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An unidentified pest has been wreaking havoc on jute plants on more than 11,000 hectares of land in Faridpur, Gopalgonj, Rajbari, and Jessore districts.
   After primary examinations, scientists of the Bangladesh Jute Research Institute reckon the pest may be a variety of cutworm. They are currently rearing some larvae of the insect at the institute’s entomology section to identify it accurately, BJRI officials said.
   It is likely to take more than a week to ascertain the species and ‘then we can prescribe the measures for containing the menace,’ said a BJRI entomologist who had visited the affected areas on May 7 and 8.
   The insects are bred and stay under the subsoil during the daytime, from where they come out at night and attack the jute plants. They have attacked mostly the jute that were planted early and are now about 30 to 35 days old. The insects have already damaged about 90 per cent crop of the affected fields and it may result in a 10 per cent reduction in national jute harvest this year, according to BJRI scientists.
   Some of them attributed the situation to widespread plantation of Indian Navin and Maharashtra varieties of Thosa seeds this year.
   ‘It is the first large-scale pest attack on jute crop this year that follows a prolonged drought. The pest has attacked most of the fields where Indian Olitorius, locally known as Thosa, variety of jute seed were planted,’ said AKM Faruquzzaman, chief scientific officer and head of pest management division of the BJRI.
   A change in crop pattern, the government’s open import policy of agricultural inputs, and weak quarantine arrangements have been blamed for causing such agricultural disasters, said Jainul Abedin, upazila agriculture officer of Maksudpur, Gopalganj.
   About 2,800 hectares of land in Faridpur, 7,400 hectares in Goplaganj, 500 hectares in Rajbari, and 500 hectares in Jessore have been affected by the pest attack.

Former BNP lawmaker M Ilyas Ali was among five persons sued on Friday for misappropriation of government money.
   A female member of the Khajanchi union council under Biswanath upazila, Angura Begum, filed the case with Kotwali police Friday evening.
   The complainant alleged that Ilyas Ali, along with Biswanath upazila engineer of the Local Government Engineering Department Habibur Rahman, local union council chairman Rajab Ali, Abul Bashar and Fayezur Rahman Fazlu, had misappropriated Tk 10 lakh meant for constructing the union council building in 2003.
   As she protested it, the former lawmaker demanded Tk 4 lakh from her.
   On December 12 in 2004, Angura Begum, collected Tk 50,000 and paid it to Ilyas Ali at his Upashahar residence in Sylhet city.
   But the former lawmaker rebuked her for not paying the full amount and physically assaulted her for the same, she complained.
   Accepting the complaint, the officer-in-charge of Kotwali police, Abdun Noor, told New Age that they would lodge regular case after primary investigation into the incident.

Al Amin, 25, arrested as a suspected activist of the Islamist militant outfit Jadid al-Qaeda in connection with the explosion at the Sylhet railway station of May 1, had remained missing for two years, said his father, Abdul Hamid.
   Al Amin is an inhabitant of Katha-Salanga under Kalmakanda in Netrakona.
   Abdul Hamid is an ayurvedic practitioner, widely known as kabiraj. He has six sons and three daughters. Al Amin is the fourth son of Hamid.
   Hamid, who had not known of the whereabouts of Al Amin until his arrest, said his son took admission to Biswanathpur Fazil Madrassah in Sylhet three years ago.
   He had been a student of Uradigi Hafizia Madrassah at Barhatta in Netrakona before he went to the Biswanathpur madrassah.
   Hamid said Al Amin had last visited his parents two years ago and he stayed at home for three days. Al Amin at the time told his parents not to worry about him as he had been in the way of Allah.
   At news of his arrest as a suspected Islamist militant, Al Amin’s mother Parishkerennesa, said ‘If we had know he would become a militant, we would not have sent him for madrassah schooling.’
   Hamid said the last time he had received a letter from Al Amin was in the first week of November 2006 and he had not heard of him after that.
   The Kalmakanda police officer-in-charge, Amirul Islam Dewan, said told New Age that he had gathered information on Al Amin at the news of his arrest in the media.
   He said, ‘Abdul Hamid was a poor kabiraj. He has no farmland. He was not able to pay for Al Amin’s education. Al Amin might have paid for his education with the help of the militant group.’

