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The detained mayors of Sylhet, Rajshahi, Khulna and Barisal city corporations may be disqualified from contesting the elections to the city corporations scheduled for August 4.
   Two of the four mayors – Mizanur Rahman Minu (Rajshahi) and Sheikh Tayebur Rahman (Khulna) – have already been convicted of patronising militancy and extortion and the rest two – Badaruddin Ahmed Kamran (Sylhet) and Majibur Rahman Sarwar (Barisal) – are facing graft charges.
   The Election Commission on Friday announced the schedule for elections to four city corporations and nine municipalities setting August 4 as the polling day.
   According to the Local Government (City Corporations) Ordinance 2008, promulgated on May 24 in accordance with the commission’s proposal, a person, who has been sentenced to imprisonment for not less than two years on conviction for a criminal offence or an offence involving moral turpitude, will be disqualified from contesting the elections to the city corporations, unless a period of five years has lapsed since his/her release.
   Rajshahi mayor Mizanur Rahman Minu, arrested on June 11, 2007, was sentenced to imprisonment for 31 years on August 26, 2007 on charge of patronising militancy and for 13 years in an extortion case on July 29, 2007. He is also facing a number of criminal and graft cases.
   Khulna mayor Sheikh Tayebur Rahman, arrested on October 2, 2007, was jailed on May 25for seven years in an extortion case. Tayebur, who is also facing 12 more cases on extortion charges, was on May 26 jailed again for 10 years in another extortion case.
   Although both Minu and Tayebur have already appealed to the High Court against their convictions, they may be barred from contesting the polls in accordance with the Emergency Powers Rules.
   The military-controlled interim government on February 13, 2007 amended the emergency rules, framed on January 25, 2007, stipulating that no person convicted in a case under the emergency rules would be allowed to contest any polls, including the national and local government elections, even if the convict appeals against the conviction.
   Sylhet mayor Badaruddin Ahmed Kamran, arrested on May 28, 2007, and Barisal mayor Majibur Rahman Sarwar, arrested on May 29, 2007, have not been convicted in any cases as yet.
   The Local Government (City Corporations) Ordinance 2008 empowers the government to suspend an elected mayor or commissioner, against whom the charge sheet in a criminal case has been accepted by a court.
   According to the laws, a person, who warrants suspension from an office, cannot contest any poll to the office.
   The courts in Sylhet and Barisal have already accepted charge sheets in the cases filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission against Badar and Sarwar respectively for amassing illegal wealth and hiding information in their wealth statements submitted to the commission.

The LGRD and cooperatives adviser, Anwarul Iqbal, has said upazila election must take place before parliamentary polls even if the political parties oppose it.
   ‘The political parties are against the holding of upazila election before parliamentary polls. But the upazila election will shall be held before the national elections,’ said the adviser, a day after the Election Commission had declared elections for some local-government bodies.
   The Election Commission on Friday announced the schedule for elections to four city corporations and nine municipalities on August 4, amid protests by major political parties who are demanding that the stalled parliamentary elections be held first.
   Anwarul Iqbal made the government plan emphatically clear while talking to journalists when he went to attend a publication ceremony of a policy paper on ‘Role of Local Government in Early Childhood Care and Development’ in the city.
   He wondered why political parties did not want local elections before the parliamentary one.
   ‘The people want local body elections before the parliamentary elections. But the political parties are saying it will hamper the roadmap on the parliamentary elections,’ he said.
   Anwarul Iqbal said political parties in public were against the holding of local elections, but ‘whether there is any secret in their mind I don’t know.’
   The adviser ruled out any possibility of the parliamentary elections being hampered, as the chief adviser has time and gain assured about it.
   About the city and municipal elections, he said these were completely non-party elections where none would take part with permanent symbol.

Leaders of the Awami League on Saturday came down hard on the Election Commission and the caretaker administration for deciding to hold local government polls and demanded parliamentary elections first after complete withdrawal of the state of emergency.
   Party presidium member Tofail Ahmed said the AL wanted parliamentary polls first and reminded the caretaker government that holding of national elections was its main responsibility.
   ‘The Election Commission has failed to implement its electoral roadmap and every steps of the commission is pushing the parliamentary elections into uncertainty’, he said.
   Tofail was critical of the Election Commission for announcing the schedule for local government polls saying that the EC should concentrate on holding the general elections on time after complete withdrawal of the state of emergency.
   He blamed the immediate past BNP-led coalition government for the present crisis and urged the party leaders and activists to remain united.
   Tofael was addressing an extended meeting of Gazipur district unit of the AL at Trust Community Center in the town. District AL president AKM Mozammel Huq presided over the meeting addressed also by Rahmat Ali, Mukul Bose, Meher Afroz Chumki and Zahid Ahsan Russell.
   At an extended meeting of the AL’s Moulvibazar district unit, party presidium member Suranjit Sengupta said that the AL wanted parliamentary elections, not local body polls, and urged the EC to withdraw the schedule for polls to four city corporations and nine municipalities and announce the schedule for general elections after complete lifting of the emergency.
   District AL president Abdur Shahid presided over the meeting addressed also by central party leaders Dewan Farid Gazi, Nurul Islam Nahid and Abdur Rahman.
   President and general secretaries of seven upazila and two municipal units of the party urged the central leadership to constitute a complete committee for its Moulvibazar district unit.
   Addressing an extended meeting of Comilla (south) unit of the AL, presidium member Matia Chowdhury said any elections prior to parliamentary polls would be a violation of the constitution and unacceptable to the people.
   She asked the government to lift the state of emergency ahead of parliamentary election. ‘A democratic election cannot be possible under the Emergency Powers Rules’, she said.
   Presided over by Mujibul Huq Mujib, district (south) joint convener of the party, the meeting was also addressed by Abdul Matin Khasru, Tajul Islam Taj, Subid Ali Bhuiyan, Baset Majumdar and Fakhrul Islam Munshi.
   In Jessore, party central leader Abdul Latif Siddiqui said the people would not allow any elections before parliamentary polls.
   He was critical of the caretaker government for its total failure in containing the prices of essentials.
   Latif was addressing an extended meeting of Jessore district AL presided over by acting district AL president Farazi Shahadat Hossain.
   AL central leaders Munnujan Sufian, Khan Tipu Sultan, Shah Hadiuzzaman, SM Qamruzzaman Chunnu and Shaheen Chakladar also spoke at the meeting.

