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The World Bank has asked the government to extend the reach of value added tax to small businesses like hotels and tailoring shops — a step, which, economists believe, will make living costlier for the masses.
   Professionals like physician and lawyer, tourism and hospitality industry, classified advertisement, travel agency, insurance company and dental clinic are among the services and businesses which the global lender wants to come under extended VAT net, sources in the government have told New Age.
   The wish list has recently been sent to the chief adviser’s office, which has forwarded it to the finance ministry for necessary actions, they informed.
   And the National Board of Revenue seems to have started acting on as it has brought about 30 service sectors, currently enjoying immunity from 15 per cent VAT applied to many businesses, under its close watch, revenue officials said.
   ‘The World Bank now wants to see no sector enjoys VAT exemption,’ a high official at the National Board of Revenue told New Age.
   Bringing small service industries under VAT net might trigger countrywide resentment, the official, however, feared.
   Economists have also echoed the same view. They have warned that imposition of VAT on businesses like small hotels, restaurants and tailoring shops will affect small traders and poor consumers at a time when the economic activities show signs of slump.
   Revenue officials said currently, small ill-furnished tin-shed hotels and restaurants, which use two electric bulbs and no fan, are exempted from VAT.
   Tourist spots have also been kept out of VAT’s reach as the government is keen to encourage private investments for developing the hospitality industry.
   Construction firms, which are engaged in the government-funded construction activities, are also free from VAT.
   No VAT has so far been in force on classified advertisements to help small businesses and common people spread information of their products and services to a wider audience at affordable prices.
   VAT does not apply to dental clinics and physicians in the belief that people will get healthcare services at affordable prices, although it does not happen in most cases.
   Even then, fresh imposition of VAT would give the service providers an excuse to charge higher from users in general, revenue and finance officials said, terming the World Bank’s prescription unrealistic.
   ‘We should not go for wholesale withdrawal of current VAT exemptions now being enjoyed by service sectors,’ a finance ministry official said, guessing that the World Bank’s wish list might be linked to its development support credit scheme somehow.
    Suppliers of foods for schoolchildren, entry fee (less than Tk 100) for cultural programmes, food item suppliers through transports, electricity used for irrigation, tailoring shops having no air-conditioned facility and insurance premiums of private sector power generation are now exempted from VAT, sources in the revenue board said.
   Finance ministry officials said the government might opt for ending VAT immunity for a number of service sectors, if not all, to comply with the World Bank’s wish list.
   ‘Such a decision, however, has not been taken yet,’ a ministry official said.
   Zaid Bakht, research director, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, said timing for imposing VAT on small hotels and restaurants was not suitable taking into consideration the present state of economy.
   He added that small hotels and restaurants are important elements of the economy and keeping them out of VAT purview ultimately benefits the poor customers.
   ‘Both small traders, poor consumers and the economy as a whole will be affected if VAT is imposed on them,’ Zaid said.
   The World Bank suggestion, if implemented, will fuel the inflationary trend since the small service industries, particularly many booming sub-sectors, serve the poor and the marginal most, the economist pointed out.
   Professor Anu Muhammad said the proposed measure would increase the cost of living of the masses, particularly the low-income group.
   He said the World Bank desires the expansion of VAT as it wants to make the country’s economy entirely an import-dependent one.
   ‘The very concept of VAT is to lessen the earnings from import duties and pave the way for unfettered access of cheap foreign goods to destroy the local economy,’ said Anu, who teaches economics at Jahangirnagar University.
   The so-called economic reforms made during the last two decades opened the floodgate of imports of foreign goods and ended up in raising the expenditures of the people.
   He called upon the government to come out from the mire of the multilateral lending agencies and stop thinking of extending VAT’s reach to small businesses, which will affect the life of poor consumers and small traders.

