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The Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson, Khaleda Zia, is set to be released from prison today although the government and the Anti-Corruption Commission have appealed for halting the bail the High Court granted her I four cases.
   The prison authorities on Wednesday received the orders for her release on bail issued by the courts concerned.
   ‘We have received the orders for the release of former prime minister Khaleda Zia and four bonds for her bail. We will complete all the formalities tonight and she will be released from jail any time she wishes,’ the inspector general of prisons, Zakir Hossain, told New Age Wednesday evening.
   Sources in the law enforcement agencies said they had chalked up a plan in details for the security of Khaleda after her release today.
   According to the plan, lawmen will escort Khaleda on her way to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University hospital, the party office at Naya Paltan and her house in the Dhaka cantonment from the special jail set up on the Jatiya Sangsad complex.
   Party sources, however, said Khaleda might also visit the grave of her husband, slain president Ziaur Rahman, at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar. She will go to the hospital to see her ailing eldest son Tarique Rahman.
   Khaleda will meet party leaders at the party office, which has been closed since the declaration of the state of emergency on January 11, 2007, the sources added.
   The party on Wednesday decided to accord a warm reception to Khaleda on her release. Leaders and activists of the BNP and its front organisations will gather along the road stretches Khaleda will pass by.
   The programme was detailed at a meeting of senior leaders of the party and its front organisations Wednesday evening in the house of the party’s secretary general Delwar Hossain at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, said sources who attended the meeting.
   Former BNP lawmakers on Wednesday also decided to accord a reception to the party chairperson with a fresh move for unification of the party streams ‘to strengthen the hands of Khaleda.’
   The lawmakers, loyal to both the mainstream and the government-backed splinter group, already had a series of meetings to initiate the unity process and stressed the need for a ‘collective leadership’ to continue with the move.
   They on Wednesday they had a meeting which discussed preparations for a ‘grand reception’ to Khaleda Zia after her release. They resolved to mobilise a large number of the party supporters for the reception.
   On the other hand, the Anti-Corruption Commission on Wednesday filed two petitions with the Appellate Division seeking stay on the High Court’s Tuesday orders that granted bail to Khaleda in the Niko and GATCO corruption cases.
   The home affairs adviser, MA Matin, however, told reporters in the afternoon at the secretariat that Khaleda would be released as soon as the High Court orders on her bail would reach the authorities. He also denied filing any appeals by the government for halting bail granted to Khaleda by the High Court.
   Although the government filed no petition for halting Khaleda’s bail in the Niko and GATCO corruption cases, it filed such petitions on Tuesday seeking stay on the bail granted to her by the High Court in two other corruption cases involving the Barapukuria coal mine and the Zia Orphanage Trust.
   Additional attorney general Mansur Habib on Tuesday told reporters, ‘We have opposed the bail petitions filed by Khaleda Zia and appealed for halting the her bail in the two cases as there was no instruction from the government for not doing so.’
   ‘We did it as a part of a regular process,’ he said. He also said the petitions, filed on Tuesday, might come up for hearing in the Appellate Division on September 15.
   The commission’s advocate-on-record Sufia Khatun told reporters after filing the appeals in the GATCO and Niko corruption cases that the two petitions might also be heard by the Appellate Division chamber judge on September 15.
   Khaleda’s counsels told reporters the commission and the government’s petitions against the High Court orders would not obstruct Khaleda’s release.
   Her counsels rushed to the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court and two special judge’s court on the Jatiya Sangsad complex in the afternoon along with the High Court orders that granted her bail.
   Khaleda’s counsel Masud Ahmed Talukder signed the four bail bonds as local guarantor and Sanaullah Miah as lawyer and furnished the bail bonds of Tk 1 lakh in each case, another of her counsels Mahbubuddin Khokan said.
   The courts accordingly issued the orders for Khaleda’s release. The orders along with the bail bonds reached the prison authorities at around 4.45pm, Khokan said.
   The High Court vacation bench of Justice Mirza Hussain Haider and Mamnoon Rahman on Tuesday granted Khaleda interim bail for three months in the Niko and GATCO cases — last two of the four cases so far filed against her — clearing the way for her release.
   The High Court bench of Justice Sharif Uddin Chaklader and Justice Md Emdadul Haque Azad on August 26 granted Khaleda interim bail for four months in the case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission on July 13 accusing her of misappropriating Tk 2.1 crore of the Zia Orphanage Trust fund.
   The same bench on August 28 granted her interim bail for four months in the Barapukuria coalmine corruption case.
   Khaleda, along with her youngest son Arafat Rahman, was arrested by the joint forces at her house in the Dhaka cantonment on September 3, 2007, a day after the Anti-Corruption Commission had filed the GATCO corruption case with the Tejgaon police against them and 11 others. Tarique, also the BNP’s senior joint secretary general, was arrested on March 8, 2007.
   Arafat went to Bangkok for medical treatment on July 19 after he was released by an executive order on July 17.
   Tarique, undergoing treatment in Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University hospital, now waits preparations to go abroad for treatment. He was released on September 3 after he had obtained bail from the High Court in all the 12 cases filed against him.
   After Tarique’s release, Khaleda on Sunday filed two petitions seeking bail in the GATCO and Niko corruption cases.

