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At least 50, including 10 lawmen, were injured and two double-decker launches were set on fire as several thousand shop owners and employees, and boatmen on Sunday clashed with lawmen in protest at the closure of a jetty at Charkaliganj Gudaraghat of Keraniganj.
   More than 10 launches were vandalised as the shop owners and boatmen, helped by the local residents, clashed with the law enforcers.
   The movement of all kinds of river vessel from the Sadarghat launch terminal remained suspended for four hours during the clashes. Launches and other vessels had been taken off the terminal till 2:30pm.
   Witnesses said several thousand people took to the streets and rampaged beginning at 7:30am in protest at the installation of a pontoon after closing a river terminal by the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority opposite the Sadarghat terminal.
   Several thousand shop owners and employees of the Zila Parishad Market, Alam Market, Chowdhurynagar Market, Nuru Market, and members of the Inland Water Transport Owners and Workers’ Association and local boatmen gathered at the place in the morning.
   They walked in a procession in protest at the BIWTA move and chanted slogans against the inland water transport authorities demanding an immediate removal of the pontoon from the place.
   A large number of police personnel reached the place to control the situation, but they failed to disperse the protesters.
   As the police charged at the protesters with truncheons, they pelted the lawmen with stones, which led to a series of clashes.
   The protesters, divided into small groups, started vandalising launches anchored at the terminal.
   At one point, they forcibly got on two double-decker launches — the MV Abhijan 3, bound for Barisal from Dhaka, and the
   Riaz 4, bound for Fatullah from Dhaka — and set fire to them.
   They stopped fire fighters when they rushed to put out the flames. The navy personnel later managed to put out the flames at about 1:30pm.
   The protesters vandalised 10 launches, including MV Awlad-3, MV Jubaraj-1, MV Manik-5, MV Manik-7 and MV Kajal.
   The protesters alleged the police had arrested former Zila Parishad Market Owners’ Association secretary Abdul Aziz, Obaydul Munshi, Babul Dhali and Abdus Sattar. The Dakkhin Keraniganj police officer-in-charge, however, brushed aside the allegation.
   ‘The terminal has been in use for 100 years, but the BIWTA has closed the terminal ignoring the facilities it offers for the people,’ Dinesh Sarkar, a local resident, told New Age.
   ‘More than 40,000 people are working in four markets to manufacture dresses for the domestic market. They will be in serious trouble if the terminal is closed,’ Dinesh said.
   A BIWTA official told New Age, ‘The authorities have decided to close the terminal at Charkaliganj following repeated accidents.’
   High police and BIWTA officials and the markets owners had a meeting to resolve the issue and they decided to remove the pontoon in a month and set up a permanent terminal near a mosque at the place.
   The duty officer at the police station told New Age, ‘The police have not arrested any one in this connection. But we are preparing to file a case.’

The detained Awami League president Sheikh Hasina on Sunday said she would contest the next general elections.
   Hasina, also a former prime minister, disclosed her decision as she talked with her lawyers and relations in a makeshift courtroom on the Jatiya Sangsad complex after appearing in the special judge’s court for hearing in the framing of charges in the MiG-29 corruption case.
   ‘In view of the present context and signing by 1.5 million people only in Dhaka in a fortnight the charter of demand for my release which showed their confidence in me, I must contest and win the next polls if the elections are held in a free and fair manner,’ she was quoted by her counsel Quamrul Islam as saying.
   On January 8, on a similar occasion, Hasina asked her party men to launch a movement demanding elections by July and gear up for contesting the elections even if she was left out.
   On April 27, however, she told her lawyers that neither her party would contest any polls without her nor she would retire from politics under any pressure.
   ‘Referring to the conflicting statements, we asked our leader about her latest stand on the issue,’ Quarmul told reporters after the talks, disclosing Hasina’s latest decision.
   ‘At least 2.5 million people in Dhaka signed a charter for my freedom…. It shows that people want me…. So, I will not bow to anybody under any pressure,’ Quamrul quoted Hasina as saying.
   According to her lawyers, Hasina also warned the government that the systematic movement already launched would no longer be carried out on a limited scale.
   She urged her party members to make preparation for the elections and remain alert so the polls were not forestalled on any pretext.
   Criticising the military-controlled interim government for holding the trial of graft cases on the Jatiya Sangsad complex, Hasina said, ‘The parliament is meant for making laws and policies of the state while special courts are being set up here one after another…. It cannot bring about any good for the nation.’
   ‘Reports have it that people have committed suicide for want of food…. It can by no means be acceptable,’ another counsel quoted Hasina as saying.

The Awami League will observe a token hunger strike today to press for its five-point demand, including release of the party chief Sheikh Hasina and announcement of election schedule.
   The six-hour token hunger strike will be staged from 10:00am at its central office on Bangabandhu Avenue and at its Dhanmondi office. Acting AL president Zillur Rahman will end the programme by offering juice to the leaders and activists at the Dhanmondi office.
   The AL dropped its earlier decision to observe the programme at all 22 thana units in the capital following a police ban and considering some other problems.
   The party got police permission to stage the token hunger strike at only two places – its central office on Bangabandhu Avenue and the Dhanmondi office.
   The Dhaka Metropolitan Police on Wednesday asked the AL to refrain from staging the hunger strike on May 5 in the capital, saying the programme would be contrary to the Emergency Power Rules as the party did not take permission.
   The party then applied to the DMP on Saturday asking permission to stage the programme and the authorities granted permission on condition that the party should not violate the emergency rules.
   AL central working committee on March 29 took the decision to stage the hunger strike countrywide and the party presidium at a meeting on April 23 fixed April 29 for the programme but later postponed the programme outside the capital and deferred the Dhaka programme to May 5.
   The acting AL general secretary, Syed Ashraful Islam, on Sunday said that the first phase of the agitation programmes demanding release and proper treatment of Sheikh Hasina would end through the token hunger strike and the party would think about further course of action later.
   The other demands of the party are – containing price hike of essentials, trial of war criminals, Hasina’s treatment abroad and improvement of law and order.

