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Forty-two people died of diarrhoea in the last one month as the deadly water-borne
   disease spread alarmingly throughout the country due to hot and humid weather coupled with scarcity of pure drinking water.
   According to the control room of the directorate general of health services, 87,173 diarrhoea-affected people had been treated in hospitals last month and 42 of them died.
   At least 110 died of diarr-
   hoeal diseases and 3,43,922 were affected since January 1 this year.
   In southern Noakhali district the situation has worsened with one reported dead and 496 affected in 24 hours till 8:00am on Tuesday.
   DGHS assistant director Dr Habiba Khatun said that 1,493 people were afflicted by diarrhoea across the country and one of them died during the period.
   People in Dhaka city are also exposed to water-borne diseases and about 600 diarrhoeal patients on an average are taking treatment in the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh, hospital at Mohakhali.
    A total of 502 patients visited the ICDDR,B hospital till 3:00pm Tuesday. Most of them came from different parts of the city.
   Physicians attributed the outbreak to scarcity of pure drinking water and unhygienic environment with slum dwellers and floating people being particularly exposed, said Dr Shahdat Hossain, a scientist at the clinical science division at the ICDDR, B.
   Diarrhoea is a tropical water-borne disease that weakens the body system due to dehydration. Doctors advise patients to take enough pure water to fight the disease.
   ‘Without personal hygiene and enough supply of pure drinking water, it is difficult to prevent its outbreak’, said ICDDR,B scientists.
   Diarrhoea breaks out in the country twice each year – before the advent of monsoon (from April to June) and in post-monsoon period (from August to October).

Prince Karim Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, on Tuesday underlined the need for global partnership and universal understanding to combat the forces that threaten to fragment the world.
   Aga Khan, who is in the capital on a four-day tour starting from Monday, also emphasised the need for ethical commitment to the education system while speaking at the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the Aga Khan Academy at Basundhara.
   Education adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman and Prince Aga Khan jointly laid the foundation stone and unveiled the plaque of the Academy.
   The proposed Aga Khan Academy will be built on 20 acres of land at the cost of $50 million over the next two years. Once fully built, the campus will comprise over 5,00,000 square feet of buildings and playing fields to accommodate a wide range of academic activities and sports and athletics.
   ‘We must resist the temptation to normalize any particular culture, to demonize the other, and to turn healthy diversity into dangerous discord,’ said Aga Khan.
   He said that the importance of ethical commitments, not only in the government but throughout society, has increased vastly in today’s world.
   The spiritual leader said that a competent civil society is a major contributor to development, particularly where democracies are less well established or where government efforts are inadequate.
   Touching on the issue of corruption, Aga Khan said, ‘The absence of corruption or fraud in government is not enough. Fraud in medicine, fraud in education, fraud in financial services, fraud in property rights, fraud in exercise of law enforcement or in the courts, are all risks which can have a dramatic impact on social progress.’
   Terming the Aga Khan Academy a new national asset, he said Bangladesh is the first Muslim country in which he has laid a foundation stone for a new academy.
   Education adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman, who attended the ceremony as the chief guest, said the media, which was busy covering politics, paid little attention to ethical issues.
   He urged people to build an ethics-based society.
   Salim Bhatia, director of the Aga Khan Academy, said the academy, in collaboration with the International Baccalaureate Organization and highly experienced educators from across the globe, is focusing on the their curriculum to ensure that what the students learn is relevant and also that they learn to think critically.
   He said the academy’s curriculum would emphasize pluralism, ethics, the histories of Muslim civilizations, global economies and comparative political systems.
   The students will be selected on the basis of merit and taught both in Bangla and English. Students of all backgrounds will have the opportunity to apply to attend the academy in Dhaka, irrespective of their ability to pay. The academy intends to scout for talent all over Bangladesh.
   The academy will share its intellectual and technical riches through the in-house Professional Development Centre (PDC).
   The PDC will provide professional development programmes for teachers in the government and other non-profit schools in Bangladesh.
   The academy, a residential institution, will enable exceptional students of all backgrounds, including those from 75 per cent of the Bengali population who live in rural areas, to get access to a world-class education.

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down the High Court verdict that had quashed the tax evasion case against the jailed former state minister Iqbal Hassan Mahmud Tuku.
   After hearing the government’s appeal against the High Court verdict, the full court of all the seven Appellate Division judges delivered the judgement clearing the way for continuation of the trial of Tuku in the case, pending with a special judge’s court set up on the Jatiya Sangsad complex.
   The High Court bench of Justice MA Rashid and Justice Miftahuddin Chowdhury on December 5, 2007, after hearing a writ petition filed by Iqbal Hassan, pronounced the verdict punching a blow to the National Board of Revenue drive against the tax dodgers under the current drive against serious crimes and corruption launched by the military-controlled interim administration.
   The revenue board’s deputy commissioner Nurul Amin on July 4, 2007 filed the case accusing Iqbal Hassan of evading over Tk 3.80 crore in income taxes in 1999–2007.
   Iqbal Hassan filed a petition challenging the case and the High Court on August 29 stayed midway the proceedings of the tax evasion case and issued a rule on the revenue board to explain why the case would not be quashed.
   Iqbal Hassan, arrested on February 4, is now serving a sentence of nine years’ imprisonment handed down by a special judge’s court on November 15.
   The special anti-graft court, set up on the Jatiya Sangsad complex, jailed him for nine years for amassing illegal wealth beyond his known sources of income and concealing information in his wealth report submitted to the Anti-Corruption Commission. The court also ordered confiscation of his wealth of Tk 3 crore.

