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Several hundred workers of a readymade garment factory staged violent protest at Pallabi in the capital city on Friday, claiming that some officials had beaten one of their colleagues to death.
   The workers took to the streets and went on the rampage at Road 3, Plots 5, 6 and 7 for about two hours, disrupting traffic movement in the area until 12:30pm.
   The body of Mohammad Panna, an 18-year-old helper and son of Mohammad Monu Mia of the village Boraiya in Rajapur upazila of Jhalakati, was found hanging from a ceiling fan in the dining room of the factory early Friday.
   The agitators alleged that the general manager, the production manager and a security guard had beaten Panna to death and hung his body from a ceiling fan to make it look like a suicide.
   Panna, who lived in the Roopnagar slum with three brothers and a sister, went to the factory for night duty at about 2:15am, they said.
   As it was cold outside and he had to go out to buy some, he put on a full-sleeve T-shirt from the factory. The security guard, Habib, caught him at the gate and dragged him to the room of the production manager, Shamsu.
   Later, Shamsu called the general manager, Kamrul Islam, who dragged Panna into his office room.
   ‘The three started beating him although he kept telling them he had no intention of stealing the T-shirt and at one stage Panna fell unconscious,’ said Alal, a colleague who was also working the night shift. ‘They told us that they would hand Panna over to the police as he was a thief and locked him inside the room.’
   When they realised that Panna had died, they hung the body from the ceiling fan with a red cloth and went away, he alleged.
   Dayshift workers found the dining room locked and Habib absent when they reported for duty at around 7:30am.
   They opened the door with a key from another guard and found Panna hanging from the ceiling fan.
   As the news broke out, the workers became agitated, cordoned off the factory and shouted slogans against the authorities.
   In a few minutes, a few hundred workers assembled and shouted slogans for the immediate arrest of and punishment for the killers.
   The angry workers took to the street and put barricade in front of the Purabi Cinema Hall for about two hours disrupting traffic movement until 12:30pm.
   Leaders of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association and the Garment Workers Association went to the spot at about 1:45pm and assured the agitated workers of proper investigation and arrest of the criminals.
   Meanwhile, a representative of Anwar Hossain Manik, owner of the factory, came to the factory and announced that the authorities would pay Tk 3 lakh to Panna’s family as compensation within a week.
   He also assured of proper investigation of the incident and exemplary punishment for the culprits.
   A murder case was filed with the Pallabi police station and the body was sent to Dhaka Medical College for autopsy.
   A huge contingent of the police and the Rapid Action Battalion has been deployed at the factory to avert any further commotion.
   Leaders of the Jatiya Sramik Federation Bangladesh, Bangladesh Garments Sramik-Karmochari Federation, Bangladesh Garments Workers Unity Council, Garments Sramik and Shilpo Rakkha Jatiya Mancha condemned the killing.

At least 16 people, including two senior Petrobangla officials along with wives and an army corporal, were killed in road accidents on the Dhaka–Sylhet Highway in Narsindi and Habiganj and on the Natore–Dhaka Highway in Natore within seven hours on Friday.
   A Sylhet-bound microbus in Narsingdi collided head-on with a truck at Baghata in the district headquarters at about 10:30am. The microbus immediately caught fire.
   The Petrobangla director (planning), Kazi Shahidur Rahman, his wife, and Petrobangla’s senior general manager MA Based, also former managing director of the Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration Company and Titas, and his wife, who were in the microbus, died on the spot.
   The microbus driver and a rickshaw-puller, Kismat Ali, were also killed. Kismat died as the microbus hit his rickshaw parked by the road.
   Shahidur Rahman’s son Nihad Nahian and Based’s son Naim Ahmed Amit were also in the microbus. They managed to escape with injuries. They were sent to Dhaka Medical College Hospital in a critical condition.
   The Petrobangla officials were going to Sylhet to attend the annual meeting of the Sylhet gas field at the Khadimnagar resort. The meeting was scheduled to begin at 7:30pm Friday.
   Three others, who were travelling in the Palash-bound truck, were also injured.
   In another accident in Narsingdi, seven people, travelling in a Brahmanbaria-bound microbus, were killed when the vehicle bumped against a truck parked on the Dhaka–Sylhet Highway near the Chaitanya bus stand at Shibpur at about 4:30am Friday.
   The police said the microbus had hit the truck from behind amid dense fog, killing all the seven, including the driver, on the spot.
   The deceased were Imran, Shah Moni, Khorshed Alam, Nizam Uddin, Monu Miah, driver Suruj Miah, and Rafiq Miah.
   All of them are from Rasulpur at Sarail in Brahmanbaria and were returning home after seeing their relatives off at the hajj camp in Dhaka.
   Army lance corporal Sohrab in Habiganj was killed and four other army members — Khorshed, Biplob, Russell and Rabiul — were injured when their car fell into a ditch near the Phultala Bridge at Nabiganj at about 11:00am. Army sources said the victims were going to the Comilla cantonment from Nabiganj.
   The victims were taken to Sylhet Osmani Medical College Hospital where Sohrab was declared dead.
   Khorshed and Russell were sent to Dhaka Combined Military Hospital in the afternoon as their condition deteriorated.
   In Natore, a college teacher, Kazi Mahfuzur Rahman and his nephew Kazi Jahurul Islam killed on the spot and several others injured when a truck hit their car and a motorbike at Gazir Beel in the district headquarters at about 9:00am.
   The local residents sent injured to Natore Hospital.