The BNP secretary general, Khandaker Delwar Hossain, on Sunday accused the government of Fakhruddin Ahmed of trying to prolong the state of emergency by giving misinterpretation of the constitution in a bid to cling to power.
   He also alleged that the Election Commission was undertaking huge tasks like delimitation of the constituencies as part of a plot to defer parliamentary polls.
   ‘They are prolonging the state of emergency by giving misinterpretation of the constitution to cling to power with an ulterior motive denying the people their fundamental rights’, Delwar told reporters at his Sher-e-Bangla Nagar house.
   He questioned the legality of the proclamation of a state of emergency on January 11, 2007 and termed it unconstitutional, unwarranted and against the fundamental rights of the people. ‘The president can declare a state of emergency but such proclamation requires counter signature of the prime minister for its validity. But there was no prime minister in the country when emergency was declared and the chief adviser does not act as the prime minister.’
   Delwar, also chief whip of the eighth parliament, said that a state of emergency must to be approved by parliament within 120 days of its declaration otherwise it would terminate automatically.
   ‘A caretaker government by no way can stay in power for more than 90 days and a departure from the provision is against the spirit of the concept of the caretaker government. But this government is staying in power illegally, promulgating one ordinance after another using the emergency powers rules’, he said.
   ‘Those who were behind the proclamation of state of emergency will have to face the people’, he said.
   The BNP stalwart also termed delimitation of the parliamentary constituencies ‘illegal, ill-motivated and untimely’.
   ‘The Election Commission has undertaken such Herculean task to defer parliamentary polls as part of their design to pull rank and make political
   parties form a rubber stamp parliament… Nobody asked the commission to go for delimitation.
   The political parties rather have long been opposing such moves. Despite that the commission began redrawing the boundaries of the constituencies’, he said.
   ‘The commission has undertaken the task unnecessarily… it has triggered controversy over settled things. We have long been saying that people have no confidence in this Election Commission and it has lost its credibility for its activities’, Delwar said.
   ‘Enough is enough…return to the path of the constitution… safeguard the country’s sovereignty…’, he said declaring, ‘No polls without Khaleda Zia and the BNP will be acceptable in this country’.
   He called on the government to release Khaleda Zia and [Awami League president] Sheikh Hasina and hold the elections immediately.
   Delwar also alleged that influence of a ‘black hand’ had crippled the judiciary denying the people justice.
   He also censured the interim administration for allocating blocks of natural resources to foreign companies. ‘They have no right to make such deals with foreign companies.’
   He told a questioner that BNP was preparing for a tougher movement against the government. ‘We are moving step by step.’

The process of the much-talked-about dialogues between the military-backed government and political parties for smooth transition to democracy has apparently slowed down.
   Officials, however, said that the recommendations that resulted from informal parleys between the parties and a panel of advisers of the interim administration are still being reviewed by the Chief Adviser’s Office.
   They expect that chief adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed, who had announced in January that he would begin dialogues with the parties for smooth transition to democracy through a credible election, will make a fresh announcement on the time, venue and modalities of the talks ‘very soon’.
   ‘You will see progress in the dialogue process within a day or two, Inshallah [God willing]. Everything will be made public the moment any decision is taken in this regard,’ said the local government, rural development and cooperatives adviser, Anwarul Iqbal, in response to reporters’ queries at the secretariat on Sunday.
   The government took four months to hold ‘informal consultations’ with the political parties and representatives of the few hand-picked civil groups in the run-up to formal dialogues since the chief adviser made the above announcement in January.
   The four-member panel of advisers, headed by communications adviser Ghulam Quader, submitted a set of recommendations to the chief adviser after wrapping up the consultations on April 30.
   The matter was not discussed by the council of advisers although a senior official at the Chief Adviser’s Office had earlier told the media that the recommendations would be placed before the cabinet for discussion.
   When his attention was drawn to media report that the chief adviser may address the nation on May 8 to inform the people of his strategy for the planned dialogues, Fakhruddin’s press secretary told New Age that the date has not been fixed as yet.
   In his reply to a similar question, Anwarul Iqbal — one of the members of the four-member advisory panel that held consultations with parties last month — said that he could not mention any specific date. But he assured the media that the chief adviser may address the nation by that time.
   When his attention was drawn to the possibility of the presence of army representatives in the dialogue, he said he had seen it in the media reports but knew nothing about it.
   Commerce adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman said the government was still preparing for the final talks. ‘Today’s meeting of the council of advisers will also discuss the dialogues…But the reality is that the preparation for the dialogues is still continuing,’ he said while talking to reporters at the secretariat earlier in the day.
   He, however, expressed the hope that they would enter the next phase of dialogue soon.
   The four-member panel of advisers, tasked with preparing the groundwork for the dialogues, concluded the nearly month-long pre-dialogue consultations with political parties and business leaders on April 29.
   When he was asked whether there would be any army representation in the final dialogues with the parties, Zillur also declined to say anything in this regard.

At least 351 people were killed and nearly 100,000 left homeless when tropical cyclone Nargis tore through Myanmar, razing thousands of buildings and knocking out power lines, state media said Sunday.
   Residents awoke Sunday to scenes of devastation after the cyclone bore through swathes of southern Myanmar late Friday and Saturday, uprooting trees, cutting phone lines and water pipes, and clogging streets with debris.
   Myanmar’s state channel MRTV said on their Sunday evening news broadcast that 109 people had been killed in Haing Gyi island, just off the coast of southwestern Ayeyawaddy division where the storm first hit.
   One person was killed in Nyaung Done, a township also in Ayeyawaddy, the channel reported.
   An information ministry official and state media had already reported that another 222 people had died in Ayeyawaddy, while 19 others were killed in the economic hub Yangon.
   The authorities have declared disaster zones in the regions of Yangon, Ayeyawaddy, Bago, Mon and Karen states.
   MRTV said that about 20,000 houses have been destroyed on Haing Gyi island, and 92,706 people there were now homeless.
   In one mainland township in Ayeyawaddy, 75 per cent of all homes were believed to be destroyed, the channel said, adding that authorities had launched a rescue operation in the region.
   Nargis made landfall late Friday around the mouth of the Ayeyawaddy (Irrawaddy) river, about 220 kilometres southwest of Yangon, before hitting the country’s economic hub.
   The cyclone brought down power and phone lines, cutting off the military-run nation one week before a crucial referendum on its new constitution – the first polling in Myanmar since general elections in 1990.
   The coastal area of Ayeyawaddy appears worst hit by the natural disaster, but Yangon was also battered.
   Traffic lights, billboards and street lamps littered the roads after being knocked over by strong winds.
   Trees in the leafy city were uprooted, crushing buildings and cars, while water pipes were also cut, forcing people out onto the streets with buckets to try and buy water from the few shops that remained open.
   Roofs of houses have been torn away, while only a few taxis and buses – which tripled their fares – braved the debris-clogged streets on Sunday.
   The information ministry official said seven empty boats had sunk in the country’s main port, while Yangon’s international airport was closed.
   State media said the airport was due to reopen on Monday.
   ‘Now the military and the police have started to clean the city,’ the official said. ‘We are trying to get back to the normal situation as soon as possible.’
   Electricity supplies and telecommunications in Yangon have been cut since late Friday night as the storm bore down from the Bay of Bengal, packing winds of 190-240 kilometres per hour.
   There are also fears that the poorer outlying areas of Yangon, with their flimsy houses, might have been hard hit.
   ‘A tea shop owner told me that many people in a Yangon suburb need urgent help for food and accommodation,’ one food vendor said. ‘Some children are not even wearing clothes.’
   Myanmar’s infrastructure has been run into the ground by decades of mismanagement by the military, which has ruled since 1962.
   It was not immediately known whether damage from the storm would affect next Saturday’s referendum on a new constitution, which the ruling junta says will pave the way for democratic elections in 2010.
   Critics, however, say the charter will simply enshrine the military’s power.
   Residents in Yangon said they had heard speculation that the referendum might be postponed, but the information ministry official refused to comment.
   ‘We cannot say anything, it is up to the senior authorities,’ he said.
   Thailand’s meteorological department downgraded Nargis to a depression on Sunday, but warned of flash floods and heavy rains in northern, central and eastern Thai provinces as the storm crept over the border from Myanmar.
   An official at Thailand’s disaster prevention department said as of Sunday evening, there were no reports of severe flooding in the kingdom.

