BNP's Golam Mohammad Siraj won the Bogura-6 by-elections, which saw the use of EVMs in all polling centres. Siraj bagged 89,782 votes while his nearest rival Awami League's T Zaman Niketa got 32,297 votes, said Zakir Hossain, Bogra Sadar upazila election officer, in an announcement. Turnout was about 35 percent.

The voting ended peacefully. No incidents of violence or allegations of irregularities were reported on the day of voting at least. The constituency was declared vacant as BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, who was elected from the parliamentary seat in the 30 December general election, did not take oath as MP.

At least three local private banks suffered major cyberattacks last month, raising concern about the robustness of their security systems against a growing threat of scammers. Of the three, Dutch Bangla Bank Limited (DBBL) was the biggest victim, losing as much as $3 million (around Tk 25 crore) to global cybercriminals.

Two other banks -- NCC Bank and Prime Bank -- also faced cyberattacks, but they claimed they were able to avert financial losses. In the case of the DBBL, hackers planted a malware in the bank's switch (card management system) around three months ago and made a perfect replica of the switch, which the bank could not detect. When hackers went for transactions last month, the proxy or the shadow switch gave instructions to release funds, keeping the bank completely in the dark.

A writ petition was filed with the High Court seeking its directives to prevent unnecessary C-sections ( Caesarean) births in the country. A Supreme Court lawyer filed the petition. The HC bench of Justice FRM Nazmul Ahasan and Justice KM Kamrul Kader was likely to hear the writ later in the week, after Dhaka Courier goes to press.

According to WHO and Unicef reports, about 77 percent of C-sections that took place in Bangladesh last year were "unnecessary", and contributed to their rise by 51 percent between 2016 and 2018. According to the writ petitioner, 95 percent of the income at some clinics come from performing the procedure on unassuming patients, while no steps have been taken by the authorities to even monitor the situation.

Bangladesh and Nepal agreed to use the existing setup of Indian transmission lines to trade power in the short run. Both countries also planned to make joint investments in hydropower projects in Nepal. The agreement was signed by Nepal's Energy Secretary Dinesh Ghimire and his Bangladeshi counterpart Ahmad Kaikaus during a Joint Steering Committee meeting at Cox Bazaar.

The secretary level meeting also decided to study the prospect of building dedicated power lines in the long term in line with the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the two countries on 'Cooperation in the Field of Power Sector' last August. Discussions on the use of Indian transmission lines passing through the Siliguri Corridor, also known as the "Chicken's Neck", emerged in the wake of recent amendments to the cross-border energy trading regulations by India.