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About 80 lakh Class III, IV and V students face problems in their studies as a half of the textbooks they have been given are used, by students of previous years, and often have pages torn and exercises filled in.
   The government provides every academic year each of the students with three used and three new textbooks to save resources. Many students even receive more used than new textbooks, said some primary schoolteachers.
   The teachers have complained they face problems in classroom teaching as some students have used textbooks which do not often have all the pages or have the pages torn and have all the exercises filled in by the students of previous years.
   The government in the late 1990s started textbook loan programme whereby books fit to be reused are recycled for certain years. The students are required to return all their textbooks to the school on completion of their courses.
   A number of teachers and students have complained that many such used textbooks do not even have some chapters and they are dirty as they have been in use for two consecutive years.
   ‘Exercises which need to be filled in by the students in classrooms often remain filled in, leaving new users of the books in trouble,’ said a teacher at the BG Press Government Primary School in Dhaka.
   In some cases, the teacher said, students who need to repeat the year do not get books as they submit their books after the examinations which are given to new users. The government has in the latest guidelines decided to provide such repeaters with textbooks.
   Asma Aktar, a student of Class III at the school, on Thursday urged the headmaster a copy of the English book in a condition better than the copy she had in. She showed her book which had some pages missing. She received the book on January 30.
   The headmaster had nothing to do for Asma as there were no books at his disposal which are in a better condition.
   ‘Whenever a thana education officer or district primary education officer comes to my school, I discuss the problem with them. But nothing has been done in this regard till date,’ said a headmaster of a registered primary school in Jhalakathi.
   ‘Having to read such used books also creates a negative psychological impact on the schoolchildren,’ he said.
   ‘There has been another flaw in the system of recycling,’ he said. ‘For an example, when 40 Class V students pass out, the teachers get only 40 sets of used textbooks.
   But there may be cases that more than 60 students get promoted from Class IV to Class V and the teachers do not have books for the remaining 20 students.’
   A high primary and mass education ministry official on Thursday told New Age, ‘We have received complaints on several occasions in this regard. But we have nothing to do at this moment.’
   The National Curriculum and Textbook Board every year publishes about six crore copies of new textbooks for distribution among primary students. Six crore more copies of the books are recycled.
   There are more than 1.62 crore students in 80,401 schools which offer only primary schooling, according to government statistics.
   The Bangladesh Government Primary School Teachers’ Association president, M Abdul Awal Talukdar, on Thursday said, ‘Studies of thousands of primary schoolchildren are hampered because of the government’s decision on recycling textbooks.’

The visiting British foreign secretary, David Miliband, on Friday stressed lifting of the state of emergency in Bangladesh, saying a fully functioning democracy does not operate under emergency.
   ‘I will be exploring with ministers (advisers) over the next 36 hours discussing more widely how we can ensure as soon as possible Bangladesh becomes a full functioning democracy bringing all the benefits to the people,’ he told reporters after a meeting with the foreign adviser, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury.
   Miliband, who arrived here in the afternoon on a two-day visit, hoped that the interim government would fulfil its commitment to hold a free and fair election by December this year.
   He said: ‘We’re impressed by the steps taken by the caretaker government for over a difficult last year. We got signs of a movement towards democratic election even before December deadline. We certainly look forward to the commitment of the government being fulfilled.’
   The British foreign secretary said all know that a democratic country needs more formal institutions for democratic politics.
   To that end, it requires independent judiciary, a judicial system that deals with all individuals without fear or favour, he pointed out also stressing for development of a free media in this regard.
   ‘Britain wants to support strong, independent and effective democratic institutions,’ he said.
   Miliband said Bangladesh is a very important country to Britain. ‘We are proud of the links that exist between Britain and Bangladesh,’ he said, adding that Bangladesh was increasingly becoming important in the region and its regional role alongside other forces is also important.
   Referring to his talks with the foreign adviser, Miliband said issues of climate change, global trade and political extremism were discussed.
   He said leadership of caretaker government on issue of climate change is very important. The chief adviser played a significant role last year in supporting Britain’s drive on UN Security Council discussion on the climate change issue.
   On global trade, he said the UK would see how countries like Bangladesh expand its economy through global trade deal.
   On extremism, Miliband said political extremism does not respect national boundaries. ‘It is a threat to nations all over the world… We want to work together to tackle extremism and terrorism wherever it has.’
   Iftekhar said they have had very fruitful talks on various issues relating to Bangladesh, institution building, climate change, trade, global politics and the needs and reasons for global stability.
   ‘We’ve also discussed possibility of a compact partnership between Bangladesh and Britain to uphold our common values,’ he said.
   The British high commissioner, Anwar Chowdhury and senior officials of the foreign ministry were present at the meeting held at state guesthouse Padma.

