Abahani Ltd and Mohammedan Sporting Club became joint champions of the Green Delta Premier Hockey League. Abahani defeated Mohammedan 5-2 in the last league match at the Maulana Bhasani Hockey Stadium on Saturday. The result meant both teams finished on 36 points from 13 matches.

According to the by laws, the championship would have to be decided by a play-off match. But the league committee opted instead to announce them as joint champions after a meeting with both club officials.

Principal architect of the 1972 constitution Dr Kamal Hossain has said that the government should not amend the constitution in haste without building consensus.

"The constitution is sacred. The government should not add anything to the constitution suddenly without unanimity," said Hossain, president of Ganaforum.

Real Madrid are looking to buy players but will not necessarily splash out on high-profile 'galacticos' in the transfer window, according to director Emilio Butragueno.

The club spent around 250 million euros (211.3 million pounds) on Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka and others in last year's close season and this time have made the relatively low-key signings of Argentina winger Angel Di Maria and Spanish midfielders Sergio Canales and Pedro Leon.

Electricity supply in different parts of Dhaka city will be suspended from dawn to dusk on Friday and Saturday because of maintenance work of the transmission line.

According to a Power Grid Company of Bangladesh statement, service work will be conducted from 6am to 6pm on both days in Shiddhirganj-Ulon and Haripur-Maniknagar lines under the Shiddhirganj-Maniknagar transmission line construction project.

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina is personally averse to the idea of banning any political party, MPs of her Awami League said.

"I am not in favour of banning any political party," she reportedly told the MPs on Thursday when they suggested that the Election Commission should consider the issue.

Sea levels are rising unevenly in the Indian Ocean, placing millions at risk along low-lying coastlines in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, scientists say in a study.

Researchers from the University of Colorado and the National Center for Atmospheric Research say the rising sea levels are caused in part by climate change and are triggered by warming seas and changes to atmospheric circulation patterns.

The central bank has announced 'Agriculture Loan Policy' with a target of distributing Tk 12,600 crore to the farmers in this fiscal year, which is around 9.5 percent of the current national budget and 9.6 percent higher than last year's.

Bangladesh Bank governor Atiur Rahman announced the policy at a press conference at the bank's office on Wednesday. Deputy governors of the bank Murshid Kuli Khan and Ziaul Hasan Siddiqui were also present at the press briefing.

The United States on Wednesday announced new sanctions against North Korea, targeted against its leadership, and warned of serious consequences if it again attacked the South.

Relations across the divided peninsula have turned increasingly hostile after South Korea accused the North of sinking one of its warships in March, killings 46 sailors.

Diego Maradona will decide whether to stay on as Argentina coach after a meeting next week, the head of the country's football association said on Tuesday.

Argentina's former captain had been due to meet football association (AFA) chief Julio Grondona this week but the meeting was postponed after Maradona decided to travel to Venezuela where he was expected to meet leftist president Hugo Chavez.

Being a little less carnivorous may help you stay slim, according to a European study.

Researchers from Imperial College London found that avid meat eaters gained more weight over 5 years than those who ate less meat but the same amount of calories. When the researchers looked at different types of meat, they found the strongest association with weight gain was poultry, followed by processed meats and red meat.

A Pirojpur court on Wednesday sent two war crime cases filed in the district against top Jamaat-e-Islami leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee to the International Crimes Tribunal.

District's chief judicial magistrate Chowdhury Mahbub Hossain passed the order on petitions of the investigation officers in the cases.

Dhaka and New Delhi are finalising the modalities of implementing the US $ 1 billion Line of Credit (LoC) that India offered to Bangladesh last January.

The Bangladesh government is going to ink a deal with India's Exim Bank that New Delhi will route the credit line through.
Highly-placed sources in the Indian government said that the Exim Bank would possibly sign an agreement with Bangladesh government within a month for utilisation of the credit line.

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has said the wages the owners of the ready-made garment unit pay their workers were "insufficient" and "inhuman".

She made the comment while answering to the questions from the MPs in the parliament on Wednesday.

The parliament has formed a 15-strong "all-party committee' to review the constitution with no representation from the main opposition BNP.

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday afternoon proposed the committee in the parliament, which was passed unanimously by voice vote.

New Chittagong city mayor M Manzur Alam has said any irregularities in the city corporation in the past will be looked into for effective actions.

He said this in a brief press conference after moving into the mayor office on Tuesday.

He declared that resolving the water-logging problem of the port city is his major goal. "A separate standing committee will be formed in the first general meeting scheduled on July 26 to take effective steps to resolve water-logging."

The parliament has passed a law that will allow the government to declare a particular region as special economic zone for rapid growth and industrialisation.

Any entrepreneur, investing in the special economic zone, will get special tax rebate and financial benefits, the bill, pushed through on Tuesday, says. In addition, they will get land from the government on lease.

The government has decided to import rice from Vietnam shortly, food minister Abdur Razzaque told journalists on Tuesday.

The decision followed a meeting in the morning between the minister and a visiting Vietnamese delegation led by Cao Thi Ngoc Hoa, vice director general of Vietnam Southern Food Corporation, a government entity.

BNP chief Khaleda Zia has sat with six legal and constitutional experts of her party to decide over whether to send a representative to the all-party constitutional review committee.

Tuesday's emergency meeting started at 8:30pm at the chairperson's Gulshan office, her press secretary Maruf Kamal Khan told bdnews24.com.

Dhaka city development authority Rajuk does not know how many unapproved buildings are there in the capital, according to the state minister for housing and public works.

"Rajuk doesn't have exact statistics of how many buildings have been constructed without prior approval from it," Abdul Mannan Khan was quoted as telling the parliament on Tuesday.

US researchers have created a primitive artificial lung that rats used to breathe for several hours and said on Tuesday it may be a step in the development of new organs grown from a patient's own cells.

The finding, reported in the journal Nature Medicine, is the second in a month from researchers seeking ways to regenerate lungs from ordinary cells.