Dhaka is far from initiating a move to settle disputes with New Delhi and Yangon over the demarcation of maritime boundary, delaying the exploitation of marine resources and exercise of the country’s sovereignty in specific areas of the Bay of Bengal.
   Having 12 nautical miles of territorial sea and 200 nautical miles of exclusive economic zone, Bangladesh is yet to delineate the maritime areas to establish its claim over what Bangladesh is entitled to in marine laws.
   Sources in the foreign affairs ministry told New Age that Dhaka would submit its claim to the United Nations ‘much before’ the timeframe to do so by 2011. ‘Bangladesh will do it in due time,’ said an official.
   Bangladesh has not yet been able to make a technical assessment of its seashore especially defining the territorial sea from the baseline before taking a codified stance for bargaining, if needed, with the counterparts in the light of relevant international law.
   An inter-ministerial committee of representatives from seven government bodies has been assigned to make the technical assessment. A cell of the foreign ministry as the coordinator will formulate the guidelines for the purposes.
   In the absence of such ‘homework,’ the Bangladesh government is not in a position to allow bidding or seismic survey of the Bay of Bengal for the exploitation of mineral resources.
   A draft guideline for the seismic survey, proposed by Petrobangla, were sent back by the cabinet in view of the ‘need for thorough check-up as the national interest is involved’ in the whole affair.
   The marine law provides for a littoral state of an area up to minimum 200 nautical miles, wider than Bangladesh’s land surface.
   But Bangladesh’s long coastline of 580 kilometres with zigzag baseline is yet to be well demarcated, as stipulated by the law, through necessary technical studies.
   India and Myanmar are the disputants in Bangladesh’s claim for having areas of the Bay of Bengal under its jurisdiction or exploring natural resources as per international law.
   The shape of the Bay and the geographical locations of three countries have created the scope for overlapping the areas to be claimed by each of them.
   Also, many in the diplomatic circle believe that Bangladesh’s dispute with India over South Talpatty island in the Bay of Bengal, among other factors, deters the maritime boundary delimitation.
   An alarming part of no-status situation, according to legal experts, is that Bangladesh has no monitoring or surveillance on activities such as intrusion, piracy, stockpiling of wastes on the seabed, and illegal fishing.
   Bangladeshi fishermen are involved in mainly onshore fishing, but not offshore fishing is done in the absence of proper legal management of the sea.
   ‘International law has given a country having sea outlet a much-needed protection for its areas in the sea. But Bangladesh’s problem now is more of technical than legal,’ an expert on international law told New Age.
   And the country has neither an agreement nor even a stopgap arrangement for joint management of maritime disputes with India and Myanmar in the high seas.
   ‘Oceans have no frontiers so there is no alternative to cooperation to manage maritime boundary for a smooth exploitation of the vast unexplored resources,’ said the expert, works in a government organisation.
   A professor of international relations at Dhaka University earlier told New Age that Bangladesh had not taken any significant initiative on the maritime issue after New Delhi had raised its objection to the exploration of oil in the Bay by four foreign companies in 1974.
   In the same year, the country had its Territorial Waters and Maritime Zones Act. Clause 5 (1) of it says that the government may declare any zone of the high seas adjacent to the territorial waters to be the economic zone of Bangladesh specifying therein the limits of such zone.
   In 2001, Bangladesh ratified the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea, 1982, which, proponents worldwide then thought, would help to resolve a lot of maritime disputes.
   The most controversial and tricky maritime area is the exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles.
   It is, according to the law, ‘a zone beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea in which a coastal state has: sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring, exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources, whether living or non-living, of the waters superjacent to the seabed and of the seabed and its subsoil, and with regard to other activities for the economic exploitation and exploration of the zone, such as the production of energy from the water, currents, and winds; jurisdiction with regard to the establishment and use of artificial islands, installations, and structures; marine scientific research; the protection and preservation of the marine environment; the outer limit of the exclusive economic zone shall not exceed 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured.’