The government has finally addressed the grievances of small savers by raising the threshold of tax-free incomes from savings certificates to Tk 1.5 lakh from Tk 25,000 a year.
   The council of advisers at its weekly meeting, chaired by chief adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed, Saturday approved the amendment to the Income Tax Ordinance 1984 raising the income tax threshold.
   Small savers and pensioners were shaken by a National Board of Revenue circular imposing 10 per cent tax at source on annual interest incomes of Tk 25,000 or above from savings certificates with effect from July 1, 2007.
   According to the amended ordinance, incomes from savings certificates up to Tk 1.5 lakh are now exempted from the tax at source.
   Internal Resources Division would soon ask all scheduled banks and postal department not to deduct any tax at source from savings certificates incomes up to Tk 1.5 lakh, sources said.
   Sales of savings instruments slumped in the first two months of the current fiscal year as fresh tax drove away many potential savers to other sources of savings, IRD officials said.
   The revenue board made the provision effective from July 1, 2007 through a circular, attached with some conditions and a complex mechanism.
   Depositors, pensioners, small savers and bankers have long been facing a lot of problems in handling the new regulations of the revenue board, which prompted the government to review the Finance Bill’s provision, meeting sources said.
   The government borrowed Tk 4,000 crore in 2006-07 fiscal year from the public through different savings instruments to bankroll the budget deficit, said officials of National Savings Directorate.
   The directorate runs four types of savings instrument – pension savings certificate, 5-year Bangladesh savings certificate, 3-year savings certificate and three-month savings certificate.

A severe power crisis, caused by short supply of gas to power plants, has again gripped the country at a time when people are suffering from hot and humid weather.
   According to official sources, the country generated 3,580MW of electricity against the official demand for 4,400MW on Saturday, the weekend when the normal demand for power is relatively less compared with other working days.
   But power sector experts believe the demand for power was more than 5,000MW, showing a huge gap between the supply and demand.
   The country saw a landmark power generation of 4,100MW in September, but it could not be sustained because of short supply of gas and technical faults in old machines.
   The present generation shortage forced the power sector authorities to cause a load-shedding of more than 1,000MW across the country.
   The officials of the load dispatch centre, however, claimed the countrywide load-shedding was about 700MW during peak hours.
   The sources said a 210MW generation unit at Raujan and another unit at the Mymensingh power station remained closed for gas shortage while some other units at Ghorasal and elsewhere were forced to shut down for technical faults caused by the hot weather.
   Consumers in many areas under the Dhaka Electric Supply Authority faced frequent power outages as it could supply only 1,370MW against the demand for about 1,800MW.
   ‘We need to shed load between 400MW and 500MW on a regular basis, and now it has increased,’ said a DESA official in its control room.
   He said the hot weather has made the situation worse as transmission and distribution systems in many areas tripped because of overheating.
   About the frequent power outages, the energy adviser, Tapan Chowdhury, said the situation was unlikely to improve before April when about 300MW is expected to be added to the national grid.

The Anti-Corruption Commi-ssion has found businessman Giasuddin Al Mamun and his wife, Shahina Yasmeen, to have owned illegal assets of over Tk 111 crore disproportionate to their known sources of income.
   They have earned the money during the 2002–2006 BNP rule, investigations showed.
   Mamun, friend of detained former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s elder son, Tarique Rahman, submitted his income tax return to the National Board of Revenue on Tk 30,95,958 as his legal earning between tax years 2001 and 2006.
   His wife, Shahina Yasmeen, submitted income tax on her asset of Tk 18,14,712 during the period. The couple whitened Tk 30,70,89,670 during the period, the commission said.
   Investigations revealed that Mamun had deposits of Tk 41,52,88,894 in local and three foreign banks and moveable property. He has 33 fixed deposit receipts with the local banks.
   His deposit in two accounts of the Natwest Bank’s Aldwych branch in London amounts to Tk 6,01,57,862 and in an account with the Citibank Singapore’s Capital Square branch Tk 20,41,25,843. The money has been seized, investigation officers said.
   Mamun also did not declare his Toyota Lexus worth Tk 28 lakh. His undeclared immoveable property amounts to Tk 9.9 crore. The property includes plots at Gulshan, in Tejgaon Industrial Area, a Bashundhara, and Uttara in Dhaka, and land in Bhola, 7.5 acres of land at Gazipur and more than 7 acres of land in Cox’s Bazar.
   Shahina’s undeclared money in bank accounts, including 12 fixed deposit receipts and savings certificates, found by the investigation team, amounts to more than Tk 4 crore.
   She owned land and houses at Dhanmondi, a five-storey house worth more than Tk 6 crore at DOHS Cantonment, Gazipur, Gulshan, and a flat at Baridhara worth more than Tk 5 crore.
   Investigations also revealed that Mamun had invested more than Tk 20 crore in nine industries. The investments were made from illegal sources, according to investigations. The industries include One Composite Mill, Khamba Limited, PCCL, One Spinning Limited, SLCTML, One Properties Limited, and One Denim Mills Limited.
   The assets were found during investigation of the cases of owning illegal wealth filed against the couple by the commission with the Cantonment police on May 8.
   The investigation officer, Syed Tahsinul Haque, an assistant director of the commission, sought permission of the ACC chairman on August 12 to charge the couple with possessing the illegal assets.
   Mamun was shown arrested on March 26 and was charged with owning arms illegally. He was convicted to 10 years’ imprisonment in this case in July. A special court in June also sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment for not submitting wealth statement to the commission.
   Mamun, who is among the 177 corruption suspects so far listed by the government since March, in court claimed he had been picked up by the law enforcement agencies on January 31.
   A total of 13 cases have been filed against Mamun with the different police stations, and of which 11 cases filed for his alleged involvement in extortion, is still under investigation, police said.