The chairman of Transparency International, Bangladesh, Professor Muzaffer Ahmed, on Tuesday said there should not be any provision of allowing whitening of black money in the country.
   The TIB chairman said such provision encouraged the owners of black money for carrying on their corruption.
   ‘I cannot understand why the governments are allowing whitening of black money for the last 10 years. Such provision is irrational and encourages more corruption,’ Professor Muzaffer said.
   He was addressing a roundtable on ‘Budget Proposal: Reforming Tax System and The Way to Curb Corruption,’ at the National Press Club.
   Former advisers ASM Shajahan and M Hafizuddin Khan, noted journalist ABM Musa, Amader Samay editor Naimul Islam Khan, Bhorer Kagoj editor Shaymal Datta and Jatiya Party leader Ziauddin Bablu, among others, participated in the roundtable.
   Professor Muzaffer said there were laws in the country to confiscate all illegal money and property, but usually the laws were never applied.
   He also demanded publication of the list of those who had whitened their black money under the government-offered fresh chance.
   About the corruption regarding income tax, the TIB chairman said there were so many legal loopholes in the country’s laws on income tax which help the dodging taxes.
   The income tax-related laws need to be reviewed from time to time to make them up-to-date and relevant to the socio-economic condition of the country, he said.
   About the two divisions of tax — business tax and individual tax — the TIB chairman said government and its institutions usually avoided addressing the problems of individual tax payers that made the tax system more complicated.

The Gulshan police recovered the body of a man from Banani in Dhaka Monday night.
   The police found the body of Alauddin, 58, a governing body member of the Mirpur University College, from Road No 23 of Banani at about 8:30pm.
   They informed his family finding an identity card in his pocket.
   His face bore several marks of injuries, the police said.
   According to the family, Alauddin had gone out of the house at 11:00am.
   ASM Baharuddin, son of the victim, filed a case with the Gulshan police in this connection.
   The police, however, failed to arrest anyone or say the motive behind the killing till Tuesday evening.

A Dhaka court on Tuesday sent the detained former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s assistant private secretary Obaidul Moktadir Chowdhury to jail after he had surrendered in court in connection with a corruption case.
   Metropolitan sessions judge M Azizul Haque, however, granted bail to Moktadir’s wife, Fahima Khatun, also accused in the case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission with the Gulshan police on November 4, 2007.
   The court also transferred the case to the special judge’s court 7, set up on the Jatiya Sangsad complex, for trial.
   The commission pressed charges against the couple for owning illegal wealth of about Tk 1.16 crore beyond their known sources of income and hiding information on assets of Tk 73.58 lakh in the wealth statement submitted to the commission.
   The judge earlier issued warrants for the arrest of the couple after the commission had filed the charge sheet showing them absconding in the case.

Bangladesh sought the assistance from the Aga Khan Foundation to develop the skills of Bangladeshi workers, especially in nursing which is on a huge demand at home and abroad.
   The foreign affairs adviser, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, made the request when he called on Prince Karim Aga Khan at the latter’s hotel suite Tuesday afternoon.
   During the meeting, Iftekhar said a cornerstone of Bangladesh’s current foreign policy was strengthening links with the Muslim community.
   It is in pursuance of the strategy Bangladesh was interacting heavily with the OIC countries and other Muslim nations, he said.
   Iftekhar said, ‘Such countries are also major destinations for Bangladeshi expatriate workers more than 832,000 of whom left for these regions in the past year.’
   They have also sent nearly $7 billion in remittances, which is a record, but this year this figure may exceed $9 billion, if all went well, Iftekhar informed Prince Karim Aga Khan.
   He also thanked the Aga Khan for contributions to the field of education and helping to create in Bangladesh a knowledge-based society in response to the demands of the time.

Workers of three state-owned jute mills in the Khalishpur industrial belt in Khulna abstained from work for eight hours on Tuesday to push for their eight-point demands, including payment of all their dues.
   The workers, teamed up as the ‘state-owned jute mill labourers’ development committee, are demanding 25 per cent dearness allowance in view of essential goods price increase, end to the activities of corrupt CBA people in the mills, overtime payment,
   reinstatement of all labourers sacked earlier, increased
   allocation in the forthcoming budget to save the jute mills, and submission of wealth report of all BJMC officials and workers.
   The labourers of the Crescent Jute Mills, Platinum Jute Mills and Star Jute Mills gathered in front of the administrative buildings of respective mills and chanted slogans in favour of their demands.
   The rallies were addressed by the committee convener, Md Gazi Masum, and other leaders, including M Sohorab Hossain, M Motiar Munshi, Mollah Abul Basar Sardar, M Sadek Ali and M Liakat Ali.
   The speakers said the labourers were passing hard days because of irregular payment of dues and essential goods price increase.
   The labour leaders demanded adequate funds in the next budget to save the mills from being closed.

Bangladesh on Tuesday welcomed the release of Pakistani ambassador Tariq Azizuddin by Afghan militants after holding him captive for more than three months.
   The foreign affairs adviser, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, said, ‘We welcome the fact that the ambassador has been set free. Inviolability of diplomatic agents is essential for the cause of global peace and understanding.’
   He noted both Pakistanis and Afghans were brothers and sisters in Islam and action that may cause misunderstandings between them needed to be avoided at all cost.