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Millions of survivors of the decade’s deadliest cyclone Sidr kept struggling for food, drinking water and shelter four days after the nightmare that saw over 3000 people dead and hundreds of villages razed to the ground.
   Tens of thousands of people in the worst-hit southern districts such as Bagerhat, Barguna, Jhalakati, Bhola and Pirojpur were going without food as no relief goods reached the remote islands and chars. People living in accessible areas are living on whatever little amount they received since the cyclone and tidal surge battered them at night on November 15.
   As air force helicopters hovered over Patharghata on Saturday and Sunday dropping some dry foods and water bottles, hundreds of people fought for the goods leaving at least 50 injured. Over 30 of them were admitted to the Patharghata health complex.
   Hunt for missing relatives, dead or alive, continued while the people were frantically searching their belongings in the debris and gearing up to start life afresh from the ruins.
   With appalling memories of losing near and dear ones, in some cases most of the family, fresh in mind, people were preparing to rebuild their homes levelled by the 260-kph the cyclone or washed away by 25-feet monster waves. They were without food and safe drinking water, with air filled with stink from corpses littered around.
   Farmers, resilient enough, started recovering the crops from the land devastated by cyclone and tidal surges.
   The confirmed death toll from the cyclone reached 3,113 by Monday, while 3,322 are injured and 1,063 missing, Lieutenant-Colonel Main Ullah Chowdhury said at a press briefing at armed forces division.
   The death counts compiled by the army, however, did not tally with that of the disaster management ministry, which put the figure at 2,408.
   The army official said two C-130 aircraft of the US Marine Corp arrived in Dhaka on Sunday night with medical supplies.
   New Age correspondents in the southern districts said rescuers and relief teams were yet to reach the remote islands and chars including Laladia, Diner Char, Kolabaria and Narkel Bagan in Barguna. None was there to count the dead or assess the damage.
   Bangladesh Red Crescent Society on Sunday said the figure of deaths could reach 10,000.
   The surviving people in the south were still living in the open and exposed to various cold diseases including cough, influenza and pneumonia. Many have already been sick.
   Stink of rotten corpses of humans and animals was growing strong in the air over chars and islands, which are still hardly accessible.
   Tube wells are damaged. Ponds and other sources of surface water were filled with saline water and rotten bodies, leaving the survivors with severe crisis of drinking water. Water purification tablets are not the answer, even then their supply exhausted in chars and islands.
   Mainuddin of Majher Char and a number of people at Padmar Char and Patharghata in Barguna and Southkhali and Sharankhoa in Bagerhat said that they could not manage to get any water purification tablet.
   The crisis of drinking water exposed the survivors to water-borne diseases including diarrhea.
   Also, the government on Monday feared an outbreak of diarrhea and other water-borne diseases at the Sidr-affected areas.
   ‘I am worried now as water-borne and other infectious diseases may spread rapidly in the cyclone affected areas due to lack of safe drinking water, dirty environment and mosquito menace,’ said health and family welfare adviser ASM Matiur Rahman after a high powered meeting of health officials in Dhaka on Monday.
   Outbreak of diarrhea, pneumonia and eye soaring, typhoid, hepatitis and skin diseases are now major concerns for the government, the adviser said.
   Although gruel kitchens were opened at some places, the people in many worst-affected areas kept going unfed as the relief teams were yet to reach them.
   Food and disaster management adviser Tapan Chowdhury admitted in Dhaka on Monday that the relief distribution in the affected areas was still insufficient as communication system was yet to be restored properly.
   Road communications in some areas were restored and efforts were on to ensure easier and faster access to affected areas, he said at a programme.
   Some remote areas were still cut off as uprooted trees were still lying on the roads.
   Telecommunications also remained disrupted in some areas of Bagerhat, Barguna, Pirojpur, Bhola and Jhalakati.
   Cyclone affected people of 22 upazilas of seven southern districts are set to go without electricity for at least one week as authorities will not be able to repair damaged transmission and distribution lines completely before November 30.
   Power authorities restored supply in the district towns of Bagerhat, Patuakhali, Jhalkathi, Khulna, Bhola and Barisal till Monday while two entire districts, Pirojpur and Barguna, continued to remain in darkness.
   Tapan Chowdhury, who is also energy adviser to the interim government, told reporters in Dhaka that the power supply system would be back to normal by November 30 all over the country, including the cyclone-hit southern districts and some pockets.

The government has sought international assistance to help millions of people living in most appalling misery in the country’s southern region ravaged by Thursday’s cyclone Sidr.
   ‘It is our view that our friends will come forward to assist us at this hour of need. We are doing everything we can ourselves, but the magnitude of the calamity has been just too great,’ foreign adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury said in a statement.
   At the initial stage, a number of countries, United Nations agencies, global aid organisations and the European Union have so far pledged around $120 million in humanitarian aid to people affected by the cyclone.
   Among them, Saudi Arabia has announced a grant of $100 million in relief assistance for Bangladesh’s cyclone victims.
   The Saudi government has also decided to send 300 tonnes of food and relief materials to Bangladesh next week, ambassador Abdullah AL Obaid Al Namla informed the foreign adviser Monday.
   Explaining the need for humanitarian assistance from abroad, a foreign ministry spokesman said this year Bangladesh saw a series of severe natural disasters since July. Cyclone Sidr that left a trail of devastation in southern districts followed twin flooding, which affected two-thirds of the country just a couple of months back.
   While the extent of damage caused by the latest disaster is yet to be assessed, the government and the people are trying their best to cope with the adversities, he said.
   ‘At this time we’ll welcome support from the international community.’
   Japan is providing emergency assistance of some $3,90,000, which will arrive in Dhaka today, ambassador Massayuki Inoue told the foreign office.
   He handed over a list of relief items to the foreign adviser Monday.
   The emergency relief goods include 100 tents, 1100 blankets, 300 sleeping pads, 200 plastic sheets, 310 portable water tanks, 30 water purifiers and 30 power generators (220V).
   Chinese ambassador Zheng Qingdian Tuesday informed newsmen that his government would donate $1 million for cyclone victims.
   In addition, Chinese Red Cross would give $50,000 to Bangladesh Red Crescent Society.
   The Swiss government has provided 200,000 Swiss francs (US$160,000) in grants for relief materials, said an embassy release in Dhaka.
   Meanwhile, Xinhua reported from Geneva that the Swiss government and charities were sending immediate aid to the survivors of cyclone in Bangladesh.
   ‘The aid, valued at 850,000 Swiss francs (about $ 760,000 ), will go in part to support efforts by the local Red Crescent Society to provide those in need with food packets, drinking water and medicine,’ the report added.
   The Australian government has announced Tk 18 crore (A$3 million) in emergency relief and recovery efforts.
    High Commissioner Douglas Foskett said AusAID will contribute A$ 1 million each to Australian NGOs working in Bangladesh for relief assistance like safe water, sanitation facilities, clothes and blankets.