Pakistan’s military ruler Pervez Musharraf won a landslide victory in a controversial presidential election Saturday, but the Supreme Court may yet snatch another five-year term away from him.
   Musharraf, a key US ally who seized power in the nuclear-armed Islamic republic in a 1999 coup, crushed token rivals in a vote by national and provincial parliaments that was mostly boycotted by the opposition.
   But the embattled general must now await a decision by the Supreme Court, which said Friday that the winner cannot be officially declared until at least October 17 while it hears legal challenges.
   ‘Rejoice in victory!,’ prime minister Shaukat Aziz told supporters of Musharraf’s ruling Pakistan Muslim League as they banged drums and waved flags outside the party headquarters in Islamabad.
   But anti-Musharraf protesters angrily set fire to an armoured police vehicle and pelted the provincial parliament with stones in the northwestern city of Peshawar, while there were small protests in southern Karachi city.
   Chief election commissioner Qazi Mohammad Farooq said a total of 257 votes were cast in the national assembly and senate, out of which Musharraf bagged 252 and three were rejected.
   One rival, former judge Wajihdduin Ahmad, won two votes, he said. Another, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, vice-chairman of former premier Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, got none.
   Musharraf’s total electoral college vote including the provincial assemblies was 384 ballots out of 702, government officials said.
   Opposition parties who make up nearly 30 per cent of the college had resigned prior to the polls, while Bhutto’s MPs abstained after she sealed a reconciliation deal with Musharraf on Friday.
   The president, who is also army chief, had hoped for a smooth poll before his plan to restore civilian rule to this chronically unstable country of 160 million people on the front line of the US-lead ‘war on terror.’
   But the court, which has been at loggerheads with Musharraf since he tried to sack the chief justice in March, postponed the official result until it has resolved appeals against his eligibility and the legality of the vote itself.
   ‘It’s a sham election,’ said Siddiqul Farooq from the opposition All Parties Democracy Movement, whose MPs last week resigned from parliament.
   The government however insisted Musharraf’s victory was valid.
   ‘It is a clear-cut victory, legally, constitutionally, morally and politically,’ Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid, one of Musharraf’s closest advisers, said.
   The United States, meanwhile, gave a cautious response to the result.
   ‘We are waiting for a declaration from the Pakistan supreme court. We will not have a comment until that declaration is made,’ a State Department spokeswoman said.
   Musharraf had bolstered his position Friday by giving Bhutto an amnesty on graft charges. The move paves the way for a power-sharing deal ahead of her homecoming on October 18.
   Bhutto in turn withdrew a threat for her MPs to quit, a move that would have robbed the vote of legitimacy.
   The court decision means Musharraf could be still be disqualified weeks after the poll – heightening instability after months of turmoil and Islamist violence and possibly pushing the president towards martial law.
   It could delay former commando Musharraf’s plans to shed his military role – a position he has said is vital for fighting al-Qaeda – and finally become a civilian ruler before he takes the oath of office.

