New Delhi, Feb. 23 : A United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) report released on Monday focuses on the need to develop manufacturing activity that can help reduce poverty in developing countries.

"This year the theme is how can manufacturing development offer opportunities to low income countries and slow moving middle income countries, what is referred to in the book as ''bottom billion''," said Philippe Scholtes, Representative and Head, United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, South Asia.

Dhaka, Feb 23 : Bangladesh's newly elected President Zillur Rahman has said that both the neighbouring countries could work together for further strengthening the parliamentary democracy in the region.

"There are ample opportunities to work together for making our parliament as the main centre of decision making and accountability," Rahman said after his meeting with Chatterjee at Bangabhaban presidential palace.

Zillur was speaking with Indian Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee at Bangabhaban presidential palace on Sunday.

Thane, Feb. 23 : The Bhartiya Janata Party will contest together with Maharashtra ally Shiv Sena in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, BJP general secretary Gopinath Munde said.

"The alliance between BJP and Sena is of life long one and the Sena supremo Bal Thackeray will never give up the alliance and desert the Hindutva policy," Munde said.

Munde quashed off all the speculations of Shiv Sena straying away from the National Democratic alliance and trying to join hands with the NCP.

Munde said the Sena will never do the mistake of having a poll alliance with the NCP.

Cairo - Deputy al-Qaeda leader Amyan al-Zawahiri urged Hamas not to accept a truce to end fighting in the Gaza Strip in a new video message distributed over the Internet.

"Israel's Arab aides are attempting to impose on the people of Gaza a truce which will stop their Jihad in exchange for the lifting of the embargo (on the Gaza Strip)," al-Zawahiri said, according to a transcript of the tape posted to Islamist websites alongside the video on Sunday.

Vienna - The man who shot dead a Chechen refugee in the Austrian capital is still on the run, the Vienna prosecution said Monday, a day after the arrest of a second suspect in Poland was announced.

Polish police arrested a 31-year-old Russian of Chechen origin near Warsaw on Thursday, on suspicion that he took part in the murder of Umar Israilov, 27, who had sought court action against Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.

Amman- Jordan's King Abdullah II on Monday issued a decree approving a major reshuffle of Prime Minister Nader Dahabi's cabinet which was formed 15 months ago, according to a royal court statement.

The cabinet change was designed to ensure the ministerial group had more coherence and enable it to cope with new economic and political challenges that emerged recently as a result of the global financial crisis and the election of what is widely perceived in the Arab world as an extremist right-wing government in Israel, the statement said.