The United Nations’ food aid agency has appealed for more aid to help save lives in Bangladesh where nearly 2,600 people were killed by cyclone Sidr.
   ‘Thousands of poor families have been devastated due to the loss of their crops, livestock and in some cases, family members,’ said Douglas Broderick of the UN World Food Programme.
   A 12-person UN team is visiting Bangladesh to assess the damage and aid requirements. ‘The initial assessment reports describe the situation as ‘grim and serious’ warranting the launch of a more comprehensive appeal for assistance,’ the WFP said. It did not specify the amount of aid required.
   The food agency has been dropping high energy biscuits from helicopters to people stranded in inaccessible areas. So far it has delivered food aid to 650,000 people.
   The government estimates some 3 million survivors who were either evacuated from the low-lying southern coast or whose homes and villages were destroyed will need support.
   Aid workers fear inadequate supplies of food, drinking water and medicine could lead to outbreaks of disease.
   ‘We plan to continue our food assistance over the coming weeks and are actively assessing the needs for the coming months,’ said Broderick.
   ‘We urge donors to step forward to provide immediate funding.’

The chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, has assured the cyclone-affected people that the government is always beside them and its ongoing all-out assistance for them would continue so they could start life anew.
   He asked the local administrations to maintain the supply chain that has been now established to deliver relief to the people rendered pauper by Thursday night’s nightmarish cyclone havoc.
   The chief adviser urged the affected people to face the situation with fortitude and appreciated their resilience in such a dire situation.
   He also asked the local administrations to take step to restart economic activities through quickly restoring the snapped communications networks and power supply.
   The head of caretaker government made the assurances on Monday while talking with cyclone-affected and cross-sections of people during his daylong visit to some remote cyclone-battered areas of Bagerhat, Barguna and Patuakhali districts in the vicinities of the Bay of Bengal that sent the tempest.
   He distributed relief materials, water-purification tablets and clothes among the affected people.
   The chief adviser said the government was now giving priority to rehabilitation of agriculture sector, and restoration of infrastructure and internal communications.
   The local administration and joint forces apprised the chief adviser of the relief and rehabilitation operation, progress in restoration of communications and telecommunications, and installing satellite phones in the isolated remote areas.
   The navy chief, Vice-Admiral Sarwar Jahan Nizam, also accompanied the chief adviser during the whirlwind trip to the backwater coastal localities.
   The chief adviser thanked the media for their activities and requested them to project the synergy of government, non-governmental organisations and people put in action to mitigate sufferings of the distressed humanity.
   The chief adviser first flew in to Dublarchar in Bagerhat, the worst scene of catastrophe, where he was briefed about relief operation, loss of lives, extent of damage and post-cyclone grim scenarios.
   Shattered houses at the offshore island have already been reconstructed, it was informed. Alongside local administration and joint forces, naval troops are helping affected people round the clock in the remote Dublarchar area and distributing drinking water, food and fuels.
   An amount of Tk 50 lakh by cheque was allocated Monday for the Dublarchar dwellers in addition to earlier-allocated Tk 1 crore for Bagerhat district.
   The chief adviser’s second stop was in Barguna where he went to Majherchar area by speedboat and talked with the affected people, inquiring about their necessities.
   Affected people requested for providing cash relief and setting up tube-wells.
   He said, if necessary, the number of VGF cards would be increased for feeding the people in distress.
   As he came to know that there is no cyclone shelter at the offshore island, Majherchar, he assured the people of looking into the matter.
   He was informed that the government-allocated house-building aid reached Barguna and distribution started.
   Expressing satisfaction over the combined activities of the local administration, joint force and Navy, he called for further strengthening the management team.
   The local administration apprised the chief adviser that adequate relief supplies were being delivered to the distressed.
   Lastly, he went to Mirjaganj of Patuakhali where he visited the affected people and places. The chief adviser said Tk 50 lakh more would be given here in addition to an earlier allocation of Tk 50 lakh.

The survivors on the islands and shoals in the southern districts are still too traumatised by the fierce assault and devastations of cyclone Sidr to make an effort to return to normal life.
   The memories of massive tidal waves tearing away children from parents’ laps, drowning brothers and sisters in front of their siblings, and destroying and washing away their houses and belongings are still too fresh for them to forget or ignore.
   There were at least 200 children at Majher Char, a remote island in Barguna district. Only 12 of them have survived the storm. The rest were washed away by the bellowing tidal surge whipped up by the category 4 cyclone, said octogenarian Abdus Sobhan Dafadar.
   Bakul Begum, 45, has become mute since one of her three granddaughters, 4-year-old Fatima, died right in her lap and another named Tanzila, 3, was washed away on that fateful night, when all hell broke loose.
   That night, Chan Banu, 25, was sitting huddled in her house clutching her 2-year-old son Rahman and 4-year-old daughter Tamanna tight to herself. The howling seawater snatched away Rahman from her. The boy managed to get hold of a branch of a tree. He was crying to his mother to come and save him, but Chan Banu could do nothing as Tamanna was still in her lap. She looked on as her only son drowned.
   The waves whisked away 6-year-old Moni from the lap of her grandma Khabiron Begum, 45, and Moni’s brother Sifat from their father.
   Even the lone buffalo left alive at Majher Char is so traumatised that it runs wildly whenever it sees any man.
   The scene was no different on Monday at Padmar Char, another remote island under Patharghata upazila.
   About one lakh people used to live on the isle, which was so ravaged by the cyclone that not a single house now stands there. There is not even a sign that there used to be hundreds of dwelling on this land. Only some bare concrete pillars of the Pashchim Padma Primary School building indicate that a structure was there once.
   Survivors on the shoals are living in the open and going without food. A man named Zahangir Fakir distributed an insignificant quantity of rice among the survivors at Padmar Char on Saturday and a lawyer distributed some breads and T-shirts on Sunday. Except that, they have not received any other relief so far.