The Election Commission is caught between a rock and a hard place over the upazila parishad polls as the country’s major political parties vehemently oppose the holding of those polls before the parliamentary elections, while the military-backed government and ‘civil society members’ are pressuring the EC to hold upazila polls first.
   The EC’s revised decision of holding a few upazila polls, meant to be a token retreat from its earlier decision of holding elections to 250-300 upazilas, was also rejected by the Awami League and its allies.
   The EC now plans to hold a fresh round of talks with the government and civil society members to reach a decision on upazila polls by Sunday morning, said EC sources. It is scheduled to sit with the prominent members of the civil society on Sunday morning.
   ‘We heard so many opinions during the latest spell of the dialogues with the political parties [that we have to do some more thinking]. We will formally announce our decision on holding upazila elections on Sunday,’ the chief election commissioner, ATM Shamsul Huda, told reporters on Wednesday.
   On the same day the EC is also likely to announce a possible date for the national polls in response to the growing demand by the major political parties for immediate announcement of a specific date for parliamentary polls.
   ‘We are thinking of a possible date for the general elections but it is not possible to declare the polls schedule right at this moment,’ the CEC told reporters on Wednesday after initiating a training programme for field-level election officials in the Local Government Training Institute.
   The CEC said the reason was that it was not possible for them to declare the election schedule as the electoral roll had not been finalised yet.
   Replying to a question, Shamsul expressed the hope that the EC would soon sit in a dialogue with the BNP, as the process of releasing BNP’s chairperson, Khaleda Zia, has started rolling. ‘We hope to hold the dialogue with the BNP soon,’ he said.
   The CEC on July 11 said that since the EC was holding the local government polls at the request of the government, the political parties and the government should come to an understanding on holding upazila polls before the national elections. He said that the political parties should discuss with the government their objections to the upazila polls as the government itself wants them to be held. Most of the political parties, except the BNP, at the dialogues with the government also demanded national elections before the upazila polls.
   At a meeting in the office of the chief adviser on Sunday, the council of advisers asked the EC to hold elections to as many upazilas as possible before the parliamentary elections, but failed to make the EC agree to its demand. The EC wants to hold the polls to about 100 upazila parishads by the end of October, said the sources.
   The EC had earlier planned to hold polls to over 200 upazila parishads from October 23, before the parliamentary elections, but it changed its plan in the face of strong opposition from political parties and due to the deteriorating flood situation in the country, the sources added.

A record 74.85 per cent of examinees have passed the Higher Secondary Certificate examinations under seven general education boards this year, according to the results published on Wednesday.
   This has been the highest pass percentage in higher secondary exams in 37 years, according to government statistics.
   The results were tabulated in grade point average with record 19,108 examinees of seven education boards scoring maximum 5; of them, 11,071 are boys and 8,037 girls.
   The percentage of successful students in the seven education boards was 64.27 in 2007, higher than 63.92 in 2006. The percentage was 59.16 in 2005, 47.74 in 2004, 38.43 in 2003 and 27.42 in 2002.
   The boards in Dhaka, Rajshahi, Chittagong, Comilla, Sylhet, Jessore and Barisal had a total of 4,96,139 examinees and of them 3,71,382 have came out successful.
   The percentage of successful business studies and commerce examinees is 82.99 while it is 76.06 in science, agriculture and home economics groups and only 69.06 in humanities. The rate of successful boys is 75.14 per cent and girls 77.79 per cent under seven general education boards.
   The success rate in HSC-equivalent alim examinations under the Madrassah Education Board is 82.43 which was 74.31 in 2007 and 75.23 in 2006, 64.74 in 2005, 41.4 in 2004 and 39.89 in 2003.
   The number of GPA 5 achievers is 2,886, which is significantly higher than 930 in 2007. The figure was only 412 in 2006.
   The madrassah board success rate overshadowed the performance of all the general education boards.
   The second largest public examinations under nine educational boards were held between May and July and the results were published on 60th day after the exams.
   The success rate of the HSC (business management) exams under the Technical Educational Board this year is 81.27, significantly higher than 68.13 in 2007. The figure was 69.74 in 2006. Only 51 examinees achieved GPA 5 under the board.
   A total of 54,518 candidates took the examinations under the board and 44,304 came out successful. Most students under the education board are dropouts from general education colleges or grown-ups, according to board officials.
   Of the seven general boards, Dhaka has topped the table of successful candidates with 82.43 per cent, with Barisal trailing the table with 65.28 per cent.
   The Comilla board comes second in successful rate with 77.33 per cent, with Jessore following with 72.24 per cent. The percentage of the Rajshahi board is 71.87, of the Sylhet board 71.17 and of the Chittagong board 67.96.
   The education adviser, Hossain Zillur Rahman, at a briefing at the education ministry expressed his satisfaction at the results.
   ‘The results show that the quality of education is improving and students are getting studious. The government has taken various steps which helped to improve the results.’
   ‘Not a single student came out successful from 41 institutions. The salaries of the teachers at such institutions will be stopped,’ the adviser said.
   All the students of 674 institutions have come out successful in the 2008 exams.
   During the 2008 examinations, 785 candidates were expelled from exams halls under the nine education boards on charge of cheating. The number was 42,270 in 2001.