The president, Iajuddin Ahmed, the chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, and the foreign adviser, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, have expressed their deep shock at the loss of lives and damages caused by cyclone Nargis in Myanmar.
   The president, in a message to the chairman, Senior General Than Shwe, of Myanmar, on Sunday said: ‘I believe, your excellency, under your able leadership the resilient people of Myanmar will soon overcome the consequences of the devastating cyclone.’
   In another message to the Myanmar prime minister, General Thein Sein, the chief adviser said: ‘I would further express to your excellency and through you to the people of Myanmar our deepest condolences and sympathies to the bereaved families. I hope that the resilient people of Myanmar would be able to quickly recover from the losses and the aftermath of the disaster.
   In a similar message to his Myanmar counterpart U Nyan Win, the foreign adviser also expressed his belief that the resilient and courageous people of Myanmar would soon recover from the losses caused by the cyclone. More than 240 people were killed and thousands of homes destroyed in Myanmar as powerful cyclone Nargis hit the country’s commercial capital early Saturday.

Flight operations at the Zia International Airport remained suspended for about two hours as an Airbus of the national flag carrier, Biman Bangladesh Airlines Limited, overshot the runway when turning to the taxiway after landing on Sunday evening, said official sources.
   All passengers aboard the aircraft escaped unhurt, official sources confirmed.
   The BG118 London-Sylhet Dhaka flight skidded some 55 feet off the runway after landing at ZIA at 6:45pm with 143 passengers. All of them escaped unhurt, a Biman official told New Age.
   Flight operations resumed at 9:00pm after the plane was towed to the hanger.
   Two committees were formed – one by the Biman and the other by the Civil Aviation Authority – to investigate the accident.
   Asked about the reason for the accident, Biman’s managing director MA Momen said, ‘The accident took place when the plane was turning towards the taxiway from the runway after landing… We will know about the reason after the investigation.’
   All passengers escaped unhurt as the speed of the aircraft was very slow, he added.
   The Biman’s seven-member committee, led by its director for customer services Aminul Haque, has been asked to report within 15 days while the four-member committee, led by wing commander Quamrul of the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh, has been asked to submit its report within four days, said officials.
   Flight schedules of different international airlines were disrupted as the airport was declared shut down for two hours, according to sources at ZIA.

Power generation hit a new low on Sunday evening after two 150 MW units of the Ashuganj power station tripped, further aggravating the severe ongoing electricity crisis throughout the country.
   The over-all load-shedding in the evening peak hours surged to around 1,700 MW as the Power Development Board’s generation was only around 3,329 MW against the demand of over 5,000 MW.
   The peak generation, which was over 3,500 MW on Saturday, plummeted on Sunday evening after two the Ashuganj units tripped in the morning because of technical glitches.
   Officials at the PDB said that power generation was also low because of the ongoing gas shortage, which has forced PDB to generate around 400 MW less power at the Rauzan, Ghorashal and Mymensingh power plants.
   The frequency of load-shedding was much lower on Saturday as the demand for power was only around 4,500 MW as it was a weekend.
   Although the 110 MW Khulna power station, which tripped two to three days back, resumed operation on Sunday evening, the over-all generation was low because of the closure of the Ashuganj units.
   The peak hour generation in the last two months was only reduced to less than 3,500 MW twice — 3,491 MW on April 2 and 3,173MW on April 3.
   Most parts of the capital faced severe load-shedding on Sunday evening, the periods ranging five to eight hours, while other parts of the country underwent 10 to 12 hours of load-shedding.
   The capital, which received around 1,200-1,300 MW in the last few days, got 1,170 MW on Sunday evening.

The leader of Nepal’s Maoists, Prachanda, says the victory of his left-wing former rebels in last month’s landmark elections is a sign of the global resurgence of communism.
   The former schoolteacher, once branded a ‘terrorist’ and wanted by Interpol, is now vying to be the first president of a republican Nepal, and he says his party’s success at the ballot box is rooted in its communist ideals.
   ‘The revolutionary process is now happening in third world countries, and when it is completed in developing countries, a new wave of socialist revolution will be there in developed countries,’ Prachanda said.
   ‘Here in Nepal we are trying our best to develop our ideology according to the changed situation,’ the 54-year-old told reporters from AFP and an Italian news magazine.
   ‘Communists all over the world need to understand the new challenges, the new developments of the 21st century.’
   The Maoists won 220 seats – more than twice as many as its closest rival, the Nepali Congress – in the April 10 elections for a 601-member body that will rewrite Nepal’s constitution and abolish the monarchy.
   ‘Our victory in the constituent assembly elections will be a big reference point for Maoists all over the world,’ said the moustachioed Maoist, whose nom-de-guerre means ‘the fierce one.’
   After living underground for 25 years, Prachanda emerged from the shadows to sign a peace deal in 2006 and end a decade-long revolt that left at least 13,000 people dead and destroyed Nepal’s already fragile economy.
   The Maoists are now promising radical change in Nepal, a traditionally conservative country with strict caste, ethnic and gender divisions where around 31 per cent of people live on less than a dollar a day.
   ‘We have come to a new understanding that multi-party competition is a must, even in socialism,’ said the Maoist leader, whose party displayed portraits of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong at campaign rallies.
   ‘Without having multi-party competition, it is not possible to create a vibrant society.’
   The Maoists warned last week that they would form a new government with or without the help of the mainstream political parties with which they signed the 2006 deal – and which they resoundingly defeated in the April elections.
   Senior leaders from the Nepali Congress, firm favourites before the shock results, have suggested the current interim administration led by the prime minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, should remain.
   But Prachanda has said he has the right to lead the next government.
   The Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal are now holding internal meetings amid deep divisions about whether they should join the former rebels.
   Under the timetable laid out in Nepal’s interim constitution, the first meeting of the constituent assembly has to be held before May 26.
   The Maoists promised voters to bring about ‘revolutionary’ land reform but they have also said they want to attract foreign investment and start to tap the Himalayan country’s massive potential for hydro-electricity.
   ‘We are interested in private investment from inside and outside the country, but the priority of the investment will be decided by the Nepalese and Nepalese government,’ Prachanda said.
   The Maoist leader said he believes that no matter what follows, his party has secured a place in history.
   ‘I think history should remember our ideology and actions as this is something new for the 21st century,’ he said.
   ‘Communism has revived itself from all the old experiences. New ideology, new strategy has been created by the Nepalese Maoists.’