The acting Awami League general secretary, Syed Ashraful Islam, on Saturday said his party would resume its moves for reforms after the withdrawal of the ban on politics from across the country.
   ‘The Awami League president [Sheikh Hasina] has taken a move to bring about reforms in the party and the process will resume after the resumption of political activities,’ Ashraf told New Age on Saturday.
   The reforms will be carried out in keeping with the proposals worked out by the Awami League on May 21, he said.
   He said labelling some leaders as reformists was unfortunate as all the leaders in the party supported in-party reforms.
   ‘All the leaders, including Sheikh Hasina, want to bring about reforms in the party. It is unfortunate that some leaders have been labelled as reformists,’ Ashraf said.
   Ashraf, who went abroad on July 13 and returned home on October 4, said he would begin his office from Monday.
   ‘I will meet acting president Zillur Rahman tonight to know of the latest situation of the party,’ he said on Saturday afternoon.
   Ashraf demanded that the ban on politics should be lifted completely across the country.
   ‘The distance between the leaders earlier resulting from some issues is being narrowed. It is now the responsibility of the leaders to remain united,’ he said. ‘Unity is also essential to carry out the in-party reforms.’
   He said the party would continue the legal battle until the release of Hasina.
   Hasina on May 21 directed a group of leaders to look into what reforms the party needed to make it more people-oriented.
   Hasina made a number of proposals and asked her deputies to talk with the party leaders and activists to have their views and estimate the funds for in-party reforms.
   The proposals include election to choose leaders at all party levels, introduction of identity cards for party activists, choosing party candidates for parliamentary polls through ballots, and seeking funds from the government for the implementation of the reforms.
   It also sent letters to the Election Commission and the missions of the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia on May 26 to know of the details of the process political parties follow to get state funds.
   The reforms process remained suspended after the arrest of the Awami League general secretary, Abdul Jalil, on May 28.

People waiting in queues for train tickets at Kamalapur railway station, seized two railway employees selling tickets on black market and handed them over to the members of the Rapid Action Battalion on Saturday.
   But the situation turned violent when the railway employees ganged up and pounced on the newsmen who went there to gather news.
   The employees attacked and assaulted Anwarul Haque, staff reporter of private Radio Today, as he was interviewing some people in queues and also the two arrested railway employees. Anwar was, however, rescued by the lawmen.
   Bangladesh Crime Reporters Association in a statement denounced the assault of Anwarul Haque by a section of railway employees and demanded arrest and exemplary punishment of those responsible.
   A section of employees at Kamalapur railway station continued selling train tickets on black market when thousands of people heading home to celebrate Eid with their families, are facing numerous hassles in collecting tickets – many of them waiting for hours in queues everyday.

The BNP secretary general, Khandaker Delwar Hossain, on Saturday said that the government had political motives behind floating the idea of the so-called ‘truth commission’.
   ‘Certainly there are political motives behind floating the idea…One of its [government] purposes might be that the BNP leaders, who would agree to abstain from contesting the next parliamentary elections, would be pardoned,’ Delwar told reporters at his Sher-e-Bangla Nagar residence.
   Law adviser Mainul Hosein on October 3 divulged the government’s plan to set up a ‘truth commission’ to bring about changes in the procedure of trial so that the businessmen, charged with corruption, might confess to their guilt to have their punishment reduced.
   Delwar also questioned he process followed in preparing and publishing the list of corruption suspects. ‘How and on what basis the government is publishing the list?’
   Asked about expelled secretary general Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan’s call for in-party unity, he said Bhuiyan had no right to speak for BNP and make a call for
   unity since he had lost the primary membership of the party. ‘He [Bhuiyan] could only
   speak if the party chairperson and activists forgive him,’ he added.
   Asked if the expelled leaders would be allowed to return to the party should they so wished, Delwar said only the chairperson can decide on the issue…I have no right to speak about the matter since I am nominated by her.’
   Mannan Bhuiyan on Friday called on the party leaders
   and activists to set aside differences and maintain unity to prepare for the next parliamentary polls.

The government, as part of its move to reform the civil administration, has decided to implement the guidelines under the national training policy to improve efficiency of public servants and make bureaucracy pro-people and accountable.
   A committee, headed by establishment ministry additional secretary Iqbal Mahmud, has been formed to work out a comprehensive proposal detailing training programmes for civil servants— from clerk to secretary— in line with the national training policy, said a senior official in the bureaucracy.
   The establishment ministry is set to hold a meeting with secretary Abdus Salam in the chair in a couple of days to discuss whether in-service training can be made mandatory for officials and employees of all levels.
   The committee includes members from Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre, Bangladesh Institute of Administrative Management and Bangladesh Civil Service Administration Academy.
   It has recommended that the government officials and employees will have to receive at least 20 hours’ training a year.
   As per the rules, public servants are supposed to get at least 60-hour training a year, but the rules were not followed properly due to inadequate training facilities and logistics, leading to gradual decline in quality of services of public servants, an establishment ministry official said.
   ‘The national training policy stipulates that there must be continuous training programmes for government employees and officials. But this could not be done due to lack of logistics,’ he said, referring to previous political governments’ indifference to the needs of skill training.
   Even no action plan was prepared so far under the guidelines of the national training policy, he pointed out.