Cyclone Sidr which left a trail of death and destruction across southern districts Thursday night, took a heavy toll on the poor, landless families as many of them lost not only their homesteads and means of living, but also their only bread earners.
   Countless families are believed to have been left paupers, district administration sources said.
   Landless farm labourer Hirak Malakar, 27, of Goara village under Rupsha upazila in Khulna district, was the only bread earner of his large family including his elderly parents. He used to work as a day labourer and sometimes fished in nearby wetlands. He was crushed to death when a huge tree fell on his mud-and-thatch dwelling on the fateful night.
   Hirok’s mother Haridasi Malakar, 50, fainting frequently since Thursday night, gave reporters a long, blank stare as they visited the shattered family. ‘We have lost our son, shelter and the only earning member,’ she muttered.
   The district administrations
   of Bagerhat, Khulna and
   Satkhira said the death tolls from the cyclone in the three districts rose to 748 till Monday afternoon.
   Monwara Begum, 55, widow of Yakub Choukidar, lives in Chila Bazaar with her 13-year old granddaughter Selina in a mud house and used to sell rice and curry every Sunday at the local bazaar. She has lost both her dwelling and the means of livelihood.
   Her thatch house was razed to the ground by the cyclone. ‘I have lost everything… I have no money to resume my small trade,’ said Monwara.
   Their lives were saved as they moved to the local cyclone shelter before the disaster struck.

The government fears an outbreak of diarrhoea and other water-borne diseases in the Sidr-affected areas which suffer from acute shortage of safe water and trained manpower to tackle such disaster.
   ‘Water-borne and other infectious diseases may spread rapidly in the cyclone affected areas due to lack of safe drinking water, dirty environment and mosquito menace,’ said health and family welfare adviser ASM Matiur Rahman after a meeting with health officials at the ministry’s conference room on Monday.
   Outbreak of diarrhoea, pneumonia, eye soaring, typhoid, hepatitis and skin diseases are now major concerns for the government, he said.
   ‘It would become an epidemic if any of the infectious diseases breaks out in shelter homes crowded with hundreds of homeless people,’ the adviser warned.
   The government will purchase generators for hospitals located in severely affected 57 upazilas of nine districts within two days, he said.
   Holidays for doctors, nurses and other employees of health complexes have been suspended. There are 1571 medical teams working in the affected areas, ministry sources said.
   The health adviser ordered the director general of health services for immediate recruitment against the vacant posts at the health complexes in the cyclone affected areas. At least four doctors must be put on duty in the affected areas' health complexes for emergency health services, he asked.
   'Medical college hospitals authorities could send their internee doctors at the Sidr affected areas as part of their community medicine experiences for two weeks,' the adviser suggested.
   Among others, secretary of the health ministry Zafar Ullah Khan, joint secretary Muhammad Jahangir, director general of health services Shajahan Biswas, director (infectious disease control) Moazzem Hossain, principal of Dhaka Medical College MA Faiz, director of Dhaka Shishu Hospital Selim Shakur, director of Central Medicine Storage Bazle Quader, director of Essential Drugs Limited Md Mehbub, Director of National Institute of Orthopaedic Rehabilitation Siraj-Ul-Islam and director of Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research Mahmudur Rahman were present at the meeting.
   Director of Central Medicine Storage Depot, Bazle Quader informed the meeting the central depot has sufficient stocks of drugs including intravenous fluid, oral rehidration saline (ORS), water purifying tablets, bleaching powder, tetracycline, injected cholera fluid and ointments for eye soaring.
   'We have already sent ORS, water purifying tablets, paracetamol, antacid, bleaching powder, injected cholera saline, anti-snake venom, amoxicillin tablet, zinc sulphate and ciprofloxacin to the affected areas,' said the director.
   Professor MA Faiz said there were some places where relief and health facilities were yet to reach.

Biman Bangladesh Airlines Ltd has so far cancelled a total of seven hajj flights and thereby incurred a loss of around Tk 12 crore, said official sources.
   Biman will have to pay Tk 3 lakh as fine to the Saudi authority for cancellation of each flight to Jeddah. It is feared that more flights are likely to be cancelled as the hajj agencies are yet to confirm the number of pilgrims intending to perform hajj under private management.
   Only 88 agencies, out of a total of 232 allowed to offer hajj packages this year, have so far reported to the Bangladesh mission in Saudi Arabia the confirmation of accommodation for the non-balloted hajj pilgrims, said an official of the religious affairs ministry, adding that only 58 of them have reported to the hajj office in Dhaka.
   Meanwhile, the ministry
   has directed all hajj agencies concerned to complete the
   procedures for getting accommodation and visas for non-balloted pilgrims without further delay.
   ‘The hajj agencies have assured us that Biman will not suffer capacity loss any more due to lack of passengers as the procedures for getting the visas and accommodation for 16,500 hajj passengers are almost complete,’ the secretary to the religious affairs ministry, Md Ataur Rahman, told New Age on Monday.
   It has been alleged that the hajj agencies are deliberately delaying the acquisition of visas and renting of accommodation in Saudi Arabia in order to shorten the stay of hajis there so that they can make more profit, which has eventually forced Biman to cancel its flights for shortage of passengers and incur a hefty loss.
   ‘Everything will become normal from tomorrow as we have already managed accommodation for the hajis in Saudi Arabia. Biman will not have to cancel any more flights,’ claimed the president of the Hajj Agencies Association of Bangladesh, Mohammed Faruque.
   Biman has suffered from a capacity loss of 2,674 seats since November 12 for lack of non-balloted hajis.
   The number of balloted pilgrims stands at 5,583 this year while the number of non-balloted pilgrims is expected to be about 37,000. On Monday a total of 6,520 hajj passengers left Dhaka for Jeddah.