BNP secretary general Khandaker Delwar Hossain has warned the government will have to take responsibilities of ‘anything unwanted’ centring the local government polls, scheduled for August 4.
   ‘The government wants to hold the elections using force and paying no heed to the people’s opinion,’ he said, demanding that the schedules, announced Friday for elections to four city corporations and nine municipalities, must be scrapped.
   Addressing a group of leaders of the party’s Jaipurhat unit at his Sher-e-Bangla Nagar flat Saturday, Delwar alleged that the interim government and the Election Commission were violating the constitution in every step.
   ‘They are only mandated to hold the parliamentary polls and they have violated the constitution by declaring the schedule of local government polls,’ he said.
   The Election Commission Friday announced schedules for polls to Barisal, Khulna, Sylhet and Rajshahi city corporations and nine municipalities, and the interim government on the same day relaxed the ban on rallies and processions for three weeks from July 13 to facilitate electioneering.
   Major political parties, including Awami League and BNP, declared the schedules illegal and demanded those be scrapped immediately.
   ‘It was not this government’s duty to hold local government polls. It is just a farce and the people will not join the elections,’ he said.
   Delwar asked the party leaders and activists to guard against, what he termed, the government’s blueprint to perpetuate its stay in office at any cost. ‘They are holding farcical trials only to bar politicians from contesting the national polls and stay in power for long,’ he said.
   Delwar said the government was trying to send BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia abroad, not her sons who needed better treatment abroad.
   ‘Such moves have to be resisted. She has already said that she will receive treatment here,’ said the secretary general, who was nominated by the party chief before her arrest on September 3, 2007.
   The district unit leaders including Mozahar Ali Pradhan, Shamsul Huq, AFM Hamidul Huq, Aminur Rahman Bakul, AM Kaikobad and Hena Kabir were present during the meeting.

The country’s top business leader has said the private sector is facing a credit crunch as banks are short of fund and rejecting new loan appeals.
   ‘It is a matter of utmost concern for us as banks either decline to give loans, or cannot arrange even syndicated loans for us,’ said Annisul Huq, president of the Federation of the Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry at a post-budget discussion in Dhaka Saturday.
   The anti-corruption drive has kept people away from banks and pushed them into a liquidity crisis, limiting the private sector’s access to loan market, he argued.
   Finance adviser Mirza Azizul Islam, who was the chief guest at the discussion attended by leaders of key industrial and export sectors, said he did not believe that the banking system was suffering from liquidity crisis.
   Quoting a Bangladesh Bank report, he said banks had excess liquidity of Tk 12,000 crore a couple of months back.
   However, he said he would ask the Bangladesh Bank to verify the actual liquidity situation.
   ‘If you have problems in getting bank loans, why don’t you go to the capital market?’ the finance adviser asked the businessmen. ‘I’ll ensure that you do not face any problem even with green-field projects if they are viable.’
   He said when a project would be considered as viable by a bank, it would also be considered as viable by the stock exchange.
   Mirza Aziz straightaway rejected the FBCCI chief’s proposal of banning the highest denomination currency of Tk 500 for alleged currency hoarding at household level.
   Annisul suspected that people, frightened by anti-graft drives, distanced themselves from banks and were holding hard cash in Tk 500 notes.
   He suggested that the government should investigate to see whether Tk 500 notes were being hoarded in households and in the border areas.
   ‘Neither the Bangladesh Bank nor the government has such a plan, nor do have I any doubt that it’s unnecessary to take such a measure,’ the finance adviser said in response to the plea.
   He termed the proposed budget an industry- friendly one and urged the businessmen and industrialists to pay more taxes.
   He denied offering any further tax exemption facility for the existing agro-based industries, saying, ‘Any special facility must have a sunset.’
   Economic Reporters Forum arranged the discussion at the National Press Club, bringing together key sector leaders who shared their views on budget proposals and major economic issues with the finance adviser and the revenue authority chief.
   ‘In recent weeks call money rates have gone up to 20 per cent, which demonstrates a huge liquidity shortage in the banking system,’ said Annisul.
   He said the crisis would deepen in the next fiscal year, beginning on July 1, as the government would heavily depend on the domestic banking system to meet the budget deficit.
   The budgetary estimate of the government’s borrowing from the banking system to finance the deficit of Tk 30,580 crore would aggravate the loan crisis further, the apex trade body chief added.
   National Board of Revenue chairman Abdul Mazid, Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association president Anwar-Ul-Alam Chowdhury Parvez, secretary general of Bangladesh Association of Pharmaceuticals industries Nazmul Hasan, president of Bangladesh Jute Spinners Association Shabbir Yusuf, general secretary of Bangladesh Breeders Association Moshiur Rahman, chief executive of PRAN-RFL Group Amjad Khan Chowdhury, president of Real Estate & Housing Association of Bangladesh Tanveerul Haque Probal, president of Bangladesh Textile Mills Association Abdul Hai Sarker, director of FBCCI Golam Dastagir Gazi and general secretary of the Economic Reporters Forum Sajjad Alam Khan also spoke on the occasion.
   ERF president Nazmul Ahsan moderated the discussion.
   The industrialists sought uninterrupted power and gas supply to their factories, relaxed regulations for legalising undisclosed money, giving the buyers of small flats the privilege of not being asked by the tax department to reveal their sources of money, prioritising the ‘build, operate and transfer’ system in developing infrastructure, introducing 10 per cent cash incentive for export of readymade garments and adequate funds to develop skilled manpower in the private sector.