The Anti-Corruption Commi-ssion in Chittagong has filed 110 corruption cases after investigation in 16 months since the declaration of the state of emergency on January 11, 2007, said its director Julfikar Ali Mojumder.
   Talking with newsmen in his office on Sunday, he said investigation process was widened to trace corruption in corporate bodies, including the Chittagong Development Authority, railway, water supply agency, port, customs and Chittagong Medical College Hospital.
   ‘We have also launched investigation regarding some high-profile businessmen, including Mir Kasem Ali of Keari Sindabad, ship-breaker Shawkat Ali, also known as Disco Shawkat, and Mohammad Yahiya,’ he said. “We already stepped up our activities. Investigation regarding corrupt officials at Chittagong port and customs will be carried out in phases.’
   ‘We have planned to launch investigation soon into land offices and sub-registrar’s offices,’ he said. ‘We are not only trying to curb corruption, but we are also taking preventive measures by launching campaign to create mass awareness of corruption and unethical practices.’
   He said 99 upazila committees and 11 district committees had already been formed involving local people to create awareness of corruption. ‘Without the help of local people, preventive measures against corruption by awareness creation cannot be successful.’ He also said preparations were afoot to hold a rally at Patiya on May 11 to raise voice against corruption.
   A concert for youth will also be organised at the place the same day to motivate the young generation against corruption, he said.
   The Anti-Corruption Commission chairman, Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury, and the officials of the Bangladesh chapter of the Transparency International are expected to join the rally at Patiya, he said.

The government has decided to allow kindergarten students to take the primary school scholarship examinations from academic year 2009, sources in the Directorate of Primary Education have told New Age.
   ‘We decided in the past week that Class V students in kindergartens would be allowed to take the primary school scholarship exams which are now centrally controlled by the directorate,’ an official said on Sunday. ‘Kindergarten authorities have for long demanded that their students should be allowed to take the exams.’
   The kindergartens must follow the National Curriculum and Textbook Board curriculum for their students to take the exams.
   In the existing system, more than five lakh students of six categories of primary schools are allowed take the scholarship exams. The number of total primary scholarship is 45,000. Thirty per cent of the total students in Class V in every school are allowed to take the exams.
   There are hundreds of kindergartens, including cadet madrassahs, and English medium schools across the country and some of the schools offer O-Level and A-Level courses under the University of Cambridge and the University of London, but most of them are not registered with the government.
   There are no statistics available with any government agency on the number of schools offering courses from pre-schooling to A-Levels. The leaders of the association of kindergartens claimed the number of such institutions offering courses up to Class VIII was around 40,000.

At least 800 houses were inundated as an embankment broke at two points at Sutarkhali under Dacope upazila in Khulna on Sunday due to pressure of current triggered by high tide.
   Shrimps of around 300 small enclosures were also washed away after the embankment on the River Shibsha collapsed in the morning.
   Sutarkhali union council chairman Bidhu Narayan Sarkar told New Age that the embankment developed cracks at Gunari village at around 9:30am. As a result, at least 800 houses were inundated while shrimps of 300 small enclosures were washed away, he added.
   Thana nirbahi officer Md Mohsin Ali said they had temporarily repaired the collapsed portion near Biswas Bari with the help of local people. The administration with the help of locals had been trying to repair the collapsed part at Gunari zero point, he added.

Law enforcers on Sunday continued with combing operation against ultra-left Purba Banglar Communist Party activists in Rajshahi, Natore and Naogaon.
   The Baghmara police, meanwhile, produced 10 suspected ultra-left operatives arrested earlier in court on Sunday.
   Four of them are arrested in the case filed in connection with Friday’s killing of a policeman and looting of firearms at the Taherpur police outpost and 10 are wanted PBCP activists by the police.
   The chief metropolitan magistrate’s court remanded them in police custody for four days for interrogation.
   A constable at the Taherpur police outpost was killed allegedly by ultra-left Sarbahara activists at Baghmara Friday night. Four constables and a member of the Ansars were injured. The ultra-left operatives also snatched away five rifles and bullets from the outpost.
   The arrested are Abdur Rahim of Arjanpara, Santosh Kumar Mohanta, Raihanul Haque, Jalal Uddin, Idrish Ali and Ismail Hossain of Jamlai, Zakaria of Bhabanpur, Belal Hossain of Ramrama, Shafiqul Islam of Udmara and Monirul of Taherpur under Baghmara.
   The police said the joint forces continued with raids on Baghmara, Puthia, and Durgapur in Rajshahi and Naldanga in Natore and neighbouring areas in Naogaon looking for Purba Banglar Communist Party operatives.
   The Rajshahi superintendent of police, Didar Ahmed, they were yet to recover the firearms looted from the police outpost on Friday. The joint forces raided areas and rounded up about a hundred crime suspects, he said.
   The PBCP activists who killed four policemen at Chowbaria in Naogaon in 2006 might have killed the policeman at Taherpur and looted firearms, law enforcers said.
   ‘We think that the Sarbahara acivists who killed four cops and looted firearms at Chowbaria in Naogaon on August 25, 2006 might have killed the policeman and looted firearms at Taherpur as most of them are now released on bail,’ Didar said.
   After the Taherpur incident, at least 12 lawmen were killed and 28 government firearms looted in attacks by ultra-left operatives in Rajshahi, Natore, Naogaon and Sirajganj in five years and a half, said a source in the police.
   Police subinspector Nasirul Haque filed a case against 20 to 25 unnamed PBCP activists with the Baghmara police station on Saturday. Faizul Islam, the officer-in-charge of the police station, has been made the investigation officer.

National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Port on Sunday alleged that some army men were creating panic among the people of Phulbari in Dinajpur in the name of taking opinion on the controversial open-pit coal project.
   It also alleged that the British government through its high commissioner in Dhaka was continuing lobbying in favour of Asia Energy in Bangladesh and creating pressure on the government to allow the company for coal mining.
   ‘We have recently come to know that some members of the army wearing military uniforms have been visiting different areas of the coalfield zone in their vehicles and asking people whether they will agree to leave the village in exchange of compensation,’ said the committee’s member-secretary Anu Muhammad at a press conference in the city.
   ‘If the government really wants to conduct survey on the coal project to take people’s opinion, it can do that. We are also ready to extend support. But it is similar to take consent by intimidation, if any army man with arms conducts public opinion survey,’ he said.
   Anu also condemned such activities and demanded immediate end to such move.
   Replying to a question on whether the army was supporting the Asia Energy’s proposed open-pit mine at Phulbari, Anu said, ‘We do not know anything about it. We do not know why the army is there. We also want to understand what the army is doing there. We request the government to clear its position in this regard.’
   When contacted, an official of the Inter Service Public Relations, however, said they were not aware of any allegation made by anyone regarding to any study. He declined to elaborate.
   Anu said Asia Energy had engaged some lobbyists, comprising former bureaucrats, consultants and journalists, in pressing ahead with the devastating project. The company was also campaigning in northern districts that it was a ‘development project’, he added.
   He called upon the British government and lending agencies like Asian Development Bank to stop lobbying in favour of the devastating project of Asia Energy which would destroy the environment in the northern region and push thousands of people on streets.
   Anu demanded immediate scrapping of the Phulbari coal project and ouster of the company from the country as per the agreement signed with the people of Phulbari in 2006.
   The committee convenor Sheikh Md Shahidullah said the people of Phulbari had given their verdict against the coal project, and there was no need to conduct public opinion survey.
   When asked what the committee would do, if the government did not scrap the project, he said, ‘We are protesting against it and we will continue with our protest.’
   Three persons were killed and few others injured at Phulbari on August 26, 2006 when law enforcers opened fire on the people who were staging demonstration in protest against the planned open pit mining project.
   Professor Hossain Monsur of Dhaka University, Professor Shamsul Alam of Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology and left leader Ruhin Hossain Prince were, among others, present at the press conference.

