Chief election commissioner ATM Shamsul Huda Wednesday briefed president Iajuddin Ahmed on progress in voter registration and implementation of the election roadmap, reports bdnews24.com.

"We told the president that 83 percent of voters have already been registered. Listing the rest will be done by June. Work on voter lists with photographs will be completed by October," Huda told reporters after the meeting with the president at the Bangabhaban.

Bdnews24.com

Khandaker Delwar Hossain, secretary general of a BNP faction, said Wednesday the BNP would announce programmes in a couple of days to press the demand for the release of former prime minister Khaleda Zia.

After a meeting on his NAM flat in the afternoon, Delwar told reporters: "We discussed probable programmes for the release of our detained leader at the meeting.

Bdnews24.com

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court is set to deliver a verdict Thursday on a government appeal against the High Court verdict that scrapped a graft case against former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

A full bench of chief justice Md Ruhul Amin will deliver the verdict. The appeal tops Thursday's work list of the Appellate Division.

Bdnews24.com

The government is making a set of guidelines to make formal dialogue with political parties transparent, the commerce adviser said Wednesday.

The government also plans to sit with small political parties all together, Hossain Zillur Rahman told reporters after a meeting of four advisers on dialogue in law adviser AF Hassan Ariff's office.

Offshore gas exploration

Bdnews24.com

The government is determined to sign deals with oil and gas companies for exploration of new offshore gas fields by October to meet the country's growing energy needs, an energy official said Wednesday.

Muqtadir Ali, a director of the government-run Petrobangla, said one domestic and six international companies from countries including the United States and China, have taken part in the bidding to explore gas fields in the Bay of Bengal.

Thirty seven Bangladeshi fishermen, who were in jail in Myanmar in the last three months, returned home Wednesday, reports agency.

Myanmar border security force Nasaka caught the fishermen, all residents of Teknaf, when they went to catch fish in sea three month back.

Business leaders Wednesday urged the government to make it clear how much of stock of food and other essentials will be considered as hoarding, reports agency.

They said the government should come up with a clear food policy so that the businessmen can remove their bad reputation as they are usually called as hoarders and profit-mongers.

REUTERS, BANGKOK - Myanmar's junta knows it needs outside help in the face of an "unprecedented emergency" after Cyclone Nargis, but it must act now to remove red tape delaying a massive international aid operation, a U.N. official said on Wednesday.

With large swathes of the Irrawaddy delta under water and up to one million people in need of shelter, water, medicine and food, the disaster presents a "major logistical challenge",

REUTERS, Yangon - Military helicopters dropped food and drinking water to the cyclone-stricken people of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, where entire villages have been virtually washed away, officials said on Wednesday.

The military government said nearly 22,500 people were killed and 41,000 missing in the most devastating cyclone in Asia since 1991 when a storm killed 143,000 in neighboring Bangladesh.

Bdnews24.com

Insurers Wednesday urged commerce adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman to step in and press Sadharan Bima Corporation (SBC) into settling their claims.

The law requires general insurers to place 50 percent of their insurance with the state-owned general insurance company. But the settlement of claims is slowing because of what the industry leaders say is inordinate delay in payback by SBC.

Agency

The country's bourses ended lower Wednesday, driven by sell-offs. Investors continued to bet on power, bank and non-bank financial institution majors but sold off shares of pharmaceuticals and chemicals, according to an official with brokerage house Latif Securities. Mutual funds closed mixed, added the official.

Turnover on Dhaka and Chittagong bourses also fell from the previous day. The trading volume recorded an increase. Market watchers termed the day's trading satisfactory and said that investors were engaged in mixed buying and selling.

Oil traded above $122 a barrel on Wednesday but global equity markets generally rose and the dollar climbed on waning fears about the credit crisis, reports Reuters.

The price of crude was at $122.09, just off its all-time high of $122.73 a barrel hit on Tuesday, held up by supply worries and pending US weekly inventory data.

Londontimes Barack Obama took a potentially decisive step towards the Democratic nomination today after scoring a big victory in North Carolina and forcing the Indiana election down to the wire.

Mr Obama's big win in the Tar Heel state robbed Mrs Clinton of the "game changing" victory she badly needed to alter the course of the Democratic nomination battle, while the closeness of the race in Indiana added to the sense that she is rapidly running out of time to wrench the nomination from her rival's grasp.

REUTERS, Moscow - Dmitry Medvedev was sworn in as president in a solemn ceremony in the Kremlin's throne room on Wednesday, ushering in an unprecedented period of dual rule with his predecessor Vladimir Putin, who becomes prime minister.

Medvedev, a 42-year-old former corporate lawyer and longtime Putin ally, placed his hand on a red, leather-bound copy of the Russian constitution to take the oath of office before 2,000 invited guests.

REUTERS, Tokyo - The leaders of Japan and China vowed on Wednesday to deepen trust and cooperate on issues from climate change to regional security, and said they were on track to resolve a feud over energy rights in the East China Sea.

Friction over history, undersea gas reserves, military plans, international influence and consumer safety has divided the neighbors, and mutual public distrust runs deep.

REUTERS, Kandahar,Afghanistan - Taliban insurgents killed a Canadian soldier in a clash in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar on Tuesday, the Canadian military said.

It said another Canadian soldier was wounded in the incident in the Zhari district to the west of the city of Kandahar, the scene of frequent gunfights between NATO-led forces and Taliban militants.

REUIERS, Washington - The World Food Program, facing an unprecedented surge in the price of food it buys for the world's hungry, has secured about 60 percent of the extra funds it needs to cover planned aid donations this year, the head of the United Nations agency said on Tuesday.

"We put out an extra appeal for $755 million and we're about 60 percent of the way there," WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said during a speech at a Washington think tank.

REUTERS, Beijing - A prominent Chinese doctor said China's deadly hand, foot and mouth outbreak will not become another epidemic on the scale of the SARS virus, even as the numbers of reported cases mounted on Wednesday.

Hand, foot and mouth is a common childhood illness, but the current outbreak has led to some 27 fatalities, mostly when linked with enterovirus 71 (EV71), which can cause a severe form of the disease,

REUTERS, NEW YORK - Yahoo Inc may not be celebrating the end of takeover talks with Microsoft Corp, but their mutual rival Google Inc should feel free to pop the champagne cork.

The rift between Microsoft and Yahoo leaves the online advertising market wide open to Google's expansion. What's more, it puts Google in the coveted position of deciding the fate of its closest rival, analysts said. Microsoft withdrew a $47.5 billion offer for Yahoo on Saturday after the Internet company dug in for a higher price.

REUTERS, BRUSSELS - European Union finance ministers are set to agree next week that financial institutions must disclose all risk exposure by the time they publish mid-year results, a document showed on Wednesday.

The ministers from the 27-nation bloc meet next Wednesday for an update on steps taken to bolster pan-EU financial market supervision, ensure financial stability, and deal with fallout from the global credit crunch.