India plans to construct a number of multipurpose dams and barrages on common rivers with Bangladesh and their tributaries, said visiting Indian environmental experts and rights activists on Friday.
   ‘India has already constructed a number of dams and barrages on many common rivers and their tributaries,’ Ravindranath of the River Basin Friends, an non-governmental organisation, based in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, told a two-day international Tipaimukh dam conference in Dhaka.
   ‘It also has a plan to construct hundreds of small, medium and large dams and barrages on the rivers Jamuna and Barak and their tributaries,’ he added.
   The experts and activists termed the construction of the Tipaimukh dam as ‘cultural annihilation’ and said the people of the two countries should resist the work and file human rights cases with international forums.
   The Indian authorities are constructing dams, which would severely damage the river systems, livelihood and biodiversity in two countries, in gross violation of human rights, they added.
   ‘It is a clear cultural genocide by displacing people and damaging heritages and livelihoods in two countries,’ said Roy Laifungbam, director of the Centre for Organisation Research and Education, an NGO, based in the eastern Indian state of Manipur. ‘Small ethnic minority groups will be doomed.’
   The Angikar Bangladesh Foundation, an NGO, organised the two-day conference. Representatives from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, who share many rivers, are taking part in the conference to raise voice against the construction of the Tipaimukh multipurpose dam by India over the river Barak in Manipur. Angikar Bangladesh director Muhammad Hilaluddin moderated.
   Inaugurating the conference, noted academician and litterateur Muhammad Zafar Iqbal called for creating awareness about the adverse impacts on Bangladesh’s environment due to the construction of the Tipaimukh dam.
   Ravindranath warned that earth filling would choke three rivers in Bangladesh – Meghna, Surma and Kushiara – even before the dam was constructed. ‘The rivers will not be able to breathe.’
   Criticising observations and rules issued by the Indian courts favouring the construction work, he said the judges hardly possessed any technical knowledge about the river systems.
   ‘River flows would be drastically reduced as India would withdraw about 17,000 cusec water at the Tipaimukh point,’ warned Professor RK Ranjan of Manipur University.
   Presenting keynote at the first working session, the IUCN country representative in Dhaka, Ainun Nishat, suggested that Bangladesh and Indian governments should take a fresh look at bilateral cooperation. ‘Direction should come from the political level for benefit sharing, instead of damage control in the region.’ Providing American statistics, Professor Khalequzzaman of Lock Haven University of the United States said India had been continuously constructing dams and barrages on trans-boundary rivers and their tributaries flowing into Bangladesh.
   He suggested that Bangladesh should urgently negotiate with India, formulate a regional water-sharing treaty and raise the issue with international forums like the World Bank and the United Nations, as
   the Tipaimukh dam site is located at a seismically ‘very active’ area.
   Awami League lawmaker Dr Abdur Razzak said Bangladesh politicians should achieve negotiation skills to deal with India.
   Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology professor Zahiruddin Chowdhury suggested a joint, unbiased assessment by experts of the two countries, as the river systems, livelihood and biodiversity will be severely damaged. ‘Wetlands in greater Sylhet and Mymensingh districts would dry up.’
   Water expert Masrur-ul-Huq Siddiqui warned that Bangladesh was bound to lose its riverine characteristics if India continued to construct dams on common rivers.
   Nasreen Huq, country director of Action Aid Bangladesh, called upon the people of South Asian countries to create united resistance. ‘The dam would create huge refugee crisis in two countries.’
   They said the people of the two countries should work together to try to bring rationality in the government and sense of proportion in the vision it have.
   Of the three main river systems in lower riparian Bangladesh – Ganges, Brahmaputra and Megna – the Meghna is considered a major lifeline and the Surma and Kushiyara get water from Barak.