At least one cyclonic storm may brew off one to two depressions forming in the Bay of Bengal this month, the Met Office said on Sunday in its a long-range forecast for May.
   The forecast issued after a meeting of experts at the Met Office said the northern and central regions of the country may experience five to six moderate to severe nor’westers or thunderstorms. Elsewhere four to five mild to moderate nor’westers and thunderstorms are likely.
   The cyclone in the Bay, if formed would be named Abe, a Sri Lankan word from a panel of code names for the Bay of Bengal cyclones as listed by the ESCAP for this year, a senior meteorologist and cyclone expert Sujit Kumar Dev Sharma told the news agency.
   The forecast further said two to three moderate to severe heat waves (38-42 degrees Celsius) may rage over the northern and central regions, elsewhere may experience mild to moderate heat waves (36- 40 C), the monthly weather forecast said.
   This month’s rainfall is likely to be 10 to 20 per cent in excess of normal average rainfall. But the rainfall in April was 78 per cent less than the normal precipitations.

The chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, on Sunday said the caretaker government had carried out reforms to create a level playing field and remove the influence of money, muscle and misuse of authority in the elections.
   He reaffirmed that the caretaker government is committed to holding a free, fair, neutral and credible election.
   The chief adviser made the remarks when newly appointed US ambassador in Dhaka James F Moriarty made a courtesy call on him at the Chief Adviser’s Office.
   During the meeting, dialogues with political parties were discussed. The chief adviser told the US ambassador that series of meetings had taken place between the advisers and different political parties and he got feedback of the talks as the advisers submitted him a report on the outcome of the pre-dialogue talks.
   He further told the envoy that he would address the nation soon after discussing the report submitted by the advisers. Moriarty said the US government was fully supportive to the steps taken by the caretaker government and the Election Commission and was following the road map.
   ‘The support will continue,’ he said, adding that the US is looking forward to a free, fair and credible election in Bangladesh. Fakhruddin said the Election Commission was going ahead with its roadmap and it also held talks with political parties on reforms of electoral rules and would place recommendations on the electoral rules.
   He said the government wanted to hold all the future elections, not only the next election, with a high standard.
   The chief adviser said preparation of voters’ list involving about 80 million voters with photographs in a short time
   was a gigantic task and it was going to be accomplished successfully.
   The US ambassador termed impressive the reforms done by the caretaker government under the leadership of Fakhruddin. He apprised the chief adviser about additional 10 million US dollar financial support to the food programme for the people affected by November 15 cyclone Sidr.
   Thanking for the US support, the chief adviser said the government would try to put it in best use.
   Referring to president Bush’s 770 million US dollar global food aid, he hoped that Bangladesh would be considered for this programme. On food and grains, the chief adviser said despite natural calamities, farmers in the country, by dint of their resilience and
   hard labour as well as cooperation of the government, had been able to produce bumper crops of paddy, potato, wheat and maize.
   He said the government would build up a higher level of food security to cope with any shortage of food. Procurement of food and grains will continue to this end.
   The ambassador said in the present context of global food situation, food security was essential.
   The chief hoped that the bilateral relations between Bangladesh and the United States would assume a new dimension during the tenure of the new ambassador.
   He said the relations between Bangladesh and US were based on a strong foundation. The USA is a big investor in Bangladesh and also a major destination of a lot of Bangladesh exports.
   Secretary to the Chief Adviser’s Office Kazi Aminul Islam and chief adviser’s press secretary Syed Fahim Munaim were present.

The hearing in the framing of charges against the detained former prime minister Sheikh Hasina and six others, including four former top military officials, in the MiG-29 case was on Sunday deferred again till May 11.
   Dhaka special judge Golam Murtoza Majumder deferred the hearing as former army chief Mostafizur Rahman again failed to appear in court because of illness.
   As the case came up for hearing in the makeshift courtroom on the Jatiya Sangsad complex, Mostafiz’s counsel SM Quamrul Hasan submitted a petition seeking time for the hearing saying that the former army chief, now on bail, was being treated in Apollo Hospitals.
   He is now under close observation of the doctors in the hospital after a coronary angiogram, the counsel said.
   The chief prosecutor, Sharfuddin Ahmed Khan Mukul, pleaded the hearing in the framing of charges should be started, saying that the presence of the accused in court was not mandatory for hearing.
   Hasina’s defence counsel Quamrul Islam argued there were a number of decisions made by the Supreme Court for not holding the hearing in the framing of charges without the presence of the accused.
   The chief prosecutor argued that such decisions could not be followed any more as the law had already been amended after such verdicts.
   The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act was amended on April 18, 2007 stipulating that the trial in any case under the law must be completed in 45 days form the date of taking cognisance of the case, he argued, adding the court had to conclude the trial of the MiG-29 case in 45 days.
   After hearing both the sides, Golam Mortuza abruptly deferred the hearing till May 11 without giving any ruling on the issue.
   On April 27, the same court, after hearing the debate of the counsels on the same issue, deferred the hearing till May 4 without giving any ruling.
   On April 20, the court deferred till April 27 the hearing as Hasina, also the Awami League president, and the former army chief could not appear in court because of illness.
   The five others accused in the case — former air chief Jamaluddin Ahmed, former defence secretary Syed Yousuf Hossain, former air force officer Mirza Akhter Maruf, former joint secretary of the defence ministry Mohammad Hossain Serniabat and businessman Noor Ali — were also present in court on Sunday. All of them are on bail.
   Abdullah Al Zahid, deputy director of the now-defunct Bureau of Anti-Corruption, filed the case with the Tejgaon police on December 11, 2001 accusing Hasina and the six doing corruption in the purchase of eight MiG-29 fighter planes from Russia in 1999, which caused to the state treasury a loss of Tk 720 crore.
   After the charge sheet had been filed on January 29, 2003, the seven accused filed petitions with the High Court seeking the case to be quashed and the court stayed the trial proceedings until the court’s rules were resolved.
   There had been a long pause as the government side stopped pursuing the lawsuit. Now that a drive is on against high-profile corruption suspects, especially politicians, under the state of emergency in the interim period, the government side moved with this and all the other such dormant cases.
   The High Court on September 6, 2007 cleared the way for the trial of the accused, except for Mostafizur, rejecting their petitions which sought the case to be quashed. The same court on January 6, 2008 also cleared the way for the trial of Mostafizur.
   Hasina on March 6 filed the petition seeking permission to appeal against the High Court verdict followed by the six other accused and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on March 17 rejected the petitions, upholding the High Court verdicts.

