Dhaka - Bangladesh's Awami League-lead alliance government will bring back home from abroad the fugitive killers of the country's founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to face a court verdict, a junior minister said Wednesday. "To bring the killers back home, the government will also sign extradition deals with countries which do not have such agreements with Bangladesh," State Minister for Home Affairs Tanjim Ahmed Sohel Taj told reporters.

Dhaka  - Several hundred workers of Bangladesh's leading voluntary organisation, Proshika, formed a human chain in front of its Dhaka headquarters Wednesday asking its chief to quit over corruption charges. "We want Kazi Faruk Ahmed [founding chairman of the organisation] to quit now. He brought a bad name for the organisation by using us (for) political purposes," said a director of Proshika, Sirajul Islam, who led the demonstration in the capital.

The employees gave the chairman a four-day ultimatum to resign, saying that otherwise they would form an alternative committee to run the organisation.

Dhaka - At least eight people have died of heat stroke this week during a nearly weeklong heat wave in Bangladesh, reports from the countryside said Tuesday. Five people died of heat stroke and heat-related ailments in the northern districts of Rangpur, Kurigram, Lalmonirhat and Bogra while three others died in the southern districts of Bhola, Jessore and Gopalganj, the bangladeshnews24. com news agency reported, quoting officials.

Many others across the country fell sick because of the heat.

Dhaka - Bangladesh on Monday opened a desk at the country's main airport to screen visitors coming from countries affected by swine flu as part of its effort to prevent spread of the influenza, officials said. "The incoming passengers have been asked to fill out a self-declaration form on arrival and advised to appear before the desk if they feel fever," Mahmudur Rahman, the director of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research, said after an emergency meeting, which reviewed the country's preparations against the influenza threat.

Dhaka  - Bangladesh's Awami League-led alliance government is proposing to restrict privatisation of state-owned enterprises, after bitter experience with past divestments, a news report said Sunday.

"We have no plan to privatise any more state-owned enterprises for the time being," the Daily Star newspapers quoted Industries Minister Dilip Barua as saying at a conference on industrial policy.

The minister criticised the handling of 76 state-run entrepreneurs privatised since 1994.

Dhaka - Bangladesh launched Saturday an improved livelihood programme worth about 80 million dollars for the coastal farmers devastated by the Super-cyclone Sidr in late 2007, officials said. Initially, the Improved Livelihood for Sidr-Affected Rice Farmers Project, funded by the United States, will benefit some 280,000 farm families through restoring high-yielding rice production in eight cyclone-battered southern districts.