Grameen Bank will be allowed to extend its operation to urban areas alongside its rural banking activities.
   The council of advisers at its weekly meeting on Saturday approved draft amendments to the Grameen Bank Ordinance 1983 allowing it to expand its activities beyond villages.
   The amended ordinance would see the government share in the bank declining to 15 per cent from existing 25 per cent while the government’s representation in the bank’s board will come down to two from three at present, meeting sources said.
   The board of directors will now appoint chairman of Grameen Bank from among the directors.
   Chief adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed chaired the meeting at his office, attended by advisers, cabinet secretary and senior officials concerned.
   The meeting approved another proposal to amend the Income Tax Ordinance 1984, raising the tax-free individual incomes from savings instruments to Tk 1.5 lakh from Tk 25,000.
   According to the amended ordinance, small savers, who will earn less than Tk 1.5 lakh as interest or profit from savings certificates, will be exempted from 10 per cent tax, earlier made applicable for incomes of above Tk 25,000, officials explained.
   The council of advisers also approved the Acid Control (Amendment) Ordinance 2007 with provision to induct law secretary, social welfare secretary and inspector general of police as members of the Acid Control Council.
   The meeting also reviewed the progress in transforming Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone into a public limited company and directed the ministry concerned to quickly complete the formalities to this effect.

Mahesh Kumar, a Bangladeshi who went to Malaysia seven months ago and had remained unemployed since then, died in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday after suffering from fever for five days.
   Mehedi Hasan, one of the ten who returned from Malaysia on Saturday, blamed the Bangladesh high commission’s indifference for the death of Mahesh.
   Twenty-five Bangladeshis have so far returned from Malaysia. All of them, with 55 others, went on hunger strike in front of the Bangladesh high commission in Kuala Lumpur in September demanding Bangladesh government intervention in their exploitation.
   ‘Expatriates’ welfare and employment secretary Abdul Matin Chowdhury and labour counsellor killed him [Mahesh],’ Mehedi lamented at Zia international Airport on Saturday morning.
   Mehedi said the deceased, a resident of Kalihati in Tangail, was among the 15 Bangladeshis who stayed in a house in Kuala Lumpur waiting for their return home under the supervision of the Bangladesh mission there. ‘Mahesh had run temperature for five days and died of a heart attack.’
   Quoting Talat Mahmood Khan, labour counsellor of the Bangladesh mission in Kuala Lumpur, a Bangladeshi satellite television channel reported that his office (the high commission) was not informed of the illness of Mahesh.
   The Bangladesh high commissioner in Kuala Lumpur, Khairuzzaman, meanwhile told New Age it would take days to send the body to Dhaka.
   When his attention was called to the allegations against the negligence of his office in not taking proper care of Mahesh, the Bangladesh envoy refrained from making any comments.
   Khairuzzaman said, ‘Although he had been unemployed since his arrival seven months ago, we are trying to pay him compensation by negotiating with the Malaysian outsourcing company and the Bangladeshi recruiting agent.’
   An inter-ministerial committee, headed by the expatriates’ welfare secretary in September, initiated an agreement in Kuala Lumpur promising such workers return home and back payment of their money deposited with the Bangladeshi recruitment agent.
   In the presence of the secretary, the deal was signed among the workers, Malaysian outsourcing agents and the Bangladeshi recruiting agent.
   The ten Bangladeshis, who returned home, meanwhile, refused to receive Tk 84,000 from the recruiting agent, Golden Arrow which sent them to Malaysia.
   Khairuzzaman claimed all of them had paid Tk 2,50,000 to the agent. The agent, however, denied the claim, saying it took only Tk 84,000.
   Fifteen other Bangladeshis, who returned home earlier, also refused to receive the amount.