Afghanistan’s government said Sunday the group behind an attempt to kill President Hamid Karzai was linked to Al-Qaeda and two government workers have been arrested for their alleged role in the attack.
   Karzai survived the April 27 attack on a military parade, but three other Afghans were killed, including a parliamentarian.
   ‘The angle that Al-Qaeda had a role in that is very clear,’ intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh told reporters.
   The attackers were assisted by two government employees, one of them a weapons expert, Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told the same press conference.
   ‘There are two people — one of them working in interior ministry and the other in defence ministry — who cooperated with them and have been arrested,’ he said.
   The ‘mastermind’ of the attack was also involved in the January storming of a five-star hotel in Kabul, Saleh said. That strike left eight people dead, including at least three foreign nationals.
   The man, identified as Homayun, was killed in a raid by security forces on his Kabul hideout in the past week.
   Another militant, a woman and a child were also killed in the operation on Wednesday, in which rebels shot dead three Afghan intelligence agents. Saleh said the woman was a would-be suicide attacker.
   The operation had neutralised the cell, which had been involved in a series of suicide attacks, car bombs and assassination attempts, and was linked to militants based in Miranshah in Pakistan, the intelligence chief said. The Taliban said it was responsible for the April 27 attack on Karzai.
   The attackers had holed themselves up in a hotel about 500 metres from where Karzai and Afghanistan’s top leadership were seated with a host of foreign diplomats ahead of the parade.
   The parliamentarian and a tribal chief were killed, while a boy died in return fire. Three rebels also died.
   It was one of the most brazen attacks in an insurgency by the Taliban, who were forced out of government in a US-led invasion in late 2001 for harbouring Al-Qaeda — which at the time had training camps here.

Soaring food prices may throw millions of people back into poverty in Asia and undo a decade of gains, regional leaders said on Sunday while calling for increased agricultural production to meet rising demand.
   Asia — home to two-thirds of the world’s poor — risks rising social unrest as a doubling of wheat and rice prices in the last year has slammed people spending more than half their income on food, the Japanese finance minister, Fukushiro Nukaga, said during the Asian Development Bank’s annual meeting.
   If food prices rise 20 per cent, 100 million poor people across Asia could be forced back into extreme poverty, warned the Indian finance secretary, D Subba Rao.
   ‘In many countries that will mean the undoing of gains in poverty reduction achieved in the past decade of growth,’ Rao told the ADB’s meeting in Madrid.
   A 43 per cent rise in global food prices in the year to March sparked violent protests in Cameroon and Burkina Faso as well as rallies in Indonesia following reports of starvation deaths.
   Many governments have introduced food subsidies or export restrictions to counter rising costs, but they have only exacerbated price rises on global markets, Nukaga said.
   ‘Those hardest hit are the poorest segments of the population, especially the urban poor,’ Nukaga told delegates.
   ‘It will have a negative impact on their living standards and their nutrition, a situation that may lead to social unrest and distrust,’ he added.
   The ADB estimates the very poorest people in the Asia Pacific region spend 60 per cent of their income on food and a further 15 per cent on fuel — the key basic commodities of life which have seen their prices rise relentlessly in the last year.
   Japan is one of 67 ADB member economies gathered in Spain to discuss measures to counter severe weather and rising demand that have ended decades of cheap food in developing nations.
   The Asia-Pacific has three times the population of Europe — around 1.5 billion people — living on less than $2 a day.
   Rice is a staple food in most Asian nations and any shortage threatens instability, making governments extremely sensitive to its price.
   Decade high inflation, driven by food and raw materials costs, has topped the agenda of the ADB’s annual meeting.
   The Manila-based multilateral lender has had to defend itself from US criticism it is focused on middle income countries and has neglected Asia’s rural and urban poor.
   Smaller countries such as Cambodia urged the ADB to focus its lending on the poorest Asian states.
   The bank on Saturday called for immediate action from global governments to combat soaring food prices and twinned it with a pledge of fresh financial aid to help feed the Asia Pacific region’s poorest nations.
   Leading members Japan, China and India backed long-term ADB strategy to provide low-cost credit and technical assistance to raise agricultural productivity.
   The United Nations said the rural poor represented a political time-bomb for Asia that could only be defused by higher agricultural investment and better technology.
   ‘Unless you can look at the plight of the poorest farmers in the region and how they are going to add to the numbers of very poor, very deprived people, we are unnecessarily going to create a problem that will erupt into a political crisis,’ said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN panel on climate change.

Yet another public sector institution, the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board, is set to become a public limited company in line with the interim government’s plan to wash its hands of businesses and services.
   The state-owned telecoms service provider is to get on the bandwagon with Biman and three state-owned lenders corporatised since the military-backed government assumed office in January 2007.
   The council of advisers at a meeting on Sunday with the chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, in the chair, gave the final nod to a proposal to turn one of the largest public sector service providers into a public limited company, apparently to face the future challenges in the telecom sector.
   The country’s president, Iajuddin Ahmed, is expected to promulgate an ordinance to this effect very soon.
   An official said that the meeting, attended by the advisers to government and special assistants to the chief adviser, approved the ordinance to turn the state-owned land-phone operator into a fully government-owned company as the Bangladesh Telecom Company Ltd.
   The authorised capital of the BTCL will be Tk 3,000 crore.
   The government had earlier launched a World Bank-funded project to infuse efficiency into the public sector telecom authorities.
   The government has no plan to offload its present staffers though they have no experience of working for private sector companies. However, if anyone intends to take advantage of the golden handshake, he or she will be free to do so. The BTTB has around 15,000 employees against the 19,500 posts sanctioned by the government.
   The government will also open a new department to rehabilitate the inefficient instead of ousting them, as per the provision of the ordinance. The board has not recruited any new staff since 1984.
   The proposed company will have a nine-member board with the telecom secretary as its chairman and the company’s managing director as the member secretary.
   The government, in September 2005, commissioned a German consultancy firm, Detecon International, to chalk out the modalities for turning the BTTB into a PLC.
   Detecon gave the government a marketing plan and strategies as well as a business plan for the new company.
   The government said that turning the board into a PLC would help to bring about efficiency in the state-owned telecom operator.
   The council of advisers also approved another proposal to sign and ratify the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, said an official at the Chief Adviser’s Office.
   The council also sent back a few proposals to amend provisions of the Town Improvement Act 1953 to the housing and public works ministry for further examination.
   The interim government turned the loss-making Bangladesh Biman Corporation into a public limited company in July last year to make it commercially viable.