Institutional reforms are losing importance in the interim government’s agenda, replaced with narrower goals of regime change at key institutions, visiting British foreign secretary David Miliband was told at a discussion of young Bangladeshis at the British Council in Dhaka on Friday. The participants told Miliband the opportunity for change in political and socio-economic trends that the interim government’s assumption of power ushered in in 2007 is now being lost, or worse still, squandered.
   The discussion on the ‘future of Bangladesh,’ organised by the British High Commission, brought together a diverse group of young Bangladeshi professionals from politics, media, development and business to share their views with Miliband.
   The Awami League’s women’s affairs secretary Dipu Moni, one of the participants, said for Bangladesh to achieve across-the-board development, the institution of democracy is essential, pointing out that the current regime has suspended fundamental human rights.
   ‘If you compare the years of military dictatorship that Bangladesh has experienced with the period between 1991 and 2006, when democratic governments were in power, we see immense achievements in economic and social development under democratic rules,’ Dipu Moni said.
   Instead of reforms, all the nation has seen under the current regime is some ‘changes of faces at the top,’ he said.
   ‘Institutional reforms should have been the key agenda of the current regime, but instead, they have chosen to go after personalities and are wasting the opportunity they had,’ Zayd Almer Khan, deputy editor of New Age, told Miliband.
   ‘2008 is going to be a critical year for Bangladesh, you must have elections by the end of this year,’ said Miliband, asking the forum whether they identified with some of the problems that the interim government had resolved to address.
   He stressed the need for institutions such as the media and the Election Commission to be strengthened as important aspects of democratic institutions.
   ‘The problems in our political arena need healthy political solutions, not depoliticisation of society as we are currently seeing,’ said participant Zahiruddin Swapan, a former BNP lawmaker.
   Among other issues that the forum discussed were the challenge of economic prosperity that Bangladesh is faced with and whether the country is ready to meet the challenge of extremism.
   Miliband admitted that religious extremism is as much a challenge for the United Kingdom as it is for Bangladesh and sought views on how young Bangladeshis looked at the issue.
   Others who joined the discussion are CSB president Asifa Raihana, Daily Star assistant editor Zafar Sobhan, UNAIDS social mobilisation and partnership adviser Lazeena Muna, Asian Tiger Capital managing partner Ispy Islam, Standard Chartered Bank capital market head and director Asheque Moyeed, Bangladesh Enterprise Institute project director Shahab Enam Khan, and Bikalpadhara Bangladesh leader Mahi B Chowdhury.
   The British foreign secretary is on a two-day visit to Bangladesh, during which he is scheduled to visit Sylhet and development projects in the chars of Sirajganj.

Former BNP lawmaker Syed Moazzem Hossain Alal was on Friday remanded in police custody for two days hours after his arrest at Lalmatia in Dhaka on charges of breaching the emergency rules.
   The police produced Alal, also the general secretary of the party’s youth front Jatiyatabadi Juba Dal, in the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court seeking him to be remanded for three days for interrogation.
   The police arrested Alal at his house, Lucky Apartments, at Lalmatia at about 8:30am.
   ‘The police did not cite any reason for the arrest. They only said they were acting at the instruction of higher authorities,’ said his wife, Ferdousi. ‘The arrest might have political bearings on it.’
   Alal was arrested in connection with a case filed against him with the Fatullah police in Narayanganj on charges of breaching the Emergency Powers Rules, the Mohammadpur police officer-in-charge, Shibli Noman, said.
   Alal faces another case filed under the Emergency Powers Rules on November 7, 2007 on charges of harassing former army chief Mahbubur Rahman when he was leaving the grave of the late president Ziaur Rahman after placing flowers at the place.

Mohammad Quayyum Khan, a detained ward commissioner of Dhaka City Corporation and city BNP leader, died at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital on Friday.
   Dhaka Central Jail wardens took him to the hospital in the morning after he had fainted in the prison toilet.
   ‘His condition was very much critical and we referred him to the medicine ward immediately,’ said emergency medical officer Dr Shamse Ara Sweety.
   He was declared dead soon after his admission there at 9:20 am Friday, physicians said.
   Quayyum was suffering from heart diseases, said deputy inspector general of prisons Major Shamsul Haider Siddiqui.
   He was sent to jail on January 13 in 2007 a day after the security men arrested him at Kafrul. He was released on bail on January 10 this year but again sent to jail the following day, said the DIG prisons.
   More than 100 leaders and workers of local BNP thronged the hospital after the news of his death spread.
   There was no case filed against Quayyum and none had lodged any complaint against him, said Dhaka city mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka, who rushed to the DMCH to pay his last tribute to the deceased, who was the president of Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s Kafrul thana unit.
   BNP secretary general Khandoker Delwar Hossain, who was also at the hospital, demanded proper inquiry into the death of Quayyum.
   ‘Many of our leaders and activists are being tortured and our senior joint secretary general Tarique Rahman is also one of them,’ he said.
   The body was handed over to the family after autopsy in the afternoon. Namaj-e-janaza was held at the deceased’s business centre, Tamanna Complex, at Kachukhet.
   He was buried at the family graveyard in the locality. Quayyum was elected commissioner of DCC Ward 16 for two consecutive terms.

The BNP secretary general, Khandaker Delwar Hossain, on Friday denounced the re-arrest of the party chief’s adviser ASM Hannan Shah and the arrest of former lawmaker Moazzem Hossain Alal, and accused the government of working in political interests.
   He also expressed his concern about the death of Dhaka city BNP leader Abdul Qaiyum Khan, also ward 16 commissioner, in jail.
   Delwar said he was surprised at the arrest of Hannan Shah although he was released after being remanded on bail by the highest court.
   ‘Hannan Shah was arrested 25 seconds inside his release from the Narayanganj jail on charge of violating the Emergency Powers Rules. People are raising questions about whether it could be possible for any person to violate the Emergency Powers Rules 25 seconds inside his release,’ Delwar said.
   ‘It is clear that Hannan Shah was arrested for no fault of his to execute the blue print to weaken the BNP,’ Delwar said. He demanded Hannan’s immediate release.
   The party’s secretary general in another statement said the arrest of the Jatiyatabadi Juba Dal general secretary, Moazzem Hossain Alal, is the manifestation of the government’s dual policy. ‘The government is hinting asettlement through dialogues with political parties, on the onehand, and it is harassing political leaders, on the other,’ Delwar said.
   ‘The arrest of Alal proves that the government wants to destroy the BNP through such harassments,’ he said.
   Delwar also demanded proper investigation into the death of Qaiyum Khan, saying that Qaiyum died as he had not been given medical treatment.