The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, on Monday wrapped up a visit to the Islamic republic aimed at building a ‘strategic unity’ with fellow anti-US populist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
   At the end of a one-day visit, which both presidents described as ‘very fruitful’, the two countries agreed to create a binational bank and a joint fund to expand industrial cooperation, state media reported.
   ‘After two years we managed to create a joint bank which I am sure other countries will join,’ the state news agency IRNA quoted Chavez as saying.
   ‘Very good agreements were signed on this trip and these agreements will create a strategic unity,’ said Chavez at the end of his fourth visit since Ahmadinejad took office in 2005 to Iran, which he branded as his ‘second home’.
   The Venezuelan president before leaving Tehran renewed his verbal attacks on the United States, wishing that ‘the weakening of dollar leads to the fall of the dollar empire.' 'We should ask God that the corrupt US imperialism collapse as soon as possible,' he said.
   Ahmadinejad for his part vowed that the two countries would 'stand by each other until the end, in defence of our nations' rights and our ideals.'
   'Despite what the arrogance wants our ties are expanding in all areas,' he said, eluding to Iran's arch-enemy the United States.
   Chavez, who was accompanied by five ministers including the foreign, oil and industry ministers, last visited Iran in July, laying the foundations alongside Ahmadinejad for a joint petrochemical plant.
   Both Chavez and his self-proclaimed political 'brother' Ahmadinejad attended a weekend OPEC summit in Riyadh, where Chavez warned oil could hit 200 dollars a barrel if the United States attacked Iran.
   State television showed a smiling Ahmadinejad warmly welcoming his stocky counterpart at an official ceremony.
   'They had one-and-a-half hours of private talks. They emphasised boosting bilateral relations and ties in the economy, banking, engineering and petrochemicals,' the television said.
   Despite their cultural differences, Iran and Venezuela have in the last years forged increasingly strong ties based on their shared dislike of the United States.
   Chavez is the most vocal cheerleader in Latin America for Iran and its nuclear programme, which is feared by the West to be a cover for weapons development although Tehran insists it is purely peaceful.
   Both staunchly anti-American leaders with a passion for provocative statements, Ahmadinejad and Chavez appeared to have forged a close personal bond marked by much mutual back-slapping and embracing.
   As well as promoting political ties, the two OPEC members have sought to expand economic links, especially in the energy sector. There is even a weekly flight between Tehran and Caracas, Iran's only link to the Americas.
   Amid increasingly cool ties with the West over the nuclear standoff, Iran has worked hard to cultivate its ties with non-aligned allies like Belarus, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Syria and Venezuela.
   The drive is seen as a counter to US efforts to freeze Iran out of the international financial system, which have already seen almost all major European banks cut their business with the Islamic republic.
   Ahmadinejad last visited Venezuela in September, his third trip to the country.
   The Iranian president displayed his distinctive world view to a gathering in Tehran of Asian MPs, urging a world of justice where 'bullying powers' like the United States would lose their influence.
   He lashed out at the veto-wielding Western permanent members of the UN Security Council. 'When two or three oppressive powers have membership rights how can we see peace and stability in the world.'

A Dhaka court on Monday placed Tarique Rahman, the elder son of detained former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, in police custody for five days of interrogation in two extortion cases.
   Additional chief metropolitan magistrate Sultan Mahmud issued the order after hearing two petitions filed by the Detective Branch and the Gulshan thana, seeking remand for Tarique Rahman. He was remanded for three days in DB’s and two days in Gulshan thana’s custody.
   The jail authorities produced Tarique, the senior joint secretary-general of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, in the court amidst tight security.
   Investigation officer Hassan filed a prayer for remanding Tarique in the custody of the Detective Branch for interrogation in the case against his close friend Giasuddin Al Mamun and three others associate of Mamun.
   ‘Mamun, with the help of his associates, extorted money from businessman Khairul Bashar, the managing director of a construction firm, Abdul Momen Ltd, and Tarique accepted some of the money extorted,’ said the IO his appeal.
   Khairul, on April 9, lodged the case with the Shahbagh thana, alleging that Mamun extorted Tk 10.31 crore from him on different occasions between October 30, 2001 to July 5, 2006.
   Tarique was later shown arrested on April 26 in the case, based on Mamun’s confession in the court.
   ‘We need the remand for the sake of proper probe into the case. Necessary information can be extracted if we can intensively interrogate Tarique in custody,’ the investigation officer argued in his petition.
   Sub-inspector Aminur Rashid of the Gulshan thana submitted another petition to the court and sought remand for Tarique for seven more days for interrogation in the case of extortion of Tk 81 lakh from businessman Harun Ferdousi.
   Harun, the managing director of Marshal Distillery, on March 27, filed the case with the Gulshan police against five persons, including Tarique and Mamun, in which he said the accused had forced him to pay Tk 81 lakh between March 2, 2002 and December 28, 2006.
   Thirteen lawyers argued in the court for cancellation of the sought remand, saying Tarique was implicated in both the cases to tarnish the reputation of Khaleda Zia and her family.
   The counsels also told the court that Tarique is now ill as he was sent to jail nine months ago in another extortion charge, which was stayed by the High Court on March 17.
   After the hearing magistrate Sultan Mahmud, who on November 15 had refused to send Tarique into police custody on the grounds of bad health, ordered his remand.
   Tarique, through one of his counsels, Masud Ahmed Talukdar, requested the court not to remand him on Tuesday as the day is his 46th birthday.
   The DB police were allowed to remand Tarique for three days and the Gulshan thana for two days. The Dhaka Central Jail authorities were asked to take necessary steps so that Tarique could go on remand.
   Tarique was among the 178 corruption suspects whose names were announced by the interim government, and was arrested from his mother’s house in the cantonment on March 7. He faces at least five cases for various charges including corruption and extortion.

