Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday expressed optimism that all the upazilas would come under cent percent electricity coverage by 2021, as the government was working to illuminate all homes across the country.

An alleged member of an inter-district robber gang was killed in a “gunfight” with police in Brahmanbaria’s Ashuganj upazila early yesterday.

A Bangladeshi businessman has alleged that he was kidnapped in West Bengal and had to pay a Rs-50 lakh ransom.

The fifth edition of Dhaka International Folk Fest is scheduled to begin today at Bangladesh Army Stadium in Dhaka.

Transportation costs, the largest direct logistic costs in Bangladesh, would be up to 35 percent lower if there were no congestion on roads, said a World Bank report.

Israeli air strikes killed nine Palestinians in Gaza yesterday, medical officials said, raising the Palestinian death toll to 22 over a two-day escalation in violence since Israel launched strikes to kill an Islamic Jihad commander.

When onion prices have reached Tk 150 a kg, Industries Minister Nurul Majid Mahmud Humayun, raising many eyebrows, claimed that the prices were under control.

The Sundarbans may be destroyed if unplanned development in the southwestern region follows the opening of the Padma Bridge, noted climate change expert Dr Saleemul Huq said yesterday.

A Russian court yesterday handed down prison terms of up to 19 years to six Crimean Tatar men for membership of a banned “terrorist organisation”, ending a three-year case denounced by rights groups.

Jamaat-e-Islami Secretary General Shafiqur Rahman has been elected Ameer of the party.

North Korea on Monday accused the United States and South Korea of hostility that has prevented progress towards peace on the peninsula, in a speech to the United Nations.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday stressed the need for making the railway staffers better prepared to prevent train accidents, particularly in winter.

Three people were killed in a shootout at a Thai courtroom yesterday during a hearing into an inheritance dispute, according to police, who said two of the victims were lawyers.

Angelica Villalobos came to the United States illegally as a child and lived in the shadows until she and 700,000 others like her gained protection from deportation under a program that the Supreme Court was set to take up yesterday.

Eighteen Turkish students and a lecturer went on trial yesterday for taking part in a banned LGBTI Pride event at an Ankara university.

Jewel and his two siblings were waiting for his fisherman father who promised to return home with new dresses, but they only received their father’s body yesterday morning.

A mob beat up a doctor and his assistant at a “sealed-off” private clinic in Pabna’s Chatmohar upazila on Monday when they allegedly tried to flee from the operation theatre leaving a patient in critical condition.

Burglars looted around 20kg of gold, worth Tk 8.5 crore, from the vault of Benapole Customs House sometime during the three-day holiday that ended on Sunday.

Israel killed a top commander from the Iranian-backed Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad in a rare targeted strike in the Gaza Strip yesterday, drawing retaliatory rocket salvoes that reached as far as Tel Aviv.

A patrol team of Border Guard Bangladesh came under attack in Ghumdhum border area of Bandarban’s Naikhyangchhari upazila on Monday evening.