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A short spell of rain Sunday afternoon brought respite to city dwellers of from exhausting heat of the past two weeks caused by a moderate heat wave.
   Rainfall was also reported from some other parts of the country, including Faridpur, Mongla, Jessore, Khulna and Barisla.
   Many people came out of their residence when the half-hour rain began at about 4:30pm.
   The metrological office said, although insignificant, the shower heralded the activation of monsoon.
   Predicting more rainfall today and tomorrow, an official at the Met Office said monsoon was already active in the Bay of Bengal and approached the Teknaf coast Sunday.
   It is expected to cover the central parts of the country within the next two days while the whole country within a week, he said.
   The met office recorded 54mm rainfall in Dhaka, 23mm in Faridpur, 51mm in Mongla, 12mm in Jessore, 9mm in Khulna and 3mm in Barisal.
   The highest temperature in Dhaka was recorded at 35.7 degrees Celsius.

Work on a bottled-water plant of Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority will start at Mirpur in the Dhaka city within a month, sources in the water agency said.
   The water agency managing director, ANH Akhter Hossain, on Thursday signed a contract with the Paragon Enterprise Limited, which had won the tender work.
   A WASA official said Paragon Enterprise will start earth-filling on the site this month. At the end of May, the Ministry of LGRD and Cooperatives approved the report of the tender evaluation committee, he said.
   A Tk 13-crore project was proposed in the last government’s tenure to supply pure bottled water for the people at a reasonable price. Since 2002, Dhaka WASA had cancelled a number of activities relating implementation of the project, including scraping a couple of tenders.
   The utility service authorities completed its tender work in February selecting the bidder through a two stage process — submission of technical proposal and financial offer.
   In March 2004, the LGRD and cooperatives ministry cancelled the procedure, and suggested installation of both the water and bottle manufacturing plants.
   The plant was supposed to be set up at Sayedabad Water Treatment Plant with the capacity of producing 10,000 litres of bottled water per hour. But considering the volume of work and availability of required land, the authorities later decided to shift the site in Mirpur.
   In 2003 a quotation paper of a Chinese company which was taking part in the tender was snatched in front of the Bangladesh Secretariat. Later, the authorities cancelled the tender schedule.

British actress Joanna Lumley on Sunday urged individuals, private sector, donor agencies, opinion leaders and media to create a movement against avoidable blindness.
   Lumley, a supporter of Sight Savers International, is currently on a visit to Bangladesh to see the international non-governmental organisation’s work first hand.
   According to a joint survey of the organisation and the International Centre for Eye Health, there are at least 6.5 lakh blind adults in Bangladesh.
   Also there are 40,000 blind children of whom 13,000 are curable through minimal surgical intervention and another 13,000 could have been prevented through simple public health interventions such as immunisation, vitamin A supplementation and early stage breastfeeding.
   ‘It is breathtaking to see how a small operation makes such as big difference to a child’s entire life,’ she said at a briefing at a city hotel to share her experiences.
   ‘I met Arif, a five-year old, blinded by cataracts, the day I arrived at his village. I watched the surgery take place on Saturday, it took only fifteen minutes to give him his sight back. When the bandages were removed Sunday morning, it was a moment I will never forget.’
   ‘It was as if a whole new world had opened up to him,’ said Lumley. ‘In Bangladesh someone blinded by cataract can see again for just Tk 2,000 and many could give the gift of sight to people who need it the most.’
   Lumley said she would raise funds to treat blind children once she is back in the United Kingdom.
   She also said she expects to raise a good figure as there are many Bangladeshis living in the United Kingdom and there is a close link between the two countries.
   Enamul Kabir, country representative of Sight Savers, said it is on a four-year campaign to ‘’find and restore sight to 12,000 children, who have been blinded by cataract, by 2008’.
   He said the programme would need about two million pounds (about Tk 24 crore).

Rooms at CMCH ransacked
Burglars ransacked five rooms of academic building at Chittagong Medical College Hospital early Sunday. The police said the burglars entered the rooms of the accounts officer, chief assistant accountant, rent collector, cashier and assistant cashier after cutting the window grilles at night and broke open three lockers and fifteen almirahs but did not take away anything. A five-member committee headed by senior store officer Debashis Dutta has been formed to investigate the matter. The committee is supposed to submit a report by Monday.
— New Age

Fire guts 9 houses in capital
A fire gutted nine semi-brick houses at the Mohammadpur Sweeper Colony in the capital early Sunday. Affected people said the fire originated from an electric short circuit in a house at around 1:15am and engulfed the adjacent houses. Informed, four fire-fighting vehicles doused the fire at around 3:15pm. No casualty was reported. The fire service sources said loss due to the accident was worth Tk 5 lakh.
— New Age

Probe body for clash at SBMCH
A three-member committee, led by Nazmul Hossain, professor and chairman of physiology, was formed on Sunday to probe clashes between the Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal and Islami Chhatra Shibir at Barisal Sher-e-Bangla Medical College on Saturday. Other members of the committee are Abdur Razzak, associate professor of cardiology, and Kabiruzzaman, assistant professor of orthopaedics. The committee is ordered to submit a report within ten days.
— New Age

Scholarship awarding ceremony held
The SpandanB of the USA organised a scholarship awarding ceremony with the education minister, Osman Farruk, as chief guest at the Teachers-Students Centre of Dhaka University on Sunday. The US-based Imdad-Sitara Khan Foundation gave stipends to 72 students out of 200 applicants of under-graduate and graduate levels. Each recipient will get Tk 1,200 per month during their entire academic career from the foundation through SpandanB. The foundation’s former chairman, M Abdul Mannan, presided over the function addressed by Dhaka University vice-chancellor SMA Faiz, University Grants Commission chairman M Asaduzzaman, BUET vice-chancellor Alee Murtaza, Dhaka University pro-vice-chancellor AFM Yusuf Haider and treasurer Syed Rashidul Hasan.
— BSS

New BUET student welfare director
Water expert Professor Dr Manwar Hossain took over the charge as director of the students’ welfare department of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology on June 1. He joined BUET in 1976 as a lecturer in water resources engineering department and was promoted as a professor in 1992.
— BSS