The Transparency International Bangladesh has revealed that chances of bribery and corruption are still in abundance at the Chittagong Customs House despite some systematic reforms initiated since the promulgation of state of emergency.
   ‘The authorities have so far collected Tk 1,400 crore more revenue in the outgoing fiscal year in comparison with the previous year’s earnings,’ it said in a report released in the port city Saturday.
   The local chapter of the global corruption watchdog appreciated the steps recently taken to reform the customs house, but stressed that much more needed to be done to increase revenues, plugging the duty loopholes and checking bribery and corruption.
   The TIB report, detailing the problems of the Chittagong Customs House and their remedies, was placed at a roundtable discussion presided over by the organisation’s trustee board chairman Professor Muzaffer Ahmad at the Chittagong Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
   AHM Manjur Mannan, a member of the Anti-Corruption Commission, was the chief guest at the discussion moderated by TIB executive director Iftekharuzzaman, while M Hafiz Uddin Khan, adviser of a former caretaker government, was a special guest.
   Tanvir Mahmud, a research officer of TIB, elaborated on the findings, while customs officials Margub Ahmed, Nasiruddin and Matiur Rahman, Chittagong Port Authority member Yayah Sayed and FBCCI director Amirul Hoque took part in the discussion.
   The report apprehended that the Chittagong Customs House could return to the previous state of unbridled bribery and corruption if shortage of skilled manpower and complications in cargo assessment and customs formalities were not removed.
    It also identified persisting mismanagement, huge writ petitions as well as irregularities of pre-shipment inspection companies as factors that might lead the CCH to its previous state.
    The TIB recommended fundamental and systematic reforms, appointment of skilled manpower and full-fledged automation of CCH, NBR and Chittagong Port to tame corruption that add to the cost of business and make Bangladesh’s exports less-competitive.
    The Customs Act 1969 also needs to be updated, it said.
    ACC member AHM Manjur Mannan said curbing corruption was a collective responsibility and urged the people from all walks of life to remain vocal against the scourge.
    He also stressed the need for increasing salaries of officials and employees of both the government and private organisations for curbing corruption, saying that corruption would not reduce if their basic needs remained unmet.
    Professor Muzaffer said the practice of corruption reduced in a few sectors due to some visible initiatives in the recent period, but it would be sustainable without massive systematic changes.
    ‘Corruption will not be eliminated overnight. But, we may be able to keep it in check through raising voice,’ he said, stressing the need for public awareness and resistance against corruption of all sorts.

Russia coach Guus Hiddink got the result he wanted to become a traitor in his native Holland after his team’s 3-1 quarter-final win after extra-time dumped the Dutch out of Euro 2008.
   The 61-year-old former Netherlands coach had said he would be happy to be a Dutch traitor if his Russian team beat his countrymen and two goals in extra time broke Dutch hearts on Saturday. Real Madrid striker Ruud van Nistelrooy had headed home an 86th minute equaliser to give the Dutch a life-line - and take him alongside Johan Cruyff on 33 goals for the national side - but super sub Dmitri Torbinsky grabbed a second in the 112th minute, before Andrei Arshavin settled it with a third on 116 minutes.
   Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, this is the first time Russia have made the knock-out stages of a major tournament and will contest next Thursday’s semi-final in Vienna.
   But it was heart-break for Holland as the defeat signalled the last game in charge for Dutch coach Marco van Basten - who joins Ajax next season on a four-year deal - who made his swansong at Euro 2008 after four years in charge.
   The former AC Milan striker failed in his bid to bow out out on a high by giving the Netherlands a second European crown to the one he helped win in 1988.
   His Dutch team had come into the Basel quarter-final with a 100 percent record from Group C having handed out comprehensive defeats to both 2006 World Cup finalists France (4-1) and Italy (3-0) on route.
   After Holland defender Khalid Boulahrouz and his wife suffered the personal tragedy of losing their prematurely born daughter last week, the team all wore black arm-bands, but Saturday’s result only served to cap a dark week for the Dutch.
   Meanwhile, Hiddink has continued his habit of helping internationals punch well above the weight.
   The former Netherlands boss guided South Korea to the semi-finals at the 2002 World Cup and Australia to the knock-out phase in 2006 just before signing on to coach Russia.
   His side opened their Euro 2008 campaign with a 4-1 hammering at the hands of Spain as David Villa hit a hat-trick, but the Russians hit back with a 1-0 win over Greece and were impressive in their 2-0 win over Sweden.
   Both sides had plenty of chances in the first half.
   The Russians made a bright start and kept Manchester United goalkeeper Edin van der Sar busy in the first-half with Dynamo Moscow defender Denis Kolodin and Pavylyuchenko going close early on.
   But the Dutch also threatened on attack with Real Madrid’s Wesley Sneijder testing the Russian defence and fellow midfielder Rafael van der Vaart also squandered several chances as it remained 0-0 at the break.
   Van Basten brought Arsenal forward Robin van Persie into the fray at the start of the half but the Dutch went behind for the first time in the tournament soon after.
   After Arshavin terrorised Sweden in Russia’s 2-0 win last week, he blasted in a free-kick which forced van der Sar into a diving save, but the shot just carried wide.
   Russian opened the scoring when Pavlyuchenko slipped his marker and stabbed home Ivan Saenko’s cross on 56 minutes for his third goal of the tournament.
   But with time running out, the Dutch made their experience count as striker Nistelrooy headed an 86th minute equaliser from Sneijder’s superb cross to put his side back in the game and take the match to extra-time.
   And the goal which ended Dutch hopes came after a pin-point accurate cross along over the goal-mouth from Arshavin was poked home by Torbinsky in the 112th minute.
   And Arshavin scored a third just four minutes later as his side will now face Italy or Spain in Thursday’s semi-final.