The acting Awami League president, Zillur Rahman, on Friday said his party planned to incorporate all the pro-independence political parties into the AL-led alliance aiming at participation in general elections together.
   The Awami League will begin talks with the components of the alliance on Sunday to persuade them into placing identical proposals at the proposed dialogues between the government and political parties and to extend the alliance for polls.
   ‘We will begin discussions with the 14-party alliance partners on Sunday and initiate an extended grand alliance with pro-independence and democratic political parties,’ Zillur told reporters at his house at Gulshan.
   People will not accept any alternative to power handover without elections, he said. Elections should be held earlier than the time laid out in the Election Commission roadmap.
   Referring the chief election commissioner’s comment that elections schedule could not be announced before September, Zillur said it would not be possible to hold election by December if the schedule is not announced earlier. He demanded announcement of election schedule before September.
   Zillur received donation from the party’s farmers’ front Krishak League and the Faridpur unit Awami League to the party’s relief fund in separate programmes.
   The party president, Sheikh Hasina, now detained in jail, will be released through legal battle, Zillur hoped. The party will, otherwise, begin a movement for her release.
   The party’s agriculture affair secretary Abdur Razzak and organising secretary Abdul Mannan, Krishak League president Mirza A Zalil and general secretary Motahar Hossain Mollah and Faridpur unit president Kazi Zainul Abedin and general secretary Hasibul Hasan Lablu also spoke on the occasions.

British detectives said Friday that Benazir Bhutto was killed by the force of a suicide bomb and not gunfire, backing the Pakistani government’s version of how the opposition leader was assassinated.
   Scotland Yard said a lone attacker shot at Benazir as she waved to supporters at an election rally in Rawalpindi on December 27 — but he missed and then detonated explosives which caused her head to fatally smash against her car.
   Benazir’s party immediately rejected the findings, saying it still believed the two-time former premier was slain by an assassin’s bullet and reiterating calls for a UN inquiry into the killing.
   ‘In essence, all the evidence indicates that one suspect has fired the shots before detonating an improvised explosive device,’ said the summary of the 70-page report delivered to Pakistani authorities earlier in the day.
   ‘The blast caused a violent collision between her head and the escape hatch area of the vehicle, causing a severe and fatal head injury,’ added the summary, signed by British Detective Superintendent John MacBrayne.
   The British team of forensics and other experts spent two and a half weeks in Pakistan in January at the invitation of president Pervez Musharraf, who said he wanted to end controversy over the manner of Benazir’s death.
   The government has blamed an al-Qaeda-linked warlord based in Pakistan’s troubled tribal areas for the attack and has always said that the blast caused the injury, although it initially said there were two attackers.
   The findings have caused fresh controversy ahead of general elections on February 18 that are supposed to be a key step in the nuclear-armed nation’s transition to democracy.
   Benazir’s aides have said they saw bullet wounds on her head as they bathed her corpse before burial. They have also criticised Pakistani authorities for hosing down the scene hours after the attack.
   ‘The party is still looking at the Scotland Yard report — however, it is difficult to agree with its findings on the cause of death,’ Pakistan People’s Party spokeswoman Sherry Rehman told AFP.
   ‘We do believe that she was killed by an assassin’s bullet,’ she added.
   Rehman said Scotland Yard was hampered by the fact that they were working under Pakistani police, and that their inquiry was limited to the cause of death and not the network behind the attack.
   British team said its task was complicated by the ‘lack of an extended and detailed search of the crime scene, the absence of an autopsy, and the absence of recognised body recovery and victim identification processes.’
   But it added that there was sufficient evidence to draw ‘reliable conclusions’, including X-rays checked against Benazir’s dental records and video footage taken by witnesses.
   ‘The only tenable cause for the rapidly fatal head injury in this case is that it occurred as the result of impact due to the effects of the bomb-blast,’ it quoted British government pathologist Nathaniel Cary as saying.
   Photographs and footage shown in Pakistani media after the attack showed an apparent shooter wearing sunglasses, a series of gunshots and Bhutto’s scarf flying up before the blast.
   Musharraf himself recently admitted that there was a possibility that Bhutto was shot, adding that the announcement she died from a skull fracture caused by her car sunroof lever may have been made too hastily.
   The government however says that the family refused to allow an autopsy on the two-time former prime minister that would have allowed the cause of death to be established more fully.
   Scotland Yard’s report will make little difference to the ongoing debate about who was responsible for the killing.
   Musharraf and the US Central Intelligence Agency have blamed Mehsud for masterminding the killing, an accusation he denies.

Some 122 former BNP lawmakers on Friday demanded immediate release of party chairperson Khaleda Zia’s adviser ASM Hannan Shah and former parliament member and Jubo Dal general secretary Syed Moazzem Hossain Alal.
   Hannan Shah was re-arrested on Thursday shortly after his release from Narayanganj jail, while Moazzem Hossain Alal was arrested from his house in the city’s Lalmatia area Friday morning on charges of breaking Emergency Power Rules.
   In a joint statement, the BNP leaders expressed concern over the re-arrest of Hannan Shah at the jail gate immediately after he was released following a High Court order. They said even the case filed against Alal was also stayed by the court.
   The signatories to the statement are ANM Ehsanul Haque Milon, Kazi Shah Mofazzal Hossain Kaikobad, Syed Mehedi Hasan Rumi, Mizanur Rahman Sinha, Rahim Uddin Bharasha, Principal Sohrab Uddin, Joynal Abedin (VP Joynal), M Shahjahan Chowdhury, Alhaj Kazi Golam Morshed, M Mozammel Haque and Adv Goutam Chakrawarty.

