Agency The BBC has teamed up with Bangladesh's leading news web site bdnews24.com to enable its users to listen to BBC World Service radio.

Visitors to the 24/7 site across the world can now access BBC radio programmes in English and Bangla. The news service is the first news site in Bangladesh to carry the BBC radio content.

Staff Correspondent

Shamsun Nahar Rahman Rose, a social and cultural activist and mother of renowned fashion designer Bibi Russel, died at a city hospital on Sunday.

She was 79. Shamsun Nahar, wife of late freedom fighter and cultural activist Mokhlesur Rahman Sidhu Bhai, is survived by two sons and three daughters.

Agency

Bangladesh's army-backed emergency government has banned two popular live political talk shows, the private satellite television channel ETV said Saturday.

'The information ministry handed us a written order saying that we cannot telecast out our live talk shows any more,' a senior ETV official said.

Agency

Controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, under virtual house arrest after being shifted out of here in controversial circumstances, had her Indian visa extended for six months from February 17.

'I have come to know that my visa has been extended,' Taslima told the Press Trust of India on Wednesday when contacted in Delhi where she is staying at an undisclosed destination on security grounds after violent protests by a little-known Muslim group against her alleged anti-Islam writings.

LOS ANGELES (AFP)

Nominees for the 80th Academy Awards were to be unveiled early Tuesday, with Hollywood on tenterhooks as experts predicted a wide open battle for the Oscars' best picture prize.

The nominations for this year's awards were to be revealed at 5:38 am (1338 GMT) at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose Beverly Hills headquarters went into lockdown on Monday in anticipation of the event.

Staff Correspondent

A video compact disc of the Spartacus 71, video-film directed by Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, was released in the Star Cineplex of Basundhara City Shopping Complex in Dhaka on Monday.

Members of the Dhaka guerrilla group 'crack platoon' in 1971, Nasir Uddin Yousuff and Habibul Alam (Bir Pratik) unveiled the cover of the VCD, produced by the Impress Telefilm Limited and released by the Laser Vision.

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Staff Correspondent

Small and medium businesses in Bangladesh spent nearly $380 million on IT and telecom solutions in 2007, said a study conducted by the New York-based Access Markets International Partners. 'SMBs in Bangladesh may have started off a bit slower than their counterparts in the Indian subcontinent in terms of overall IT adoption,' says Dev Chakravarty, senior analyst at AMI Partners, a consulting firm that specializes in IT, internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital and actionable market intelligence, with a strong focus on global small and medium business enterprises. 'However, their IT adoption is set to take off more rapidly in the near future.

Agence France-Presse . Paris

Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, under Indian government protection from Islamist death threats, described her life in hiding as a 'slow and lingering death' in a text released in France on Friday.

'I am merely a disembodied voice. Those who once stood by me have disappeared into the darkness,' the 45-year-old Taslima wrote in an article published in Saturday's edition of Le Monde newspaper.

Staff Correspondent

Playwright Selim Al-Din was taken to LabAid Cardiac Hospital in the city in a "very critical condition", his physician said Saturday.

Selim has been put on the life-support system, LabAid interventional cardiologist Dr APM Shohrabuzzaman told bdnews24.com by phone.

Vodafone Group Plc, the world's biggest mobile player by revenue that entered India early this year, on Monday indicated it was open to foray into other South Asian nations such as Pakistan and Bangladesh.

"These are some large-population markets, but with small mobile penetration and given a chance we would like to enter these markets," Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin told analysts when asked to comment on media reports that Vodafone was among the potential suitors for Egyptian telecom firm Orascom, which has a strong presence in Pakistan and Bangladesh.