The government will procure 1200,000 tonnes of foodgrain during the Irri-Boro season to check price rise and ensure food security in the country, the food and disaster management adviser, Tapan Chowdhury, said in Pabna on Friday.
   The adviser said steps would be taken so the growers could get fair prices of their produce. The procurement prices have already been increased for paddy and rice, he added.
   The government has fixed Tk 11.25 and 18.00 for each kilogram of paddy and rice respectively.
   ‘Adequate stocks of paddy and rice should be ensured in every district so that there is no crisis of food during disasters or natural calamities,’ he said while launching a food procurement drive in the district this morning.
   Tapan expressed the hope that the procurement target of foodgrain would be fulfilled this year because of good harvest of Irri and Boro.
   The deputy commissioner, Mohammad Golam Mowla,
   senior officials of the Department of Food, farmers, mill owners, journalists and the local elite were present on the occasion.
   Earlier, the adviser chaired a meeting of the district law and order committee and reviewed the law and order as well as prices of essentials in Pabna.

Livestock authorities culled several thousand fowls in a Jaldhaka village after samples from dead birds tested avian flu virus positive.
   This is for the first time bird flu was detected in local species of birds in a village of the Jaldhaka upazila.
   Upazila livestock office sources said that so far a total 4,526 domestic fowls were culled and buried.
   The birds were collected from all the total 454 households of West Gulmonda Master Para village. Of them, 3,297 were chickens, 829 ducks and 398 pigeons.
   District administration along with district livestock office and joint forces launched a massive culling drive in the West Gulmonda Master Para village Thursday and Friday.
   District Livestock Office sources said that an NGO field worker brought some sample of dead chickens recently to the upazila livestock office in Jaldhaka. The samples were sent on 8 May to the Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute at Savar.
   The institute sent its report Thursday confirming the trace of bird flu, said Dr Sekandar Ali, district livestock officer.
   The chairman of Gulmonda union parishad under
   Jaldhaka upazila Maminur Rahman informed this correspondent that 500 to 600 local variety chickens  died of unknown disease in West Gulmonda Master Para village in the first week of May.
   A big team led by upazila nirbahi officer Muhammad Musleuddin and magistrate Mamunul Hasan   along with    officers and employees of district and upazila livestock offices, police and BDR reached the affected village Thursday night.
   They inspected the culling and burying of domestic chicken, duck and pigeon from 11:30pm Thursday till Friday noon.
   A group of Bangladesh Army personnel also joined the team later.
   The local administration pledged that farmers would be duly compensated.
   The senior medical officer of district civil surgeon’s office Dr Abdul Majid told this correspondent that a medical team visited the spot  on Thursday to examine the public health situation in the affected village.
   Panic has gripped the people of the village and surrounding areas.
   Poultry farm owners were also worried. Union parishad was using loud-speaker to make people aware about bird flu prevention.
   UNO Muhammad Mosle-uddin said that the situation was completely under control now.
   As a precautionary measure, people were asked not to rear chicken, duck and pigeon for the next three months, he said.