Thousands of villagers armed with sticks and machetes beat to death a Royal Bengal tiger Saturday after it had killed three people at Shyamnagar upazila in Satkhira, the police said.
   The critically endangered animal, one of about 600 in Sundarban, the world’s largest mangrove forest, was lassoed after entering a village and killing three people Friday night, police official Abdur Razzak said.
   ‘More than 3,000 angry villagers spent the night looking for the tiger and when they learnt it had killed three goats early this morning (Saturday), they surrounded the area and caught it with a lasso,’ the local official said.
   ‘They strung up the eight-feet (2.6-metres) long tiger and beat it to death,’ he told the AFP.
   A forest official said it was the first time in more than four years a tiger had been killed by people living near the 5,800 square kilometres (2,320 square miles) portion of Sundarban.
   ‘It was responsible for about half a dozen other deaths in recent months. It became a man-eater and every now and then it entered villages to look for prey,’ assistant forest conservator Rajesh Chakma said.
   Chakma said the increasing human presence in the dense western part of the forest was mainly to blame for the growing number of tiger-related deaths.
   Human beings are not natural prey of tigers. Some wildlife experts say the tigers turn to attacking people if they are incapacitated by injuries or old age. Tigers kill about 20 people every year in Bangladesh, officials say.
   According to a UN-funded census, the 10,000 square kilometres Sundarban mangrove forest, which straddles India and Bangladesh, is home to at least 668 Royal Bengal tigers, with some 420 living on the Bangladesh side.
   Wildlife officials say the world’s Royal Bengal tiger population has fallen to between 5,000 and 6,000 from around 100,000 at the turn of the last century due to poaching for their skins and bones, which are used in traditional medicines, and habitat loss due to human encroachment.
   The Swiss-based International Nature Conservation Union has classified the Bengal Tigers as ‘critically endangered.’

Law enforcers on Saturday returned more documents, including some research papers on different issues like election and militancy, CDs and photocopies of some papers relating to the purchase of Mig-29 warplanes to the counsel of Awami League’s president Sheikh Hasina.
   Members of the joint forces seized several documents and two Mercedes Benz vehicles and some important papers from Sudha Sadan, Sheikh Hasina’s residence in Dhanmondi, during her arrest on July 16, 2007. They later seized some other documents from the house and sealed the sinduk (chest).
   But the police failed to return some 41 documents including some important papers on some cases, cheque books of different banks and other papers as they reportedly did not find them, in spite of the fact that the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s (CMM) Court had earlier asked the police return them.
   Dhanmondi police returned some of the attached properties like 63 CDs and some other documents to Quamrul Islam, one of the lawyers of Sheikh Hasina, at around 11:00am, sub-inspector Abdul Matin of Dhanmondi thana told New Age.
   ‘We could not return the rest of the documents as they have been kept in different places,’ he said. ‘We will return the rest of the seized documents, including the register of Bangabandhu Memorial Trust, cash books and cheque books of different banks within the next couple of days.’
   ‘We also opened the seal of the sinduk in Sudha Sadan in the morning,’ he added.
   Dhanmondi police returned Sheikh Hasina’s three passports to her lawyers on June 9 while returned her car and mobile phones on June 11. They also returned Sheikh Hasina’s personal computer, including its Central Processing Unit, on June 17.
   Sheikh Hasina was arrested from her Sudha Sadan residence in a pre-dawn raid in connection with an extortion case filed against her by businessman Azam J Chowdhury with the Tejgaon thana.
   She was kept at the makeshift special jail in a house in the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban Complex at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar for over 11 months and was released June 11 by a government executive order so that she could go abroad for better medical treatment.
   Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is now in the USA for treatment, was informed of the return of the some documents seized at her residence during and after her arrest, said advocate Quamrul Islam.

Spinal cord of Tarique Rahman is broken, causing acute pain in the waist and neck, a physician at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University said on Saturday.
   Channel i, a private TV channel, quoting Professor Yunus, reported that Tarique, who is undergoing treatment at BSMMU prison cell, was also suffering from pains in the right hip-joint. ‘His condition has deteriorated,’ the doctor said, adding that he needed treatment abroad.
   Earlier, detained former prime minister Khaleda Zia had alleged that her son was in good health before his arrest and questioned why he could not walk now being under government custody.
   About Khaleda Zia’s health, DIG (prisons) Major Shamsul Haider Siddiqui said she developed swelling in the wrist of her left hand and was also suffering from pains in the knees due to arthritis.
   The BNP chairperson preferred her treatment at United Hospital in Gulshan, as she doesn’t want to go abroad for treatment. She is rather calling for sending abroad her two detained ailing sons — Tarique and Arafat Rahman Koko — for their proper treatment.

Pakistan’s new government paid tribute to slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and asked the president, Pervez Musharraf, on Saturday to spare thousands of prisoners held on death row.
   The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, made the plea for their sentences to be commuted to life imprisonment in a speech to the National Assembly to commemorate Benazir’s 55th birthday.
   The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has estimated that about 7,000 people in Pakistani jails are awaiting execution.
   Gilani, a member of Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party, said the act of mercy would be a ‘big gift to the nation’.
   On Friday, he renamed Islamabad’s airport as Benazir Bhutto International. The Rawalpindi hospital where Benazir was taken after her assassination was also renamed after her.
   Benazir, whose party heads the ruling coalition, was killed in a suicide gun and bomb attack after she addressed an election rally in the garrison town of Rawalpindi on December 27.
   Another suicide attack had killed at least 139 people at Benazir’s homecoming parade when she returned to Karachi in October from eight years of self-imposed exile.
   A pro-Western liberal with populist appeal despite foes’ accusations of corruption, Benazir had been encouraged by the United States to return to work with Musharraf against forces of religious conservatism fuelling militancy in the Muslim nation.
   The PPP held gatherings across Pakistan on Saturday and encouraged followers to donate blood to celebrate Benazir’s life and political martyrdom.
   Her widower and political successor, Asif Ali Zardari, gave blood at the Benazir family residence in Naudero in the southern province of Sindh, having prayed at her tomb a day earlier.
   ‘We don’t know if it is a day to celebrate or to mourn. Everyone is in tears,’ said Asghar Ali, one of many loyalists thronging the mansion.
   A wave of sympathy helped Benazir’s PPP win February’s election.
   The party heads a coalition that is still struggling to find its feet at a time when Pakistan in danger of sliding into an economic morass and facing mounting US pressure to do more to quell Taliban militants based close to the Afghan border.
   Pakistan has formally requested a UN investigation into Benazir’s assassination.
   The PPP harbours deep suspicion over official findings that Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was behind the conspiracy.