Pakistan’s key opposition parties on Monday failed to attend a meeting called by the election commission to finalise a code of conduct for general elections, officials and state media said.
   Former premier Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, the Pakistan Muslim League of exiled prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s main Islamist alliance and cricket legend Imran Khan’s party all stayed away, they said.
   Opposition parties have said they are mulling a boycott of the election, which president Pervez Musharraf on Sunday recommended should be on January 8.
   They say it will be unfair if it is held under an ongoing state of emergency.
   ‘Despite the fact that some of the political parties did not participate in the meeting, the suggestions and comments received from them were duly considered and accepted’ for the code, election commission secretary Kanwar Dilshad said in a statement.
   ’The chief election commissioner will unveil the details of the code and election schedule today (Tuesday),’ he later told state television.
   An election commission statement said that five ‘prominent’ parties did attend, led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid, the party that backed Musharraf for five years during the last parliament.
   The others were mainly breakaway groupings from the main parties.
   The national assembly, or lower house of parliament, dissolved on Thursday while Pakistan’s four provincial assemblies completed their dissolution on Monday.
   Benazir and other opposition leaders are expected to hold talks later this week to discuss whether to boycott the elections.
   Visiting US deputy secretary of state John Negroponte told Musharraf on Sunday that free elections were not compatible with the state of emergency that the Pakistani leader declared just over two weeks ago.
   Meanwhile, Pakistan’s purged Supreme Court swatted away the main challenges to Pervez Musharraf’s re-election as president Monday, taking him a step closer to quitting as army chief and restoring civilian rule.
   Stripped of hostile judges by Musharraf under a state of emergency after he feared it would rule he was ineligible for another five-year term, the new-look top court took just over two hours to throw out the cases.
   ‘There were five petitions, they have all been dismissed. There is only one left, and that will be heard on Thursday,’ attorney general Malik Mohammad Qayyum told AFP after a hearing from which international media were banned.
   The party of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto earlier said it was withdrawing its own challenge against Musharraf’s presidency as it did not recognise the new court.

The people of 22 upazilas of seven coastal districts worst hit by cyclone Sidr are set to go without electricity till November 30 as the authorities will not be able to repair the damaged transmission and distribution lines before that.
   The authorities till Monday have restored the power supply system in five district headquarters of Bagerhat, Patuakhali, Jhalakati, Khulna, Bhola, and Barisal, while two entire districts, Pirojpur and Barguna, continue to remain in darkness.
   The power and energy adviser, Tapan Chowdhury, told a news conference that they were expecting to restore the country’s entire power supply system by November 30. The power system has become almost normal in the country, except the southern districts and some pockets, he added.
   The documents handed out to newsmen at the conference show 22 upazilas of the seven districts will get back partial power supply by November 20 to 30 only for re-establishing telecommunications.
   ‘At the consumer level, it may take many more days to restore the full power supply system at these upazilas as the distribution lines and poles were badly damaged in the cyclone,’ said a power official.
   Those of the worst affected upazilas that got back electricity are Sharankhola and Chitalmari in Bagerhat, Mathbaria, Bhandaria, Nazirpur, Kawkhali, Zia Nagar and Sharupkathi in Pirojpur, Amtali, Betagi, Bamna and Taltali in Barguna, Golachipa, Dasmina, Mirzaganj, Baufal and Kuakata in Patuakhali, Kathalia, Nalchhiti and Rajapur in Jhalakati, Babuganj, Agoiljhora, Banaripara, Gournadi and Ujirpur in Barisal, and Lalmohon in Bhola.
   Power officials earlier on Saturday said the full power supply system would be restored in the country by four days.
   The power supply in Dhaka city, meanwhile, has become normal in most areas, excepting Dhanmondi, with all the power plants that are operative beginning generation. It will take three to four days to ensure a proper power supply to Dhanmodi, officials said.
   Replying to a volley of queries from the media regarding the lack of coordination which allegedly resulted in Friday’s power-sector disaster, plunging the entire country into darkness, the power secretary, M Fouzul Kabir Khan, claimed they had been fully prepared to face the cyclone.
   ‘Before the cyclone, we asked all power offices to switch off the power supply in the areas predicted to be hit by the cyclone so that no one was electrocuted. But, it was unpredictable that the power consumption would come down to only 300-400MW that resulted in the first tripping of the national grid,’ he said.
   About the first and the second tripping, he said the fact-finding committee would find out the reasons.
   When asked why it was a fact-finding, not an inquiry, committee that would find out the people responsible for the disaster, Fouzul said the committee had the freedom to recommend anything, even to find out the people responsible, if there was any.
   ‘If the committee find any person responsible for negligence, we will take action,’ he said.
   Fouzul admitted that they had not held any coordination meeting with the energy division before the cyclone. ‘We did not feel it was necessary as the respective power plant authorities have regular contacts with the companies from whom they procure gas,’ he said.

The Election Commission begins the work of preparing a voters’ roll with photographs and national identity cards in the Dhaka City Corporation area today.
   On the first day, enumerators will make door-to-door visits to collect information about eligible voters in 41 of the 90 DCC wards under 22 police stations. Collection of personal information in the remaining six police station areas of the city will begin later this month and early December.
   For the areas where the listing of eligible voters begins Tuesday, enumerators have been instructed to complete the tasks of distributing voter registration forms, helping people fill them in, and scrutinising the filled-in forms by November 29.
   In these areas, election officials will start taking voters’ fingerprints and photographs on December 1 at voter registration centres to be set up at places that were previously used as polling stations.
   The enumerators, mostly schoolteachers, while collecting the filled-in registration forms, will distribute tokens among the eligible voters, asking them to visit the registration centres with the slips of paper on a particular day to have their fingerprints and photographs taken.
   The areas where enumerators start door-to-door visits on Tuesday are Kotwali, Sutrapur, Jatrabari, Shyampur, Paltan, Sabujbagh, Motijheel, Kafrul, Airport, Uttara, Cantonment, Khilkhet, Pallabi, Mohammadpur, Adabar, Dhanmondi, New Market, Shahbagh, Lalbagh, Khilgaon, Tejgaon Industrial Area, and Ramna.
   Of the remaining police station areas, voters’ information gathering will commence in Gulshan and Mirpur Shah Ali Shrine on December 9 and voters’ photograph and fingerprint documentation will begin on January 2 and December 29 respectively.
   Voters’ information collection begins in Hazaribagh on November 22, Mirpur on November 29, Badda on December 6, and Tejgaon on December 24, and recording of voters’ photographs and fingertips starts on December 9, December 11, December 26, and January 16 respectively.