The United Kingdom has agreed to provide Bangladesh £75 million (about $132 million) in grants over the next five years to enable it to recoup the losses caused by the recent natural calamities, including the prolonged floods and cyclone Sidr.
   The two governments signed an agreement to that effect on Wednesday morning at the ‘UK-Bangladesh Climate Change Conference’ at the Royal Geographical Society in London.
   The declaration also states that the two governments will work together to reduce the emission of global greenhouse gases by the developed countries by about 50 per cent within 2050 to save the lives and properties of hundreds of millions in Bangladesh and other least developed countries.
   Douglas Alexander, minister for international development, UK, and AB Mirza Azizul Islam, adviser for finance and planning, signed the declaration in London after the opening session.
   Mirza Aziz said that the responsibility for managing the Climate Change Trust Fund may be given to the World Bank. The UK government has already pledged £60 million from its total package to this trust fund.
   However sources close the proceedings pointed out that any involvement of international financial institutions is seriously opposed by different sections of the citizens and the civil society. They also indicated that no concrete decision in this regard had been taken by the interim government.
   Furthermore, such a position is contrary to that of the least developed countries and other developing countries who feel that any involvement of the lending agencies would lead to further conditionalities for disbursement of these funds and would in fact act as an impediment to swift climate proofing of the marginalised communities and excluded groups.
   The conference was also addressed by Ulla Tormaes, Danish minister for development and cooperation, and Muzzafar Ahmad, an economist and environment activist.
   ‘I am happy to make the announcement of providing Bangladesh £75 million in grants for mitigating some of its havoc caused by recent Sidr,’ Douglas Alexander told reporters after the meeting.
   Besides the £60 million meant for the trust fund, the UK government will provide another £12 million for different projects funded by UK agencies and £3 million for research. It could not, however, be confirmed whether this fund is over and beyond the overseas development assistance already pledged to Bangladesh or a part of it.
   Creating international consensus to reduce emissions will be the next agendum to help save developing countries from the dire effects of climate change, said the British minister.
   Mirza Aziz termed the commitment as recognition that Bangladesh was truly vulnerable to climate change.
   ‘At least the aid commitment is a positive beginning for more grants from developed countries,’ said Aziz, adding that Bangladesh needs about $6 billion to withstand and mitigate losses due to climate change and the recent cyclone.
   Aziz called upon the international community, particularly the developed countries, to reduce their emissions and provide Bangladesh with more and adequate funds to implement its climate change strategy and action plan.
   ‘I propose the establishment of a multi-donor trust fund for harmonised action to supplement our efforts in implementing the climate change strategy and the action plan of Bangladesh,’ said Aziz in his speech.
   He pointed out that the response from the international community is inadequate to address the losses of developing countries caused by the serious devastation of natural disasters.
   The joint declaration called upon developed countries to reduce their global greenhouse gas emissions to save the least developed countries and small islands, and also the developing states.
   ‘We believe that in order to minimise the future vulnerability of the LDCs and many developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, global greenhouse gas emissions should peak within the next 10 to 15 years, and be reduced to at least 50 per cent below the 1990 levels by 2050,’ read the declaration.
   ‘If we are to achieve this scale of emissions reduction, the developed countries will need to take the lead. To put us on track to achieve this target, the developed countries, as a group, should make the commitment to reduce their emissions by at least 25-40 per cent by 2020 compared to 1990.’ The declaration said the developed countries will enhance the availability of new, additional and predictable financial flows to developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.
   On the other hand, the declaration urged the LDCs and developing countries to integrate climate resilience into their development plans and budgets.
   A 31-member government delegation comprising government officials and representatives of different non-governmental organisations and citizens’ organisations attended the meeting.

Flooding continued improving in most of the places with waterborne diseases spreading fast multiplying sufferings of the victims on Wednesday.
   Acute shortage of food and drinking water is also prevailing in the affected districts where vast tracts of cropland and water sources, including tube wells, went under water.
   An elderly man died at village Aucharpara of Sariakhandi upazila in Bogra while waiting in queue for getting relief goods while a minor boy drowned in Faridpur on the day.
   Erosion has also taken a serious turn as flood water started receding while a large number of roads in the central and south-central regions still remain submerged.
   Four hundred and eighty-two medical teams have started working in the flood-hit districts, said the control room of the health directorate, adding that the number of diarrhoea patients was 350 on Wednesday and 441 on Tuesday.
   The Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre said the Brahmaputra-Jamuna and the Ganges systems continued falling and the Meghna system started falling on the day. The confluence of Padma and Jamuna at Goalundo and Bhagyakul also marked fall.
   Flooding in Kurigram, Bogra Jamalpur, Sirajganj, Tangail, Munshiganj, Manikganj continued improving significantly, it said adding that the situation in Rajbari, Faridpur, Madaripur, Shariatpur, Gopalganj, Chandpur, and Dohar and Nawabganj upazilas in Dhaka will improve in next 24-48 hours.
   River heights fell at 61 points out of the 73 monitoring points across the country on the day and at 18 points they were still flowing above danger mark.
   New Age Bogra correspondent reports: People in Bogra were in dire need of relief materials and elderly Zil Haque died at Aucharpara while waiting in queue for getting relief goods.
   The floodwater in Faridpur was slowly receding with the Padma still flowing 70 centimetres above the danger mark. A minor boy drowned at Decreerchar on the day, raising the flood-related death toll in the district to 3 this year.
   People, who have taken shelter on embankments and in makeshift houses at different places, are facing acute scarcity of food, drinking water and medicine. In the past few days, a scanty amount of rice from the government was distributed among them.
   The situation is worse at North Channel, Decreerchar and Aliabad unions under Sadar upazila, Gazirtek and Jhawkhanda unions in Charbhadrasan and Charmanir, Charmonirampur and Charkrisnapur unions in Sadarpur upazila.
   Rokon Uddin Ahmed chairman of Nasirabad union parisad of Bhanga upazila said only 200 families in the erosion- and flood-hit villages had so far got 5 kilograms of rice each.
   Waterborne diseases broke out with the recession of water and 26 medical teams were working in the affected four upazilas.
   New Age correspondent in Madaripur said erosion of Arial Khan, Padma and Kumar had so far rendered 700 families homeless in four uazials of the district in the past week. Many educational institutions, business establishments, roads and vast tract of cultivable land were eroded.
   Three hundred and fifteen families turned homeless in Shibchar, 179 in Kalkini, 178 in sadar and 20 in Rajoir upazilas.
   Many people in the erosion-hit areas are shifting their belongings to safer places.
   In Shibchar upazila, 500 families have taken shelter beside the Bhanga-Mawa Highway in makeshift houses.
   The Madaripur-Shariatpur road is also threatened by erosion of Arial Khan at places in the district headquarters.