Rabies continues to remain a silent killer disease claiming several hundred lives every year in the country due to lack of awareness, poor vaccination coverage and growing number of stray dogs risking public life.
   The Infectious Diseases Hospital in Dhaka alone recorded 182 deaths in 2007, which were 167 in the previous year.
   According to the hospital records, 153 people died of rabies in 2005, 156 in 2004, 151 in 2003, 168 in 2002, 125 in 2001 and 171 died in 2000.
   The actual number of rabies deaths would be at least three times higher if all the cases were duly reported from all hospitals across the country, said a physician of the Infectious Diseases Hospital.
   Rabies spreads to humans mainly from mad dogs and also bites from other animals like rabid cat, fox and mongoose.
   Most of the rabies patients die because of failure to take full course of vaccine in time.
   The specialized hospital at Mohakhali in Dhaka receives 200 patients on an average everyday and 90 per cent of them come with animal bites, said another medical officer of the hospital.
   Even full course of vaccine could not prevent rabies attack in few cases because of doubts about the effectiveness of the vaccines and the extent or type of bites.
   According to the IDH record, 182 patients died of rabies in 2007 and of them, 21 took full or half course of vaccine.
   Saira Khatun, a woman from Jaydevpur of Gazipur, died on December 26, 16 days after a fox bit her in the face. She could not escape death even after taking full course of vaccine. Her son also died of rabies caused by the same rabid fox.
   Both the mother and son were admitted to the hospital immediately after the bites after being given full course of vaccine, said a duty doctor of the hospital.
   If a mad dog (the dog which carry rabies) or any other rabid animal bites in the upper fold of the body, especially in the face, the rabies spread quickly within the immune system and attacks the nervous system before the vaccination develops antibody. Such patients are less likely to survive, the doctor said.
   He said people should take vaccine as early as possible, and no later than seven days from the bite.
   Social taboos prevent many rural patients from taking anti-rabies vaccines in time and making them exposed to the fatal disease that starts from hydrophobia, he said, analysing the records.
   In many cases people rush to traditional ‘healers’ (ojha) after animal bite instead of taking vaccine.
   Another physician of the hospital said immediately after an animal bite, the victim should wash the wounds for about 15 minutes with soap.
   ‘About 60 to 70 per cent germs are washed away if the sore place is properly rubbed with soap and water,’ he said.
   Negligence of local authorities like the city corporations and municipalities in culling stray dogs has been cited as a major reason for rabies death, said the physician.
   The vaccine, which has been in use in the country is not effective enough, said another physician of the hospital.
   Bangladesh still uses the low-cost Nerve Tissue Vaccine, abandoned by most countries for its low effectiveness, he said.
   Most of the victims choose the local vaccine for its lower price compared to the imported ones, which are more effective in preventing rabies death, he said.
   The local nerve tissue vaccine, produced at the Institute of Public Health at Mohakhali, costs only Tk 40, while imported tissue culture vaccine costs Tk 2,000 to Tk 2,500 per dose.
   The fatal disease, which still claims hundreds of life every year, fails to get enough attention from the government policymakers and health service providers, the IDH doctor regretted, emphasising the need for massive campaign to save life from rabies.
   Dr Mahabub Iqbal, superintendent (ARV) of Institute of Public Heath, said they could supply 60 per cent of the anti-rabies vaccine demand due to insufficient supply of sheep, the main raw material. The institute also lacks modern machinery and chemicals in some cases.
   ‘We make requisition for 7000 sheep every year, but contractors on an average can supply only 4000 sheep,’ said Mahbub. The institute would require 10,000 sheep to produce the vaccine as per the demand.
   ‘We can make 12 to 13 courses of vaccine from a sheep normally,’ he said.
   Mahbub said an initiative was taken few years ago to go for production of tissue culture vaccine, but he could not give any detail of the move or tell the latest development.

The government has taken initiatives to seek clemency from the Saudi authorities for eight expatriate Bangladeshis sentenced to death by a court in Saudi Arabia.
   The foreign secretary, M Touhid Hossain, said the foreign ministry on Friday directed the Bangladesh mission in Saudi Arabia to approach the Saudi authorities, seeking clemency for the eight Bangladeshis.
   Relatives of the convicted Bangladeshi workers at a press conference in Dhaka on Thursday urged the government to seek clemency from the Saudi authorities for the convicts.
   The eight Bangladeshi workers were awarded capital punishment while three others were sentenced to 12 years’ rigorous imprisonment on charges of killing an Egyptian worker in Saudi Arabia.