Key UN powers stepped up calls for Myanmar to release political prisoners, after an envoy to the repressive state warned of ‘serious international repercussions’ from the bloody turmoil there.
   The United States signaled Friday it may push for UN sanctions if the ruling junta kept up a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, and western UN powers circulated a draft statement condemning its ‘violent repression.’
   ‘It is ... essential for Myanmar’s leadership to recognise that what happens inside Myanmar can have serious international repercussions,’ the world body’s special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, said in his first report to UN Security Council since his return Thursday from a visit to Yangon.
   ‘No country can afford to act in isolation from the standards by which all members of the international community are held,’ he said.
   Myanmar’s rulers meanwhile broadcast rare footage of detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi on state television for the first time in at least four years.
   They said they had freed hundreds of detained monks, and restored internet access after a week – but only during a military-imposed curfew, users reported. The steps appeared aimed at appeasing the international outrage over their crackdown.
   Gambari told CNN International after meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi in her Yangon home that she had seemed ‘encouraged by the fact that the people of Myanmar spoke up.’
   ‘But now I think she wants this to be used as an opportunity to really engage in dialogue with the authorities so that together they can move the country forward,’ he said.
   After a closed-door session with Security Council members, Gambari told reporters here Friday that there was a consensus among members that the status quo in the unrest-hit Southeast Asian country ‘is unacceptable and unsustainable and probably unrealistic.’
   He also said he was considering a return visit to Myanmar earlier than mid-November, as initially arranged, saying this would be useful ‘to keep the momentum’ generated by his visit earlier this week, which offered ‘a window of opportunity.’
   The draft statement circulated late Friday to the council contained an appeal to the ruling generals ‘to ensure full and unlimited access for Gambari during his visit.’

Protests against Myanmar’s bloody crackdown on dissenters took place in cities around the world Saturday, with thousands demonstrating in London and smaller gatherings held in Sydney, Stockholm, Bangkok, Paris and elsewhere.
   The coordinated displays of public condemnation followed the violent crackdown by Myanmar’s junta on thousands of activists in late September. At least 13 people were killed and 2,000 detained.
   In Britain, Myanmar’s former colonial power, thousands crowded through streets behind saffron-robed Buddhist monks who threw petals into the River Thames.
   Police said 3,000 people took part. Organisers put the figure at 10,000. After stopping at British prime minister Gordon Brown’s Downing Street offices to tie red headbands to the gates, the demonstrators went on to Trafalgar Square to hear MPs, human rights campaigners and Myanmar exiles exhort the United Nations to take action against Yangon’s junta.
   Amnesty International’s secretary general Irene Khan said: ‘Burma is not a human rights emergency of today, last week or last month. It is a human rights emergency that the world has chosen to forget for the last 20 years.
   Brown issued a message of support to the people of Myanmar, telling them: ‘Today is above all about repeating a firm message: the world has not forgotten – and will not forget – the people of Burma.’
   In Sydney, hundreds rallied outside the landmark Opera House. Another 1,000 marched through Melbourne, some carrying red banners that read ‘no more bloodshed.’
   Other protests took place in Perth, and in Brisbane, where organiser Natasha Lutes said: ‘This is about getting a message to the people in Burma.
   Campaigners in India were to hold a candle-lit vigil outside a war memorial in New Delhi.
   In Singapore, a vigil outside the Myanmar embassy involving an opposition political party and members of the Myanmar community entered its seventh day on Saturday.
   Amnesty International Korea said some 200 protesters, including immigrant workers from Myanmar, would stage a protest outside the country’s embassy in central Seoul on Sunday to press for the release of prisoners of conscience.
   In Paris, 200 people gathered at a Buddhist temple where they placed yellow roses at the feet of a giant Buddha statue.
   A similarly sized demonstration occurred in Vienna, with those taking part wearing saffron as a sign of solidarity. A union leader, Rudolf Hundstorfer, said ‘we can fear the worst’ for those detained in Myanmar.
   Brussels, the Belgian city home to the main institutions of the European Union, saw 400 demonstrators gather.
   Some 150 people demonstrated in central Stockholm and held three minutes of silence ‘out of respect for all those who are suffering in Myanmar,’ said Fredrik Korn, a spokesman for the Swedish branch of Amnesty International.