Small fishes are on the verge of extinction due to indiscriminate use of chemical fertilisers and harmful pesticides in the agricultural lands along with unabated elimination of fish spawns, fry and fingerlings.
   According to fisheries scientists and experts, around eight to ten thousand tonnes of insecticide and pesticide are used in the agricultural lands in the northern region every year and 50 per cent of such chemicals penetrate into water bodies.
   For this reason, the habitats and breeding and grazing grounds of fishes like floodplains, open water bodies and canals are being destroyed gradually.
   Apart from this, the fish species face a lot of manmade and natural catastrophic problems during the breeding season. Although a small number of species breed during the monsoon, they do not survive due to toxic atmosphere.
   ‘In addition to the toxic condition caused by pesticides, the existing water bodies are gradually and alarmingly becoming
   silted,’ said fisheries scientist Amimul Ehsan while talking
   to the news agency here on Friday.
   Elaborating the adverse effects of chemical pesticides, he said organoclorine group pesticides are very harmful to fishes.
   ‘Its effects continue up to 15 years after application,’ Ehsan said, adding that this intensifies the extinction process of fishes.
   District fisheries officer ASM Motaharul Haque said no rules and regulations were followed in fish culture in open water bodies. For which, he said, the water bodies excepting those which were brought under the process of fish culture were becoming fishless day by day.
   According to directorate of fisheries sources, more than a thousand tonnes of fishes used to be caught from the River Padma during the 1980s. But in 2002-03, only 281 tonnes of fishes like prawn, pabda, bachha, bele and carps were caught.
   People of lower income and poor groups are completely dependent on the fishes harvested from open water bodies to meet their protein requirements.
   Officials said the water bodies used to meet 80 per cent of the total fish demands during the 1980-90 period but at present the percentage has come down to 20.
   Meanwhile, at least 50 fish species have disappeared in the region.
   Major rivers like Padma, Brahmaputra, Teesta, Jamuna and Karotoa and their tributaries and other beels and floodplains were the main habitats and breeding and grazing grounds of fishes but those are facing drying condition at present.
   Divisional deputy director of DFO of Rajshahi Sanaullah told the news agency that the use of organic fertiliser in the agricultural lands had become essential to preserve the local fish species. Mass awareness has been rising in this regard.

The police recovered two bombs from Farmpara area in the Chuadanga district town on Friday.
   Acting on a tip-off, the police went to the spot and recovered the bombs at noon and took to local police station.Three bombs were also recovered from inside the district stadium in the same area on May 4.

A two-day training course for sub inspectors, assistant sub-inspectors and constables of police concluded in the capital on Thursday.
   A total of 50 police members from Kotwali, Lalbagh, Sahabagh, Hazaribagh and Mohammadpur police stations joined the course that was designed to train them on reduction of drug abuse and prevention of spread of HIV.
   The training course was held at the Special Branch Training School and organised by International Organization for Migration (IOM) with assistance from the home ministry, USAID and Family Health International (FHI) Bangladesh.
   Former inspector general of police Mohammad Hadis Uddin was the chief guest while Matiur Rahman, AIG (Training) was the special guest at the inaugural session of the training programme.

Two motorcyclists were killed and another injured in a road accident on Faridpur-Boalmari road near Mohishala Bridge under Boalmari upazila in Faridpur on Friday.
   According to police, the accident occurred at about 3:00pm as a truck rammed the motorbike carrying the victims. Hafizur Rahaman, 40, and Babul Biswas, 25, businessmen of Boalmari Bazar area, died on the spot. The other injured Mithun, 24, was admitted to Faridpur Medical Collage Hospital.
   The police seized the truck.

Bangladesh Muktijoddha central command council donated six computer sets to Bhawal Mirzapur Degree College in Gazipur recently.
   The donation was given to the college authority at a simple ceremony.
   Presided over by secretary general of Bangladesh Muktijoddha central command council, Mohammad Salahuddin was present as chief guest at the ceremony, chaired by assistant deputy commissioner of Gazipur Mirza Tariq Hikmot. Among others, principal of the college Mahmudul Haque, freedom fighter Abdur Rauf Nayan and Mosharraf Hossin Dulal addressed.

A suspected criminal was killed in ‘crossfire’ between his associates and the Rapid Action Battalion at Gusra area under Raujan upazila in Chittagong Friday raising the death count in such incidents to 812 since June 2004.
   The deceased, Wahid Murad, 30, of Guhapara area of Nowapara in Raujan, was an accused of 10 criminal cases, including four for murders, the battalion claimed.
   According to the battalion, a gang of unidentified miscreants opened fire on a patrol team of the battalion at Hearpara area in Purba Gusra at around 3:00am forcing them to reiterate.
   ‘After a short gunfight the miscreants receded and we found Wahid lying on the ground with bullet wounds,’ a battalion official said, adding that they had also seized a short gun, a light gun and five bullets from the spot.
   The police rushed to the scene and took the injured to the local hospital, where the doctors declared him dead, the battalion said.

