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Seven accused fugitives in the GATCO scam case including two who are detained former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s cabinet colleagues — M Saifur Rahman and Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury — have been asked to surrender to the Dhaka metropolitan sessions judge’s court by May 28.
   Saifur Rahman, also the acting chairperson of the government-backed faction of the BNP, on May 7, just before his departure for Singapore for medical treatment, made a U-turn and conceded that his leadership had become ineffective as most of the available standing committee members had officially invalidated the meeting which made him the party chief.
   The judge, M Azizul Haque, also ordered the court officials to publish a gazette notification in two national dailies, directing them to surrender to the court before the hearing on May 28.
   The Anti-Corruption Commission on May 13 submitted charge-sheets in the case against 24 people, including detained former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, six of her Cabinet colleagues, her detained younger son Arafat Rahman and 16 others.
   The 24 people were accused of causing a loss of more than Tk 14.56 crore to the state exchequer by awarding a contract to an ‘incompetent and unfit’ firm, Global Agro Trade Company, to handle containers at the Inland Container Depot in Dhaka and Chittagong Port, allegedly in return for hefty bribes.
   The court, earlier on May 15, issued warrants for arrest of 12 people, including Khaleda’s six Cabinet members, who are shown to be fugitives in the charge-sheet. The court also asked the police to report back on the fugitives by May 22.
   The Gulshan police on Thursday informed the court that they went to the residences of the accused fugitives with the warrants, but failed to arrest them as they were not available.
   Besides Saifur and Khasru, five other fugitives — former shipping secretary Zulfikar Haider Chowdhury, GATCO directors Shahjahan M Hasib and AKM Musa Kajal, former shipping minister Akbar Hossain’s wife Jahanara Akbar, and Ehsan Yusuf, one of the friends of Akbar’s son — are now on the run.
   Four other ministers — Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, M Shamsul Islam, MK Anwar and Matiur Rahman Nizami, the amir of Jamaat-e-Islami, and a former Chittagong Port Authority engineer AKM Rashid Uddin Ahmed — were taken to jail in a week’s time. Nizami was arrested while the others surrendered to the court.
   Besides the five, twelve others, including Khaleda, her son and two more of her cabinet colleagues — Khandakar Mosharraf Hossain and AKM Mosharraf Hossain, who also face charges in the GACTO scam case — were arrested and sent to jail.
   The rest are the Chittagong Port Authority’s former chairmen Zulfiquar Ali and AMM Shahadat Hossain, CPA’s former director (transport) MA Sanwar Hossain, its chief accounts officer Ahmed Abul Kashem, its former member Lutful Kabir, GATCO’s directors Syed Galib Ahmed and Syed Tanvir Ahmed, and former shipping minister Akbar Hossain’s son Ismail Hossain.
   Khaleda and the other accused were scheduled to appear in court on Thursday, but prison authorities failed to produce them because of security reasons, her counsel, Masud Ahmed Talukdar, told reporters.

The much-hyped dialogue between the military-controlled administration and political parties began on Thursday with the government looking into options for review of the constitution to bring about qualitative changes in ‘governance and politics’.
   ‘Matters related to review of the constitutional provisions – for possible adoption by the parliament – have been discussed at the meeting’, commerce adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman told a joint press briefing after the maiden meeting of the series with Workers Party of Bangladesh.
   ‘A national consensus is a must for it’, he added.
   The Workers Party, one of the two parties which held talks with the government on the day, however, stressed that any amendment to the constitution must come through an elected parliament. It should not be imposed.
   The party also demanded parliamentary elections before any other polls.
   On the other hand, the Bikalpadhara Bangladesh suggested formation of a ‘constitution commission’ with a specific agenda and timeframe on the basis of a consensus among the political parties.
   The chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, led a six-member team of advisers to the interim administration at the dialogue with Workers Party in the morning and Bikalpadhara Bangladesh in the afternoon at the Chief Adviser’s Office.
   Workers Party president Rashed Khan Menon and Bikalpadhara Bangladesh president AQM Badruddoza Chowdhury led their parties respectively at the dialogues.
   Besides the talks with the political parties, the government disclosed its plan to hold dialogues with various professional groups, civil society actors and non-resident Bangladeshis for a smooth transfer of power through fair elections at the end of the year.
   On his arrival at the meeting with the Workers Party, the chief adviser announced that he would leave the venue after delivering his speech and requested the WP leaders to continue the dialogue with the his five-member panel, according to meeting sources.
   The Workers Party leaders protested promptly saying that they should also leave the venue if the chief adviser did so and requested him to stay back and participate in the entire proceedings.
   Fakhruddin then stayed for more than an hour after delivering his speech at the meeting that lasted for more than two hours. In his speech, the head of the government dispelled the confusions over the elections and pledged to hold the polls at any cost by December.
   He also assured the WP delegation that the government would not conduct any local polls hampering the national elections. ‘Holding the national elections peacefully and credibly is our prime objective’, the chief adviser was quoted as saying.
   At the press briefing, the government and the parties said they had discussed frankly a host of issues at the dialogue and expressed optimism that the crucial national dialogue would produce a positive result through participation of all the political parties.
   Workers Party, a component of the Awami League-led alliance, asked the caretaker administration to ensure presence of the AL president, Sheikh Hasina – now detained in custody – at the dialogue. The party also demanded participation of the coordinator of the alliance and AL general secretary, Abdul Jalil, who is now undergoing treatment in Singapore, in the talks on parole.
   ‘The government has said it will take all necessary steps to ensure participation of all political parties in the dialogue’, Rashed Khan Menon told a questioner.
   The party, however, remained silent at the talks about the chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Khaleda Zia, who is also in jail.
   At the talks the WP placed a list of demands including lifting of the state of emergency, withdrawal of conditions on indoor political activities, ensuring trade union rights, halting monitoring of the media by the government agencies, holding of parliamentary elections before other polls and freeing the administration from political influence.
   It asked the government to differentiate between the political rights and public order in case the government wanted a ban on strike [hartal] and lockouts. ‘We demand our political rights as we enjoyed in the past’, said the Workers Party president.
   The party expressed its reservations about the chief adviser’s proposal to formulate a ‘national charter’ saying that there was only one charter for the country and ‘that is the 1972 constitution’. The party considers that the spirit of such charter [as proposed by the chief adviser] goes against the spirit of the constitution.
   The advisers explained that the chief adviser did not mean that.
   ‘He wants a national consensus…it was a wrong diction’, Hossain Zillur Rahman clarified and said that there should not be any confusion about it.
   ‘There has been nothing like preparing any constitutional or legal documents’, the adviser said adding that the chief adviser had called for national consensus, for which the interim government would only work as a mediator.
   The issue of concentration of power [in the hands of certain institution] by the constitution was discussed at the meeting. It may be taken to the next parliament, but for that there should be a consensus, Hossain Zillur said.
   The Workers Party delegation included its general secretary Bimal Biswas and politburo members Haider Akbar Khan Rano, Anisur Rahman Mallick, Fazle Hossain Badsha, central leaders Hajera Sultana and Quamrul Ahsan.
   The Bikalpadhara Bangladesh placed a number of demands, including formation of a constitution council, at its meeting with the government in the afternoon.
   The party said there should be a balance of power between the president and the prime minister. ‘A final decision should be made in this regard after consulting all the political parties’, said Major (retd) Abdul Mannan, the secretary general of the party.
   The party also proposed a four-year tenure for the government instead of the present five years, and a referendum in every two years to solicit popularity. If any government gets less than 50 percent vote in the referendum, it should hand over power to a caretaker administration for elections.
   ‘It may help avoid destructive political activities like hartal’, said Mahi B Chowdhury, a leader of the party, which also called for a consensus among the political parties about a guideline for democracy to be laid down after the elections.
   The parties should agree a consensus, and if they fail, the government would take initiative for such unity, it said.
   It asked the government to lift the state of emergency by phases.
   The party also asked the government to ensure voters’ security during and after the elections.