The Rapid Action Battalion arrested the suspected Khulna divisional second-in-command, also a member of the top-tier full-time activist of the banned Islamist outfit Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh in Khulna in possession of a huge amount of bomb-making materials on Friday.
   The battalion said that a RAB 6 team, tipped off, arrested the JMB leader, Ziaur Rahman Sagar alias Sabbir, from Tootpara in the city early Friday.
   During interrogation, Sabbir reportedly claimed himself as a member of the top-tier ehsar of the outfit. He also said he had guided the attacks on August 17 in Khulna, Bagerhat, Satkhira and Gopalganj and distributed 34 bombs among the JMB members of the districts for the attacks, the battalion said.
   Based on his statement, the battalion raided a students’ mess, Jessore, at Daulatpur in the city and seized three bombs and bomb-making materials.
   The materials included 37 kilograms of potassium nitrate, 250 grams of gun powder, 100 grams of aluminium powder, 3 detonators, 18 integrated circuits, 16 capacitors, 31 switches, 60 registers, 11 fuses, 35 switch bulbs and 8 pencil batteries.
   He was later handed over to the Daulatpur police, the battalion said.
   In Dhaka, family members handed over a JMB activist, Anwar Hossain, to the Uttara police in the afternoon.
   The police said the family members, being informed of his involvement with the banned outfit, caught Anwar when he went to his Chanpara house at Uttarkhan in the morning.
   The law enforcers detained four more people in Barisal, Chapainawabganj and Jaipurhat suspecting them to be JMB activists.
   An unidentified man, claiming himself a JMB militant, in a letter to a Rangpur daily newspaper threatened with an attack in the northern district town at 1:30pm Saturday.
   The man claimed that they had made a successful operation in Natore on Wednesday.

A stray bullet fired in the air outside a Queens apartment complex in New York killed a Bangladeshi woman standing at her fifth floor window, police said Thursday, reports AP.
   The woman was shot late Wednesday, three days before she would have turned 29 on New Year's Eve. She died instantly, police said.
   Police arrested a US soldier who they said was on leave and had been drinking when he fired shots into the air.
   Her husband, Golam Maola, said he was on the phone with relatives in Bangladesh just before midnight when he heard two shots outside their Queens Village apartment.
   Neighbour Wilma Narciso told the New York Times: ‘He was screaming really, really badly. He was banging at his door. There was blood on his clothes. I got blood on me. He said, ‘My wife is bleeding from her eye’.’ Police said they had arrested 23-year-old Private Danny Carpio and would be charging him with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon.
   The couple's two young children, also in the apartment at the time of the shooting, were unharmed, police said.
   Family friends told television reporters that they had been planning a surprise birthday party for the victim.
   BBC reported that Queens district attorney Richard Brown said: ‘As a result of his thoughtless action, a young woman is now dead and her two small children must face the difficult and heartbreaking chore of adjusting to life empty of their mother’s presence.’
   Brown said Pte Carpio, who lives nearby, had been drinking before meeting friends outside the apartment complex and shooting into the air. His relatives told police he had just returned from a Texas military base and was planning a party for Friday to mark his wedding in the summer.
   Police commissioner Raymond W Kelly said: ‘We believe he fired a gun in the air to celebrate his homecoming with friends in front of the location.’
   Police said Pte Carpio was co-operating and was ‘extremely remorseful’.
   The New York Times said Ms Akther and Maola were born in Chittagong. He came to the US in 1990 and she arrived in 1997.
   Maola told the paper: ‘We came from our country to live life, a better life. She is the best woman in the family. She is really a good woman.’

