A rare species of tortoise known as 'Batagur Baska' laid 21 eggs at Tortoise Breeding Centre at Karamjal Wildlife Breeding Centre of the Sundarbans under Khulna district.

Md Azad Kabir, in-charge of the breeding centre, said Batagur Baska laid 21 eggs on Friday morning on the edge of a pond.

The eggs look like that of ducks, he said, adding that they were trying to hatch these eggs naturally by putting it on sand and supervising the temperature constantly.

It will take 65-67 days to hatch the eggs, Kabir added.

According to information from the Forest Department, Batagur Baska laid a total of 197 eggs since 2017.

Altogether 110 tortoises were hatched at the Karamjal Wildlife Breeding Centre until 2019, while three tortoises among those died in Indian and Bangladesh territories, the sources said.

The Tortoise Breeding Centre was set up in 2014 in Karamjal and eight rare tortoises of Batagur Baska species were released in a pond.

Mohammad Belayet Hossain, divisional forest officer of the Sundarbans East Zone, said there are 252 Batagur Baska tortoises at the breeding centre right now. Of them, 23, including four female ones, are adult.

Ten more tortoises of this species will be released in the Sundarbans, he added.

For the fourth time, near-extinct river turtle ‘Batagur Baska’ laid 35 eggs at a wildlife breeding centre in Karamjal of East Sundarbans on Tuesday.

Forest Department is trying to hatch eggs through natural incubation (keeping them in sand) process, said Azad Kabir, officer-in-charge of the breeding centre.

He said the process would take 65-67 days.

Batagur Baska is one of the most critically endangered turtles in the world and can only be found in the wild in the mangroves of Bangladesh and India.

In 2017, two turtles laid 63 eggs of which 57 hatched. The next year, two turtles laid 46 eggs, of which 24 hatched. Last year, one turtle laid 32 eggs and all of them hatched.

A total of 155 new titles hit the month-long Amar Ekushey Book Fair on the 26th day on Thursday.

With these, some 4,394 new books have so far been published in this year’s book fair, according to Bangla Academy.

Of the new books, 19 are novels, 52 poetry volumes, 20 stories and nine essays.

Books on research (10), rhyme (1), children literature (5), biography (11), Liberation War (1), science (1), travelogue (2), history (1), medicine and health (4), Bangabandhu (2), science fiction (1) and others (7) were also published on Thursday.

Publishers from across the country are exhibiting a huge number of books on different issues while Bangla Academy is exhibiting 104 newly printed and reprinted books this year.

This year, the land earmarked for the fair was expanded to 800,000 sq ft. A total of 873 units were allocated to 560 organisations. The authorities have allotted 179 units at the Bangla Academy ground to 126 organisatons and 694 at the Suhrawardy Udyan to 694 organisations.

A orangutan named Sandra, who was granted legal personhood by a judge in Argentina and later found a new home in Florida, celebrated her 34th birthday on Valentine's Day with a special new primate friend.

Patti Ragan, director of the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Florida, says Sandra "has adjusted beautifully to her life at the sanctuary" and has befriended Jethro, a 31-year-old male orangutan.

Prior to coming to Florida, Sandra had lived alone in a Buenos Aires zoo. Sandra was a bit shy when she arrived at the Florida center, which is home to 22 orangutans.

"Sandra appeared most interested in Jethro, and our caregivers felt he was a perfect choice because of his close age, calm demeanor, and gentle nature," Ragan said in a news release. "Sandra still observes and follows Jethro from a distance while they are in the process of getting to know and trust each other. But they are living harmoniously in the same habitat spaces as they continue to gain confidence in their relationship."

Judge Elena Liberatori's landmark ruling in 2015 declared that Sandra is legally not an animal, but a non-human person, and thus entitled to some legal rights enjoyed by people, and better living conditions.

"With that ruling I wanted to tell society something new, that animals are sentient beings and that the first right they have is our obligation to respect them," she told The Associated Press.

But without a clear alternative, Sandra remained at the antiquated zoo, which closed in 2016, until leaving for the U.S. in late September. She was in quarantine for a month at the Sedgwick County Zoo in Kansas before arriving in Florida.

On Friday, Sandra celebrated her birthday, complete with pink signs and wrapped packages. Jethro, who was once in the entertainment business, attended the party.

Ragan said that Sandra and Jethro will "sit in the vicinity of each other," but not close enough to touch. Sandra weighs 129 pounds, and Jethro, 260.

"Sandra does like to watch Jethro eat," Ragan said. "Some adult male orangutans will advance an introduction forcefully, but Jethro has been patient and calm giving Sandra more confidence in his presence."

A trailblazer among black women in the business world wants to help make sure that the stories of other pioneering women like her are not forgotten.

The HistoryMakers, an oral archive that's recorded the stories of more than 3,300 African Americans, launched The WomanMakers initiative with a $1 million gift from Ursula Burns, the former head of Xerox.

"We have to value our own stories," Burns said in a phone interview about the project that will focus on African American women. "We have to teach ourselves to actually value ourselves in our society."

Burns, 61, was chair and CEO of Xerox from 2009 to 2016. She spent her entire career at the company, working her way up from an internship in 1980 and, upon becoming CEO, was the first black women to head a Fortune 500 company. Burns left Xerox after the company was split in two.

The initiative was kicked off at a Jan. 31 luncheon in New York City, where Burns presented Julieanna Richardson, who founded The HistoryMakers in 1999, with the monetary gift in honor of her late husband, Lloyd Bean.

"We have so much potential to leave a historical record that will not have any chance to being erased, that is what is exceedingly important to me," Richardson said about the initiative.

The launch included a number of women on the advisory committee for The WomenMakers initiative, who will help determine the 180 women whose stories will be recorded thanks to Burns' gift.

Those on the committee are high-profile figures including Anna Deavere Smith, Bethann Hardison, and Anita Hill.

In the 20 years since its official launch, The HistoryMakers has recorded the stories of black pioneers in a number of fields including Hank Aaron, Maya Angelou and Colin Powell.

But even as an organization founded and led by a black woman, Richardson said there are still more men's stories in the archives than women's — about 800 more.

"When you look at different periods of time, even the modern-day civil rights movement, often the story of women's roles is not well-recorded or told," she said.

Women, Richardson said, were often the ones keeping the archives, but, "we aren't keeping their histories at the same time."

Telling their stories and showcasing their achievements is important, especially in these fraught partisan times, Burns said.

"These endemic, unbelievably prejudicial discussions we're having today about things we should no longer be talking about, the value and the worth of a human being that people think they can derive from the color of their skin," she said.

"I am really animated about this time because all of this work that has been undertaken before I got here that enabled me to get here, they're chipping away and eroding that and I just can't allow that to happen without some attempt to make people understand there's so much more to the story."