The Awami League general secretary, Abdul Jalil, on Wednesday announced reassuming party office immediately after he had obtained bail from the High Court in the corruption case filed against him.
   Jalil re-starts organisational activities as general secretary of the party today after 16 months by placing floral wreaths at Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s portrait at the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum.
   The High Court vacation bench of Justice Mirza Hussain Haider and Mamnoon Rahman granted Jalil, also a former minister, bail till October 20 in the corruption case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission against him for amassing illegal wealth and hiding information in the statement submitted to the commission.
   Coming out of the court, Jalil at an impromptu briefing at the Supreme Court Bar Association said, ‘As a free man after obtaining bail from the High Court, now I announce my re-assumption of party office as the Awami League general secretary.’
   He also denied sending any letter to the chief adviser announcing to quit politics.
   He came down heavily on reporters as they asked him about the letter that was read out by his wife to media when she appealed for his parole on medical grounds.
   Jalil challenged the reporters, saying his wife had never read out any letter signed by him where he announced to quit politics.
   ‘Do not carry out negative propaganda. Show the video footage of the reading out of the letter, if you have any,’ he said.
   ‘I was released on parole for treatment overseas on condition that I would not be engaged in politics during the parole period. After recovery, I returned home on August 31. The duration of my parole expires today and the High Court granted me bail today,’ he said on Wednesday.
   ‘According to the Awami League constitution, I am supposed to continue as the party’s general secretary. Being respectful to rule of law, I was waiting for my bail orders,’ he said.
   After the briefing, Jalil rushed to meet the acting party president, Zillur Rahman, at Gulshan.
   Welcoming him, Zillur said as the High Court granted bail to Jalil, he was now the general secretary of the party in keeping with the party constitution.
   ‘It is up to Jalil when he will resume work,’ Zillur told reporters, hoping that Jail would assume office of the general secretary in a couple of days.
   ‘We are happy as Jalil has obtained bail,’ Zillur said, adding the government would have no rights to keep anyone behind bars after the release of the BNP chairperson, Khaleda Zia, and her son Tarique Rahman.
   Jalil on Wednesday told New Age he was now general secretary of the party, but would restart his activities formally after placing flowers at Mujib’s portrait on Thursday.
   Jalil, however, on Monday asked the party’s acting general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam to continue to discharge the duties of the party’s general secretary for a few more days as he needed rest.
   Jalil returned from Singapore on August 31 after six months. He was paroled on March 2 for a month for treatment overseas and left Bangladesh for Singapore on March 3.
   The joint forces arrested him at his Mercantile Bank office at Motijheel in Dhaka on May 28, 2007.
   On the other hand, granting bail to Jalil, the High Court also issued a rule on the Anti-Corruption Commission and the government to explain in four weeks why the initiation and continuation of the corruption case against Jalil would not be declared illegal.
   The court passed the order after hearing a writ petition filed by Jalil on Tuesday.
   On December 18, 2007, the commission filed the case with the Ramna police against Jalil for amassing illegal wealth of Tk 35.08 lakh beyond his known sources of income and for concealing information on his assets of Tk 36.04 lakh in the wealth statement submitted to the commission.

Tarique Rahman, ailing senior joint-secretary general of the BNP, who was fully prepared to leave Dhaka for London on Wednesday night, cancelled his journey ‘as the government did not give him clearance for the trip’, alleged his lawyers.
   ‘Tarique Rahman was fully prepared to leave Dhaka today [Wednesday] in a Singapore Airlines flight for London for treatment. But he was compelled to cancel the trip as the government did not give clearance for the journey’, Tarique’s lawyer Ahmed Azam Khan told reporters at 9:45pm.
   Shamsur Rahman Shimul Biswas, another lawyer of Tarique, said at 10:00pm, ‘Everything was completed. The tickets were reconfirmed and the home ministry was duly informed about it. But he [Tarique] was not allo- wed to fly for unexplained reasons.’
   Despite repeated attempts, home secretary Abdul Karim could not be reached over telephone for comments till filing of this report at about 10:20pm and 11:20pm. He did not receive the calls made over mobile.
   Tarique was scheduled to leave the Zia International Airport for Singapore on way to London by flight SQ-435 of Singapore Airlines at 11:55pm.
   He was also scheduled to board a London-bound flight from Changi International Airport in Singapore today.
   His wife Dr Zubaida Rahman, daughter Zaima Rahman, Zubaida’s sister Shahina Khan Bindu, Shahina’s husband Shafiuzzaman and Tarique’s physician Dr Kazi Mazharul Islam Dolon were also scheduled to accompany him.
   Tarique and his family members collected UK and German visas for the trips.
   An ambulance was kept ready Wednesday evening at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University hospital where Tarique has been undergoing treatment since January 31, to carry him to the airport.
   Several hundred BNP activists and supporters gathered at the hospital and its surroundings to see him off. BNP secretary general Khandaker Delwar Hossain and Zubaida also visited him at the hospital on the day.
   The party activists, who were chanting slogans demanding release of Khaleda Zia, left the hospital premises after the lawyers made the announcement that Tarique was not flying Wednesday night.
   The government deployed additional police in and around the hospital and
   at different places of the city, including the airport, on the day.
   A close relative of Tarique told New Age in the evening, ‘We are not sure whether he will be allowed to undergo treatment abroad…Things have become intricate after he was released on bail…It seems some issues have not been settled… The authorities concerned have not allowed his wife [Zubaida] to visit her mother-in-law [Khaleda Zia] in prison since Tarique’s release.’
   The army-led joint forces on March 7 last year arrested Tarique, 43, at their Dhaka Cantonment residence.
   He was implicated in as many as 13 cases for ‘extortion’, ‘tax evasion’, taking ‘kickbacks’ and ‘amassing illegal wealth’.
   The courts had allowed the government to remand Tarique Rahman in custody for nine days in different
   cases.
   On January 9, Tarique told the court that he had been tortured in remand. ‘I was kept blindfolded for 18 hours of the 24 hours of remand on December 31.
   I was not taken to a police station from Dhaka Central Jail but somewhere else. I was tied up and suspended from the ceiling and tortured physically there while being kept blindfolded’, he alleged.
   He was shifted to a prison cell in the BSMMU hospital on January 31 for treatment of multiple ailments, including compression fracture in his two spinal bones, cervical disc prolapsed with radicalopathy, right hip arthropathy, chest pain with palpitation, severe muscle spasm in the lumber region and right lower limb, serenegative spondyloarthopathy, narrow angle glaucoma and wasted muscles of lower limbs.
   The medical boards concerned suggested overseas treatment for him.
   Tarique’s broken spinal bones did not improve although he has been taking treatment in the hospital since January 31, said the board.
   The government released Tarique on bail on September 3 after about 18 months of imprisonment.
   Out of the 13 cases lodged against Tarique, one case involving the Daily Dinkal was disposed of, and he got bail in 12 cases that are under trial.