The United States will provide Bangladesh $40 million in food aid for supporting a schoolchildren-feeding programme for the next three years and partly for distribution to the Sidr-affected people.
   The US ambassador in Dhaka, James F Moriarty, made the announcement on Sunday, reiterating that Washington has emphasised the importance of democracy, development and denial of space to terrorists for the sake of amicable bilateral relations.
   A $30 million component of the assistance is meant to benefit approximately 3,50,000 schoolchildren throughout the country by doling out a 75-gram packet of fortified biscuits for each student daily — one of the programmes aimed at attaining universal primary education.
   ‘We are providing a means and an incentive for children to stay in school so that Bangladesh can prepare the next generation of leaders,’ the ambassador told journalists in a written statement at the American Club.
   He did not mention whether Washington would help Bangladesh in overcoming the globally soaring prices of food-grains by import or by helping it to attain self-sufficiency in food, but the mission director of the US Agency for International Development, Denise Rollins, said that the US has no assistance programme on budget supports for offsetting the price-hikes of food items.
   When he was asked if the $40 million food aid was part of President George W Bush’s announced $700 million assistance, Rollins replied that it was a component of a humanitarian assistance programme worth $2.1 billion.
   She acknowledged that the food price-hike was a cause of concern in Bangladesh and elsewhere in the world, but ducked a question on making bio-fuel by what US newspaper Washington Post termed ‘Siphon off Corn to Fuel our Cars’.
   However, the $10 million new emergency food aid in the $40 million assistance package will benefit those who are still struggling to recover from the devastating effects of cyclone Sidr, said Moriarty, adding that this donation would be used for direct food distribution, rehabilitation work through food-for-work and cash-for-work programmes, emergency school feeding, and feeding pregnant and lactating mothers and infants.
   In all, the US government has pledged $110 million in food aid since October 2007. Washington provided $20 million immediately after the cyclone on November 15, 2007.
   The US government is also funding the $48 million programme on sustainable development. In the past week, the US gave $2 million to the World Food Programme to feed primary schoolchildren in Sidr-stricken areas and another assistance programme worth $1,00,000 as an emergency response to alleviate the sufferings of the starving people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
   Referring to his meeting with the chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, on the day, Moriarty said that Washington has remained ‘committed to assisting the government of Bangladesh and its people’.
   ‘We were here before the cyclone, we were here during the initial emergency relief phase, and we are here to help Bangladesh move forward.’
   The United States has provided Bangladesh over $5 billion in development assistance, including food aid of $2.5 billion, since its independence in 1971, said the ambassador.

Thousands of Kuwaitis have demonstrated against a government crackdown on illegal tribal primaries, with some of them throwing stones at a security building before storming it, the interior ministry said on Sunday.
   The confrontation Saturday evening was the third between authorities and tribesman over the banned parliamentary primaries since Kuwait’s leader dissolved the legislature in March and ordered early elections on May 17. No injuries have been reported from any of the protests.
   The crowd of several thousand gathered in front of a security building south of Kuwait City on Saturday, demanding the release of members of the Mutair tribe arrested for carrying out the primaries, the interior ministry said in a statement.
   ‘There were mobs among them who pelted stones at the building, breaking the glass of its facade, and some of them stormed it,’ said the statement.
   Officials called in special forces, but tribal elders were able to mediate the confrontation before they were used, it added.
   Kuwait criminalised the primaries in 1998 because authorities believe they encourage allegiance to tribes rather than the state. Most Kuwaitis come from tightly nit Bedouin tribes.
   The state argues that the primaries also deprive many Kuwaitis from having a fair chance to compete in a district if they are not supported by the local tribe.
   However, tribes insist they have the right to choose whom to field in the parliamentary elections. The government has detained scores of people for taking part in the primaries. The tribes have been trying to get around the crackdown by holding votes in secret or by calling them ‘consultations’ instead of actual primaries.
   Also Sunday, the interior ministry warned foreigners in a separate statement against demonstrating and threatened to deport any of them who organise protests.
   Many Asian labourers have held sit-ins in recent weeks to protest non-payment of salaries. Some two-thirds of Kuwait’s population of over 3 million are foreign workers. Unskilled labourers, mostly from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, often complain of lack of payment and poor living conditions.
   Kuwaiti law gives the interior minister the right to deport any foreign resident believed to be a threat to security.

Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels have received at least three shipments of military hardware in the recent months, a news report said on Sunday quoting the island’s intelligence agencies.
   The arms shipments come despite claims by the Sri Lankan navy that it has destroyed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s last gun-running ship last October, the independent Lakbima newspaper said.
   It said the intense use of heavy artillery shells by the rebels in the north-eastern Weli Oya and northern Wanni and Jaffna fronts ‘have raised fresh concerns’ about the LTTE’s ability to replenish their dwindling armoury.
   ‘The general impression among the public was that the LTTE had been starved of military supplies since the navy destroyed a fleet of LTTE vessels which functioned as floating armouries for the group,’ the report said.
   ‘However, recent reports by intelligence agencies suggest otherwise,’ the paper’s defence columnist Ranga Jayasuriya said.
   ‘They (intelligence reports) paint a gloomy picture, revealing that the LTTE had unloaded three shiploads of arms during the months of February and March,’ it said.
   Quoting a recent report ‘filed by the Directorate of Military Intelligence and presented to the National Security Council’ Jayasuriya said a shipload of arms had been smuggled in on March 12.
   Another report by the State Intelligence Services states that two vessels had been unloaded by the LTTE during February 16 and 17.

Wild Asian vultures could become extinct in 10 years unless officials stop the use of a livestock drug that has caused the birds to decline faster than the dodo, British and Indian scientists in the past week said.
   A new study shows the population of oriental white-backed vultures has plunged 99.9 per cent since 1992 while the numbers of two species, the long-billed and slender-billed vultures, together have fallen by nearly 97 per cent.
   A wider ban of the veterinary drug Diclofenac and more captive breeding centres are the only way to save the birds found mainly in India, the researchers said in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society.
   India banned manufacture of the veterinary form of the anti-inflammatory in 2006, but a version formulated for humans is still used to treat livestock, the researchers said. When the vultures feed on carcasses they ingest the drug, which shuts down their kidneys and kills them within days.
   ‘The ban on diclofenac production for veterinary use was an excellent first step,’ Vibhu Prakash, a researcher at the Bombay Natural History Society and colleagues wrote. However, this action is insufficient on its own to save these species.
   The birds are critical to the ecosystem and for human health in India because they are the primary means of getting rid of animal carcasses in the nation of some 1.12 billion people, added Andrew Cunningham, who worked on the study.
   Their demise has led to a sharp increase in dead animals around villages and towns, which has boosted the numbers of disease-carrying rats and rabid stray dogs, he said.
   ‘This is a direct consequence of the decline of the vultures,’ Cunningham, a veterinarian at the Zoological Society of London, said in a telephone interview.
   The researchers counted vultures in northern and central India between March and June 2007. They surveyed the birds from vehicles along more than 160 sections of road totalling 18,900 kilometres.
   The study followed four previous counts and was the first since 2003. The researchers warned that all three species could dwindle down to a few hundred birds or less to the verge of extinction in fewer than 10 years.
   The researchers believe the number of oriental white-backed vultures in India could now be as low as 11,000 from tens of millions in the 1980s.
   Populations of the long-billed vultures have likely dropped to 45,000 while only an estimated 1,000 of the slender-billed species remain, they said.
   The dodo was hunted to extinction barely 100 years after it was discovered in the 16th century.