Senator John McCain is fighting for the backing of his foes in the Republican Party’s conservative base, now that rival Mitt Romney has quit the race, clearing his path to the White House.
   Addressing an annual gathering of fervent Republican activists, McCain sought to shore up his conservative credentials and allay fears over his stand on some key issues, as he seeks the party’s presidential nomination.
   ‘It is my sincere hope that even if you believe I have occasionally erred in my reasoning as a fellow conservative, you will still allow that I have, in many ways important to all of us, maintained the record of a conservative.’
   With former Massachusetts governor Romney dropping out of the race on Thursday after a slew of poor Super Tuesday showings, McCain’s path to the Republican ticket is suddenly a lot clearer.
   But recognising the crucial support he needs from the party’s conservative base to win the nomination for the November elections, the Vietnam war veteran called for its backing in defeating the Democrats.
   ‘I am acutely aware that I cannot succeed in that endeavour, nor can our party prevail over the challenge we will face ... without the support of dedicated conservatives,’ McCain told the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday at an annual meeting in Washington.
   Peppering his speech with references to former president and Republican icon Ronald Reagan, McCain set out a platform of tough stands on various issues from abortion to tax cuts and his unwavering support for the Iraq war.
   The Arizona senator, 71, has a solid conservative voting record, but has enraged the key constituency with his campaign finance measures, his stand on immigration reform and his initial opposition to Bush’s huge tax cuts.
   He was only interrupted with boos once, when he brought up his bid to overhaul immigration laws, an issue branded an amnesty by many furious conservative critics.
   But addressing the immigration issue head-on, McCain told the conference that he had ‘stood my ground aware that my position would imperil my campaign.’
   His intention had been to restore border controls, he said, vowing that as president he would work first to secure the frontiers before trying to tackle illegal immigration.
   ‘I will not obscure my positions from voters who I fear might not share them. I will stand on my convictions, my conservative convictions and trust in the good sense of the voters,’ McCain said.
   And he pledged to offer voters ‘a clearly conservative approach to governing,’ as the crowd warmed to his speech after an initially chilly welcome.
   He garnered a standing ovation and chants of ‘John McCain’ when he vowed no retreat from Iraq.
   Romney earlier quit the White House race after spending millions of dollars of his personal fortune on a campaign which failed to fire up the party faithful.
   ‘This isn’t an easy decision, I hate to lose,’ Romney told the conservative conference, saying he was suspending his campaign to avoid a damaging, divisive race that could hand the November elections to the Democrats.
   In the deadlocked Democratic race, Barack Obama has reaped seven million dollars since the Super Tuesday clash, amid news that Hillary Clinton faced a cash crunch forcing her to loan her campaign five million dollars. The former first lady has brought in at least six million dollars since the polls closed Super Tuesday.
   The Democratic rivals are set for a clutch of smaller primary and caucus contests, before the next big showdowns on March 4 in Ohio and Texas.
   If no clear winner emerges by then, eyes will turn to Pennsylvania’s late April primary, with chances growing the tie may only be broken at the Democratic convention in August.
   Obama’s campaign announced that he had agreed to two debates ahead of the March 4 vote in order to ‘provide the largest number of voters in upcoming primaries the chance to compare the candidates one-on-one.’
   McCain won nine of 21 states on offer Tuesday, giving him 724 delegates to the Republican convention. Romney holds onto the 281 he has won so far, while Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee has 196. A total of 1,191 are needed to win the nomination.
   Senator Hillary won eight states Tuesday, including the four biggest prizes — California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and her home state of New York — but Obama won 13.\A Real Clear Politics running count had the New York senator with 1,076 delegates, more than half the 2,025 she needs to capture the nomination. Obama had 1004.

A suburban city council meeting was transformed into a scene of carnage late Thursday when an enraged gunman burst in and shot seven people, five fatally, the police said.
   He managed to kill two police officers and three city employees before police shot him dead, St Louis County Police spokeswoman Tracy Panus told AFP.
   The man, who had a history of disturbing council meetings with complaints about persecution by officials, rushed into the council chambers as the meeting was getting underway at around 7:00pm, witnesses said.
   ‘He came from the back of the room,’ said Janet McNichols, a St Louis Post Dispatch reporter who was covering the meeting in Kirkwood.
   ‘He kept something about, ‘Shoot the mayor’ and he just walked around shooting anybody he could.’
   The shooter first targeted a policeman in the meeting, said McNichols, who looked up to see officer Tom Ballman shot in the face.
   He then shot Public Works Director Kenneth Yost, also in the head, she said.
   ‘After that, I was on my stomach under the chairs,’ she said. ‘I laid on my stomach waiting to get shot. Oh God, it was a horror.’
   McNichols recognised the man, identified as Charles Lee ‘Cookie’ Thornton, as a frequent presence at city council where he often directed angry words at Yost and the mayor.
   The mayor, Mike Swoboda, was also shot, as was council member Michael Lynch, McNichols said.
   Police would not release the names of the victims but the St Louis Post Dispatch confirmed that one of the dead was city council woman Connie Karr.
   Thornton continued to yell about the mayor while McNichols cowered under the chairs.
   She then heard him approach the semicircular desk at the front of the room where the city council members sit, and continue to fire.
   City Attorney John Hessel managed to fend him off by throwing chairs, she said, until police finally stormed into the room. There was more shouting, then more shots, and then she heard the officers say they got him.
   The gunman had also shot and killed a police officer in a parking lot about a half a block from the city government building where the meeting was being held, police said.
   Panus said the injured were a civilian and a city employee, one of them critically wounded.
   The civilian was later identified as a reporter for a local newspaper chain.
   ‘We don’t know if it was a ricochet or what, but it hit him in the hand and shattered a bone or two,’ said Dave Bundy, Suburban Journals editorial director, who spoke with reporter Todd Smith in the emergency room.
   Missouri governor Matt Blunt said Kirkwood had been ‘terrorized by a senseless and horrific crime at an open government meeting.’
   ‘I join Missourians tonight in praying for the victims, their families and friends, and everyone in the community of Kirkwood,’ he said in a statement.
   Thornton, who had twice been convicted of disorderly conduct for disrupting city council meetings and had been handcuffed and pulled from a meeting in May 2006, recently sued the city for prohibiting him from speaking out at meetings.
   Thornton represented himself in the case and said his free speech rights had been violated.
   A judge dismissed the case on January 28.
   A popular star athlete in high school, Thornton’s demeanor began to change when he started getting tickets for parking vehicles he used in his asphalt business outside his home, said Doug Vaughn, a sports anchor with KMOV who was a friend of Thornton’s.
   ‘He was more than a critic,’ Vaughn told the Post Dispatch. ‘It got to where he was showing up at every council meeting and trying to dominate everything. He kind of lost his mind.’
   Thornton’s family said they had no inkling of his intentions when he left the house, saying he loved them, would be back soon and ‘To God be the glory,’ the paper reported.
   Elsewhere in the United States Thursday, a gunman opened fire at an Ohio school, wounding his estranged wife in front of her students before fleeing the school and later killing himself during a three-hour standoff, police said.

