Prime minister Sheikh Hasina, in a barbed retort to the opposition leader on Saturday, elaborated on an analogy of thorns that BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia had made during a speech in Dhaka the day before.

Hasina, speaking in Chittagong, said those who had turned the people's lives miserable during their own tenure in government between 2001 and 2006, are now out to make it more difficult for the ruling government.

The government has extended the ban on rice export to six more months, a commerce ministry statement said on Thursday.

The period on the restriction expires on Thursday. The new extension will be effective from Friday, the statement said. The government extended the ban in June.

The prime minister, on New Year's Eve, said the five former army officers convicted of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's 1975 assassination would be executed "at the start of the new year".

"We are determined to carry out the death sentences at the very beginning of the New Year," Hasina said in a New Year message.

BRAC founder and chairperson Fazle Hasan Abed will be knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services in tackling poverty in Bangladesh and other parts of the world.

Abed's name was included in the Queen's New Year's Honours List released on Dec 31, the NGO said in a statement on Thursday.

The year 2009 brought moments of joy and sorrow for stock investors as the landmark listing of giant Grameenphone sent market capitalisation skyrocketing, but naked intervention caused plenty of market jitters.

The year was also marked by wild share price fluctuations, highest single day turnover, an OTC market and introduction of book building pricing method for floatation of IPOs (initial public offering).

If you recently tweeted about how you were chillaxin for the holiday, take note: Fifteen particularly over- or mis-used words and phrases have been declared "shovel-ready" to be "unfriended" by a US university's annual list of terms that deserve to be banned.

After thousands of nominations of words and phrases commonly used in marketing, media, technology and elsewhere, wordsmiths at Lake Superior State University on Thursday issued their 35th annual list of words that they believe should be banned.

Bangladesh will remember 2009 for two very distinct events – a mutiny that shook the nation at the start of the year and a milestone verdict towards the end of the year that brought long-awaited legal closure on a dark episode of history.

The shocking BDR massacre threatened to destabilise the nascent government in February, while November's landmark judgment by the Supreme Court finally offered the nation a sense of justice 34 long years after the 1975 assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the nation's founding leader.

Perhaps it's not surprising, but for members of the US armed forces, combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan increases the risk of depression, according to a new study.

Timothy S. Wells of the US Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, studied more than 40,000 members of the US military who had been free of symptoms of depression and had not taken medication for anxiety, stress, or depression before deployment.

Home minister Sahara Khatun has refuted reports about India sending extra security forces to protect its mission in Dhaka. After days of mounting newspaper reports, Sahara denied any knowledge of the matter just two days ago.

But she told reporters Wednesday: "I have enquired about the matter. The news appearing in different dailies and telecast on different channels is absolutely false."

One more seat on the front row in parliament will not be enough to make BNP join parliament in the forthcoming winter session, front-ranking BNP leader Barrister Moudud Ahmed said on Wednesday.

He said, "Other pending issues, such as withdrawal of false and harassing cases filed against BNP leaders, including chairperson Khaleda Zia and senior vice-chairman Tarique Rahman, will have to be settled. We will join parliamentary sessions only when a congenial environment is created."

The government on Wednesday approved a proposal to import power from India. The tariff will be agreed upon once a Memorandum of Understanding is reached between the two countries.

The cabinet at a meeting chaired by prime minister Sheikh Hasina approved the Memorandum of Understanding between Bangladesh and Indian governments on cooperation in power sector, her press secretary Abul Kalam Azad told reporters at a briefing.

A Dhaka court on Wednesday ordered police to drop charges against the last seven students of Dhaka University over torching a military vehicle during the August 2007 campus unrest.

The latest order means all the cases filed in connection with the student unrest during the caretaker government have been withdrawn.

Bangladesh policymakers hope that the country's manpower exports will grow substantially in 2010, despite a huge fall this past year.

"Several countries have emerged from the impacts of the global recession. New labour markets are being created and we're being asked to send workers," overseas employment minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain told bdnews24.com.

Commerce ministry has claimed that the prices of consumer products in Bangladesh are lowest is the South Asia.

Commerce minister Col (Rtd) Faruk Khan told a meeting of parliamentary standing committee that the prices of essentials in Bangladesh largely depended on the price-level in India, said standing committee members.

England captain Andrew Strauss described his team's crushing innings victory over South Africa on Wednesday as one of the best away wins he had experienced.

Off-spinner Graeme Swann and paceman Stuart Broad bowled South Africa out for 133 to complete an innings and 98-run win and give England a 1-0 lead in the four-match series.

A citizens group enforced a half-day strike in Bajitpur Upazila in Kishoreganj district on Tuesday demanding the Upazila be made a district.

The 6am-12noon strike suspended all traffics in the Upazila. Shops and businesses were also shut down.

Home minister Sahara Khatun on Monday said she did not know anything about the presence of 'Indian forces' brought to provide extra security to the Indian High Commission premises in Dhaka.

Responding to queries from the reporters the minister said, "I have heard this for the first time from you. My ministry is not aware about this."

Senior BNP leader Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, in reaction to the speaker's nominal offer on Monday of another front row seat in parliament for the abstaining opposition party, said the seating dispute was not the only issue at stake.

Chowdhury told bdnews24.com: "It's not right to say that the opposition is absent from parliament only because of the seat dispute. Nor is it correct to assume that BNP will return to parliament just because one more seat is offered on the front row."

Speaker Abdul Hamid said on Monday main opposition BNP may get one more seat on the front row in parliament, a move that could be seen as holding out an olive branch to lure the boycotting party into the house.

According to the speaker, this will fulfill one demand of the BNP, which has been absent from parliament since June this year.

The government expects the upcoming Dhaka International Trade Fair to buck a two-year trend of declining export orders. Commerce minister Faruk Khan said Monday: "Export orders will rise this time."

Export orders from the fair in 2006 amounted to Tk 24.68 crore. But they shrunk to Tk 22.6 crore in 2008 and Tk 19.91 crore in 2009.