With civil war raging in Sri Lanka, the journalists trying to cover the conflict find themselves increasingly under siege.
   They have been hounded by the government, attacked by unknown assailants and accused of aiding the rebels. Many reporters have been arrested or fled the country, while others have resorted to self-censorship, journalists said.
   Rights groups blame much of the intimidation on the government, saying that since fighting with the Tamil Tigers flared more than two years ago, pressure has grown on journalists to report the official line.
   When media don’t comply – reporting higher troop casualties or alleging corruption in arms purchases – ‘they are branded as traitors,’ said Sunanda Deshapriya of the Free Media Movement.
   ‘The government does not accept that media can play a watchdog’s role,’ he said.
   The media minister, Anura Yapa, denied the government was intimidating the media or orchestrating the assaults.
   ‘We have no intention of suppressing media freedom. Why should we attack journalists and get our image tarnished?’ he said.
   For their part, the rebels allow no independent media at all in their de facto state in the north, which they run as a dictatorship. The rebels also have been accused of killing journalists critical of them in the violence-plagued Jaffna peninsula.
   Pressure on the media has grown along with the fighting. Both sides have been accused of exaggerating victories and downplaying defeats, while the government has restricted access to the war zone, making independent reporting difficult.
   The president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, recently summoned top media officials and warned them that the rebels, known formally as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, could be using their reports on the war to predict future military operations.
   ‘I said that such information is a blow to the country at a time when we are trying to weaken the LTTE militarily,’ Rajapaksa told the Sunday Times.
   Last year, two private newspapers critical of the government were closed down after the government accused them of links to the rebels; the printing press of the Sunday Leader, a pro-opposition newspaper, was torched by unknown attackers; and a radio station was forced off the air after a report on a rebel assault.
   At least 100 reporters have been attacked, 25 journalists have fled the country and several others have gone underground, said Deshapriya of the Free Media Movement.
   Many have been arrested, including JS Tissainayagam, a Sunday Times columnist who has been jailed without charge since March by the government’s anti-terror squad.
   Keith Noyahr, defence reporter for The Nation newspaper, was abducted by a group of men outside his home on May 22. Six hours later he was released, beaten and bloody.
   No one has been charged with the attack, which came several weeks after Noyahr wrote a column about controversial military promotions.
   Noyahr’s colleagues said he and his editor have fled the country. The colleagues, who declined to give their names out of fear of repercussions, refused to provide contact details for either man, and calls to their mobile phones went unanswered.
   In a letter to Rajapaksa last week, Joel Simon, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, accused the government of stifling war reporting and doing nothing to protect reporters.
   ‘Those who wish to harass, harm, or even kill journalists can operate with relative impunity in Sri Lanka,’ he wrote.
   Days later, Rajapaksa established a committee of government ministers to look into the complaints.
   In the face of the violence and intimidation, many journalists said they have stopped reporting information that might embarrass the government.
   ‘We don’t want to be pet-poodles of the government, (but) neither to antagonize the military,’ said Ranga Jayasuriya, defence columnist at the Lakbima News newspaper.
   Iqbal Athas, a high-profile defence columnist for the Sunday Times who is routinely threatened, said this was the ‘worst period’ in his 42-year career.
   The government withdrew his security detail after nine years last year when he reported on irregularities in the purchase of fighter jets. The ministry of defence web site accused Athas of working for ‘the pro-terrorist propaganda machine’ and trying to sow ‘disloyalty, suspicions, disobedience, rumours, etc.’ among troops.
   ‘It’s clear that what they want to do is silence me to not write anything they dislike,’ Athas said.

An ally of India’s coalition government on Saturday withdrew its support to protest against high inflation, adding to the woes of the premier, Manmohan Singh, under fire from leftist partners over a nuclear deal.
   Schoolteacher-turned-politician Mayawati, who uses one name, announced she was ending her backing for Singh’s Congress party-led government after accusing the coalition of failing to insulate the poor from spiralling prices.
   ‘The Congress party has neglected poor workers as well as the Dalits (low-caste Hindus) and so my Bahujan Samaj Party is withdrawing support from the government,’ said Mayawati in Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh state.
   ‘This government has failed miserably to check inflation and the rise in prices of essential commodities – especially food items – and is pursuing policies which are not in the interests of the people,’ she said.
   Mayawati, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, also cited alleged neglect by Congress of her BSP-led provincial administration.
   The BSP, which has 17 MPs, had given outside support to the United Progressive Alliance government since it swept to power in 2004.
   The BSP’s move will not topple the minority government.
   But it comes at a time when 59 communist MPs have threatened to withdraw their support over a civilian nuclear energy deal with Washington and force early general elections.
   The government argues that the deal, which would give India access to the worldwide civilian nuclear energy trade even though it has not signed global non-proliferation pacts, is crucial for the country’s energy security.
   Mayawati’s move came a day after inflation shot to its highest level in 13 years, accelerating to 11.03 per cent from 8.75 per cent a week earlier after a hike in state-set fuel prices.
   The rise in inflation has hit India’s poor the hardest.
   Some political analysts, however, suggested Mayawati’s departure could help the beleaguered prime minister.
   ‘This withdrawal of support by Mayawati may draw other regional parties to help the prime minister out of his troubles’ since they are reluctant to face early polls, said Anand Ojha, a political scientist at Delhi University.
   General elections are due by May 2009.
   The Samajwadi (Socialist) Party, which is at daggers drawn with Mayawati, refused to support Congress after it swept into power but might now have a change of heart, Ojha said.
   He noted that the party, which has 39 MPs, had shown signs of warming up to Congress.
   Mayawati’s announcement came after India’s finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram promised more measures to tame prices.
   ‘We should not give room for panic. We should take steps to quell inflationary expectations,’ he said after meeting India’s central bank chief to discuss steps to check inflation.
   Several economists have forecast a half-point rise in the central bank’s leading short-term lending rate along with other aggressive credit-tightening measures, possibly within a few days.