The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s president, Annisul Huq, on Wednesday alleged that drug retailers were charging unduly high prices for medicines.
   At a FBCCI meeting on Wednesday, Annis told journalists that he had received complaints from several drug manufacturers who had alleged that many retailers are charging exorbitantly high prices for drugs, openly flouting the maximum retail prices written in the tags.
   ‘Some drugstores sold an inhaler at Tk 400 although it carried a price tag of Tk 160,’ he said, adding that an anarchic situation is prevailing in the medicine retail markets.
   Annis said that he would forward the complaint of the medicine manufacturers to the authorities concerned, and urged journalists to write on the issue seriously.
   These comments of the FBCCI chief came more than a month after a New Age report revealed that retailers had raised the prices of some essential medicines to an exorbitant level, although they were legally bound to sell medicines at the maximum retail prices fixed by the manufacturers.
   The New Age report found that several brands of Paracetamol and antibiotics were selling at prices that were more than double those fixed by the manufacturers.
   Consumer right activists say the Drug Administration under the Ministry of Health, which is responsible for fixing and monitoring the prices of drugs, lack both the capacity and the sincerity to check the manipulation of prices and supply of drugs to the market.

Students and their parents were filled with joy at different colleges in Dhaka on Wednesday when they got the results of this year’s Higher Secondary Certificate examinations as the largest number of students scored the highest grade point average of 5.
   Notre Dame College topped the list of institutions with largest number of students scoring GPA 5 under the Dhaka education board. A total of 1,189 students, including 924 from Science, 222 from Commerce and 43 from Humanities groups, got GPA.5 from the college.
   The college principal Father Benjamin Costa told New Age that the result was an outcome of a combination of hard work by the students, teachers and guardians. Dhaka City College came in the second spot with 987 students getting GPA-5.
   Viqarunnisa Noon College stood in third with 663 students securing the highest grade point average, including 451 students from Science, 132 from Commerce and 81 from Humanities.
   The college principal Rokeya Akhter Begum told New Age that they had tried to provide proper care to the students, which resulted in their success in the examinations. Dhaka Commerce College was in the fourth place with 518 students securing GPA 5.
   The Ideal School and College, Motijheel, became fifth with 420 students, including 342 students from Science, 61 from Commerce, and 17 from Humanities groups, securing GPA 5.
   The college principal Rasheda Begum said it was only the beginning of the journey for the girls, adding that she would be very proud if the students could get admitted in the leading institutions of the country.

Thousands of Maoist fighters confined to camps as part of Nepal’s peace deal are to be integrated into the national army within six months, the country’s new president said Wednesday.
   In a speech outlining the policies of the recently formed Maoist government, the president, Ram Baran Yadav, also said the ultra-leftists were in favour of private enterprise and would only implement carefully considered land reforms.
   ‘The integration and rehabilitation of People’s Liberation Army will be completed within next six months to take the peace process to a logical conclusion,’ the president said in a speech.
   Around 19,000 former Maoist fighters have been staying in United Nations-monitored camps since a 2006 peace deal that ended a decade of civil war and led to the abolition of the monarchy in May this year.
   The Maoists went on to win elections and form a government — with ex-rebel leader Prachanda appointed prime minister — but still need to resolve the issue of what to do with their hardened fighters.
   President Yadav said that the government will concentrate on ‘bringing economic and social transformation’ to the Himalayan nation and one of the world’s poorest countries.
   ‘The government will encourage public-private partnership for economic and infrastructure development and a high-level, scientific land reforms commission will be established to bring changes in the agriculture sector,’ Yadav said.
   ‘Private investment will be encouraged to promote and develop the industrial sector, and employment opportunities will be created within the country to end the trend of people going abroad for jobs in the years ahead,’ he said.
   The Maoists have promised a radical reform agenda, but in recent months have shown signs they would be a cautious and considered approach to policy.

The commerce adviser, Hossain Zillur Rahman, on Wednesday said the government would relax the Emergency Powers Rules to allow the political parties to hold council sessions ‘for qualitative changes in politics.’
   ‘There is a decision that parties, if they appeal, would be allowed to hold council sessions for qualitative changes in politics,’ Zillur said, in reply to a query at the secretariat.
   He said the government had the authority to relax the Emergency Powers Rules as required to allow the parties to hold council sessions.
   Major political parties including the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party are demanding a complete withdrawal of the state of emergency for council session as part of the preparation for the general elections scheduled for December.
   ‘The government will facilitate the holding of party council sessions which is needed for qualitative changes in politics… Parties will be given the opportunity to hold such programmes,’ said Zillur, also involved in ongoing dialogue with the parties and other stakeholders for smooth transition to democracy.

Kuwait said on Wednesday it was considering ‘alternatives’ for its widely-criticised employee sponsor system after violent protests by foreign workers demanding better conditions.
   ‘We are considering alternatives for the sponsor system to meet international labour standards,’ the minister of social affairs and labour, Bader al-Duwaila, told an emergency session of parliament.
   Under the system, any foreign worker in Kuwait must be sponsored by a Kuwaiti employer, thus keeping expatriates at the mercy of their bosses. Other oil-rich Gulf states apply the same system.
   The session was called by about 35 MPs in the 50-member parliament to debate violent protests by thousands of Bangladeshi workers in July to demand better pay and working conditions. Around 1,000 workers were later deported.
   Parliament’s human rights committee had on Monday called for a review of the sponsorship system to help stop employers from abusing hundreds of thousands of foreign labourers.