The BNP senior joint secretary general, Tarique Rahman, has suspected that there may be foreign conspiracy behind the rise of militant activities in Bangladesh.
   ‘Those who are linked to militant activities do not want industries of Bangladesh flourished so that they can benefit from instability,’ he said in an interview with the private ATN TV channel on Friday.
   ‘Such conspiracy against Bangladesh is not new, it had started during the regime of Sirajuddaulah, he said.
   Tarique, the eldest son of the prime minister, Khaleda Zia, said: ‘The four-party alliance had been formed against the backdrop of national political crisis.’
   ‘The partners of the alliance run their respective parties. They are going to people to win support with their ideology,’ he added.
   Tarique, who had conducted a three-month grass-root level representatives conferences of the BNP said: ‘The BNP has got strengthened following the conferences as people of the country as well as party leaders and supporters came to know about government’s activities.
   ‘We will get positive result in next general elections,’ he said about the outcome of the conferences.
   Tarique gathered opinions from about 60,000 workers and leaders in the conferences held from January 4 to March 29, 2005.
   On the basis of the opinions, he submitted a report to the prime minister and the BNP chairperson, Khaleda Zia.

More than 8,000 members of security forces will rule the streets in the capital on Saturday to thwart any public nuisance during celebration of the New Year, 2006.
   Apart from the deployed forces, the intelligence men will also keep vigilance on the streets to ward off any untoward incident.
   A number of mobile teams, comprising law enforcers and doctors, will be posted at different city points from the evening to check suspects and unruly New Year revellers, and if anyone gets unruly on the street taking liquor will be taken into custody, the police officials said.
   There will be special vigilance in the city’s sensitive, posh and diplomatic enclaves, including the Gulshan, Baridhara, Banani, Uttara and Dhaka University campus.
   Only the Kakoli crossing and Phoenix Road towards Gulshan will remain open and the people should go thorough security checks to enter those areas after 8:00pm.
   None will be allowed to enter the Dhaka University campus, excepting the students and residents of its campus, after 8:00pm Saturday.
   However, the people residing in the areas can use any roads leading to the outside, said a press release signed by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police commissioner, SM Mizanur Rahman.
   Vehicles of emergency services like fire and ambulance would be kept out of purview of the police restrictions.
   The release cautioned that stern action would be taken against unruly revellers to be found in the city streets on the night.
   ‘A section of unruly youths drinking alcohol is usually seen getting involved in unsocial acts on the 31st night to celebrate the New Year,’ it said.
   The metropolitan police chief requested all to refrain from immoral and undisciplined acts, it added.
   The Rapid Action Battalion will remain vigilant in at least 100 city points from Saturday afternoon. Sniffer dogs and bomb disposal squads of the battalion will also remain standby on the night.
   Meanwhile, the Department of Narcotics Control has asked the authorised bars, clubs, hotels, guest houses, and restaurants not to sell or serve liquor to customer after 7:00pm Saturday.
   ‘In case of violation of the order, the DNC will take legal actions against the owners and employees of the organisations as per the anti-narcotics law of 1990,’ said a letter issued by the DNC.
   The DNC has also identified 41 sensitive points in the city, where they will launch special drives after the evening.
   The DNC patrol teams would launch a special drive at the hotels and restaurants, where liquor was supplied illegally in the past years, said an official.