In a late-term triumph for the US president, George W Bush, the US House of Representatives on Friday approved spy-powers legislation that has drawn heavy fire on civil liberties grounds.
   Lawmakers voted 293-129 for a bill that may shield elecommunications firms facing massive lawsuits over their work with Bush’s secret, six-year, warrantless wiretapping programme, begun after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
   The measure now goes to the Senate, where Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid has opposed granting retroactive immunity to companies that cooperated with a programme thought to have skirted established surveillance laws.
   During often bitter House floor debate, many Democrats broke with the measure, the fruit of months of talks among Senate and House leaders of both parties that ultimately gave in to key White House demands.
   ‘It’s Christmas morning at the White House thanks to this vote,’ said Caroline Fredrickson, a top official with the American Civil Liberties Union which has fiercely opposed the legislation.
   Earlier, Bush had used a hastily announced public statement at the White House to press lawmakers to approve new funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and pushed hard for House passage of the intelligence bill.
   ‘It’s vital that our intelligence community has the ability to learn who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning,’ Bush said in the two-minute statement.
   The spending bill would provide 162 billion dollars for conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, fuelling both for months after Bush’s successor takes over in January, without attaching a withdrawal timetable sought by Iraq war opponents.
   But the bitterest feuding was over the intelligence bill, which came amid a pitched political battle raging over Bush’s decision to secretly launch a warrantless wiretapping programme believed to have skirted surveillance law.
   Critics charge the secret programme was illegal because it ran afoul of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s requirement of a court order to spy on US citizens inside the United States.
   The White House says Bush, who brought the programme under FISA oversight in January 2007, made proper use of wartime presidential powers under the US Constitution, and that the often-updated law was ill-suited to deal with modern telecommunications and the nature of the terrorist threat.
   If passed, the new measure could short-circuit about 40 court challenges targeting major US telecommunications firms that cooperated with the programme, which the US public learned about in a December 2005 New York Times article.
   ‘This is a good bill. It will help our intelligence professionals learn the enemy’s plans for new attacks. It ensures that those companies whose assistance is necessary to protect the country will themselves be protected from liability for past or future cooperation with the government,’ said Bush.
   Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said he would try to remove the retroactive immunity clause from the Senate version, but warned ‘given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay.’
   ‘So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the programme,’ he said, adding a vow to ‘to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives – and the liberty –of the American people.’
   The fighting over the surveillance law and the war in Iraq come as the US presidential campaign has heated up – and Bush has adopted a take-no-prisoners approach to belittling his Democratic critics on national security issues.
   ‘The war on terror is the great challenge of our time. And on this vital issue, the Democratic Party has repeatedly shown it would take America down the wrong direction,’ he said in a speech Wednesday.

Floods could be a big challenge for the government in the next crop season, but the people need to face such adverse effects by adopting new technologies, said the agriculture adviser, CS Karim, on Saturday.
   The present food crisis resulting from two consecutive floods and the cyclone Sidr in 2007 was not an unexpected event, Karim said as he, as chief guest, addressed the urea pellet award ceremony in Dhaka.
   Bangladesh will need to pursue technology-based sustainable agriculture to meet the future food security challenge for an increasing population.
   ‘The country is facing an additional demand for 4 lakh tonnes of rice every year. We need to face the challenge of additional food production with the help of new technology,’ he said.
   As climate changes are likely to bring about changes in crop calendar, the farmers need to get prepared such unexpected changes by adopting technology, he said.
   Karim said, ‘We have taken supplementary measures for fertiliser and irrigation. But flooding will remain a big challenge. We cannot stop floods.’
   The Department of Agricultural Extension director general, Md Shamsul Alam, presided over the programme. The agriculture secretary, M Abdul Aziz, attended as guest of honour.
   The DAE field services director, Shahidul Islam, delivered the welcome address. Senior scientist at the International Fertiliser Development Centre Thomas P Thompson and United States Agency for International Development office director Anne Williams spoke as special guests.
   Karim said the result of using urea pellets in the immediate-past boro season was successful. ‘The technology has been used by some 4 lakh farmers on 1.5 lakh hectares of land in 80 upazilas of 14 districts.’
   Karim said there was no option but to increase urea prices in the wake of an increase on the international market. ‘Prices are still within the reach of farmers.’
   He brushed aside any probable impact of the urea price increase on rice prices. ‘The cost of urea has increased by only Tk 0.40 a kilogram of rice. But the amount of agriculture subsidy has increased at the same time to cushion the farmers against shocks.’
   He said the government had plans to introduce compost manure this year, aimed at fertiliser cost reduction as the prices of chemical fertiliser increased on the international market.
   The programme was organised by the Department of Agricultural Extension and the International Fertiliser Development Centre.
   Three hundred and sixty-four people, including farmers, dealers and DAE field officials, were awarded in recognition to their achievement and performance in expanding and use of urea pellets.

Hillary Clinton will campaign with White House hopeful Barack Obama next week for the first time since she lost their bruising battle for the Democratic nomination, his campaign said Friday.
   Hillary vowed to throw her full support behind the party’s standard bearer when she stepped out of the race on June 7, ending her 17-month-long quest to become the nation’s first woman president.
   The former rivals met privately at the Washington home of a fellow senator three days after Obama secured the Democratic on June 3, but Hillary has kept a low profile since the end of their historic nomination race.
   The Obama campaign said they will campaign together on June 27, but it said details about their joint appearance would be made available later.
   The former first lady fought Obama until the very last primaries on June 3, hoping to convince the Democratic Party that she had a better chance to beat Republican candidate John McCain in the November general election.
   While she failed to change the tide, the massive support she garnered across the country in the 17-month-long campaign sparked calls for Obama to pick her as his vice presidential running mate.
   Hillary has insisted that she was not seeking the number two spot, but she has also never said whether she would reject the job if it were offered.
   Since she dropped out of the race 20 days ago, Obama has sought to woo back women voters disappointed by the defeat of the candidate who came closest to becoming the first female presidential nominee.
   Hillary’s support could also help Obama win over white, working-class voters who are crucial in battleground states and favoured her during the primaries.
   A Fox News poll released Thursday suggested that anger among some Hillary supporters over her primary defeat by Obama was easing.
   In April, 32 per cent of her voters told the Fox pollsters they would back McCain in November’s election if Obama won the nomination. That now stands at 17 per cent, with 68 per cent falling in line behind the Democrats’ new champion.
   In her emotional farewell speech on June 7, Hillary urged her supporters to fall in line behind Obama, who made history himself by becoming the first black nominee of a major US party.
   ‘The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passions, our strengths and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States,’ she said then.
   ‘I have seen his strength and determination and his grace and his grit,’ Hillary said. ‘In his own life, Barack Obama has lived the American dream.’