The Election Commission is going to send the government a set of recommendations for making amendments to Constitution for the establishment of a bicameral parliament, increasing the number of parliamentary seats and introduction of proportional representation.
   The recommendations also include abrogation of Article 70 of the Constitution that bars any lawmaker from voting against any of the party’s decisions in the Parliament.
   ‘We are going to send a set of recommendations to the government in which we will incorporate the issues that are beyond our mandate as these require amendments to the Constitution. The issues include increasing the number of parliamentary seats and abrogating Article 70 of the Constitution,’ said election commissioner Muhammed Sohul Hussain at his office on Thursday.
   A recommendation has also been made for identifying war criminals though trials to ban them from elections, and another for increasing the number of parliamentary seats for women for which there will be direct elections, he told reporters.
   He said that the recommendations would be prepared on the basis of the dialogues between the EC and political parties, and are likely to be sent to the government in the middle of June.
   ‘Political decisions on the issues are required. The present caretaker government or the next elected one can consider these matters in the future,’ he said.
   Sohul also said that the EC would suggest the government to form a ‘Constitution Review Committee’ that would recommend necessary constitutional amendments for changes in parliamentary practice suiting the changed context.
   ‘We’ll suggest that the elected government form a constitution-review committee since the current caretaker government can’t review or amend the Constitution,’ he added.
   The other vital issues include empowerment of voters to recall their representatives on grounds of failure to perform properly, and ensuring representation of ethnic minorities.
   When he was asked whether the EC had any specific recommendation for Article 70 which restricts parliamentarians from crossing the floor (voting against his party), Sohul said that they are working on it. ‘The parliamentarian should be given the authority to oppose any idea which his/her party stands for, and should vote against the party’s decision if it is in his/her constituency’s or the country’s interest,’ he added.
   The EC also is going to publish a report on its electoral reforms talks with the political parties. It has already finalised the report and directed its secretariat to take steps for publishing it. The EC Secretariat is now preparing to publish the report — containing entire proceedings of the talks — in a couple of days or so.
   The EC began talks on reforms with the parties, which concluded on April 27 this year, on September 12 last year.

The High Court on Thursday ruled that the Election Commission’s failure in holding the national elections within the 90-day timeframe was a violation of the Constitution.
   The High Court bench of Justice MA Rashid and Justice Ashfaqul Islam, however, observed that the court had no alternative but to accept the EC’s decision to hold the stalled elections in December.
   It also observed that the election, planned for December in line with the EC’s roadmap, was a ‘logical decision’.
   The court noted that the EC, by swearing on affidavit, had stated that due to the time needed for voter’s registration and preparation of voters’ identity cards and for ensuring availability of transparent ballot boxes, the elections would be held in December.
   ‘The court has no choice but to accept the statement by the commission,’ it said.
   ‘The development of democracy and establishment of the rule of law are being halted due to repeated violations of the Constitution,’ observed the court.
   The court delivered the verdict after hearing a public interest litigation writ petition filed by a Supreme Court lawyer, Masud Reza Sobhan, on January 27.
   Since the 90-day timeframe is mandatory to hold the election, the EC has no discretion to extend the specified time, the court observed while disposing of the writ petition.
   In its comprehensive observations on the politico-electoral scenario, the court said, ‘The responsibility of the EC is to hold elections so that the caretaker government can hand over power to the new prime minister.’
   The constitutional provisions on holding the polls within 90 days from the date of the parliament’s dissolution are mandatory, as there are no other provisions in the country’s law, the court opined, adding, ‘The constitutional provisions are self-executory.’
   The court noted with surprise that the chief adviser, not the EC itself, had declared a tentative election schedule and left it to the EC to declare the exact date of the polls.
   ‘We could not find in the Constitution any clause which empowers the chief adviser to make such a statement,’ said the court.
   The court also noted, ‘It is seen that the EC itself is not independent…Therefore, there is an apparent need to separate the Election Commission’s secretariat from the Chief Adviser’s Office.’
   The court did not declare the EC’s failure to hold the polls in 90 days to be illegal, although another bench, after hearing the writ petition on January 14, issued a rule on the EC, asking it to explain why such a failure would not be declared illegal.
   It, however, said the next Parliament would look into the matter.
   About the rigidity of the provisions of holding elections within 90 days after Parliament’s dissolution, the court affirmed that it should be seen rigidly and ‘thus the Constitution has been violated’.
   Citing Article 7 of the Constitution, the court said the supremacy of the Constitution is the will of the people. The responsibility of the EC was to hold the election so that the elected representatives could run the country. The responsibility of the caretaker government was to assist the EC in this regard, ‘but nothing has been done’ to that end.
   The framers of the Constitution stipulated the timeframe by exercising their wisdom, the court observed, adding that the provisions of the Constitution were not followed and therefore the EC had ‘violated the Constitution’.
   ‘It cannot be conceived that the commission would not hold the election and thereby an unelected caretaker government could continue to run the country,’ concluded the court.

