THE forest department seized smuggled forest goods worth about Tk 2.5 crore from different areas under five forest ranges in Moulvibazar in 2007.
   Sixty-six smugglers were also arrested in 1,530 cases and 14 illegal saw-mills were sealed off during the period.
   Officials of Moulvibazar Range, Rajkandi Range, Kulaura Rang, Juri-1 Range and Juri-2 Range of the forest department conducted separate drives throughout the year and seized the goods including timber, cane, bamboo and rubber. The Rapid Action Battalion and the Bangladesh Rifles assisted them.
   Abu Naser Mahsin Hussain, sub-divisional forest officer at Srimangal office, recently told journalists that the seized forest goods included 46 thousand 468 cubic-feet of timbers of different varieties, 9 thousand 148-feet round-shaped timber, 468 cubic-feet fuel-wood, 1,404 pieces of furniture of different kinds, 72 thousand 627 pieces of bamboo, 1,880-feet cane, 280 bundles of straw, and 2,749kg of raw rubber.
   Abu Naser said a good number of vehicles including 30 trucks, five pick-up vans, two microbuses, one taxi, two tractors, 21 trolleys, two three-wheelers and seven auto-rickshaws used by smugglers were also seized.
   It may be mentioned that Moulvibazar is rich with its forest wealth. There are so many forests in the district including country famous Lawachhera Reserve Forest cum National Park. A section of criminals are engaged with smuggling of forest resource in the district.

THREE houses were burnt in a fire in Comilla early Sunday.
   Local people said the fire had originated from the house of one Mohammad Safiullah at about 2:30am and soon engulfed the adjuring houses of Md Zakir Hossain and Mahabubul Alam in the Danshiri area under Chandina upazila.
   Later a Fire Brigade unit from Comilla town went to the spot and doused the flame with the help of local people after one and a half hours of effort. No report of casually, however, reported.
   The affected house owners said the extent of loss could be over Tk 10 lakh.

DEPARTMENT of Fisheries has been extending freshwater prawn/lobster cultivation throughout the 16 districts under the Rajshahi division for the last couple of years.
   According to officials concerned, the department has undertaken a project titled ‘Extension of Freshwater Lobster/Prawn Farming’ with the prime objective of enhancing prawn production to meet its growing demand.
   Rajshahi district fisheries office has arranged a two-day training programme for the targeted people at its office that ended Thursday.
   Divisional deputy director of the department Shawkat Ali, district fisheries officer of Rajshahi Aminul Haque and fish farm manager of Puthiya Ruhul Amin conducted different sessions of the training.
   Under the project, district fisheries office has so far brought 175 entrepreneurs, farmers and hatchery owners under need-based training programme aimed at enhancing awareness and technology transfers among themselves in nine upazilas of the district.
   They were given training on mix-culture, water quality determination, pond and nursery management, paddy-cum-lobster cultivation, transportation and marketing, and demonstration nursery management.
   District fisheries officer Aminul Haque said on successful implementation the project would enhance lobster production to 600 kilograms from 200 kilograms per hectare.
   Referring to various aspects of increasing lobster production, he said Bangladesh earn foreign currencies worth Tk 2,500 crore per year exporting lobster. Of the exported lobster, contribution of freshwater prawn is around 23 per cent.
   Meanwhile, prawn and lobster demand in the local markets has also been enhanced to a greater extent with increas-ing the number of Chinese
   and Thai restaurants at present. So, there is no alternative to farming extension in the freshwater.
   He said there were a number of field-level problems especially seed and post-larva crisis, shortage of appropriate technology and extension training.
   He, however, said if the problems were solved accurately the lobster in a near future could be the means of earning enormous foreign currencies.

THREE persons have been found dead in Pabna and Sylhet.
   The Pabna correspondent of New Age reports that the police recovered the body of a young man at Bhitabari under Santhia upazila on Saturday.
   The deceased was Kamal Hossain, 26, of village Bhitabari.
   The police said Kamal had gone to his father-in-law’s house of village Sharishabari for taking dowry money on Friday night. But he did not return on that night.
   Next day, the family members found the body hanging from a tree at his courtyard.
   The body was sent to the Pabna General Hospital morgue for a post-mortem examination.
   An unnatural death case was filed with police.
   In Sylhet, according to a UNB report, bodies of two young men were recovered in Dakshin Surma and Biswanath upazilas on Friday.
   The police said local people found the body of an unidentified man floating in a pond at Joinpur in Dakshin Surma upazila in the afternoon.
   Later, the police recovered the body that bore marks of injury and sent it to the Osmani Medical College Hospital morgue.
   In another incident in Biswanath upazila, the police recovered the hanging body of young man in the upazila headquarters on Friday.
   The police said local people found the body of Manik, 30, of Bajitpur in Dowarabazar upazila of Sunamganj, hanging from a tree adjacent to the house of his master Manjur Ali of village Rajnagar under the upazila.
   The police recovered the body and sent it to the Osmani Medical College Hospital morgue.
   The housemaster, Manjur Ali, said Manik left the job on Tuesday drawing his salary from him.
   Separate unnatural death cases were filed with the police.