In a cramped, humid laboratory in London, mosquitoes swarming in stacked, net-covered cages are being scrutinized for keys to controlling malaria. Scientists have genetically modified hundreds of them, hoping to stop them from spreading the killer disease.
   Faced with a losing battle against malaria, scientists are increasingly exploring new avenues that might have seemed far-fetched just a few years ago.
   ‘We don’t have things we can rely on,’ said Andrea Crisanti, the malaria expert in charge of genetically modifying mosquitoes at London’s Imperial College. ‘It’s time to try something else.’
   Malaria kills nearly three million people worldwide every year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of bed nets have been handed out, and villages across the continent have been doused with insecticide. But those measures have not put a significant dent in malaria cases.
   After a string of failed initiatives, the United Nations recently announced a campaign to provide bed nets to anyone who needs them by 2010.
   Some scientists think creating mutant mosquitoes resistant to the disease might work better.
   ‘We still have a malaria burden that is increasing,’ said Yeya Toure, a tropical disease expert at the World Health Organisation.
   ‘Under such circumstances, we have to investigate whether genetically modified mosquitoes could make a difference,’ said Toure, who is not involved in the Imperial College research.
   The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has found the work so promising it has invested nearly $38 million into genetic strategies to stop mosquitoes from transmitting diseases like malaria and dengue fever.
   ‘This is one of those high-tech, high risk innovations that would fundamentally change the struggle between humans and mosquitoes,’ said Regina Rabinovich, director of infectious diseases development at the Gates Foundation.
   Mosquitoes bred to be immune to malaria could break the disease’s transmission cycle. ‘That is the nirvana of malaria control,’ said Rabinovich. ‘It would potentially transform what the field looks like.’
   In 2005, Crisanti proved it was possible to create a genetically modified mosquito by inserting a gene that glowed fluorescent green in males.
   Among other possibilities, he and his team are now planning to create sterile male mosquitoes to mate with wild female mosquitoes, thus stunting population growth. They are also trying to engineer a malaria-resistant mosquito.
   Last year, American researchers created mosquitoes resistant to a type of malaria that infects mice. Others are altering the DNA of the mosquitoes that spread dengue.
   But not everyone thinks these super mosquitoes are such a good idea. Some scientists think there are too many genetic puzzles to be solved for modified mosquitoes to work.
   The malaria-causing parasite, which mosquitoes then transmit to humans, is simply too good at evading anything scientists might devise to protect the mosquito, argued to Jo Lines, a malaria expert at London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
   ‘It’s a series of arms races that the parasite has consistently won,’ Lines said. Whenever mosquitoes have developed genes resistant to the malaria-causing parasite, the parasite has always found a way around it, Lines said.
   Quantity might also be a problem. ‘You are going to need to produce billions of these mosquitoes if this is ever going to work,’ Lines said.
   Some environmentalists worried that genetically modified mosquitoes might wreak havoc in the ecosystem.
   ‘Can’t we just give mosquito nets to people instead of looking at these really complex technological fixes that mess with the very delicate balance of nature and evolutionary history?’ asked Gillian Madill, a genetic technologies campaigner at Friends of the Earth in Washington.
   Rabinovich said rigorous testing would be done before releasing any genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild.
   ‘It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature,’ she said. ‘But if you can come up with another way of tackling (malaria), this is not something that one walks away from without fully evaluating it.’
   Over the next year, Crisanti hopes to finalize plans for a test release of genetically modified mosquitoes in southern Italy. There, millions of the insects will be set loose in large cages to determine things like how they might interact with wild mosquitoes and how many would be needed to knock out malaria.
   Crisanti acknowledged there might be unintended consequences of releasing genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild, although he could not predict what they might be.
   The scientist said it was a risk worth taking.
   ‘I think there is a moral good to doing it,’ he said. ‘If we do this right, the mosquitoes will get rid of malaria for us.’