Detained former premiers Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia will face the hearings in the framing of charges in different cases on the Niko graft charge, as will Khaleda’s eldest son Tarique Rahman and former state minister for home affairs Lutfozzaman Babar in the Bashundhara bribery case.
   AK Roy, of the Special Judge’s Court-2 set up in the Jatiya Sangsad complex, on Thursday fixed May 26 for hearing the framing of charges in the Niko graft case against Hasina, also Awami League’s president, and eight others.
   Khandakar Kamal Uzzaman, of the Special Judge’s Court-9, will hear the arguments on the framing of charges against Khaleda Zia, also the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s chairperson, and 10 others in another case on the Niko graft charge on the same day.
   Another special court under Shahed Nooruddin on Thursday fixed May 27 for hearing the framing of charges against Tarique, also the senior joint secretary-general of the BNP, Babar and six others in the Bashundhara murder/bribery case.
   The High Court bench of Justice Khademul Islam Chowdhury and Justice Mashuk Hossain Ahmed on Thursday continued for the second day to hear Khaleda’s petition that sought her discharge from the Niko charges. The bench will resume hearing on Sunday.
   The Niko graft case against Khaleda is going to be tried soon.
   The Anti-Corruption Commission on December 9, 2007, in separate cases sued Hasina and Khaleda for alleged corruption in signing contracts with a Canadian oil company, Niko Resources, that reportedly caused Tk 23,630.50 crore loss to the state exchequer.
   Charges were pressed against Hasina and eight others in the case filed by the ACC’s deputy director, MM Shabbir Hassan, with the Tejgaon police for causing a loss of Tk 13,630.50 crore to the state.
   Her chief secretary SA Samad, former state minister for energy in her cabinet Rafiqul Islam, former energy secretaries Tawfiq Elahi Chowdhury and M Akmal Hossain, then Petrobangla chairman Mosharraf Hossain and Niko’s South Asia vice-president Quasem Sharif were also accused of the same charge.
   Khaleda was sued for causing a loss of Tk 10,000 crore to the state. Former law minister Moudud Ahmed and former state minister for energy AKM Mosharraf Hossain of her cabinet, the then acting energy secretary Khandakar Shahidul Islam and Quasem Sharif of Niko were the others accused in the case. The ACC’s assistant director, Mahbubul Alam, lodged the case with the same police station.
   The ACC on May 5 filed a charge-sheet with the court against Khaleda and 10 others and another charge-sheet against Hasina and eight others on May 7.
   The ACC implicated two persons — former secretary of the External Resources Division AKM Moshiur Rahman and former director Syed Anwarul Haque — in the charge-sheet filed against Hasina.
   Former principal secretary to the Prime Minister’s Office Kamal Uddin Siddiqui, Petrobangla’s joint secretary and director (finance) CM Yousuf Hussain, former Bapex secretary Shafiur Rahman and former general manager Mir Mainul Haque, One Group’s managing director Giasuddin Al Mamun and International Travel Corporation’s chairman and managing director Selim Bhuiyan were implicated in charge-sheet in the Niko case filed against Khaleda.
   The ACC on May 6 pressed charges against Tarique, Babar, Bashundhara Group’s chairman Ahmed Akbar Sobhan and five others in connection with bribery to cover up the murder of a Bashundhara director.
   Others accused in the Bashundhara case are former BNP lawmaker Kazi Salimul Huq Kamal, Shah Alam’s sons Safiyat Sobhan Sanbir and Shahadat Sobhan, Bashundhara’s director Abu Sufian and Tarique’s private secretary Miah Nuruddin Apu.
   Of the eight, Tarique, Babar and Sufian are in jail, while the others are in hiding.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance on Thursday demanded release of two top leaders of the combine, Khaleda Zia and Matiur Rahman Nizami, before the dialogue, saying that the talks with political parties would be fruitless in their absence.
   Leaders of the alliance’s four components met after one and half years at Delwar’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar flat in the afternoon. The last meeting of the alliance, presided over by BNP’s chairperson Khaleda Zia, was held on January 22 last year.
   The alliance warned the government that it would have to take the responsibility if the dialogues with the political parties become an exercise in futility.
   ‘If the dialogues go in vain, the government will have to take the responsibility,’ said the BNP’s secretary-general, Khandakar Delwar Hossain, after a meeting of the BNP-led alliance.
   The alliance decided to adopt a common strategy after ironing out ‘insignificant’ differences on national issues, including political affairs and the ongoing dialogue between the government and the political parties, said meeting sources.
   Khandakar Delwar told reporters after the meeting that the conditions that the chief adviser had imposed in his address to the nation on May 12 had sparked off questions among people about the government’s willingness to hold any effective dialogue.
   He read out a 14-point charter of demands that includes immediate announcement of the election schedule, immediate withdrawal of the state of emergency, putting a stop to ‘invisible’ intervention in the judiciary, scrapping the gazette notification of delimiting electoral constituencies, abandoning the initiative to hold local government polls before parliamentary elections, stopping the Election Commission’s controversial acts that serve the purposes of ‘hidden quarters’ and omitting the clauses contradictory to holy Qur’an from the National Women Development Policy,.
   The alliance also demanded ensuring food supply for the starving people, selling food at subsidised rates as was done in ration shops, bringing prices of essentials within the people’s reach, and solving the crisis of power, irrigation and fertiliser to ensure increase of agricultural production.
   The alliance also demanded withdrawal of all cases filed against the leaders of the alliance’s components including BNP’s standing committee member M Shamsul Islam and vice chairman MK Anwar.
   Delwar, referring to the Election Commission’s activities, said that it seems that the EC is unable to work independently. ‘It is being guided from somewhere and is creating an environment that is not conducive to hold elections. It is now delimitating the electoral constituencies, which is nothing but an attempt to delay the parliamentary polls,’ he claimed.
   Delwar said they had reviewed the latest developments in politics, economy and society in the meeting, and had tried to work out a common strategy that is valid in the present political situation.
   Responding to a question, Delwar said, ‘The alliance was inactive because of the situation, but it has remained alive and will remain so. We will also discuss the issues in our respective party forums.’
   He said both the BNP and Jamaat have separately demanded release of the two top leaders, Khaleda and Hasina.
   BNP’s standing committee member RA Gani, Jamaat-e-Islami’s secretary-general Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid and assistant secretary general Abdul Quader Mollah, leaders of Islami Oikya Jote Abdul Latif Nezami and Mufti Muhammad Wakkas, Khelafat Majlis’s leaders Muhammad Ishaq and Ahmad Abdul Quader, and Bangladesh Jatiya Party’s leaders Andalib Rahman Partha and Shamim al Mamun were present at the meeting.
   Responding to a question regarding Jamaat’s silence on Khaleda’s arrest, Mujahid said the party spoke on the issue when it was required. ‘Despite desiring to do so we, the alliance’s leaders, could not sit together but now we are sitting and speaking on the issue.’

