Dhaka  - Bangladesh will go to the polls on December 18 to elect a new parliament, caretaker government chief Fakhruddin Ahmed announced nationwide on television and radio Saturday.

Ahmed also said in his televised address that the local polls in over 400 sub-districts would be held on 24 and 28 December.

The former central bank governor promised to relax the state of emergency rule during the elections.

Johannesburg  - South Africa was thrown into turmoil Saturday after President Thabo Mbeki caved into pressure from the governing African National Congress (ANC) to resign his office.

The ANC said earlier it was recalling Mbeki as president in a bid to heal divisions in the party following a court finding of political interference in the corruption case of Mbeki's rival, ANC leader Jacob Zuma.

New York, Sept. 20 :The 2008 presidential campaign has stimulated a great deal of interest among American voters all year, but according to the New York Times, the campaign is at an interesting phase, and is now even more focused on the process of electing a new president.

In the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, 63 percent of voters said they were paying a lot of attention to the campaign, up from 51 percent before the parties held their conventions.

In September 2004, 52 percent said they were concentrating a lot on Senator John Kerry’s campaign to defeat President Bush.

Washington  - The US government was weighing its options for a more permanent fix to the ongoing credit crisis on Thursday as regulators and authorities cracked down on stock-selling techniques that have helped fuel a sell-off on Wall Street.

President George W Bush defended the "extraordinary measures" already taken by the government to shore up a wealth of shaky financial firms and sought to reassure investors fearful that more bank failures could be on the horizon.

Madrid  - Spain's Supreme Court on Thursday banned another Basque separatist political party, the Communist Party of Basque Lands (PCTV), for supporting militant Basque separatist group ETA.

The move follows the court's dissolution of Basque Nationalist Action (ANV) on Tuesday, the region's third-strongest party at municipal level, because of ETA links. The parties had emerged as the successors of ETA's political wing Batasuna after it was outlawed in 2003.