Vicente Fox, known for his candid talk when he was Mexico’s president, speaks his mind when describing several world personalities including the US president, George W Bush, in his memoir that went on sale in the United States this week.
   ‘My first impression of George W Bush was one of total self-confidence,’ writes Fox in ‘Revolution of Hope,’ a portrait of Fox’s life and an account of his six-year presidency.
   ‘He was quite simply the cockiest guy I have ever met in my life.’
   The future leaders of the United States and Mexico first met in 1996, when Bush was governor of Texas and Fox governor of the state of Guanajuato.
   In 2000 Fox, a member of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), became the first opposition candidate to win the presidency from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had been in power for 71 years.
   Fox also calls Bush a ‘windshield cowboy’ — meaning someone more comfortable driving his truck around his ranch than riding a horse.
   That was emphasised when Fox offered Bush to ride a horse during a later visit to Fox’s ranch.
   Bush ‘demurred, backing away from the big palomino,’ Fox wrote.
   ‘A horse lover can always tell when others do not share our passion for climbing aboard an animal that weighs five hundred pounds and does not necessarily stop when you put on the brakes.’
   Fox pokes fun at Bush’s ‘grade-school-level Spanish,’ but praised his ‘cultural sensitivity’ towards Hispanics, and his ‘real compassion for the Latino citizens’ of Texas that ‘goes well beyond political practicality.’
   Fox also takes aim at the leftist Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, and Cuba’s communist leader Fidel Castro.
   When Chavez ‘gets long-winded,’ wrote Fox, describing the 2004 Summit of the Americas held in Mexico, ‘it is time for the other presidents to go for a bottle of water and some cookies, and try to do some real business in the hallways.’
   Fox also had an all-night dinner with Fidel Castro, ‘the region’s most infamous revolutionary,’ a man who had a ‘strange habit of pulling his ears between every bite of food.’
   Nevertheless Fox was impressed at Castro’s ‘inexhaustible energy and brilliant, diverse intelligence.’
   Fox writes that he sees Chavez as the ‘new Fidel,’ and laments his popularity in places like Bolivia and Ecuador.
   Chavez, in turn, has called Fox ‘the empire’s puppy.’ Both Chavez and Castro often
   refer to the United States as ‘the empire.’
   Fox describes Bill Clinton as ‘a role model for ex-presidents who want to make a difference,’ and former British prime minister Tony Blair as being ‘impossible not to like.’

Workers of two garments factories in Gazipur on Saturday went out on demonstrations, staged a sit-in and gave the authorities an ultimatum for the payment of the salaries and remunerations in arrears and festival allowance.
   Sources said the workers of the ARN Garments Factory at Saydana Maleker Bari in the district headquarters gathered on the factory premises in the morning. More than two hundred workers, led by the workers of the knitting section of the factory, staged the sit-in to push for the payment of dues in arrears and festival allowance.
   Law men reached the place and tackled the situation. The workers at one point announced an ultimatum for the authorities to pay the dues and the festival allowance by Sunday noon.
   About six hundred workers of the knitting section of the Dana Garment Factory at Sardaganj in the district headquarters went out on demonstrations and went on strike in the morning.

Fidel Castro insists Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara could never have been taken prisoner 40 years ago if his gun hadn’t malfunctioned. But the retired Bolivian general who led the mission to capture him says the Argentine revolutionary was hardly a heroic figure in his final moments.
   The man that general Gary Prado remembers – sad, sick, hungry, dressed in rags and alone in the jungle — simply dropped his gun and surrendered, saying, ‘Don’t shoot, I’m Che.’
   ‘He wasn’t the figure of the heroic guerrilla,’ Prado recalled in an interview with The Associated Press Thursday night.
   Decades after he gave up a comfortable middle class life in Argentina to foment armed rebellion, Guevara still inspires and infuriates people around the world.
   He is an icon for fans who have made his death scene a tourist trap. His face is instantly recognisable, a one-dimensional image on posters and T-shirts that either celebrate or mock his revolutionary ideals.
   Prado is bitter that Guevara still gets so much global attention four decades later. He’s angry that Bolivia’s leftist president Evo Morales plans to honour Guevara but not the 55 soldiers who died putting down his attempted revolution in Bolivia.
   Che ‘wasn’t someone to inspire terror or anything, but simply to be pitied,’ he said.
   Castro has put a noble spin on the death of his fellow revolutionary and close friend, calling Guevara ‘not a man who could have been taken prisoner’ with a working gun.
   ‘Wounded and without a weapon they were able to hold him and take him to a small town nearby, La Higuera,’ Castro told Spanish writer Ignacio Ramonet for the book ‘100 Hours with Fidel.’
   ‘The following day, October 9, 1967, at noon, they executed him in cold blood,’ Castro said.
   Prado said the order to kill Guevara, then 39, came not from the CIA operatives who joined his soldiers, but from Bolivia’s president, who wanted to avoid a trial that would give Guevara a global platform to spread his views. Prado said he wasn’t present when Guevara was shot.
   ‘Why did they think that by killing him, he would cease to exist as a fighter?’ Castro asked in 1997, when Guevara’s remains were finally laid to rest in Cuba amid thundering cannons. ‘Today he is in every place, wherever there is a just cause to defend.’
   Those who knew him personally remember a complex character – sardonic and demanding of himself as well as others.
   ‘He always did what he said he was going to do,’ said Alberto Granados, who travelled with Che across South America on a broken-down motorcycle in 1952, a trip portrayed in the hit 2004 movie ‘The Motorcycle Diaries.’
   ‘That’s why he is still timely,’ added Granados, who is now in his 80s and lives in Havana.
   Cuba will honour him Monday with a ceremony at the tomb where his remains are kept, beneath a gigantic bronze statue built in his image in Santa Clara, where Guevara oversaw a decisive victory for the Cuban rebels. Cuba also planned a gathering of 1,500 people playing chess – Guevara’s favourite game.
   In Bolivia, Che fans were gathering in the jungle where he was captured and in La Higuera, where he was killed. A new Che statue is being built in his native Argentina, Venezuela is holding an art and music festival in his honour.

