Dhaka, Jan. 8 : Bangladesh President Iajuddin Ahmed on Thursday summoned the first session of the country''s ninth Parliament on January 25 following the swearing-in of Sheikh Hasina-led Government on Tuesday.

"The order of the President has been sent to the Parliament Secretariat. The first session will begin at 3 p. m. local time on January 25," a spokesman at the presidential palace said.

The Parliament Secretariat also issued a press release in this regard.

New Delhi/Hyderabad, Jan. 8 : The Central Government on Thursday ordered a probe into the books of accounts of eight subsidiaries of Satyam Computer Services, a day after the company''s former chairman and managing director, B Ramalinga Raju, admitted that the company had forged accounts.

The inspection would be conducted as per the provisions of Section 209A of the Companies Act, Corporate Affairs Minister Prem Chand Gupta told reporters on Thursday.

Mumbai/Lucknow, Jan. 8 : Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt will contest the 2009 general elections on a Samajwadi Party (SP) ticket. Fellow actor and Bhojpuri film star Manoj Tiwari will also contest the polls from the same party.

Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh told mediapersons on Thursday, said that if Dutt was disallowed from contesting the elections because of the criminal cases against him, the party would move the Election Commission or the Supreme Court.

"Dutt told me you are like my elder brother. He said he would do anything I ask him to though he said he was not a political person," said the SP general secretary.

Oslo - Exhuming the Norwegian grave of a man who died in 1945 may offer clues to his then claims that he was a missing Austrian archduke, news reports said Thursday.

Norwegian heirs to Dr Hugo Kohler have applied for permission to exhume his grave to retrieve DNA in an attempt to prove his claims that he was really archduke Johan Orth who went missing in 1890, the Norwegian daily Faedrelandsvennen reported.

Knut Harald Saeth, church board chief in the Norwegian town of Kristiansand, granted the permission after consulting the Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs.

Washington - US president-elect Barack Obama is expected to call for drastic measures to revive the ailing US economy on Thursday, even if that means tipping the US deficit over 1 trillion dollars.

In prepared comments for a speech scheduled for 1600 GMT, Obama said the economic situation could deteriorate further and a recession last for years without government intervention. He said unemployment threatens to reach 10 per cent.

Nairobi- Somali gunmen on Thursday shot and killed an aid worker with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the second in three days, as he distributed aid near Mogadishu, the agency said.

"Unknown gunmen shot and killed him during a food distribution at Daynile, 10 kilometres north-west of Mogadishu," Nairobi-based WFP spokesman Peter Smerdon told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"They then put his body in a WFP vehicle and drove off, shortly before pushing his body from vehicle and driving away," he added.