The Election Commission has suspended its November 22 dialogue with the government-backed Bangladesh Nationalist Party and decided to wait until the High Court gives a verdict on the issue.
   ‘As the High Court has stayed the operation of the invitation, the scheduled dialogue with BNP will not be held on November 22. We will wait until the legal issue is settled,’ the chief election commissioner, ATM Shamsul Huda, told reporters on Monday.
   The CEC made the statement a day after the High Court put a four-week freeze on the commission’s invitation to BNP’s acting secretary general Hafiz Uddin Ahmad for a dialogue on electoral reforms.
   Asked whether the EC would appeal against the HC stay order, he said, ‘We will make a decision in consultation with the attorney general.’
   He said that holding dialogue with BNP was not the commission’s concern at the moment… Its main concern is how to complete the voter registration in the cyclone-ravaged areas.
   The CEC said work on voter registration in the cyclone-affected areas was deferred for nine days. He, however, said that the disaster would not halt progress towards the elections as outlined in the roadmap.
   ‘The roadmap was prepared keeping in mind the possibility of such calamities,’ he added.
   The High Court on Sunday stayed the commission’s scheduled dialogue with the government-backed faction of the BNP and issued a rule on the EC to explain in three weeks why the invitation should not be declared illegal and void.
   In response to a query, the CEC said, ‘We will reply to the court’s ruling.’
   The court passed the order freezing the scheduled dialogue after hearing a writ petition filed by the detained BNP chairperson and former prime minister, Khaleda Zia.
   The BNP chairperson on November 13 issued a legal notice on the EC, asking for withdrawal of its invitation to Hafiz Uddin Ahmad that was sent on November 5, but the commission, in its reply on November 13, refused to cancel the invitation, said her counsel.
   On November 6, a day after the invitation letter was sent, the CEC had said that the ‘doctrine of necessity’ had prompted the EC to invite the Saifur-led faction of the BNP to the dialogue.

Internet and overseas telephone call services were disrupted for seven hours and a half from early hours of Monday as the BTTB’s Chittagong–Cox’s Bazar fibre optic link with the submarine cable snapped for the second time in a week.
   ‘The cable was snapped at around 1:00am at Gachhbaria, about 44 kilometres from Chittagong,’ said Aminur Rahman, a divisional engineer of Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board’s Chittagong zone.
   ‘The cable was fixed at about 8:30am,’ said Aminur, who led the technical team that restored the cable link.
   He suspected that Monday’s disconnection might be an act of sabotage. The same cable was cut at two points on November 13 causing severe disruption to the internet and international telephony.
   The board’s underground fibre optic network between Dhaka, Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar is often severed by public and private agencies during maintenance work and by cable thieves, resulting in frequent disruptions in services in absence of a backup.
   According to a board document, the cable was cut for 23 times since its inauguration on May 21, 2006.
   The document said seven of such incidents were acts of sabotage. In eight cases, the cut resulted from works by other agencies. Only two incidents were detected as theft.
   Earlier, BTTB general manager Ziaur Rashid Safdar said the telephone board would strike a deal with the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh by November to use its Dhaka–Chittagong–Cox’s Bazar fibre optic cable as a backup to keep communications uninterrupted.
   Meanwhile, the frequent cable cut is hurting the information technology sector.
   Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services last week urged the government to take effective steps to ensure uninterrupted connectivity with the submarine cable.

Disaster management adviser Tapan Chowdhury urged the countrymen including politicians to come forward to help the cyclone victims, but avoided a press query whether the government would allow use of banners and lift emergency in the affected areas.
   ‘I have nothing to say about the demand of political parties to allow them to use banners during relief distribution,’ he said at a news briefing on Monday.
   He also ruled out any possibility of talks with political parties over cyclone relief distribution.
   ‘We have no plan to sit with political parties, but we have planned a meeting with business leaders tomorrow (Tuesday),’ Tapan said.
   He, however, said the government would extend all out cooperation if any politician or political party comes forward to help the affected people forgetting their differences.
   Responding to a question about lifting emergency, Tapan said the state of emergency could not be a barrier to humanitarian works by any group or individuals. ‘Politics and disaster are totally separate things.’
   He said the government got assurance of $140 million in emergency assistance from foreign countries including $100 million from Saudi Arabia.
   A grant of Tk 100 crore is expected from Japan, he added.
   Official death counts from the Cyclone Sidr rose to 2408, Tapan said quoting statistics of the ministry till 1:00 pm Monday. The number of affected families was 9.11 lakh and people 32 lakh 72 thousand five hundred and 65.
   The number of casualties and extent of damages would go up, he said.
   Relief has reached each of the effected districts, he claimed.
   The government has so far distributed relief in cash and kinds including Tk 12.30 crore from chief adviser’s fund and Tk 1.50 crore from food and disaster management ministry. Besides, 7,500 tonnes of rice have been allocated for the affected people, the adviser said.