Mystery shrouds the identity of the attackers who killed three Ansars, attacking the Bamihal police camp in the Chalan Beel area under Singra in Natore Wednesday evening.
   Meanwhile, members of the banned Islamist outfit, Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, in a letter to a Rangpur daily allegedly claimed responsibility of attacking the police camp.
   Local people in Nature said the attackers named outlawed Sharbahara Party in their slogan, its slain leader Siraj Sikder, Mao Tse Dong and also the Purba Banglar Communist Party.
   But the police expressed doubts about the slogans as both Sarbahara and PBCP are rivals and any member of the outfit cannot chant slogan for both the party.
   Besides, the leftist extremists always claimed responsibility of launching any attack in the past, but in case of Bamihal camp, none had claimed the responsibility till Friday.
   Local sources said the leftist extremists had circulated handbills when they attacked the Gurudaspur police station in Natore in 1987. The Natore police superintendent, Golam Kibria, did not rule out the possible involvement of JMB in the police camp attack.
   The bodies of three Ansars, in the meantime, were sent to their respective village homes after janazas held at the district Ansar station Thursday evening.
   An uneasy calm is prevailing at Singra as many of the residents of Bamihal and surrounding areas have left their houses and took shelters elsewhere fearing police arrest.
   Meanwhile, one Sohag of Adarshapara in Rangpur, passing him off as ‘Ehsar’ of JMB in a letter to a local daily, claimed the responsibility of Natore attack and threatened with fresh bomb attacks in the district town.
   The letter, received by local daily Yuger Alo on Friday warning more blasts, even suicide blasts, has created panic among the police.
   ‘This time Rangpur will experience such deadly attack on December 31,’ the man wrote in the letter.
   ‘Mission December 31,’ this is code name of JMB’s operation in Rangpur, the letter reads.
   The statement faxed to the newspaper office Friday evening claimed that bomb blasts would take place at 1:30pm Saturday.
   The letters reads: We are not frustrated after the capture of our military commander Sunny, Enayet and other regional commanders.
   ‘We took oath to our new leadership and determined for complete our next missions,’ the man said in the letter.

The regional free trade accord, SAFTA, will give some tariff benefits to Bangladesh’s readymade garments and few other products, trade leaders said, expressing their readiness to exploit full potentials as soon as the deal comes into force on January 1.
   The agreement on South Asian Free Trade Area was signed on January 6, 2004 during the 12th SAARC Summit in Islamabad and as per the previously set deadline, is coming into effect from the New Year.
   ‘It is a very good beginning for us. Our exports will increase much,’ Abdul Awal Mintoo, former president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry, told the news agency.
   He said Bangladesh, being an LDC, will get some privilege from the developing countries like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
   Asked whether exporters are capable to exploit the opportunity, he said there is good number of entrepreneurs in the country and they have the capacity to grab the benefits fully.
   ‘Country’s RMG export will rise by nearly $40 million in the region due to imposition of quota,’ said Annisul Huq, former president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturer’s and Exporters Association, mentioning that local RMG exporters will be able to export 8 million pieces of garments under the SAFTA.
   He also said that local exporters, including RMGs, agro-based and cosmetics, will get competitive advantage in the SAARC region, especially in Indian markets.
   He considered that Bangladesh’s export to Indian markets will rise mainly because of reduction of inter-state duty, and less transport cost.
   ‘Most of our commodities are highly competitive in terms of quality and price in Indian markets,’ said Khurshid Ahmad Farhad, manager, export, Square Consumer Products Ltd.
   He said commodities, including winter cosmetics items, juice, spice, cookeries, cement and melamine items, which are being exported to the Indian markets currently, have competitive advantages in terms of quality and prices.
   Khurshid said local toiletries and winter items have already been exported to West Bengal, South and northeastern parts, and the reduction of basic duty by 5 per cent will help increase exports.
   He stressed for increasing the ratio of formal trade so that the country can fully exploit the duty-cut in its favour.
   In SAFTA, member-countries, barring the LDCs, will bring down their tariffs by 20 per cent by the end of first year. Customs tariffs would be reduced to five percent after seven years, effectively cutting import duties by 15 per cent every year. The LDCs would get ten years to bring down their tariffs to five per cent.
   The total intra-regional trade amongst SAARC countries is less than $7 billion as against the combined international trade of $350 billion in the region.