More than two thousand students of Chittagong University went on a rampage torching Sholashahar railway station and setting up road blockades following the tragic death of a fellow student in a train accident on Thursday. Traffic remained suspended on the road stretching from Sholashahar to Muradpur during the violent protest.
   University sources and witnesses said that Mahmudul Hasan Mamun, a third year student at the accounting department, fell on the track through the gap between two carriages of a shuttle train while stepping on its rooftop from the over bridge just as the train started at about 9:55am . His body was mangled.
   Witnesses said the train stopped some 60 yards from the spot after other students watching the incident from the platform raised alarm.
   Manirul Islam, a friend of deceased Mamun, said the accident took place due to hasty start of the train which reached the station half an hour behind schedule.
   ‘Usually the train reaches the station at 9:20am and leave at the scheduled time of 9:35am’, he said adding that the train had reached the station at 9:55am and in no time headed for the university prompting the students also to hurry.
   All railway staff fled the station after the angry students attacked and set fire to it. Furniture and documents of the station were reduced to ashes.
   Abul Hossain, the stationmaster, said an assistant stationmaster, Mohammed Nezam, and a guard, Abul Hossain, sustained critical injuries in the attack and that they were undergoing treatment at BR hospital.
   The students set up barricades on the road after the incident disrupting traffic for more than five hours till 1:30pm and halted fire engines which came to extinguish the fire.
   Large contingents of police, paramilitary BDR and Rapid Action Battalion went to the spot during the trouble but refrained from going into action against the protesters, sources said.
   The students kept university proctor Professor Mohammed Jasim Uddin, confined for more than one hour and released him when the vice-chancellor Professor M Badiul Alam, reached the spot at about 2:00pm.
   They submitted a six-point charter of demands, including compensation for the family of the victim, punishment of the people responsible and improvement of the shuttle train service, to the VC.
   The students withdrew their agitation at about 3:30pm after the VC assured them that the victim’s family would be given Tk five lakh as compensation.
   The VC also announced that Mamun’s sister would be given a job and the university authorities would bear the educational expenses for his other younger sister.
   Mamun, son of Mohammed Ali of Baholigram in Patiya, was the eldest of four siblings and stayed at a maternal uncle’s residence at Bakalia in the city.

The dialogue with political parties will not be successful without the participation of the Awami League, party’s acting president Zillur Rahman cautioned on Thursday.
   ‘The Awami League has not taken a final decision on whether to go to the dialogue or not,’ Zillur told reporters after a meeting with leaders of Samyabadi Dal at his Gulshan home.
   Zillur said other political parties were deciding to take part in the dialogue as they felt ‘it was better to join the talks than staying away completely’.
   However, the AL acting president claimed Samyabadi Dal was going to the dialogue in some confusion. ‘The party will tell the government that the dialogue without the Awami League will not be successful,’ Zillur said.
   The Samyabadi Dal general secretary, Dilip Barua said, ‘We decided to go to dialogue. We hope the Awami League, too, will go.’
   But he added that his party would demand that the participation of the AL in the dialogue be ensured. ‘Dialogue can’t be meaningful without AL’s participation,’ Dilip Barua said.
   Zillur also told reporters that the chief adviser’s recent address to the nation did not reflect what had been discussed in the pre-dialogue talks.
   ‘There were no conditions in the pre-dialogue talks. And the dialogue was also supposed to be held without any conditions. There have now been conditions imposed.’
   ‘The chief adviser spoke of a ‘national charter’ in his address to the nation. We don’t know what will be in the charter,’ he said.
   Zillur said the AL and Samyabadi Dal agreed in Thursday’s meeting that the constitution of 1972 would be their charter. ‘That charter could be reformed if necessary.’
   Dilip Barua said the state of emergency must be lifted soon and an unelected government was not entitled to formulate a national charter. ‘It is only parliament that can create a national charter.’

The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, has diagnosed a 16-month-old Bangladeshi baby as being stricken by H5N1, the virus that causes avian influenza, said the director of disease control of the DGHS, Moazzem Hossain, also a line director of the CDC.
   The CDC Atlanta informed the Bangladesh government after detecting the virus on Wednesday, he said.
   Moazzem also said that a joint team, comprising experts from the Directorate-General of Health Services and International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh, went to see the child on Thursday and found that he was absolutely cured.
   The DGHS circulated a press note that stated that the child was infected with bird flu in January this year and was cured after 14 days of treatment. The government sent the sample of the child’s blood and other body fluids to the CDC Atlanta for diagnosis that very month.
   About 3,700 suspected cases of the virus in human bodies were reported and only one case was detected as bird flu in the country, said sources at the National Advisory Committee on Avian Influenza after the meeting that was held in the health and family welfare ministry’s conference room on Thursday.
   At the meeting, committee members discussed the overall management of bird flu and said that the situation is under control and there is nothing to fear.
   Professor Mahmudur Rahman, director of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research, told New Age on Thursday that the IEDCR is conducting surveillance in the districts affected by bird flu, and people who come into direct contact with poultry birds and products are now being kept under observation by epidemiologists.
   Epidemiologists said that in the case of human infection, it is quite difficult to differentiate avian flu from regular seasonal flu. But there is a 90 per cent chance of full recovery if anti-viral medication is applied within 48 hours of being infected with the H5N1 virus.
   Mahmudur Rahman also said that immediate diagnosis is essential to stop further spread of the virus to the entire flock of fowls in a farm and to reduce human exposure to the virus. During outbreak in humans, it is necessary to look for animal and human infection and to ensure early diagnosis, thorough investigation, aggressive management of each case and infection control through personal protection and anti-viral vaccination.
   The World Health Organisation, to prevent avian influenza, recommends that the chicken be cooked thoroughly so that all parts of the meat reach an internal temperature of at least 70 degree Celsius, as this temperature destroys the virus.
   The first bird flu case was detected in March 2007. About 287 farms with confirmed H5N1 virus cases were reported in 47 districts till May 21 in 2008, according to the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock.
   The government has so far exterminated more than 16,37,266 poultry birds and destroyed about 22 lakh eggs in 505 commercial and 42 backyard farms in the country.
   Bird flu was thought only to infect birds until the first human cases were detected in Hong Kong in 1997. Humans catch the disease through close contact with infected birds.
   Poultry birds excrete the virus in their faeces, which dry up and become pulverised into powder, and are then inhaled by humans and other birds and animals.
   The symptoms are similar to other types of flu — fever, malaise, sore throats and coughs. Humans can also develop conjunctivitis because of the virus.
   The World Health Organization confirmed 382 cases of H5N1 in humans in Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Laos, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam, leading to 241 deaths, from 2003 to 30 April, 2008.

