Local BNP and Awami League leaders are among 20 people accused in a case filed over alleged illegal tree felling and timber trading in Satchari National Park in Habiganj’s Chunarughat.

The Rohingya crisis is putting huge pressure on Bangladesh’s economy and damaging the environment in areas hosting the refugees, Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman said yesterday.

Police have recovered two brass idols stolen from the Radha-Govinda Temple inside the Central Kali Temple in Faridpur’s Nagarkanda upazila and arrested four people in connection with the theft.

The power and energy crisis is expected to abate in winter and visible progress would be seen by next summer, said the prime minister’s finance and planning adviser.

A man was arrested and sent to jail yesterday after locals detained him for allegedly attempting to rape a seven-year-old schoolgirl in Kaliakair, Gazipur, on Wednesday.

State-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Ltd (BAPEX) has launched a fresh exploration drive at Mobarakpur in Pabna, hoping to tap commercially viable gas reserves after an earlier attempt was halted over technological limitations.

A Dhaka court yesterday summarily dismissed a case filed hours earlier against former interim government chief adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus and 26 others over the vandalism and arson at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s residence at Dhanmondi 32.

Bangladesh will seek a higher share of Ganges water when the water-sharing treaty with India is renewed, as the existing 30-year agreement is set to expire in December, State Minister for Water Resources Forhad Hossain Azad said yesterday.

Three political parties registered with the Election Commission last year have violated its rules by failing to submit their annual audit reports, while four others registered in earlier years have also failed to comply.

The government yesterday launched a preventive oral cholera vaccination campaign targeting 51.75 lakh people in 14 high-risk upazilas and thanas.

Kolkata police have arrested the leaseholder of Shikha Inn in connection with a fire that killed nine people, including seven Bangladeshis, at a hotel in the city’s New Market area in the early hours of Wednesday.

Senior Supreme Court lawyer Toufiq Nawaz, husband of former minister Dipu Moni, was laid to rest at Banani Graveyard yesterday afternoon beside the grave of his mother, Khairun Nesa.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s first visit to India should be a bilateral one rather than a meeting on the sidelines of multilateral platforms such as BRICS or the United Nations General Assembly, said Humayun Kabir, adviser to the prime minister on foreign affairs, yesterday.

The Forest Department has returned two elephants, Samrat and Niharkoli, to their owners after nearly two years at Gazipur Safari Park in Sreepur.

Following Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir’s election as president, BNP Standing Committee member Ruhul Kabir Rizvi has been appointed the party’s acting secretary general.

At least one dengue patient died, and 750 others were hospitalised in the 24 hours till 8:00am yesterday.

At least 10 garment workers were injured in a clash with police at Zirabo Pukurpar in Ashulia yesterday morning, according to protesting workers.

Bangladesh’s deeply fraught political landscape witnessed a rare moment of camaraderie in parliament yesterday as lawmakers from across the aisle gathered around president-elect Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, offering handshakes and embraces.

A Jamalpur court yesterday sentenced seven people to death and seven others to life imprisonment for killing an uncle and his nephew in Madarganj upazila in 2016.

Bangladesh yesterday saw its first contested presidential election since 1991, with the Jatiya Sangsad electing ruling party candidate Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir as the country’s next head of state.