplomatic policy or suggest what Prime Minister Modi should do. The Awami League has always believed in maintaining good relations with our neighbours while protecting Bangladesh’s sovereignty and national interests. During our time, we strengthened relations with India while also working closely with China, Japan, the United States and other countries,” she mentioned.

Hasina emphasised that lasting bilateral cooperation between New Delhi and Dhaka required a representative government in Bangladesh with democratic legitimacy and broad public support, rather than one that excluded significant sections of the population from the political process.

“I also believe that lasting relations between Bangladesh and India require democratic legitimacy and public confidence. A genuinely representative government provides a stronger foundation for cooperation than one that excludes a large section of its own people from political life,” she noted.

Emphasising that a peaceful, democratic and stable Bangladesh was in India’s interest, just as a friendly and cooperative India benefited Bangladesh, Hasina said that the two countries should preserve the relationship built during her tenure.

“That is the relationship we worked to build, and I believe it should be preserved. Neighbouring countries may have disagreements, and Bangladesh may have differences with India. But those differences should be resolved through dialogue and mutual respect, not through hostility for political advantage,” she told media.

Referring to issues such as the land boundary, Ganges water-sharing and maritime boundaries, Hasina said that her government had demonstrated during its tenure that differences could be resolved through dialogue.

“Our foreign policy has always been based on friendship towards all and malice towards none. This was the principle articulated by the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and we have followed it,” the former PM stated.

Microsoft faced severe outage across its platforms — 365, Outlook and Teams — as thousands of users across the globe, including India, on Friday morning were unable to access its services.

There were more than 1 lakh incidents of people reporting issues with Outlook at outage-tracking website downdetector.com.

The disruption also hit connectors used by OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s AI services.

“We’re aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact,” Microsoft said in a statement, adding that it was providing updates in its admin center.

In its latest update, Microsoft attributed this incident to “a large number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable,” for reasons it did not explain.

Microsoft said it continues to investigate the outage.

In a post on X for users who can’t access the admin center, Microsoft said some of its infrastructure was experiencing “elevated load,” and that it was “redistributing connection traffic across our broader worldwide infrastructure to help balance the load.”

Its team has paused all deployments, is moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure, and is restarting affected servers to return them to service, the tech company said.

The company says its Defender XDR security system is also affected by the outage.

Earlier in the day, Microsoft said it had fixed a Teams disruption affecting users in North America and that the impact had been fully resolved.

The company later said the issue may also affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in other regions.

Microsoft faced a major outage in September, when a days-long outage hit Microsoft 365, its online productivity suite that includes Outlook.

The company had blamed a “core authentication configuration” issue that prevented users from accessing the service.

The navy of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Thursday that two “violating” oil tankers were disabled by explosions while crossing the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday night.

In a statement on the IRGC’s official news outlet, Sepah News, the navy said the two supertankers transited the strait despite frequent warnings from its centre for controlling traffic in the waterway about the “unauthorised and unsafe” nature of the southern route.

It added that the tankers were carrying more than 4 million barrels of oil in total, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The navy warned that the same fate will await any vessel that turns off its navigation systems in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf and cooperates with the U.S. military in crossing the waterway’s “unauthorised” southern route.

The Navy on Wednesday said a “violating” oil tanker caught fire earlier in the day after hitting naval mines east of the Strait of Hormuz.

The incident occurred in the early hours of Wednesday as the oil tanker was transiting the “unsafe and forbidden” region east of the waterway, the navy announced in a statement, Xinhua news agency reported. It said that its naval forces are monitoring the strait’s eastern waters, stressing that safe passage through the waterway requires coordination with the Iranian armed forces and compliance with maritime regulations.

Separately, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Ali Abdollahi on Wednesday warned the United States and Israel against making any new miscalculation, saying that “any point that serves as a focal point for threats against the existence of the sacred establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran will become a direct target of asymmetric operations.”

He said in a message carried by Iranian media that the armed forces would carry out orders issued by the country’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, without hesitation.