The government has decided to allow farmers in the cyclone-hit areas to reschedule their outstanding farm loans they took from the state-owned banks, the finance adviser announced on Monday.
   Cyclone-affected farmers would also be provided with fresh loans so that they can recover from the losses, AB Mirza Azizul Islam told reporters after a meeting with heads of the public sector banks on Monday at his finance ministry office.
   The central bank will issue a circular today asking the banks to help cyclone-affected people in the south and south-western regions with contingency supports inclusive of rescheduling current loans for another year and allocation of fresh loan.
   ‘It’s too early to say whether loans will be waived,’ he told a questioner after the meeting that reviewed overall financing, credit disbursement and loan recovery of the state-owned commercial and agricultural banks.
   Bangladesh Bank governor Salehuddin Ahmed and finance secretary Mohammad Tareq were also present, among others.
   The finance adviser directed the state-owned banks to expedite the process of loan disbursement.
   The national economy might slow down unless the credits were made available to those who needed them, he said.
   Mirza Aziz mentioned that the economy would not be severely affected by the consequences of cyclone despite huge losses incurred by individuals in the affected areas.
   ‘Aman is not now the major crop in Bangladesh. And also the crop sub-sector is not the all important one when the greater agriculture contributes only 22 per cent to the GDP,’ he said.
   ‘There will be monetary injections in terms of loans and grants into the rural economy.’
   Meanwhile, disbursement of agricultural loans in the first quarter of the current fiscal year has not been satisfactory despite the government’s declared policy to accelerate farm lending under the post-flood agriculture rehabilitation scheme. The adviser claimed that the situation began improving from October onwards.
   According to the latest official statistics, about 25 per cent of the farm loan target has been distributed till date.
   The meeting also observed that the state-owned banks had been suffering from capital shortfall and the central bank might declare three of them — Sonali, Janata and Agrani —as problem banks after their corporatisation.
   Sonali Bank has a capital shortfall amounting to Tk 3,660 crore, Janata Tk 1,025 crore, Agrani Tk 1,970 crore and Bangladesh Krish Bank Tk 401 crore.
   ‘Since the government still is the owner of these banks, it does not want to see their financial health deteriorating further,’ the adviser said.

Zimbabwe said Monday it had put its military on high alert against a possible British invasion after the former armed forces chief of its old colonial master revealed London had considered such a move.
   ‘We are aware of plans by Britain to invade our country and assassinate our leaders and we are not going to lie down and take this as just threats,’ the deputy information minister, Bright Matonga, said.
   ‘We take these threats seriously and our armed forces are always on high alert. We are aware and confident of
   our capability and we will
   deal with them swiftly and effectively if they dare invade our territory.’
   Matonga’s comments come after the former head of the British armed forces, Lord Charles Guthrie, revealed in a newspaper interview that the possibility of invading Zimbabwe had been discussed during Tony Blair’s premiership.
   Guthrie said that ‘people (in Blair’s administration) were always trying to get me to look at’ the possibility of invading the southern African country.
   ‘My advice was: ‘Hold hard, you’ll make it worse. You won’t have a single African country on your side,’ he told Britain’s Independent on Sunday newspaper earlier this month.
   Matonga said that Mugabe, in power since the former Rhodesia won its independence in 1980, had been on Britain’s hit-list for a long time.
   ‘They have always targetted African leaders opposed to their imperialist policies and they want to do that with president Mugabe. But we have a robust army ready to defend the country and its leaders.’
   Zimbabwe’s relations with Britain were strained after Zimbabwe launched controversial land reforms in 2000, seizing farms from white farmers – the majority of them of British descent – to give to black farmers.
   Mugabe was one of Blair’s most virulent critics before the British premier stood down in June, frequently accusing him of trying to force regime change and telling him to ‘keep his pink nose’ out of Zimbabwe’s internal politics.

Sonali, Janata and Agrani banks are no longer nationalised commercial banks and have been turned into corporatised lenders.
   According to a gazette notification issued by the finance ministry on Monday, the banks have been removed from the purview of Bangladesh Bank Nationalisation Order, 1972.
   The notification, signed by a senior assistant secretary of the ministry, Saiful Huda, also says the three banks from now on will run under the Companies Act, 1994 as corporatised lenders. The banks launched the process of turning into limited companies by registering with the Office of the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies in July.
   The change in their status will be effective from November 15, the notification said.
   The administrative and policy functions of the finance ministry, like giving promotions, recruitment, and formulating regulations for loans and advances, related to these three banks have been vested with their boards of directors, sources in the ministry said.
   ‘The revised memoranda and articles of association of the banks stipulate that all administrative and policy-related activities should be carried on by the bank boards, instead of the finance ministry,’ a high official of the ministry told New Age on Monday.
   The law ministry on Sunday okayed the notification sent to it by the finance ministry for vetting on Thursday, the sources said.
   Also on Thursday, the government signed vendor’s agreements with these three new corporatised state-owned lenders, paving the way for disinvesting the ailing financial institutions.
   The council of advisers last month approved the agreements. The council also approved removal of the banks from the purview of Bangladesh Bank Nationalisation Order, 1972 that had brought the then private-sector banks under government ownership soon after the country’s independence.
   The interim government undertook the initiative to turn the nationalised commercial banks into limited companies in line with a recommendation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
   The government however will retain its shares in the banks and its power of appointing their board members.

Decades of development in Asia will be reversed by climate change, threatening the lives of millions of people, environmentalists and aid agencies warned Monday.
   The Working Group on Climate Change and Development, an umbrella group of greens and aid groups, said Asia was on the frontline of the climate change threat.
   ‘Asia is at a critical juncture as the home to almost two thirds of humanity. It has made real advances in reducing poverty but lies on the frontline of impacts from climate change,’ said co-author Andrew Simms.
   ‘Now if it follows a fossil-fuelled Western economic development path, it will set in train an irreversible course of events that will guarantee a great reversal in its own progress,’ added Simms of the New Economics Foundation.
   The coalition’s Up in Smoke report calls on industrialised nations to act ‘first and fastest’ to cut emissions, ensure technology transfer and increase adaptation funds to help Asia deal with the effects of global warming.
   ‘To prevent catastrophic global warming, the only feasible alternative is for wealthy countries to dramatically reduce their ‘luxury’ greenhouse gas emissions, so that the ‘survival’ emissions of people in poor countries do not cause disaster,’ said Simms.
   Over half of Asia’s four billion-strong population lives near coasts, putting them in danger from sea-level rises, while more extreme weather patterns threaten the whole region, the report says.
   The group said India and China, the region’s two biggest economies and emerging global giants, should move away from coal in favour of renewable power which could provide them with long-term energy security.
   Chinese agricultural productivity will fall by 5-10 per cent if no action is taken, with the production of wheat, rice and corn decreasing by up to 37 per cent in the second half of this century, it noted.
   Countries such as Bangladesh are particularly vulnerable to climate change in the form of flooding and droughts.
   India meanwhile could be threatened by energy and food supply insecurity, reduced fresh water supplies and increases in extreme weather events, the report says.
   The Working Group comprises aid agencies and green organisations including ActionAid, Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oxfam and WWF.