Nepal’s embattled king is expected to quit his Kathmandu palace soon, reports said Thursday, just days before the Himalayan nation’s monarchy is due to be abolished.
   King Gyanendra was likely to move to Nagarjun, a palace on the outskirts of the city, before he loses his status and becomes a common citizen, newspapers said.
   He has been ordered to leave the city-centre Narayanhiti palace before the first meeting of the constitution-writing assembly on May 28, when it is set to formally end the monarchy, turning the impoverished nation into a republic.
   ‘There is a possibility that the suspended king will leave Narayanhiti palace around the time of the deadline he was given to leave,’ the state-run Gorkhapatra newspaper reported Thursday.
   ‘The suspended king will spend some time in Nagarjun before going to his own house – Nirmal Niwas – after abandoning Narayanhiti,’ the newspaper said, quoting unnamed palace sources.
   Palace press officials said they had received no information about the king leaving Narayanhiti, a sprawling pink palace set in massive grounds in the heart of Kathmandu.
   But Kishore Shrestha, the editor of a weekly tabloid full of stories about the embattled Shah dynasty, said palace sources had told him that the king would leave the palace soon.
   ‘I’ve heard the king is planning to leave Narayanhiti for another palace for a few days... I don’t think he’ll be back until after the declaration of the republic,’ Kishore Shrestha, editor of the Nepalese weekly Jana Aastha, said.
   ‘The king leaving the main palace would be a way for all sides to save face.’
   Nepal’s fiercely republican Maoists signed up for peace in 2006 after a decade of civil war that killed at least 13,000 people.
   They are set to lead a new government after they emerged as the largest party in April 10 elections for the new assembly.
   Nepal’s King Gyanendra ascended to the throne in 2001 when his drink- and drug-fuelled nephew, Crown Prince Dipendra, massacred the former king and most of the royal family at the palace.

The Anti-Corruption Commi-ssion on Thursday approved submission of charge sheet against 16 corruption suspects, including the detained Awami League general secretary, Abdul Jalil.
   The commission also approved submission of final reports instead of pressing charges against eight persons, including five roads and highways officials in a case filed with the Dhanmondi police on January 10, as the investigation found no sufficient proof of the charges against them.
   Five corruption suspects—Islam Group chairman Manjurul Islam, Orion Group chairman Obaidul Karim’s wife Arjuda Karim and son Salman Obaidul Karim, former BNP lawmaker Abdul Wahab, and Ideal School and College’s accountant Zahirul Islam submitted their wealth statements to the commission.
   These were revealed by the commission’s director-general (admin) Hanif Iqbal at a briefing on Thursday.
   Jalil, now in Singapore on parole for medical treatment, will be indicted for acquiring wealth of Tk 35.08 lakh beyond his known sources of income and concealing information about assets of Tk 36.04 lakh in his wealth statement submitted to the commission.
   Charges will also be pressed against him for illegal transfer of money and hiding information about money amounting to Tk 5 crore.
   The commission will press charges against former lawmaker Manjur Quader and 11 others in connection with a case filed for misappropriation of corrugated-iron sheets.
   AL religious affairs secretary Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, typist/personal officer of Land Ministry Kutubuddin Ahmed, and former administrative officer of the roads and highways department, Abul Kalam Shamsuddin, also a CBA leader, will be indicted individually for concealing information and acquiring wealth beyond their known sources of income.

Former US ambassador to Bangladesh Patricia Butenis, who is now posted in Baghdad, arrived in Dhaka on Thursday on a ‘private visit’, an official of the US embassy in Dhaka said.
   ‘She is strictly on a private visit, not on any special assignment,’ a US embassy spokesperson told New Age.
   The itinerary of Butenis’s tour will not be made public as the visit is a private one, the spokesperson said.
   The sudden visit of the former ambassador, however, has sparked off speculations in the political arena as her visit coincides with the beginning of dialogue of the political parties with the military-backed caretaker government before the next elections.
   Butenis, now posted in Iraq as the US charge d’ affaires, visited Dhaka between March 1 and 4, which was also termed a private visit by the US embassy in Dhaka.
   She, however, attended a number of official and private programmes during that ‘private visit’.
   During her four-day tour Butenis attended a dinner hosted by the Canadian High Commissioner and a lunch hosted by the US embassy at the Westin Hotel. She also attended ‘Celebrating the Halfway Mark of the Voter Registration’ programme organised at the Radisson Water Garden by the United Nations Development Programme, which was
   attended by top Election Commission officials, senior-most military and civil officers, political party leaders, heads of diplomatic corps, and foreign diplomats.
   Only about a week after Butenis’s visit to Dhaka, Geeta Pasi, the then US charge d’ affaires in Dhaka had initiated her mission’s dialogue with the political parties from the second week of March.
   Passi and her colleagues’ move was the first major political development involving the US mission after foreign diplomats played a critical role in the events that led to declaration of the state of emergency on January 11, 2007 when the general elections scheduled for January 22 were suspended.
   Butenis, UK High Commissioner Anwar Choudhury, Canadian High Commissioner Barbara Richardson, Australian High Commissioner Douglas Foskett, European Commission’s Ambassador Stefan Frowein and, most visibly, the UN’s Resident Coordinator Renata Lok Dessalien played active roles in the political changeover.
   Butenis had held a number of meetings with top politicians including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia and Awami League president Sheikh Hasina before the state of emergency was imposed.
   She had also held a series of discussions with other influential quarters in the civil and military administrations.
   Butenis left Dhaka in June 2007 to take up office in Iraq as deputy chief of the mission in Baghdad.

