A four-year-old girl was killed after being raped allegedly by a neighbour in Chuadanga’s Damurhuda upazila on Saturday night.

At least 30 top drug dealers, who have been in police’s “safe house” for the last seven months, are set to surrender in Cox’s Bazar today.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday stressed the need for more translations of Bangla literature as her government wants to spread it across the world.

Bangabandhu issues an order asking government officials to attend office timely. He warns them of strict action if they are absent and negligent in performing their duties.

The US Senate on Friday rebuffed Democratic calls for new witnesses at President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, paving the way for his acquittal next week of charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

African countries are scrambling to avert an outbreak of the rapidly spreading coronavirus strain, as health officials warn that the poorest countries are ill-equipped to combat the deadly disease.

Police arrested a man, said to be an Awami League activist, on charge of raping a 14-year-old girl from the Tripura community. The incident happened on Friday night in Cox’s Bazar’s Chakaria, which is adjacent to Bandarban’s Lama upazila.

A man was stabbed to death in the capital’s Mohammadpur area last night.

Lt Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora, C-in-C, Eastern Command of India, calls on Prime Minister Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at his official residence. Aurora was accompanied by Maj Gen BN Sarkar.

Of queues and chaos

A total of 312 Bangladeshis, who were stranded in Coronavirus-hit Chinese city of Wuhan, landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka yesterday morning.

China faced deepening isolation over its coronavirus epidemic yesterday as the death toll soared to 259, with the United States and Australia leading a growing list of nations to impose extraordinary Chinese travel bans.

Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) leaders and activists seemed to have taken Awami League presidium member Abdur Rahman’s instruction of “occupying and controlling” polling centres seriously, as members of the ruling party’s student wing were seen in large numbers at seven centres inside Dhaka University (DU) campus.

Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda yesterday said polling agents should have the strength to stay put at polling centres.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will leave Dhaka for Rome on Tuesday on a four-day visit to hold talks with her Italian counterpart Giuseppe Conte.

Whether voters needed help or not, polling agents of the ruling party insisted on being by their sides at all times -- even inside the sacred area of the polling booth where nobody save the EVM machine is supposed to be a witness.

Foreign diplomats visited different polling centres during yesterday’s Dhaka city polls without their local staffers, following a government directive not to include Bangladeshi employees of their missions in election observer teams.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday sharply criticised some foreign missions in Dhaka for picking Bangladeshi nationals as “foreign election observers”.

Low overall turnout and a lesser presence of young voters compared to that of the elderly was what The Daily Star observed at two voting centres during the city corporations polls yesterday.

Macau is usually bustling with gamblers during China’s Lunar New Year holiday but the flood of tourists has been reduced to a trickle this year as fears grow over a coronavirus that has killed almost 260 people.