Participants in a workshop on Monday stressed the need for ensuring gender equality in every spheres of life to expedite the country’s overall development.
   The journalists should play an an important role in creating awareness among the people of gender equality, they told the discussion, ‘gender and media for the journalists’ on Wednesday.
   The Press Institute of Bangla-desh in assistance with CIDA-funded project Policy Leadership and Advocacy for Gender Equa-lity organised the programme.
   The vice-chancellor of Comilla University, Professor Golam Mowlah, inaugurated the four-day workshop at the seminar room of Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development in Comilla with the PIB director general Mohammad Nazrul Islam was in the chair.
   Dr Golam Mowla termed the gender equality issue very important saying that the country will never advance without eliminating gender discrimination.
   M Diaz, field manager of PLAGE-II and M Zakir Hossain, director of PIB, among others, addressed the programme.

The police recovered the body of a teen-aged boy from a store room of a library near Puraton bus stand in Jamalpur Tuesday morning.
   The deceased was Md Asad, 17, son of Abdul Karim of village Joyrampur under sadar upazila. He was an employee of the library. The police said he might have commit suicide on Monday night.
   The reason behind the suicide, howeverr, could not be known. The police recovered the body and sent it to the Jamalpur General Hospital morgue for post-mortem examination.
   An natural death case was filed. In Jessore, the police recovered the body of a contractor on Wednesday.
   The deceased was Habib Ahmed, 35, a class one contractor of Wapdapara in the town.
   The deceased relatives said Habib was strangled by his rivals in the afternoon over a tender-related despute.

Construction work of two ferry ghats on the banks of the River Kirtankhola in Barisal began on Tuesday. The Roads and Highways Department is building the ferry ghats at a cost ofTk 20 lakh, RHD sources said.
   The RHD chief engineer for Barisal region, Khandoker Nurul Arefin said construction work would be completed in two months. He said taking into account the sufferings of the people, RHD authorities had undertaken initiatives to introduce ferry service on the river.
   After complementation of the work, all modes of vehicles, including minibuses and microbuses, will to cross the river through the ferry ghats, RHD sources said.
   Shariful Islam, RHD executive engineer, and Abul Kalam Azad, executive engineer of ferry division had visited the sites of the ferry ghats the same day.
   The ferry ghats had been the long demand of the people of the eastern part of the city.
   The people of the city’s eastern part, including Bukhainagar, Char Munai and Biswaserhat will be benefited from the ferry services and will be able to communicate with the main city through town service buses.

Production at the Jamuna Fertiliser Factory in Jamalpur was suspended on Tuesday due to leak in the plant’s reactor.
   The fertiliser manufacturing plant was shut down after a leak was detected in the gasket of the reactor at about 10:00am, factory sources said.
   The managing director of the feriliser plant, Mir Mozaffar Ali, said production would resume after repairing the leak. It might take five days to resume the production, he added.
   The Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation chairman, M Moklesur Rahman, said leak in the plant’s reactor often happens due to low voltage it was not a major problem.
   Usually the factory remains closed for 50-60 days every yeardue to such problems, said the chairman.
   The factory, commissioned 17 years ago, usually supplies urea to 16 northern districts including Jamalpur, Sherpur, Sirajganj and Rajshahi.
   The factory with a capacity to produce about 1,700 tonnes of urea per day, now produces some 1,500 tonnes.

An old man was crushed under the wheels of a running train near Waruk rail station in Saharasti upazila Wednesday.
   Witnesses said the Chandpur bound train from Laksham ran over the unidentified man, aged about 60 at around 8:00am. The body was sent to Chandpur Railway Hospital for autopsy.