The Rapid Action Battalion on Wednesday arrested a passenger of an Air Arabia flight at Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong for spreading bomb scare.
   According to airport sources, a note in Bangla was found in the Air Arabia flight from Sharjah one hour before its landing at the airport at 2:10 pm. The note said a bomb had been planted in the aircraft that was carrying 81 passengers and a crew of eight.
   All the passengers and crew got panicked and the pilot informed the control tower of the airport to take necessary measures in this regard, the sources said.
   Wahidur Rahman, manager of the airport, said RAB and explosive experts of army had come to the airport responding to their call and they had taken the aircraft to a safe place soon after its landing. They found nothing in one hour of search in the plane.
   RAB had arrested Nasir Uddin, who was on board the aircraft, as his handwriting had matched with the letter, he said, adding motive behind the incident could not be known immediately.
   Normal activities of the airport was not been hindered due to the bomb hoax, he said.

Civil servants account for most of the mercy seekers who confessed to their corruption before the Truth and Accountability Commission, installed by the military-controlled government, to skip criminal proceedings against them.
   Nearly 98 per cent of the 209 petitioners, who have either shown interest in disclosing their ill-gotten assets or confessed to their guilt before the commission, are from the government services, according to official sources.
   A few of them are retired officials and the rest are still in service. Wives of a few of the officials have also appealed for clemency after depositing their illegal wealth to the state exchequer.
   The commission received a list of a total of 209 individuals, who expressed interests in disclosing their illegal wealth and get mercy, till Wednesday, Khondaker M Asaduzzaman, secretary to the TAC, told reporters at his office.
   Among them 191 are officers and employees of different public offices, including autonomous bodies, spouses of 13 officials, three businessmen. Professional identities of two others were not mentioned, he added.
   Till last week, a total of 199 individuals showed interest in voluntary disclose of their corruption.
   Asked about the departments the officials and employees represent, the TAC secretary said that he was unable to disclose the names of the departments as per the commission’s decision. The records remain with the commission, which may anytime disclose the names and identities of the mercy seekers if it so wishes.
   But, it has been known the officials are mostly from the Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd (formerly Bangladesh Telephone and Telegraph Board), Roads and Highways Department, Titas Gas, Dhaka Electric Supply Authority, Directorate of Registration, Department of Forest, Chittagong Port Authority, Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, Essential Drugs Company, Rural Electrification Board, Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority and a few other public sector service providers.
   No politicians turned up at the TAC as yet. ‘We have not received any petitions from the politicians’, the secretary said.
   The TAC chairman, justice Habibur Rahman Khan, expressed utter disappointment last week as no politicians and businessmen turned up to take the ‘opportunity’ to avoid criminal proceedings. The TAC has extended the time for appeal by a month until September 30.
   The secretary said 161 people had formally appealed to the commission in its prescribed forms. The three-member commission heard 46 of those who had disclosed their ill-gotten wealth totalling Tk 149,713,833. The TAC asked them to deposit the money to the Bangladesh Bank and appear before the commission with the receipts to obtain clemency certificate.
   Asked when the process of depositing the ill-gotten money might begin, Asaduzzaman said, ‘It may begin from today.’ After hearing, the commission passed an order to the individuals to deposit their illegal money to the central bank with a certain deadline.
   ‘Submission of the money should begin as per the direction’, he added.
   The commission heard six petitions on Wednesday.

The tender evaluation committee for the 450MW Bibiyana independent power plant has recommended awarding the lone bidder, which offered to sell power for high tariff, the plant installation contract.
   The committee, headed by the power cell director general, Abdul Jalil, on Wednesday submitted the evaluation report to the Power Division recommending the government to accept the power price offered by the consortium of the Powertek Berhad of Malaysia, Siemens Project Ventures of Germany and the Korea Electric Power Company.
   The consortium offered to sell electricity to the Power Development Board for 4.5394 US cents, or Tk 3.15, a kilowatt-hour after installing the Bibiyana plant. The price is almost double the amount for which the Power Development Board buys electricity from the 450MW Meghnaghat and 360MW Haripur independent power plants installed in 2001.
   Sources in the committee said they had recommended awarding the consortium the contract although the price was ‘a bit high.’
   ‘But given the present high price of power plant equipment on the international market and power tariff of such IPPs in other countries, the Powertek offer was not abnormal and can be accepted,’ said a source.
   He said the committee made the recommendation to select the company in line with the observation of another committee, headed by PDB member (distribution) Alamgir Kabir, which was formed by the Power Division to look into the justification of the power tariff offered by Powertek.
   Sources in the Alamgir committee claimed after verifying the power plant equipment prices on the international market and going through the prices of electricity of IPPs in some countries in East Asia and the Middle East, they found the Powertek price to be ‘reasonable.’
   Power Division officials said they would forward the tender committee’s recommendations to the council of advisers’ committee on purchase, headed by the finance adviser, Mirza Azizul Islam, seeking approval to award Powertek the contract.
   ‘But we will also seek a decision from the committee on mitigating losses the PDB will be incurring by buying electricity from the Bibiyana plant as the power board’s selling price to consumers is much lower than that of the Powertek offer,’ said an official.
   He said the government would either need to give the power board subsidy or it would need to increase tariff at consumer level for buying electricity from Bibiyana.
   The power secretary, M Fouzul Kabir Khan, on Wednesday told New Age they would send the recommendations of the tender committee and price justification committee to the cabinet division soon for placing before the purchase committee.
   When asked whether the price of Powertek was too high, Fouzul said, ‘The tender committee made the recommendations in line with power price justification committee. They have gone through the prices of electricity of IPPs in different countries. The purchase committee will decide whether to accept their recommendations.’