Finance Adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam said on Thursday that the government would concentrate more on completing the unfinished construction work of numerous bridges and culverts across the country to serve the people and ensure the best use of public resources.
   ‘We will now take initiatives to complete the unfinished construction work of bridges and culverts, that are now of no use, to make the best use of the investment already made,’ Aziz told reporters when asked to comment on news items carried recently by a Bangla daily on nearly 2,750 unfinished and unnecessary bridges in the country.
   ‘Probing any irregularities of sanctioning allocations for unnecessary bridges and spending them will take place later,’ he told reporters.
   He was answering questions from reporters after emerging from a meeting of the executive committee of the National Economic Council at the auditorium in the Planning Commission.
   The ECNEC approved 12 development projects at a cost of Tk 1,057 crore, including Tk 117 crore for project assistance.
   The Chief Adviser and ECNEC’s Chairman,
   Fakhruddin Ahmed, presided over the meeting.
   The approved projects include construction and reconstruction of 54 dilapidated fire service and civil defence stations under the home ministry; construction of a road from Mirpur Grameen Bank to Agargaon; development of roads connecting unions and other
   infrastructure in greater Comilla district (Comilla, Chandpur and Brahmanbaria); and construction of upazila and union land offices (5th phase) (1st revised) under the land ministry.
   The other projects are reconstruction of narrow bridges and culverts, including approach roads, on national and regional highways under the communications ministry (2nd revised); development of Semutang gas-field and digging of wells for exploration of oil/gas at Sundalpur under the Energy and Mineral Resources Division; Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient Industrial Park under the industry ministry; establishment of the National Institute of ENT (1st phase) in Dhaka under the health and family welfare ministry; and setting up of the
   Jessore University of Science and Technology (revised) under the education ministry.
   The projects also include modernisation of vaccine production technology and extension of laboratory under the fisheries and livestock ministry and drainage of Natun Dakatia and Puraton Dakatia rivers (2nd revised) (part of Dakkhin Comilla and Uttar Noakhali coordinated drainage project) under the water resources ministry.
   Finance and Planning Adviser Dr AB Mirza and ECNEC’s alternative chairman M Azizul Islam, Home Affairs Adviser Maj Gen (retd) MA Matin, LGRD and Cooperatives Adviser M Anwarul Iqbal, Health and Family Welfare Adviser Dr AMM Shawkat Ali, Law Adviser AF Hassan Ariff, Education Adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman and special assistants to the Chief Adviser attended the meeting.
   The cabinet secretary and principal secretary to the Chief Adviser, planning secretary, Planning Commission members and secretaries and senior officials of the ministries concerned were also present at the meeting.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, on Thursday toured the Myanmar cyclone disaster area, as he began talks with the junta on opening up to a massive relief effort that could save countless lives.
   The country’s military leaders have shocked the world by refusing a full-scale emergency operation despite the scope of
   the destruction, and Ban said he would try to persuade them to welcome offers of help with open arms.
   ‘The whole world is trying to help Myanmar,’ Ban said as he visited a camp of survivors from the May 2-3 storm, which has left around 134,000 people dead or missing and another 2.5 million people in need of immediate aid.
   ‘Don’t lose your hope,’ he told one woman in the devastated Irrawaddy Delta, the rice bowl region which bore the brunt of the worst natural disaster in the country’s history. ‘The United Nations is here to help you.’
   Ban said there were recent signs of ‘flexibility’ from the regime, which in the past few days has consented to UN helicopters flying to remote villages to help speed up a relief effort criticised by the international community.
   But the UN chief could not get the head of the junta, Senior General Than Shwe, to take his calls or answer his letters in the aftermath of the disaster, and the regime has a long history of thumbing its nose at world opinion.
   Ban is to meet Than Shwe on Friday in the remote capital of Naypyidaw, hoping to stress the urgency of the crisis as well as the international fury that has led to allegations of crimes against humanity over the disaster.
   The United Nations believes only 25 per cent of those in immediate need of food, water, shelter and medicines have been reached by international aid three weeks after the disaster struck.
   There are French and US navy vessels with relief supplies at sea nearby, but the junta has refused to allow them in. It has also blocked visas for many of the foreign disaster relief experts needed to oversee the aid operation.
   ‘The ships are waiting, just waiting for permission,’ said Michael Turner, spokesman for the US embassy in neighbouring Thailand. ‘How long they’ll be there is difficult to say.’
   Aid groups warn that hunger and disease are stalking many of the survivors of the storm, and that the death toll could rise if they do not get assistance immediately.
   But the country’s strictly controlled state media have said reports that people are not getting enough aid are the work of ‘traitors,’ and suggested that the emergency phase of the operation is over.
   The official New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a mouthpiece for the junta, said on Thursday: ‘Storm victims are not to trust the fabricated news made by destructive elements at home and abroad.’
   But AFP reporters who have been able to slip through the security cordon the regime has thrown up around the delta region have reported that many victims still have not received any aid from the government.
   ‘I’m quite confident we will be able to overcome this tragedy. I’ve tried to bring a message of hope to your people,’ said Ban – the first UN secretary general to visit the country in more than 40 years.
   ‘At the same time, I hope your people and government can coordinate the flow of aid, so the aid work can be done in a more systematic and organised way.’
   The storm wiped out entire villages in the Irrawaddy Delta, but the country’s main city of Yangon was also hit hard.
   Poor access, logistical bottle-necks and other problems have beset the relief operation, in addition to a decision by the ruling generals to keep out most foreign disaster experts.

The religious affairs ministry has sent letters to the deputy commissioners, asking them to immediately take legal action against unauthorised middlemen (kafela leaders) involved in hajj management in various areas across the country to check ‘deception and widespread irregularities in the sector’.
   ‘To ensure smooth hajj management we have asked the deputy commissioners to take legal action against the unauthorised middlemen dealing with would-be hajj pilgrims in collusion with some agencies,’ the religious affairs secretary, Mohammad Ataur Rahman, told New Age on Thursday.
   He said that the ministry has got lists of such middlemen, popularly known as kafela leaders, from various sources with allegations that hajjis have been exploited by these people with impunity for years.
   The local administrations have been directed to take action against these unauthorized kafela leaders for illegally managing hajj pilgrimages in the private sector and thereby deceiving hajis, said the secretary, adding that they were also allegedly extracting additional money from the hajis.
   Meanwhile, an anti-graft taskforce has started looking into irregularities and anomalies in hajj management, especially by the private hajj agencies.
   ‘The investigation conducted by the ministry found that allegations of irregularities and mismanagement against 87 hajj agencies were well-founded. We have engaged the anti-graft taskforce to look further into the allegations for determining the next course of action against them,’ said Ataur Rahman.
   The army-led taskforce has taken away some files in connection with hajj management from the ministry early this week for inquiry, said another official concerned.
   Against this backdrop a total of 211 hajj agencies, out of 324, signed bilateral agreements with the government, the deadline for which was April 30, for offering hajj packages this year, said official sources.
   The government, to protect the hajjis from being deceived by the private operators, has decided not to allow any agency to offer hajj packages henceforth without signing bilateral agreements with it.
   According to the latest hajj policy, each agency must sign two agreements on non-judicial stamps — one with the religious affairs ministry and the other with the individual haji — where the facilities to be provided by the agency will be mentioned specifically and unequivocally. Each agency, as per the policy, must provide guides for the pilgrims and ensure orientation sessions for the hajis at the hajj camp in Dhaka.
   Moreover, the agencies will not be able to receive any money without the agreement with the individual haji in the prescribed form, which the officials believe will help to check irregularities in hajj management this year.
   On March 16, the religious affairs ministry declared Hajj Package 2008 for performing hajj in December through both government and approved hajj agencies, raising the airfare to and from Saudi Arabia to $1,350 from $1,250 for each pilgrim.
   According to revised rates, the total charge for each balloted hajj pilgrim will range from Tk 1,99,112 to Tk 2,16,782 this year, which will have to be deposited by July 6. Application forms, after being duly filled in, must be submitted to the local deputy commissioners’ offices by July 7, 2008.
   It has been estimated that the total number of hajj passengers will be 65,000, of which 15,000 will be balloted (under government arrangement).
   Licences of two hajj agencies — Jebric Travels and Dulafakir Hajj Agency — have already been cancelled for irregularities and ‘causing suffering’ to last year’s hajj pilgrims, said ministry officials.
   Owner of Jebric Travels, Ramjan Ali, went into hiding after his hajj agency failed to send 55 intending hajis to Saudi Arabia last year, each of whom had paid over Tk 1,70,000 to the agency.
   Secretary-general of the Hajj Agencies Association of Bangladesh, Eyaqub Sharafati, told New Age that the government’s move to stop operation of middlemen would protect the hajis from being deceived. He, however, demanded that the government extend the deadline for the agreement so that more agencies could offer hajj packages this year.

