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The Ekushey book fair drew a large crowd with many of the city dwellers visiting the fair taking advantage of the weekly holiday on Saturday, the second day of the month-long annual event on the Bangla Academy premises.
   Although many of the visitors only browsed through books instead of buying, the publishers and stall owners were quite happy with the sale and hoped that it would go up in the remaining days.
   The authorities this year set up six entries allowing the visitors to smoothly enter the fair ground. Four archways were set up at four of the six entries and the authorities said they would set up archways in all the six entry points.
   The visitors were happy with adequate number of entries as well as security measures on and outside the fair ground. They also appreciated introduction of a display board about the new arrivals of the day.
   ‘I feel secured although it was embarrassing when they frisked me,’ said Masud Rana, a singer by profession.
   Professor of English department at Dhaka University and poet Khondakar Ashraf Hossain expressed his satisfaction over the large crowd on the fair and hoped all out success of the fair. He said his new book, On Behula’s Raft, will hit the fair soon. Writers.ink, a publishing house, will publish the book and it will be available at the University Press Limited stall.
   The publishers were also happy with the presence of large number of visitors at the fair.
   A number of publishers said new titles will start hitting the fair largely after the first week.
   ‘I am quite happy with the number of visitors as well as the sale on the second day of the fair,’ Osman Goni of Agamee Prakashani said, adding ‘The sales of the first two days make me hopeful of reaching our target.’
   A number of satellite television channels, including Bangla Vision and Channel i, telecast live special programmes from the fair venue.
   The fair information centre reported arrival of 73 titles on Saturday and ten on Friday. Books are being sold at 25 per cent discount, which was 30 per cent last year.
   Confusion and controversy over the implementation of fair guidelines continued with some of the publishers alleging that some big publishing houses were violating the rules.
   Although the guideline restricts selling books of a publisher in other stalls, books by popular writers, published by the big houses, are sold in almost all the smaller stalls at the fair.
   ‘We are trying to monitor everything and check the violation of the guidelines,’ Bangla Academy director general Syed Mohammad Shahed told a news briefing on the academy premises.
   The academy set up a Lekhak Kunja (writers’ corner) at the Nazrul Mancha.
   The Bangla Academy also held a discussion on ‘The achievements in arts-literature in 36 years: Music and Dance Art (1972-2007).’
   Khondakar Tajmi Nur read out the keynote paper. Tamanna Rahman, Komol Khalid and Saim Rana took part in the discussion, chaired by Karunamaya Goswami.
    Recalling the contribution of Ramnidhi Gupta, Rabindranath Tagore, DL Roy, Rajanikanta, Atul Prasad and Nazrul Islam, Tajmi Nur said, ‘It is very urgent to initiate a plan to promote Bangla culture specially music and dance.’
   A cultural function was also held in the afternoon.
   The academy will today hold discussion on ‘The achievements in arts-literature in 36 years: Jatra (1972-2007)’ at 4:00pm.
   Researcher Tapan Bagchi will present the keynote paper while writer Rashid Haider will chair the discussion. Main Ahmad, Bhaswar Bandyopadhaya and Lutfar Rahman will take part in the discussion.

Two devastating fires burnt over 300 shanties and office equipment and valuables at a Gendaria slum and in the office of a recruiting agency at Naya Paltan in Dhaka Saturday.
   The shanties were burnt in the fire at the Railway Station Slum in the early hours while the office materials were burnt in the agency office at noon.
   The slum fire originated from a short circuit at about 1:00am and spread out to engulf the adjacent shanties, fire brigade sources said.
   Several fire fighting units from Postogola, Sadarghat and the Fire Service and Civil Defence headquarters brought the blaze under control at around 2:15am. No casualty was, however, reported.
   Around 300 families of rickshaw pullers, garments
   workers, domestic helps, day labourers and roadside vendors have lost everything in the fire that forced them to stay under the open sky.
   The extent of damage in the fire could not be ascertained immediately, fire brigade sources said.
   The affected people claimed the damage to be Tk 15 lakh.
   The Paltan fire had also originated from a short circuit at Air Trip International, housed on the 5th floor of the City Heart Shopping Complex at 67, Naya Paltan, at around 1:00pm.
   Two fire fighting vehicles
   had rushed to the scene and doused the flame at around 2:15pm.
   The air conditioners, computers, air tickets and others office documents were burnt in the fire, the agency officials said putting the estimated loss at Tk 15 lakh.

Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha will start construction of the 2400-foot long and 60-foot wide Bijoy Sarani-Tejgaon Road in early March.
   The process of acquisition of land and 18 legal structures at the area of the planned road is in its final stages and the DC Office would handover the land to Rajuk on February 24, said an official of Rajuk.
   ‘We will go for demolition of the legal structures on the land of the planned road after we receive the land and structures from the DC Office,’ he said.
   Rajuk in the first week of November 2007 had demolished 44 illegal structures constructed on the planned Bijoy Sarani-Tejgaon Road and demolition of 18 legal structures were waiting for the acquisition.
   ‘A tender was invited on January 27 to give road construction work to a firm, which is scheduled to be opened on February 27,’ said the official adding that they were hopping to complete the appointment of the firm by first week of March.
   Construction of the road will begin as soon as the firm is given the work order for the 2400-foot link road that will connect the Old Airport Road at Bijoy Sarani and Tajuddin Ahmed Sarani at Nabisco crossing, Tejgaon.
   Consultant to prepare design of overpass over the Tejgoan level crossing on the planned road was appointed on January 27, and the consultant has already started its job, he said.
   The demolition work of the 22-storey Rangs Bhaban will resume shortly under the supervision of a team of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. The BUET team was appointed as the consultant of the job in the last week of January.
   ‘We are now doing the safety works, including setting up of shock absorber on the ground floor, which will be completed by four days,’ said an official of Rajuk, adding that demolition of the building will resume after the safety works are completed.
   The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council in the last week of August, 2007 approved the project to construct a 2400-foot long and 60-foot wide road from Bijoy Sarani to Tejgaon in the capital at a cost of Tk 122 crore.

The Rapid Action Battalion arrested an upazila election officer of Naogoan and two others with about one pound of heroin Friday night.
   The arrested are Nasir Uddin, 44, election officer of Porsha upazila, Kutub Uddin, 48, of Bishnupur, and Mahbur, 30, of Kamashpur under Sapahar upazila in Noagoan.
   According to a press release issued by RAB-5, a team of elite force of the Railway Colony camp in the Rajshahi city conducted a drive at Bashbari in Porsha at about 9:00pm and caught Nasir and his accomplices in possession of the heroin.
   The RAB team brought the three to the RAB headquarters in Rajshahi. They were being interrogated by the elite force members till Saturday afternoon.

The Bhasha Andolon Museum has initiated the process of making a list of the heroes of historic language movement in 1952.
   Names of the people who had contributions to the language movement but opposed the war of independence will not be included in the list, the museum authorities told a news briefing in Dhaka on Saturday.
   They said they would try to complete the job by this year and keep in mind about the controversies over the list of freedom fighters.
   Urging all concerned to help complete the list by providing information, they said one coordinator or more had been appointed in each district to collect the information.
   They also placed a seven-point charter of demands at the briefing.
   The demands include formulation of a national language policy, recognition of the participants in language movement as national heroes, inducting history of language movement and the biographies of the language heroes in academic curricula, ensuring teaching of Bangla language and local culture in English-medium schools, preserving the rights of language and linguistic culture of the ethnic minorities.
   They also demanded inclusion of a provision for placing wreaths at the Central Shaheed Minar alongside the National Martyrs’ Memorial in state protocol and allocating a piece of land for the construction of the museum.
   Piyari Mahbub, wife of language movement hero late Kazi Golam Mahbub, addressed the briefing on the museum premises in Dhanmandi.
   Language movement hero Mirza Mazharul Islam, Abul Kasem Fazlul Huq, and Mili Rahman, wife of Bir Shreshtha Matiur Rahman, were present, among others, at the briefing.
   They regretted that even eight years after the declaration of International Mother Language Day, no official publication introducing the story behind declaration had yet been made.
   They also informed that the museum authorities had translated a book on their own and were making arrangements for distributing it across the world.

Dry weather will prevail over the country in the next 24 hours till 6pm today.
   Mild to moderate cold wave is sweeping over Rajshahi and Sylhet divisions and the regions of Jessore, Barisal, Kushtia, Bhola, Comilla and Tangail and it may continue, Met Office said.
   Light to moderate fog may occur over the river basins of the country during early morning, it said, predicting nearly unchanged night temperature over the country. The country’s highest temperature on Saturday, 26.0 degrees Celsius, was recorded Saturday at Cox’s Bazar and the lowest, 6.4 degrees Celsius, at Srimongal.
   The sun sets in the capital today at 5:46pm and rises tomorrow at 6:38am.

Heroin seized,
2 held at Uttara
The Department of Narcotics Control seized 2.3 kilograms of heroin and arrested two suspected drug peddlers from a house at Uttara in Dhaka Friday night. Tipped off, a team of the department, led by its deputy director Shahidur Rahman, raided a flat on the fourth floor of House 3, Road 10, Sector 14, Uttara at about midnight and seized the heroin in 100gm, 50gm and 25gm packets. They arrested Jalal Hossain, 35, and his employee Jasimuddin, 25, from the house. The two told police that they would get the supply of heroin from one Babul of Godaghari in Rajshahi and used to sell it in different areas of Dhaka, mainly at Agargaon, Sayedabad and Tongi.
— New Age

UK expatriate
stands by AMCH
A Bangladeshi pharmacist in the United Kingdom, Syed Kamal Uddin Haider, on Saturday donated Tk 5 lakh to the Ahsania Mission Cancer Hospital. Kamal handed over a cheque for the money to the Dhaka Ahsania Mission president, Kazi Rafiqul Alam, at the mission’s office in Dhaka. DAM sources said a bed of the AMCH will be dedicated to Syed Kamal Haider’s late sister Syeda Nargis Ara.
— BSS