The government has decided to release the first installment of funds for implementing the World Bank-funded Enterprise Growth and Bank Modernization Project without getting the revised projects approved by the Planning Commission, said official sources.
   ‘The first installment of the EGBMP fund will be spent for retrenchment of state-owned government organizations through a voluntary retirement scheme and for payment of the long overdue salaries of managing directors or chief executive officers of the state-owned Sonali, Janata and Agrani banks,’ said a high official of the finance ministry.
   Another official said that the final approval for the revised EGBMP from the Planning Commission would need more time and funds are needed right now for smooth operation of the project.
   Sources said the finance ministry is set to release the first installment of Tk 21.15 crore, of which Tk 19.59 crore is foreign-funded and the rest comes from the government exchequer. After revision of EGBMP project the cost will be Tk1900 crore .
   The Planning Commission has said that the first installment of EGBMP fund should be spent for the approved projects.
   After corporatization of the three state-owned banks, their managing directors or CEOs could not get their salaries due to lack of approval of the revised EGBMP projects.
   The duration of the EGBMP projects has been extended for two more years, and the first enterprise growth project was completed in the last fiscal year.
   The government has spent Tk 1,133 crore out of Tk 1,480 crore, and the unused Tk 347 crore will be spent to expedite voluntary retirement of the staff of government-owned industries under Voluntary Retirement Scheme in the next two years.
   Nearly 6,000 employees have availed themselves of the VRS under EGB project.
   The WB-funded EGBMP projects started in July 2004. Initially, it was estimated that the programme would cost $25 crore, but later the cost increased to $39 crore, which will be repaid in 40 years with 7 per cent interest.

The Chittagong Port Authority on Wednesday allowed the Panama flag vessel laden with more than 1,400 reconditioned vehicles to berth at the New Mooring container terminal jetty, port officials said.
   The MV Morning Bridge berthed at the jetty after the authorities had made space at the container terminal jetty to accommodate the imported vehicles, a senior official said.
   ‘We needed to make space behind the jetty by displacing a large number of containers as the vessel had been stuck up in the outer anchorage for days facing huge demurrage,’ he said.
   He said the unloading of the reconditioned vehicles had started immediately after berthing as the ship would leave the port Thursday morning.
   The ship remained stuck up in the outer anchorage as the port authorities denied it entry because of space crunch in the car sheds, the officials said.
   The sheds were packed up with more than 4,000 imported vehicles as the delivery of them had been suspended for more than a month over a complexities related to customs duty assessment, they said.
   Another ship laden with more than 400 reconditioned vehicles on Wednesday started from Singapore for the Chittagong port via Kolkata on September 14, they said.

Particle physicists were jubilant on Wednesday after the long-awaited startup of a mega-machine designed to expose secrets of the cosmos passed its first test with flying colours.
   Cheers, applause and the pop of a champagne cork — rather than the cataclysmic suck of a black hole, as doomsayers had feared — marked the breakthrough at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.
   Robert Aymar, the organisation’s director general, hailed it as a ‘historic day’ for CERN and mankind’s thirst for knowledge.
   Humans have ‘a quest for (knowing) where they came from and where they should go, whether the Universe will end, and where the Universe will go in the future,’ he said.
   Just after 0730 GMT, the first proton beam was injected into the Large Hadron Collider, a massive built 100 metres underground at CERN headquarter.
   The mission aims at resolving some of the greatest enigmas in physics: whether a so-called ‘God particle’ exists that would account for the nature of mass; an explanation for ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ that account for 96 percent of the cosmos; and whether other dimensions exist in parallel to our own.
   In a 27-kilometre circular tunnel on the Swiss-French border, parallel beams of protons will be accelerated to nearly the speed of light.
   Superconducting magnets will then steer the counter-rotating beams so that strings of protons smash together in four huge laboratories, fleetingly replicating the conditions that prevailed at the ‘Big Bang’ that created the Universe 13.7 billion years ago.
   Arrays of detectors will trace the sub-atomic rubble spewed out from the collision, looking for signatures of novel particles.
   CERN scientists have dismissed fears that the process could create a ‘black hole’ whose super-gravity would swallow the Earth.
   Wednesday’s startup marked the start of a long and cautious commissioning process to check equipment and operational procedures before these collisions can get underway.
   The first batch of protons was halted, sector by sector, to verify that monitoring systems and the steering magnets were working properly. Their speed was purposely slowed for the inspection process.
   The clockwise beam completed this first test lap in under an hour, causing an eruption of joy and an outbreak of bubbly in the control room.
   ‘No-one would have imagined that this could have been done in less than an hour. It’s phenomonenal, quite unbelievable,’ an operator said. ‘We are very happy and proud.’
   By comparison, the predecessor to the LHC at CERN, the Large Electron Positron collider, took 12 hours to achieve the same goal.
   A test of the anticlockwise beam would take place later on Wednesday, scientists said.
   LHC Project Leader Lyn Evans, who has been working on the collider for 14 years, said he felt a wave of relief after the protons had completed their first lap so smoothly.
   ‘It’s a machine of enormous complexity and things can go wrong at any time,’ he said.
   Messages of congratulations flooded in from CERN’s partners and rivals, including the legendary Fermilab particle physics lab near Chicago.
   The LHC took nearly 20 years to complete and at six billion Swiss francs (3.76 billion euros, 5.46 billion dollars) is one of the costliest and most complex scientific experiments ever attempted.
   When all is ready, the LHC will whizz two parallel beams, one clockwise and the other anticlockwise, around the tunnel at up to 11,000 laps per second before steering them into collisions into four chambers whose walls are swathed with detectors.
   The first collisions are likely to start in several weeks, but only next year will the LHC be cranked up to its full capacity of 14 teraelectronvolts — a massive amount of energy — or seven times the record held by Fermilab.
   Over the 10-15 years in which will the LHC will operate, masses of data will spew from these collisions and will be scrutinised by physicists around the world.
   ‘It’s about acquiring knowledge for humanity about the behaviour of fundamental matter,’ physicist Daniel Denegri said. ‘We expect to make discoveries that could be rather spectacular.’
   The Holy Grail will be finding a theorised component called the Higgs Boson, which would explain how particles acquire mass. Believed to be ubiquitous — yet also frustratingly elusive until now — the Higgs has been dubbed the ‘God particle.’
   The giant machine was several times over its initial budget and began operations two years late.
   Before the startup, Internet-driven rumours said the LHC would create black holes or a nasty hypothetical particle called a strangelet that would gobble up the planet.
   CERN commissioned a panel to verify its safety calculations and France also carried out its own assessment.