Myanmar’s democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi met Monday with a junta officer, a government official said, as regional leaders prepared to confront the regime over its crackdown on dissent.
   Witnesses said a convoy picked up the Nobel peace prize winner from her home, where she has been confined for 12 of the past 18 years, and took her to a nearby military facility often used for official meetings.
   The government official said the opposition leader met for about an hour with labour minister Aung Kyi, who has been appointed by the junta to handle contacts with her.
   The meeting was the third between the pair since Aung Kyi was appointed as a liaison in the wake of international outrage over the junta’s deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in September.
   Nyan Win, a spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, said the party had not yet received any information about their discussions.
   Earlier this month, Aung San Suu Kyi had indicated that she was eager for the talks to move forward.
   ‘I expect that this phase of preliminary consultations will conclude soon so that a meaningful and time bound dialogue with the (government) leadership can start as early as possible,’ she said in a statement on November 8.
   The latest meeting came as regional leaders gathered in Singapore for the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which was preparing to confront Myanmar’s junta over its actions during the September crackdown.
   The international community, especially the United States and the European Union, wants ASEAN to push Myanmar’s generals towards democracy.
   So far it has been reluctant to take any punitive action against the nation formerly known as Burma, which is a member of ASEAN, even as Western nations have tightened sanctions on the regime.
   A UN rights investigator, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, last Thursday ended a five-day mission to Myanmar to examine the casualties and detentions arising from the suppression of the protests led by Buddhist monks around the country.
   The government says 15 people were killed in Yangon and about 3,000 arrested during the crackdown, although diplomats say the toll is likely much higher.

Some 9,642 people in the United States were victims last year of hate crimes targeting them because of their skin colour, religious belief, sexual orientation or ethnic origins, the FBI reported on Monday.
   Sixty per cent of hate crimes targeted individuals or a collective of people, such as businesses or institutions, the statistics showed, while 39 per cent were directed at property.
   Thirteen per cent of the attacks on people involved serious aggressions, including three murders and six rapes.
   More than half the victims — 5,020 — were attacked because of their race, and two-thirds of race crime victims were black, the statistics showed.
   Some 1,750 or around 19 per cent of the total of hate crime victims were attacked because of their religion, with two-thirds of those hate crimes targeting Jews and nearly 12 per cent perpetrated against Muslims.
   Some 1,472 hate crimes were based on a person’s sexual orientation, the majority against male homosexuals, the statistics showed.
   Around 1,300 people were attacked because of their ethnicity; nearly 63 per cent of those hate crime victims were Hispanics.
   The statistics represent only hate crimes reported by the police in the 50 states to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
   The data showed a rise of seven per cent in the number of victims compared with 2005, when 8,804 people were the target of hate crimes, and were almost identical to figures for 2004, when around 9,500 victims of hate crimes were reported to the FBI.

The chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, will curtail his visit to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting to be held in Kampala, Uganda on November 23-25 in view of the situation caused by cyclone Sidr.
   The chief adviser is expected to leave Dhaka on November 21 to attend the Commonwealth summit.
   In reply to a question, the foreign adviser, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, told the news agency on Monday that the visit had been cut short.
   He said the chief adviser would stay for one and a half days in
   Kampala, which will enable him to meet some Commonwealth leaders and apprise them of the country’s post-cyclone situation.
   Iftekhar said the chief adviser’s remarks in Kampala on natural disaster in Bangladesh would be in the context of the effect of climate change in area on which Bangladesh is playing a leading role.
   It had been planned that the foreign adviser would represent the chief adviser to the rest of the summit, but later it has been decided that he too would return home with the chief adviser on November 25.

The director of the US foreign assistance, also administrator of the USAID, Henrietta H Fore arrives in the capital today for a day long tour to observe the devastation of cyclone Sidr and relief operations.
   During her stay, she will observe first-hand the devastation caused by the cyclone and relief operations by the US government-funded partner organizations.
   ore will meet with senior government officials to discuss how the United States can continue to assist Bangladesh in this time of need, said a release of the American Centre Monday.
   She will present 35 metric tons of non-food relief assistance supplies such as shelter vinyls, hygiene kits, jerricans and blankets worth $161,875.00 USD.

Pakistani cricket hero Imran Khan began a hunger strike Monday in the prison where he was sent last week for protesting against emergency rule, his spokesman said.
   He said Khan, who now heads his own opposition party, wanted a restoration of the constitution and reinstatement of judges sacked when the president, Pervez Musharraf, imposed the emergency just over two weeks ago.
   ‘Imran Khan has gone on hunger strike for an indefinite period,’ spokesman Saifullah Niazi said.
   ‘He is demanding the restoration of the judiciary and restoration of the constitution,’ Niazi said.
   Khan is in Deraghazi Khan jail, normally used to house terror detainees and hardened prisoners.
   He was picked up last Wednesday and charged under a section of anti-terror legislation which stipulates a minimum punishment of at least seven years and up to life in prison.
   Khan had been put under house arrest after emergency rule was declared on November 3 but slipped the net and went into hiding, communicating via email and video.
   He was arrested after emerging from hiding last Wednesday at a university campus in the eastern city of Lahore.
   The Lahore police said then that he would face charges for inciting people to pick up arms, calling for civil disobedience and ‘spreading hatred.’