Forty-two staff of the roads and highways department tasked with toll collection at Birshreshtho Mohiuddin Jahangir Bridge on the river Sugandha and Major MA Jalil Bridge on the Sandhya River on the Barisal-Dhaka highway have been sent away on punishment transfer for embezzlement.
   The step was taken after investigations had found that, on an average, Tk 25,000 was misappropriated a day and a total of Tk 6.25 core in the past three and a half years from the toll money.
   Khondokar Nurul Arif, R&H additional chief engineer, admitted to the facts and said the transfer order was issued on May 8 and had already been executed.
   Meanwhile, 32 new staff have been posted at the toll centres and 10 more will be sent soon to replace their corrupt predecessors, he added.
   Following press reports on misappropriation of toll money collected from the bridges, the army-led joint forces and two R&H committees investigated the allegations from April 19 to 28 and found them true.
   No action, however, has yet been taken against the executive engineer, sub-divisional engineer, accounts officer and some other R&H officials, who too were involved in collection and misappropriation of tolls from the bridges, though Khondokar Nurul Arif assured that nobody would be spared in the drive against corruption.

Joint forces on Thursday night arrested Kamar Ahmed, staff reporter of Daily Jessore, from Rail Road area along with an alleged member of smugglers’ syndicate, Ruhul Amin.
   The forces later handed them over to Kotwali police.

Maritime ports of Chittagong, Cox’s Bazaar and Mongla have been asked to hoist a cautionary signal No 3 as a low is forming in the mid-Bay, weathermen said on Friday.
   Meteorological department official Bazlur Rashid said, ‘We are watching the low very closely. We don’t know yet if it would deepen further.’
   He could not give details on the distance of the low from the shore.
   ‘The seaports of Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar and Mongla have been directed to keep a cautionary signal No 3,’ Rashid said.
   Fishing trawlers and boats have also been warned against venturing into the deep sea and advised to operate near the shores instead, he said.

Three fake SSC examinees under Open University were arrested in Kendua and Mohonganj upazila Friday.
   Police picked up Rajon Khan, Mohsin and Sohel as they appeared in mathematics examination in Joyhari Primary School and Mohonganj Pilot High School centres. They were appearing as proxy examinees on behalf of their brothers.
   In Gazipur, an examinee and three others were arrested while writing answer scripts outside the examination hall at Shreepur Pilot High School centre Friday morning.
   The arrested were Swapan Mahmud and his associates Selim, Abdullah al Mamun and Arif.

The fate of about 500 students on various courses at the distance learning centres in the district of three Dhaka-based private universities has become uncertain as the University Grants Commission recently issued an order to close down the centres.
   Although the controversial centres are still in operation, the students fear they may reach a dead end anytime.
   The UGC in an order last month prohibited the private universities from running any distance learning or other academic courses by setting up campuses or regional resource centres elsewhere without permission of the government. The commission also directed to immediately close down such centres at district and upazila levels.
   Three private universities — the Shanto-Marium University of Creative Technology, Asian University of Bangladesh, and Darul Ihsan University — have been offering BEd and other courses in Nilphamari for the last one year. About 500 students are now enrolled in those programmes.
   Golam Sadek Sabu, coordinator of the AUB regional resource centre at Babu Para in Nilphamari municipality told New Age that they had not got any direction yet from their Dhaka office to stop their programmes in the district.
   Enayet Hossain, district education officer of Nilphamari said, an inquiry committee had been formed at the direction of the DC with the Sadar upazila nirbahi officer as its convener to investigate into the activities of the outer campuses and regional resources centres of the private universities in the district.
   These centres usually run their academic courses in rented houses or at schools on holidays and, in most cases, teachers of various local colleges serve there as instructors.