A new type of treatment that trains immune system cells to better recognise the AIDS virus may help control the deadly and incurable infection, Australian researchers reported on Friday.
   Tests on monkeys infected with a similar virus shows the treatment controlled the infection, although it does not cure it, and tests are already planned in people.
   The treatment is called OPAL, for Overlapping Peptide-pulsed Autologous Cells, and would be categorised as an immunotherapy technique, or a so-called therapeutic vaccine, Stephen Kent of the University of Melbourne and colleagues said.
   Writing in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens, they said the treatment involves mixing a patient’s own blood cells with tiny bits of protein from the virus.
   These cells are then re-infused into the patient.
   ‘Levels of virus in vaccinated monkeys were 10-fold lower than in controls, and this was durable for over one year after the initial vaccinations,’ they wrote.
   ‘The immunotherapy resulted in fewer deaths from AIDS. We conclude this is a promising immunotherapy technique. Trials in HIV-infected humans of OPAL therapy are planned.’
   The AIDS virus infects more than 33 million people globally and has killed 25 million since it was identified in the 1980s.

The International Union of Architects, the global body of the professionals, is inviting Muhammad Yunus as speaker to its 23rd international congress in Turin, Italy, scheduled for early July.
   Transmitting Architecture is the theme of the global event this time. The event will study architecture as a means of communication and the means of communication proper to architecture.
   The union president, Gaëtan Siew, is now in Dhaka to seek Yunus’s consent to address the congress which will be attended by more than 17,000 representatives from across the world.
   For the first time in the union’s history, the organisation will have a non-architect speaker at its world congress which will examine all aspects of a profession that, on a daily basis, deals with the quality of life, city, landscapes, and the environment, through a dialogue involving all the stakeholders.
   Talking with New Age, Siew described the union’s rationale for having a non-architect speaker at the academic and professional congress.
   ‘The architect community speaks too much among themselves, but now prefers to hear the others who can see from outside what architects should do and what is their responsibility and what people expect from them,’ he said.
   ‘Yunus represents well what many people in the third world can bring to others and they have not been listening for years and years. He will bring the messages, very important to the participants. We need different ways of seeing things and I do think this could be one of the reasons to enlighten the Turin congress by him,’ Siew said.
   Siew said he would meet architects’ organisations and also architecture teachers in Dhaka.

The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations has elected Bangladesh to three prestigious bodies, a foreign ministry spokesman announced it on Sunday.
   The bodies are Commission on Population and Development and the Governing Council of UN-HABITAT for four-year term (2009-2013) while Executive Board of UNICEF for a three-year term (2009-2012).
   The foreign adviser, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, observed with regard to the elections and said, ‘We are pleased with this since it reflects international acknowledgement of Bangladesh’s key role in economic and social issues. This can be seen as a foreign policy achievement’.

Iraq restarted its mission in Bangladesh on Sunday, after a lapse of five years.
   The functioning of its mission in Dhaka was stopped as the US-led forces occupied Iraq in March 2003.
   Iraq’s new charge d’affaires Sabri Rashid presented his credentials to the foreign affairs adviser, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, in his office Sunday.
   Rashid assured that Iraq would import workers from Bangladesh after Iraq achieved political stability.
   ‘We have started the full functioning of our mission in Dhaka. We are here to restore the excellent bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Iraq,’ Rashid told reporters after his meeting with Iftekhar.
   ‘We will import workers from Bangladesh after Iraq gets political stability and restores internal security,’ Rashid said.

Two steamers used by the occupation forces during the war of independence and sunken in an air strike are being recovered from under the bed of the River Jamuna near Pakhimara under Saghata upazila in Gaibandha.
   MV Khaled and MV Sher Shah had capsized with unknown number of Pakistani troops when struck by the allied Indian Air Force at the fag end of the war in December 1971. Since then the steamers lay buried under the sands.
   More than a dozen divers are now excavating the earth to recover the steamers. Rashid & Brothers, a ship breaking farm of Khulna, has purchased the sunken steamers in a tender floated by the authority.
   The steamers were detected from their masts that showed up during the winter. Railway and IWTA officials visiting the spot ascertained that MV Khaled and Sher shah lay buried there.
   Informed sources said the two steamers were plying in between Teestamukh Ghat at Phulchhari and Bahadurabad Ghat of Jamalpur to ferry railway passengers across the River Jamuna.
   As the war broke out, Pakistani occupation forces grabbed the steamers for transporting troops and war materials in northern districts.
   Meanwhile, freedom fighters in the region have demanded that parts of the recovered steamers should be kept in the Liberation War Museum.

A Dhaka court on Sunday asked the members of the Supreme Court Bar Association election committee to explain in three days why a temporary injunction should not be imposed on the function of the newly elected general secretary of the bar association.
   Assistant judge Iftekhar Ahmed passed the order after hearing a petition filed by Abdullah Al Mamun, a candidate for the post who was shown defeated after the recount of votes.
   The order was issued on nine members of the election committee and Nurul Islam Sujan, elected the general secretary of the bar in the polls held on April 28-29.
   ‘It is unexpected, we will face the case’, Nurul Islam Sujan told reporters in his reaction to the court order.
   In his petition, Mamun alleged that the sub-committee had declared him elected secretary of the SCBA by defeating Sujan by a narrow margin of two votes. But on the next day, the sub-committee declared Sujan, a pro-Awami League candidate, elected to the post after the recount on his [Sujan] appeal.
   ‘The recount of votes by the sub-committee was illegal and without lawful authority as there is no such provision as per the SCBA constitution’, Mamun, a pro-BNP candidate, told the court. ‘I appealed against the decision on the recount as no such things happened in the 60-year history of SCBA. But the sub-committee turned down my appeal’, he added.
   At a press conference, Mamun questioned the neutrality of the election sub-committee and demanded resignation of its convener Nizamul Huq Nasim, who has been conducting SCBA polls for long.
   ‘Nasim tampered with the results… He held a meeting behind closed doors with outgoing secretary AM Amin Uddin and Sujan at the secretary’s office on the night before the vote recount on April 30, and I was not allowed to enter into the room’, Mamun alleged.
   Some other defeated candidates also spoke at the press conference.

Kal-Baishakhi, a seasonal northwest storm, swept over the Barisal region Saturday night, leaving at least one person dead and causing damage to crops and trees.
   Met office said the strong wind at a speed of 65-75 kilometres per hour lashed different areas of the region, disrupting road and waterway communications, power supply and telecommunications.
   District agriculture and disaster management offices were yet to assess the extent of damages caused to crops and infrastructures.
   Sher-e-Bangla Medical College Hospital sources said Shamsul Huq, 55, an employee of Lakutia agriculture firm in the city outskirts, was injured severely as a branch of tree, caught in violent storm, fell on him. He died at SBMCH Sunday night.