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday ridiculed the UPA government on completion of four years in office by bringing out a parallel ‘list of achievements’ of the Congress-led coalition which included ‘betrayal’ of the common man.
   The party listed the ‘achievements’ of the government as ‘bartering’ of national security for votes, ‘imperilling’ food and economic security, ‘devaluing’ the office of the prime minister and other institutions and ‘sanctifying’ corruption.
   ‘The stark truth about four years of the government is its failure on all fronts, compounded by its betrayal of the common man in whose name the Congress had sought votes,’ BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
   The BJP came out with its parallel ‘list of achievements’ of the government on a day the UPA celebrated completion of four years in office with the prime minister hosting a dinner to coalition partners and left allies.
   In a sarcastic remark, Prasad said while ministers and leaders of the UPA attend the grand dinner, crores of ordinary Indians will be eating less than their normal meagre intake because skyrocketing prices have eaten into their per capita food consumption.
   ‘The UPA government’s failure to check spiralling inflation, which is robbing the paltry earnings of the common man, has imperilled their economic and food security,’ he said, while noting that apart from the poor, price rise has also hit the urban middle class.
   The ‘list of achievements’ came a day after the party identified stifling inflation, rise in terror attacks, collapse of agricultural sector and brakes on infrastructure development as the legacy of four years of UPA ‘misrule’.

A Rajshahi court on Thursday sentenced four people, including a Rajshahi University teacher, to death for killing S Taher Ahmed, a teacher of the university.
   Rajshahi Speedy Trial Tribunal judge ATM Mesbauddollah, however, acquitted former Islamic Chhatra Shibir university unit president Mahbub Alam Salehi and Taher’s house caretaker Jahangir Alam’s father Ajimuddin Munshi.
   The court delivered the verdict amid tight security with a large number of activists of Jamaat-e-Islami and its front organisations present at the court premises.
   The verdict sentenced geology and mining department teacher Mian Mohammed Mahiuddin, Taher’s housekeeper Jahangir Alam, Jahangir’s brother and former Chhatra Shibir activist Abdus Salam and brother-in-law Nazmul Islam to death.
   A professor of geology and mining, S Taher Ahmed was killed on February 1, 2006 and his body was recovered from a tank behind his residence on the university campus on February 3, 2006.
   Taher’s son Sanjid Alvi Himel filed a murder case with Motiher police on the same day.
   The detective branch and Motiher police jointly submitted the charge sheet with the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s court on March 18, 2007 after investigation, pressing charges against six persons.
   Mohiuddin, Jahangir, Salam and Nazmul were arrested within a week of the murder while the Shibir leader Salehi surrendered to the CMM court later.
   The judge pronounced the verdict after deposing 49 witnesses with all of the accused in the dock.
   Rajshahi University Shibir president Delwar Hossain Saydee, its central committee leader Rezaul Karim and another Shibir activist were allowed to enter the courtroom during the pronouncement of the verdict although others including the press were barred from entry.
   Family members of Taher and the accused persons were also present on the court premises during the verdict.
   Salehi returned to the campus after being released from the Rajshahi Central Jail on Thursday noon, sources said. Socio-cultural activists condemned the acquittal of Salehi.
   ‘We can not accept Salehi’s acquittal of the charge because it is well established that Salehi and Mohiuddin had masterminded the killing,’ eminent writer Hasan Azizul Haque told New Age.
   ‘Chhatra Shibir will become more influential in Rajshahi University after the verdict,’ said Hasan, also a teacher of the university.

In a stroke of cosmic luck, astronomers for the first time witnessed the start of one of the universe’s most fiery events: the end of a star’s life as it exploded into a supernova.
   On January 9, astronomers used a NASA X-ray satellite to spy on a star already well into its death throes, when another star in the same galaxy started to explode. The outburst was 100 billion times brighter than Earth’s sun. The scientists were able to get several ground-based telescopes to join in the early viewing and the first results were published in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
   ‘A star exploded right before my eyes,’ lead author Alicia Soderberg, an astrophysics researcher at Princeton University, said Wednesday in a teleconference.
   She likened it to ‘winning the astronomy lottery. We caught the whole thing from start-to-finish on tape.’
   Another scientist, University of California at Berkeley astronomy professor Alex Filippenko, called it a ‘very special moment because this is the birth, in a sense, of the death of a star.’
   And what a death blast it is.
   ‘As much energy is released in one second by the death of a star as by all of the other stars you can see in the visible universe,’ Filippenko said.
   Less than 1 per cent of the stars in the universe will die this way, in a supernova, said Filippenko, who has written a separate paper awaiting publication. Most stars, including our sun, will get stronger and then slowly fade into white dwarfs, what Filippenko likes to call ‘retired stars,’ which produce little energy.
   The first explosion of this supernova can only be seen in the X-ray wave length. It was spotted by NASA’s Swift satellite, which looks at X-rays, and happened to be focused on the right region, Soderberg said. The blast was so bright it flooded the satellite’s instrument, giving it a picture akin to ‘pointing your digital camera at the sun,’ she said.
   Soderberg said that by seeing it live in X-rays, astronomers on Earth learned of the supernova about a month before they normally would.
   The chances of two simultaneous supernovae explosions so close to each other is maybe 1 in 10,000, Soderberg said. The odds of looking at them at the right time with the right telescope are, well, astronomical.
   Add to that the serendipity of the Berkeley team viewing the same region with an optical light telescope. It took pictures of the star about three hours before it exploded.
   This new glimpse of a supernova seems to confirm decades-old theories on how stars explode and die, not providing many surprises, scientists said. That makes the findings ‘a cool thing,’ but not one that fundamentally changes astrophysics, said University of California, Santa Cruz astrophysicist Stan Woosley, who wasn’t part of the research.
   The galaxy with the dual explosions is a run-of-the-mill cluster of stars, not too close and not too far from the Milky Way in cosmic terms, Soderberg said. The galaxy, NGC2770, is about 100 million light years away. One light year is 5.9 trillion miles.
   The star that exploded was only about 10 million years old. It was the same size in diameter as the sun, but about 10 to 20 times more dense.
   ‘The big stars live fast and die young,’ said Harvard astronomy professor Robert Kirshner. ‘We don’t know if they leave a beautiful corpse.’
   The death of this star went through stages, with the core getting heavier in successive nuclear reactions and atomic particles being shed out toward the cosmos, Filippenko said. It started out in its normal life with hydrogen being converted to helium, which is what is happening in our sun. The helium then converts to oxygen and carbon, and into heavier and heavier elements until it turns into iron.
   That’s when the star core becomes so heavy it collapses in on itself, and the supernova starts with a shock wave of particles piercing through the shell of the star, which is what the Soderberg team captured on x-rays.
   People at home can simulate how this shockwave works, Filippenko said.
   Take a basketball and a tennis ball, get about five feet above the ground and rest the tennis ball on top of the basketball. Drop them together and the tennis ball will soar on the bounce. The basketball is the collapsing core and the tennis ball is the shockwave that was seen by astronomers, he said.