NATO defence ministers were set Friday for a second day of contentious talks on Afghanistan amid calls led by the United States and Britain for more frontline combat troops to fight resurgent Taliban forces.
   Ministers stuck to their positions on Thursday during talks burden-sharing in Afghanistan, a sensitive issue that threatens cohesion of the 26-nation transatlantic alliance.
   NATO’s UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has been confronted with an increasingly bloody insurgency campaign by Taliban militants, and commanders have sought more troops and weapons.
   The German defence minister, Franz Josef Jung, resisted renewed pressure by the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, to send German troops — currently deployed in northern Afghanistan — to the restive south.
   ‘In my opinion our contribution is excellent,’ said Jung in Vilnius. ‘We are the third-largest contributor.’
   Germany has 3,200 soldiers, deployed in the relatively peaceful north, compared with 15,000 US and 7,800 British troops.
   Jung on Wednesday turned down NATO, US and Canadian requests to deploy German forces in the south, pointing out the limited terms of deployment approved by the German parliament.
   The Bundestag voted in October to extend Germany’s Afghan mission for a year, but exclusively in the north. Opinion polls suggest that a majority of Germans oppose Bundeswehr troops engaging in combat missions.
   The Canadian defence minister, Peter MacKay, confirmed his country could not keep its contingent of 2,500 men in southern Kandahar province after February 2009 without extra support in the form of 1,000 troops, helicopters and drone surveillance aircraft.
   Canada’s parliament decides next month whether to prolong its combat mission in Afghanistan beyond February 2009, a vote that could trigger a snap general election.
   For the last year-and-a-half, the United States has urged European allies — notably Germany, France, Spain and Italy — to join Britain, The Netherlands and Canada in fighting Taliban insurgents.
   ISAF forces have grown from 16,000 to 43,000 troops within the space of two years, but commanders have been calling for another 7,500 troops to fight a resurgent Taliban, which has used bases in remote tribal areas of northern Pakistan to regroup.
   Ahead of the Vilnius conference, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said he worried about NATO ‘evolving into a two-tiered alliance, in which you have some allies willing to fight and die to protect peoples’ security, and others who are not.’
   ‘And I think that it puts a cloud over the future of the alliance, if this is to endure and perhaps even get worse,’ he said.
   The message was reinforced by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, on a surprise visit to Afghanistan Thursday.
   ‘Frankly, I hope that there will be more troop contributions and there need to be more Afghan contributions,’ Rice said reporters in the former Taliban capital of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
   But Gates adopted a pragmatic line on Thursday, suggesting that countries which couldn’t dispatch combat troops because of domestic politics send equipment or non-combat troops.
   ‘We are realistic about politics here in Europe,’ Gates told journalists in Vilnius. ‘The governments in Europe get it, they understand the importance of Afghanistan but many of them are in coalitions and just aren’t able to do certain kinds of things.
   ‘If somebody can’t send combat soldiers in certain areas because of the politics at home then perhaps they could pay for helicopters or provide helicopters,’ said Gates, in what appeared to be a reference to Germany.
   The defence minister of Denmark, Soren Gade, said no country at the Vilnius talks had made any firm troop commitment.
   The French defence minister, Herve Morin, said he said MacKay on Thursday that ‘we would help the Canadians,’ but added that a firm decision would only come from the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, at the Bucharest NATO summit in April.
   ‘The solution does not depend on only France, and all this must be considered in a global framework... If I have a message for Canadians, it is to be patient,’ Morin said.
   NATO spokesman James Appathurai said the two-day informal NATO defence ministers meeting in Vilnius was not meant to see ministers ‘put forces on the table and tell us where they are going. That wasn’t the idea.’

