Porimol Joydhor, a sacked teacher of Viqarunnisa Noon School and College, was sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment for raping a Class X student in 2011, ending a 39-month legal battle in the sensational case. The Fourth Tribunal for Prevention of Women and Children Repression in Dhaka also fined him Tk 50,000, payable within 90 days, in default of which he will have to serve six more months in jail.

How would our daily lives be if Dhaka city remained under water for more than a week after a heavy rainfall?

Nato member Turkey shot down a Russian war plane on the Syrian border yesterday, an act President Vladimir Putin denounced as a "stab in the back" by "accomplices of terrorists" as tensions spiralled between two rival players in the Syria war.

The United Nations has renewed its call on the Bangladesh government to immediately impose a moratorium on capital punishment and abolish the practice altogether.

A Dhaka court yesterday indicted four suspected Islamic State (IS) operatives for conspiring to topple the government through subversive activities and establish a Khilafat state in Bangladesh.

Pakistan's top rights activist Asma Jahangir has blasted the Pakistan government for demonstrating “disproportionately high passion” against the execution of two top war criminals in Bangladesh.

Separate registration for print media's online editions is not necessary. Instead, those should be brought under the existing laws that regulate the newspapers.

Elections to 234 municipalities will be held on December 30, marking the start of the country's first local government polls on partisan lines.

Dhaka's potential cumulative damage from intense rainfalls would stand at Tk 11,000 crore in the next 35 years, a World Bank study estimates. This damage will be caused by waterlogging and urban flooding, and does not include the impact of climate change. In a changing climate scenario with more intense rain, the estimated loss would be Tk 13,900 crore in the 2014-2050 period.

An Islami Chhatra Shibir activist was beaten to death allegedly by Bangladesh Chhatra League men yesterday afternoon at MM College in Jessore.

Elections to around 240 municipalities across the country are likely to be held on December 30, said Election Commission officials.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last night said some countries have been jointly exerting pressure on the government to make it say that global terror outfit Islamic State (IS) has presence in Bangladesh.

We can react two ways at Pakistan's expression of 'deep anguish' at the hanging of two war criminals – Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed.

Terming it a brazen interference in Bangladesh's internal affairs, Dhaka yesterday strongly protested Islamabad's statement on Sunday's execution of two war criminals.

Top war criminals Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed and Salauddin Quader Chowdhury were buried yesterday at their village homes amid tight security.

They paid fees and service charges to IRIS Corporation for their passports in Saudi Arabia three to four months ago but the Malaysian outsourcing company did not bother to give passports to at least 50,000 Bangladeshi expatriates.

One of Bangladesh's many tragedies was the near reversal, within three and a half years of our birth as a country, of the gains of our Liberation War and the coming to power, later, of people who not only opposed the birth of Bangladesh but actively participated in the genocide and crimes against humanity that was the hallmark of the Pakistani forces and their Bengali collaborators.

Families of war crimes victims, campaigners and researchers have hailed the government for its commitment in bringing the perpetrators of the 1971 to book and implementing the court verdicts against them.

Dhaka has reacted sharply to a statement from Islamabad on Sunday's execution of two war criminals, and summoned the Pakistan high commissioner in Bangladesh for lodging a formal protest. Pakistani Envoy Shuja Alam was asked yesterday afternoon to come to the acting foreign secretary's office at 2:30pm today, a diplomatic source in Dhaka told The Daily Star.

Parliament last night passed three bills allowing partisan elections to the mayoral post at city corporation level and to the chairman post at upazila parishad and union parishad levels.