This year’s fitra has been fixed at Tk 66 per head for Dhaka and its adjoining areas.
   For other parts of the country, the fitra has been fixed at the local market price of 1.650 kg of coarse flour or flour.
   The decision was made at a meeting held to fix ‘Sadkatul fitra’ in the conference room of the Islamic Foundation Bangladesh on Wednesday with the DG of Islamic Foundation (Additional charge), Hasan Jahangir Alam, in the chair, said a PID handout.
   The meeting discussed the market prices of coarse flour and flour of different bazars of the country and fixed the fitra at Tk 66 as per the market price of Dhaka.
   The meeting was attended, among others, by acting Khatib of Baitul Mukarram National Mosque Mufti Mohammad Nuruddin, member of board of governors of Islamic Foundation Maulana Mufazzal Hossain Khan and former principal of Dhaka Alia Madrassah Professor Noor Mohammad.

The Juba Mahila League, an associate organisation of the Awami League, on Wednesday submitted a memorandum to the home affairs adviser demanding permanent release of the Awami League president, Sheikh Hasina, now in the United States, and withdrawal all cases filed against her.
   The Juba Mahila League president, Nazma Akter, and the general secretary, Apu Ukil, submitted the memorandum to the office of the home affairs adviser at about 12:10pm.
   Several hundred Juba Mahila League leaders and activists earlier marched towards the secretariat to lay siege to the home affairs ministry to push for their demands, but the police stopped them at the party’s central office on Bangabandhu Avenue at about 11.30am.
   The leaders at the gathering on Bangabandhu Avenue threatened tougher programmes to paralyse the government if Hasina was not released permanently.
   They demanded an immediate announcement of the parliamentary polls schedule, saying the government was wasting time to implement its evil design.
   Nazma and Apu then submitted the memorandum to the office of the home affairs adviser.

Humayun Khaled, a joint secretary at the education ministry, will be secretary to the National Human Rights Commission on deputation, the establishment ministry said on Wednesday.
   The commission was set up on September 1 in compliance with the National Human Rights Commission Ordinance 2007.
   The government had earlier formed a six-member search committee to appoint the chairman and members for the commission.

Drafts of new rules and regulations or amendments deemed necessary by the government for prepublication will be released on web sites of the ministries concerned for public opinion with three months time-limit before finalisation.
   Notice about uploading the drafts on web site will be given in print media, as per decision of the caretaker government, engrossed in doing sweeping reforms meant for transparency and good governance against the backdrop of past crises.
   A meeting of the council of advisers with the chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, in the chair approved the decisions after discussing a proposal for implementation of the second spell of interim recommendations made by the Regulatory Reforms Commission and placed by the Cabinet Division.
   The meeting discussed the draft of Dhaka Shishu Hospital Ordinance 2008 and sent it back for further vetting.
   However, the meeting found the need for proper running of the hospital and viewed that its ‘proper management is an imperative’.
   The council of advisers also elaborately discussed the draft of the Non-Realisable Public Utility Bill Ordinance 2008 and sent back for further discussion with stakeholders and further examination in the light of the discussion at the council of advisers meeting.
   Chief Adviser’s press secretary Syed Fahim Munaim briefed newsmen about the outcome of the meeting. Advisers and special assistants to the chief adviser attended the meeting at the Chief Adviser’s Office. Cabinet secretary, chief adviser’s press secretary and secretaries concerned were also present.

Miniscule eight-legged invertebrate creatures known as ‘water bears’ can survive the vacuum and radiation of space, according to research published Tuesday in a US journal.
   It was the first time that an animal has been tested for survival under open-space conditions, the European scientists that authored the report wrote in the September 9 edition of the journal Current Biology.
   The creatures, known as tardigrades, are tiny — between 0.1 to 1.5 mm long — and are commonly found on wet lichens and moss. They are resistant to drying out, show strong resistance to heat, cold and radiation, and can be brought back to life after years of dryness, scientists say.
   The animals have been able to survive in extreme environments ranging in temperature from minus 272 degrees Celsius (-522 degrees Fahrenheit) to more than 151 degrees Celsius (303 degrees Fahrenheit), as well as pressure equivalent to 300 times the pressure of the atmosphere.
   Researchers exposed dried-up tardigrades to open space conditions — vacuum, ultra-violet radiation from the sun and cosmic radiation — while aboard the FOTON-M3, a European Space Agency spacecraft launched in September 2007 that orbited 270 kilometres above the Earth.
   Upon returning home, scientists determined that most of the tardigrades survived exposure to vacuum and cosmic rays. Some even survived the exposure to solar ultra-violet radiation that is more than 1,000 times higher than ultra-violet radiation on the Earth’s surface.
   The survivors were even able to reproduce well after their space trip, the researchers wrote.
   The tardigrades extreme resistance to UV radiation ‘is perhaps most surprising,’ the authors wrote.
   ‘How these animals were capable of reviving their body after receiving a dose of UV radiation ... under space vacuum conditions remains a mystery,’ wrote the team of authors led by Ingemar Jönsson, Kristianstad University in Kristianstad, Sweden.
   ‘It is conceivable that the same cellular adaptations that let them survive drying out might also account for their overall hardiness.’