The government has decided to send an Indian proposal for a direct Kolkata-Agartala bus service via Dhaka to a core group of the representatives of government departments concerned for scrutiny before sending a reply to India.
   Sources in the communications ministry said the proposal, pursued by New Delhi for about three years, would soon be sent to the 15-member core group headed by the communications secretary as the proposal is deemed very close to providing ‘transit’ for India.
   Communications ministry officials said the ministry, at the instruction of higher authorities, in January moved the file of the Indian proposal, which sought the direct bus service to cut travel distance between the two Indian cities through the Bangladesh territory.
   Direct bus services are now in place between Dhaka and Kolkata, introduced in 1999, and Dhaka and Agartala, introduced in 2003.
   The government has recently formed the permanent core group comprising the representatives of foreign affairs and other relevant ministries and government agencies to determine the country’s common standpoint on all regional and bilateral transport connectivity issues.
   The government also said it was mandatory to obtain the opinions of core group on all matters of national and regional connectivity and also on participation in meetings or events related to regional connectivity issues.
   ‘As the proposal relates to connectivity, we have decided to send the matter to the core group,’ said an official of the communications ministry.
   Since 2005, New Delhi has been pushing Dhaka for the introduction of a direct bus service between Kolkata and Tripura’s capital Agartala through Bangladesh to cut travel distance by three-fourths.
   The distance between Kolkata and Agartala in India’s landlocked northeast is about 1,700km. But cut through Bangladesh, the distance shrinks to only 400km.
   Describing the proposal ‘a prelude from New Delhi to seeking transit through Bangladesh,’ a senior communications ministry official said the core group would examine the proposal and decide on whether to allow direct bus service as ‘India wishes.’
   ‘The proposal is a subtle way of India’s seeking transit through Bangladesh although it talks about improving bilateral relation,’ the official said.
   New Delhi has been pursuing what it calls the ‘Bangla corridor’ from its eastern to its remote, north-eastern region, but Dhaka kept the transit issue on hold for political and economic reasons.
   India renewed the proposal for a direct bus service between Kolkata and Agartala through Bangladesh in 2006 at a meeting between the bus operators of two countries in Kolkata. The meeting to improve the existing Dhaka–Kolkata and Dhaka–Agartala bus services was attended by officials of the two governments.
   Communications ministry officials said there had been no formal requests from India since then, but they talked about the proposal on any occasions they had meetings with the communications ministry.

Sri Lankan troops captured an area from Tamil Tiger rebels in the island’s north after fighting across the region killed 55 rebels, the defence ministry said on Friday.
   Security forces took a village near Adampan in the district of Mannar, where 12 members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were killed, the ministry said.
   It said two government soldiers were killed and five more wounded in the latest fighting.
   The ministry claims raised the number of guerrillas said to have been killed this year to at least 1,005, just over one third of the Tiger’s total fighting force, according to military estimates.
   The rebel losses compare with just 44 government soldiers killed during the same period, according to figures released by the defence ministry.
   In separate clashes along frontlines in the adjoining Vavuniya district since Thursday, security forces killed 22 guerrillas while destroying three of their bunkers, the defence ministry said.
   It said another 21 rebels were killed in fresh fighting since Thursday in the northern peninsula of Jaffna and the north-eastern Trincomalee districts. There was no immediate word from the LTTE.
   The government claims cannot be independently verified. The Sri Lankan government last month officially pulled out of a defunct truce with the rebels, who have fought for more than three decades for an independent ethnic homeland in the Sinhalese-majority island.

At least three people, two of them supporters of slain former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s party, were killed in violence related to the upcoming polls, a senior police official said Friday.
   Eight others were wounded in the two incidents in southern Sindh province involving supporters of Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-Q party, Shaukat Shah, a senior police official, told the news agency.
   In one clash in the province’s Dadu town, the PPP and PML supporters exchanged strong words and then gunfire, leaving a 14-year-old boy passing by and a PPP supporter dead, Shah said. Five others were injured in that incident.
   The country heads to the polls on February 18 for the general elections in which the former ruling PML backs president Pervez Musharraf.
   The vote was postponed by six weeks because of deadly riots sparked by Benazir’s assassination in a December 27 gun and suicide bomb attack in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
   British detectives said Friday that Benazir was killed by the force of the suicide bomb and not gunfire, backing the Pakistani government’s controversial account of how the opposition leader died.
   The findings have caused fresh controversy ahead of the polls. In the second incident of election-related violence, in Nawabshah — the hometown of Benazir’s widower, Asif Zardari — PML and PPP supporters exchanged gunfire, leaving one PPP backer dead and three injured. The police and paramilitary forces were guarding the areas, Shah said.

German authorities have learnt that al-Qaeda is preparing to carry out attacks in Germany, a senior official said in an interview with Die Welt newspaper on Friday.
   The secretary of state in the interior ministry, August Hanning, said al-Qaeda leaders based in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan have ‘decided to carry out attacks in Germany.’
   ‘We are worried that we will not be able to foil every plot,’ he added.
   Die Welt said the federal intelligence agency and police have established that Germany’s military mission in Afghanistan prompted Al-Qaeda to move the country ‘much higher’ on its list of targets.
   In September 2007, two German converts to Islam and a Turkish man were arrested in the western Sauerland region on suspicion of planning to blow up US installations in Germany, including the south-western US military airbase at Ramstein.
   The men had stockpiled some 700 kilograms (1,500 pounds) of chemicals to use in ‘massive’ attacks to coincide with the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the security services said.
   The plotters are believed to belong to the Islamic Jihad Union, a group with links to al-Qaeda.
   The deputy president of the federal police, Bernhard Falk, said there were clear indications that al-Qaeda had ordered other attacks and that its cadres were preparing to strike.
   ‘There is a high probability that besides the Sauerland plot, several other operations have been planned,’ he said.
   Hannig linked the ‘high risk’ to the volatile situation in southern Afghanistan, saying al-Qaeda’s ‘operational capacity’ in the region had recovered.
   Germans in Afghanistan, often young men of Turkish origin or German converts to Islam, were recruited to become ‘holy warriors’ and sent back to Germany to carry out attacks, he said.