Aftershocks, avalanches and flooding could bring more geological disasters to China’s mountainous southwest following last week’s devastating earthquake, a senior government official said Thursday.
   The 8.0-magnitude earthquake has increased risks along China’s Dragon Gate seismic fault, a well-known geological landmark, Yun Xiaosu, vice head of the ministry of land and resources, told reporters.
   ‘As rain increases during the rainy season and coupled with the continuous aftershocks, it is very probable that geologic hazards in the disaster area will increase and again bring a large amount of losses,’ he said.
   Heavy rains were likely to bring greater instability to the mountains that had already been greatly shaken by the earthquake and its nearly 170 aftershocks, Yun said.
   ‘This has made the work of monitoring, prevention and mitigation of potential geologic disasters great and the tasks before us arduous,’ he said.
   The quake, the biggest to hit China in more than 30 years, has left over 80,000 people dead or missing, and more than five million homeless.
   Most of the flattened towns and villages have been along the 200-kilometre long Dragon Gate seismic fault in the Himalayan foothill region of Sichuan province.
   Yun said one of the biggest concerns was the creation of 34 bodies of water known as ‘quake’ or ‘barrier’ lakes that formed after landslides blocked rivers. He said they could burst and threaten populated areas.
   ‘We must be aware that the barrier lakes that we have identified are very serious,’ said Liu Yuan, vice director of the ministry’s geologic environment department.
   ‘I want to be clear about this in order to ensure safety – if these barrier lakes burst, the after effects will be severe over a wide area.’
   Officials had ordered people in all threatened areas near the quake lakes to evacuate, he said.
   Experts were studying ways to engineer channels around or through the barriers to alleviate rising waters and reduce the potential dangers, especially on the Minjiang river, a major tributary of the Yangtze, he said.
   The officials further warned that more quake lakes could
   be formed if the frequency of aftershocks, landslides and avalanches in the mountainous region increased during the rainy season, which begins next month.
   On Thursday, the government announced that 167 aftershocks over 4.0 magnitude had struck along the Dragon Gate seismic fault since the May 12 quake, with four registering over magnitude 6.0.
   The fault, also known as the Longmenshan fault, runs along the rugged and steep Dragon Gate mountains, which form a geological border between the plain of Sichuan province and the towering Himalayan mountains, the world’s highest.
   Yun said his ministry had identified more than 4,900 geological hazards along the Dragon Gate fault before the earthquake struck, of which 158 of them were considered major hazards.

The Executive Committee of National Economic Council on Thursday approved 12 development projects involving Tk 1,057 crore, including Tk 117 crore project assistance.
   The approval was given at an ECNEC meeting at NEC conference room at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar with the chief adviser and ECNEC chairman, Fakhruddin Ahmed, in the chair.
   The approved projects include construction and reconstruction of 54 dilapidated fire service and civil defence stations under the home ministry, construction of a road from Mirpur Grameen Bank to Agargaon, and development of roads connecting unions and other infrastructures in greater Comilla district (Comilla, Chandpur and Brahmanbaria) and construction of upazila and union land offices (5th phase) (1st revised) under the land ministry.
   The other projects are reconstruction of narrow bridges and culverts, including approach roads, on national and regional highways under the communications ministry (2nd revised), development of Semutang gas field and digging of wells for exploration of oil/gas at Sundalpur under the Energy and Mineral Resources Division, Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient Industrial Park under the industry ministry, establishment of National Institute of ENT (1st phase) in Dhaka under the health and family welfare ministry and setting up of Jessore University of Science and Technology (revised) under the education ministry.
   It also includes modernisation of vaccine production technology and extension of laboratory under the fisheries and livestock ministry and drainage of Natun Dakatia and Puraton Dakatia rivers (2nd revised) (part of Dakshin Comilla and Uttar Noakhali coordinated drainage project) under the water resources ministry.
   Finance and planning adviser and ECNEC alternative chairman AB Mirza M Azizul Islam, home adviser MA Matin, LGRD and cooperative adviser M Anwarul Iqbal, health and family welfare adviser AMM Shawkat Ali, law adviser AF Hassan Ariff, education adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman and special assistants to the chief adviser attended the meeting.
   Cabinet secretary and principal secretary to the chief adviser, planning secretary, Planning Commission members and secretaries and senior officials of the ministries concerned were also present at the meeting.

The Philippines sought Thailand’s agreement on Thursday to supply more rice as Manila shores up its inventories amid high global prices and tight supplies, officials said.
   The world’s biggest rice importer, the Philippines says it has contracted for 1.7 million tonnes of the staple to fill a 10 per cent domestic production gap this year, and wants to buy an additional 675,000 tonnes as buffer stocks for the last quarter of the year. The government has secured contracts with Vietnam for up to 1.5 million tonnes and Japan for 200,000 tonnes, and is in talks with Thailand — the top exporter — over additional supplies. The Thai prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, was scheduled to meet with the president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, later Thursday. The agriculture secretary, Arthur Yap, said earlier the rice agreement with Thailand was unlikely to be signed this week because more work needs to be done.
   Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye said the two leaders would discuss cooperation food security, improving the supply and distribution of rice and boosting productivity through research and development. On Friday, Samak was scheduled to visit the International Rice Research Institute south of Manila, which has been developing rice varieties to increase production and withstand drought or floods to help farmers across the world.

The World Islamic League, under the patronage of Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, will hold a three-day world Islamic conference at Makkah Al-Mukarramah in Saudi Arabia on May 31.
   The League has organised the conference for dialogue between the followers of different religions and civilisations for propagation of common evaluation amongst them.
   About 383 distinguished persons, researchers and professors from 161 countries will participate in the conference, said a Saudi embassy press release.