The police filed charge sheets against former environment and forest minister Tqariqul Islam’s wife, Nargis Begum, youngest son, Aninda Islam Amit, and brother–in-law, AK Sharafuddaullah Chhatlu, on Saturday for misappropriating 22 pieces of corrugated iron sheets meant for relief goods.
   The investigation officer of the case, assistant subinspector Mursalin, filed the charge sheet with a magistrate’s court in Jessore.
   The charge sheet dropped 25 others made accused in the case filed on March 2.
   The joint forces seized the iron sheets from his house on March 2 and the case was filed.

Around a hundred Myanmar citizens held a demonstration Saturday near the Myanmar embassy in Dhaka against the ‘brutal’ killings and arrests of Buddhist monks, democratic activists, and students by the military junta in their country.
   The protest organised by the Rakhain Sangha Union coincided with international day of support for freedom in Myanmar. RSU president Uthiha submitted a memorandum to the Myanmar embassy.
   ‘We are friends of Bangladesh. Please, support us,’ he called upon the people of Bangladesh.
   The demonstrators, amidst tight security, carried placards and banners and chanted slogans against the Myanmar military rulers, demanding their immediate stepping down from power and restoration of democracy in the South East Asian country.
   ‘We Want Democracy’, ‘No Need of Military Constitution’, ‘Stop Killings in Burma’, and ‘Release Political Prisoners’ were some of the slogans the protestors chanted.
   They condemned the killing of journalists while covering the recent street protests in Yangon and also urged Beijing to
   stand by the oppressed Myanmar people, shifting from its stance of propping up the ruling junta.

A regional leader of the ultra-left New Biplabi Communist Party was killed in an encounter of the police with his associates at Kedarpur Madrassah in Jessore early Saturday, taking to 865 the number of such deaths after June 2004.
   The deceased was Bidhan Chandra Das, 40, of Gaurighona at Keshabpur and regional leader of the New Biplabi Communist Party, the police said.
   The police seized two guns, bullets and 10 crude bombs from the spot.
   The police said they had arrested Bidhan at Gaurighona early Friday. After interrogation, he reportedly told the police that his associates would gather on the madrassah ground on Saturday night.
   Based on his statement, the police took him to the place. As they reached the place, Bidhan’s associates fire on the law men, forcing them to fire back. Bidhan sustained injuries in the fight.
   He was later declared dead when he was taken to Keshabpur Health Complex.
   The Jessore police superintendent, Iqbal Bahar, visited the spot.
   Bidhan was accused in about a dozen cases, three related to murder, filed with the Keshabpur and Dumuria polices.

The Dhaka Metropolitan Police has asked the city dwellers to keep the records of the security guards of their houses and business establishments, including banks and markets.
   ‘The photographs of the guards and addresses need to be recorded and a copy must be sent to the police stations concerned,’ said a release issued by the city police on Saturday.
   The city police urged the owners of business establishments to keep closed-circuit television cameras on and alert security guards during the Eid holidays.
   The authorities requested the city dwellers not to open doors of their houses until the identification of the strangers is established, the release said, fearing an increase in crimes such as theft and robbery during the holidays.