The Indian Congress on Thursday slammed LK Advani’s attack that it was soft on terror, terming it ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘double-facedness’. Congress instead called the Leader of Opposition’s tenure as home minister as indefensible on terrorism front, reports The Times of India.
   With Kandahar hijacking back in focus after the conviction of three accused, Congress asked why had the self-appointed ‘lauh purush’ turned a ‘soft purush’ on December 31, 1999, when it sent the foreign minister to escort terrorists to the Afghanistan. ‘The nation wants to know what had transpired between the Deputy PM, Taliban diplomats and the hijackers between December 24-31, 1999,’ asked spokesman Abhishek Singhvi.
   Singhvi said Masood Azhar masterminded the attack on parliament after he was released with two other terrorists in the Kandahar swap. ‘Why did BJP release Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh and Zargar?’ he asked.
   In a sensational allegation aimed at defusing BJP campaign on the Afzal hanging, Congress said Afzal Guru had been ‘picked and released’ two months before the attack on parliament.
   The sudden Congress decision to hold a ‘special briefing’ to counter Advani’s launch of ‘sankalp yatra’ in Jabalpur appeared to mark a change in party strategy to counter the BJP plank of terrorism.

The US military has lost a year’s worth of records describing the Guantanamo confinement of Osama bin Laden’s driver, a prosecutor said at the Yemeni captive’s war court hearing on Thursday.
   Lawyers for the driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, asked for the records to support their argument that prolonged isolation and harassment at the Guantanamo prison have mentally impaired him and could affect his ability to aid in his defence against war crimes charges.
   ‘All known records have been produced with the exception of the 2002 Gitmo records,’ one of the prosecutors, Navy Lt Cmdr Timothy Stone, told the court. ‘They can’t find it.’
   He said the military was still looking for the records kept at the remote US naval base in southeast Cuba, which he referred to by its nickname.
   The chief prosecutor, Army Col Larry Morris, told Reuters that all of Hamdan’s interrogation records were given to the defence at least a year ago and that the missing 2002 documents are ‘local detention records that deal with issues of confinement such as diet, exercise, hygiene and the location of the detainee’ within the camp.
   Defence lawyers contend there are still two months’ worth of records missing from interrogations in Afghanistan shortly after Hamdan was captured there in November 2001.
   The US president, George W Bush, authorised the Guantanamo court to prosecute suspected al-Qaeda members on terrorism charges, arguing that existing civilian and military courts were not designed to try war captives who are not part of any national army.
   Hamdan, who is in his late 30s, was the prisoner whose lawsuit prompted the US Supreme Court to strike down the initial Guantanamo war crimes system. The charges against him were twice dismissed and then refilled and the military hopes to begin his trial in May.
   He faces life in prison if convicted on charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. Hamdan has said he never joined al-Qaeda but worked in bin Laden’s motor pool in Afghanistan because he needed the $200 monthly salary.
   Prosecutors say he was a trusted member of al-Qaeda who helped bin Laden elude US forces in Afghanistan and that he had two anti-aircraft rockets in his car when captured at a checkpoint near the southern city of Kandahar.
   Hamdan’s lawyers asked the judge on Thursday to drop the charges on grounds that their client’s acts were not recognized as war crimes when committed.
   Legal authority to try non-US captives in the Guantanamo tribunals rests on a 2006 law that made conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism war crimes, but Hamdan’s lawyers said it could not be retroactively applied.
   A US justice department lawyer argued that although no international law or treaty specifically listed conspiracy as a war crime, the Nuremberg war court set a precedent by prosecuting German SS members after World War Two. They were accused of membership in what had been declared a criminal organization, essentially the equivalent of conspiring with al-Qaeda, said the attorney, Jordan Goldstein.
   He also cited as precedent an 1865 legal opinion from the US Civil War era that authorised summary execution for ‘banditti, jayhawkers’ and others who join marauding bands.
   Hamdan’s civilian lawyer, Joseph McMillan, said the law has since evolved and marauders may no longer be ‘hunted down like wolves’ and summarily executed.

With just eight days left for the expiry of her visa, a worried Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen hoped that India would not ‘turn its back’ on her and that it will grant extension on time to help her stay on, reports The Times of India.
   Taslima, 45, said she was also pinning her hopes on external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee’s statement in parliament about India’s reputation for hospitality and that it welcomed guests as long as they respected the sentiments of people.
   ‘I am always thinking about my stay. I am hopeful with eight days to go before the expiry of my visa, the government will extend it on time,’ the controversial writer said on phone from her safe house in Delhi.
   If she was thrown out, ‘it will amount to murder of my most cherished ideals, perhaps a fate far worse than I could meet at the hands of any fundamentalists,’ said Taslima who was spirited out of Kolkata on November 22 last year following violence after a demand by a minority organisation that her visa be cancelled.
   ‘If India turns its back on me I have nowhere to go, no means to survive. Even after all that has happened, I still believe, I still dream, that for a sincere, honest, secular writer, India is the safest refuge, the only refuge,’ said Taslima, who has been living in exile since 1994 after fundamentalists in Bangladesh issued a fatwa against her.
   The author also said she still believed that she should be able to spend the rest of her life in the country, which she loved. ‘India is my country, my home.’

Syed Borhan Kabir, the anchor of crime-based programme Pariprekkhit on Bangladesh Television, was arrested and sent to jail on Friday on charge of fraudulence.
   Borhan was earlier sentenced in a case filed under the Negotiable Instrument Act in his absence to one-year simple imprisonment and fined Tk 30,000.
   One Belal Hossain filed the case with a Dhaka court a few years ago and the verdict was given on November 20, 2007.
   The Ramna police officer-in-charge, Daulat Akbar, said they arrested Borhan at his business centre on the Circular Road at Moghbazar in Dhaka at about 11:30am on a warrant for his arrest.
   The police produced Borhan in the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court in the afternoon and the court sent him to jail. Borhan earlier worked as a reporter with the now-defunct Ajker Kagoj and then with Bhorer Kagoj.