The speakers at a discussion on Friday stressed research for proper definition of ‘terrorism’ to identify the root causes of terrorist activities, to keep law and order and to mete out justice in society.
   The academicians, intellectuals and politicians discussed several aspects of terrorism and expressed their apprehension that the exploiting classes might use the word ‘terrorism’ to create a ground to destroy their political enemies fighting for the exploited.
   Almost all the speakers favoured research on the root causes regarding the rise of the Islamist militancy in Bangladesh. Many termed it ‘an outcome of social injustice.’
   Fortnightly Chinta organised the discussion at the National Press Club on ‘terrorism, law and justice.’
   With the former attorney general, Hassan Ariff, in the chair, Justice Nayeemuddin Ahmed, Communist Party president Monzurul Ahsan Khan, retired brigadier Shakhawat Hossain, Ganaswasthya Nagar Hospital project director Zafrullah Chowdhury and Dhaka University professor Asif Nazrul also spoke.
   Farhad Mazhar, in the keynote paper, said, ‘It is an interesting research to find out which class is using the two words “terrorism and the terrorists” against whom and in favour of whom in the present-day Bangladesh,’ he said.
   Farhad Mazhar defined terrorism in the present context, saying that the way the capitalist countries such as the United States and its allies define the word ‘terrorism’ should be abandoned.
   He criticised the trend to explain the means, good or bad, by judging its ends. ‘Conclusions should be drawn by judging whether the activities of an Islamist militant group or a militant group in Bangladesh are against the imperialists, in the light of Marxism.’
   Hasan Arif urged all to find out the reasons behind the rise of militancy when there was no visible reason for such revolts.
   Monzurul Ahsan termed the rise of the militants ‘a result of deprivation of the poor in all aspects’ and held the governments responsible.
   Nayeemudin Ahmed said human rights violation began right after the independence in 1971.
   Zafrullah Chowdhury said the first government began political repression with BKSAL, and the successive government continued it in various forms.
   Asif Nazrul criticised all sorts of dogmatic ideas.

The treasury secretary, John Snow, has warned that unless Congress raises the national debt limit, the US government will run out of cash to finance its daily work in two months.
   In a letter to Senate leaders on Thursday, Snow said the statutory debt limit imposed by Congress of 8.184 trillion dollars would be reached in mid-February and the government would then lose its borrowing power.
   ‘At that time, unless the debt limit is raised or the treasury department takes authorised extraordinary actions, we will be unable to continue to finance government operations,’ said the letter, seen by the news agency.
   Snow warned that even if the treasury took ‘all available prudent and legal actions’ to avoid breaching the ceiling, ‘we anticipate that we can finance government operations no longer than mid-March’.
   ‘Accordingly, I am writing to request that Congress raise the statutory debt limit as soon as possible.’
   The Republican-led Congress last voted to increase the debt limit in mid-November 2004, despite opposition from Democrats who demanded the free-spending federal government tighten its belt instead.
   The US debt limit sparked bitter partisan battles in the mid-1990s between a Republican-dominated Congress and the Democratic administration of president Bill Clinton, leading to shutdowns of the federal government.
   Once the US government hits the ceiling, it comes under threat of defaulting on its debts and can lose the ability to raise future credit on the capital markets.
   Snow underlined that the ‘full faith and credit of the United States’ was a unique selling point on the markets.
   ‘A failure to increase the debt limit in a timely manner would threaten this unique and important position,’ he wrote in his letter.

A bomb exploded at Gulshan in the capital on Friday, sending a wave of panic in the locality.
   The police said criminals hurled the ‘cracker’ sometime after 7:00pm on Road No 123 in Gulshan-2 only to create panic.
   However, none was hurt in the explosion which took place amid stringent security measures taken by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police on the eve of the New Year celebrations.

Bollywood film Black has been selected as one of the top films of 2005 in a listing by American Time magazine.
   Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Black is about a relationship between a deaf-blind girl and her teacher.
   ‘Black is more than a noble weepie; it is the ultimate Bollywood love story,’ Time magazine said of the film.
   Other films which made the magazine’s top list for the year included Ingmar Bergman’s Saraband and Werner Herzog’s The White Diamond and Grizzly Man.
   Time magazine described Black as ‘an unofficial remake’ of the 1962 American film The Miracle Worker, about the deaf-blind child Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan.
   ‘This is an unusual film for India: no songs, a running time under 2 hours and most of the dialogue in English; yet it became a box office hit,’ critic Richard Corliss said of the film.
   ‘It could also be a test for Western audiences unused to the fever pitch of Indian melodrama; they may need a warning label - Caution: Extreme Sentiment (May Be Contagious).’
   Black’s maker Sanjay Leela Bhansali told an Indian website that the selection was a ‘a great victory for Indian cinema, and all my cast and crew’.
   ‘Black is about the love between a girl and her teacher. They teach each other the dignity of living. To call Black a love story is a true compliment,’ he said.