Scientists rejoiced Friday after the Phoenix Mars lander confirmed their long-held belief that ice is hiding under the surface in the Red Planet’s northern region.
   The lander’s robotic arm started digging trenches into Martian soil after touching down near the planet’s north pole on May 25, revealing a white substance that scientists had said could be either salt or ice.
   Phoenix flexed its arm again to enlarge a trench on June 15. It then took pictures of eight bright bits of material the size of dice inside the hole, which scientists dubbed ‘Dodo-Goldilocks.’
   When the lander took new photographs of the trench four days later on Thursday, the material had vanished, settling the debate about whether it was salt or ice.
   Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California concluded that the material was frozen water that evaporated when exposed to the sun. Salt would not have reacted that way, scientists said.
   ‘We found what we were looking for,’ Phoenix science team member Mark Lemmon said in a news conference. ‘We came to this site because we were expected to find water ice.’
   Scientists believed that a vast sheet of ice was hiding in the planet’s North pole after NASA’s Mars Odyssey surveyed it in 2002.
   ‘If you had a big broom and swept this area off, we are on an icesheet,’ said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson.
   ‘We have found the proof that we have been seeking that showed that this bright material really is water ice, and not another substance,’ Smith said.
   ‘Now we know for sure that we are on an icy surface and we can really meet the science goal of our mission at the highest level,’ he said.
   Besides evidence of water, the three-month Phoenix mission is also hoping to find life-supporting organic minerals in the polar region. The probe is equipped with oven-like instruments that can melt any ice collected by the robotic arm and analyse the water.
   The trick, Smith said, is for Phoenix to move ice samples fast enough from the ground into one of the lander’s eight ovens within 30 minutes before it evaporates in the atmosphere.
   ‘Just the fact that there’s ice there doesn’t tell you if it’s habitable,’ he said.
   ‘With ice and no food it’s not a habitable zone. We don’t eat rocks. We have to have carbon chain materials that we ingest into our bodies to create new cells and give us energy. That’s what we eat and that’s what has to be there if you’re going to have a habitable zone on Mars.’
   Water filtered down on Mars may have left its mark on surrounding minerals, and impurities in the ice could tell a great deal about the climactic history of this region of the planet.
   Mars is currently too cold for liquid water but it is possible that in some distant past the polar regions were warmer, scientists posit.
   Water is a main ingredient for life and the polar region at some point may have been habitable: that is a puzzle Phoenix is exploring. Phoenix’s robotic arm made contact in another trench Thursday with a hard surface scientists believe could be an icy layer.
   ‘We have dug a trench and uncovered a hard layer at the same depth as the ice layer in our other trench,’ said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, co-investigator for the robotic arm.
   After trying to crack further into it, the arm became immobilised, which is the expected programmed reaction for when it hits a hard surface.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party is preparing for a two-pronged action programme against holding of local government polls.
   A joint meeting of the party’s executive committee members and top leaders of its front organisations on Saturday night decided to go for legal battle alongside protest programmes against the government’s move to hold local polls going beyond their constitutional jurisdiction.
   The party will also discuss the issues with its allies today to finalise the action programmes, said party leaders present at the meeting.
   The meeting, chaired by party secretary general Khandaker Delwar Hossain at his Sher-e-Bangla Nagar flat, also discussed strategies for a movement to press for release of party chairperson Khaleda Zia and treatment of her sons Tarique Rahman and Arafat Rahman abroad.
   After the meeting the party’s acting office secretary Rizvi Ahmed told New Age that the leaders of the front organisations had suggested different means for waging a movement against holding of local government polls.
   They renewed the party’s call for lifting of the state of emergency, release of all political detainees and steps to bring down prices of essentials.

Schedules for the interim government’s dialogue with the Awami League, Jatiya Party, PDP and Bangladesh Kalyan Party have been fixed to carry on the current consultation on transition from the interim regime.
   The talks with Bangladesh Kalyan Party will be held at the Chief Adviser’s Office at 3:30pm tomorrow, with Progressive Democratic Party at 10:00am Tuesday and Jatiya Party at 10:00am on June 30.
   The much-talked-about dialogue with the Awami League will be held at 11:00am on July 3, according to an official concerned at the Chief Adviser’s Office.

The police seized the private car of Shamim Eskandar, younger brother of detained former prime minister Khaleda Zia, from his Balubari residence in Dinajpur town on Friday.
   The police said they seized the silver-coloured car of Shamim Eskandar at about 6:30pm directed by the Anti-Corruption Commission as he did not mention about the vehicle in his wealth statement. On May 5, the ACC filed a case with the Ramna police station in Dhaka against Shamim Eskander, one of the high profile corruption suspects in the second list announced by the ACC, on charge of concealment of information in his wealth statement.

At least 50 people were injured in a clash between supporters of the Awami League and the BNP in a Magura village on Saturday.
   Quoting local people, the police said there was a longstanding enmity between local Awami League leader Mizanur Rahman and BNP leader Awal Mollah over establishing supremacy at village Bagura under sadar upazila.
   The clash ensued between the supporters of the two parties over a trifling matter at about 8:00am where both groups used lethal weapons.
   Later, the police brought the situation under control. The lawmen also arrested six persons. Separate cases were filed.

Former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, now in the US for medical treatment, is running temperature, a spokesman said on Saturday.
   ‘She had fever last (Friday) night. She was very sick all day yesterday,’ the spokesman told the news agency at about 11:00am Washington time Saturday.
   ‘She still has fever and been complaining of ear problems.’
   Hasina, the Awami League president, flew to Washington from Boston on Thursday and is set to fly to Orlando for ear treatment, said the spokesman, reached by phone around 9:00pm Bangladesh time.

Plainclothesmen picked up five people of one of the ethnic minorities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, including Alakesh Chakma, a leader of Democratic Youth Forum, from Hathazari on Saturday noon.
   Claiming to be members of law enforcing agencies, the plainclothesmen waylaid the CNG-run auto-rickshaw carrying Alakesh and four others at Hathazari when they were on their way back from Chittagong University at about noon, and took them away to an undisclosed location.
   Dr Oni Bikash Chakma, Pahari Chhatra Parishad’s leader Pulak Chakma, Shantimay Chakma and another unidentified person were also in the auto-rickshaw along with Alakesh, who is also the husband of Sonali Chakma, president of the United People’s Democratic Front-sponsored Hill Womens’ Federation.
   Friends and relatives of Alakesh said they could not trace their whereabouts till the filing of this report at 8:30pm yesterday.
   Mohammed Alamgir, officer-in-charge of Hathazari thana, said they had not received any complaint till Saturday afternoon in this regard.

Unnamed assailants stabbed to death a former union council member at Phultala in Khulna early Friday.
   The Phultala police said the assailants had entered the room of Sufia, a former union council member, at about 7:30 am and stabbed her indiscriminately.
   The family took her to Khulna Medical College Hospital where she died at around 11:00pm.
   The police said the killing might have happened as a sequel to land dispute.

The police arrested a member of the ultra-left outfit Purba Banglar Communist Party (ML-Red Flag) at Baghmara in Rajshahi on Saturday.
   The arrested was Amjad Hossain, 50, alias Bakshi Amjad, a resident of Hamirkutsha in the upazila.
   A police team conducted a raid on Hamirkutsha and arrested Amjad.
   The police said Amjed is wanted by the police. The arrested was produced in court which sent him to jail.

New Zealand have won the third one-day international against England by 22 runs in Bristol to level the series 1-1 with two matches to play on Saturday.
   Having been put in to bat New Zealand were all out for 182, Grant Elliott hitting his maiden one-day fifty and Kyle Mills smashing 47.
   England got off to a torrid start and collapsed from to 62-2 to 64-6.
   Paul Collingwood (34) and Graeme Swann (29) put on 64 for the seventh wicket but it was not enough.