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Government employees will start drawling their salary and other benefits in keeping with the new pay scale from November if the cabinet today approves the proposed increase recommended by the seventh pay commission.
   The proposed pay scale requiring endorsement by the highest policymaking body is the major agenda at a special meeting of the cabinet to be presided over by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, at the Prime Minister’s Office today.
   The proposed pay increase will benefit some 1.2 million government officers and employees and it will be given a retrospective effect from July, when the financial year began.
   ‘It is highly likely that the cabinet will approve the new [seventh] pay scale today. And in that case, government employees will get the salary in keeping with the new scale before Eid-ul Azha,’ the finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, told newsmen in the conference room of the Economic Relations Division.
   He, however, ruled out any possibility of increasing the existing retirement age of government employees saying the government had no such plans.
   Officials said the finance ministry would propose the highest salary of Tk 40,000 and the lowest of Tk 4,100. There will 18 more slabs in the structure between the highest and lowest limits.
   Secretaries and officials of equivalent ranks might receive more financial benefits in keeping with the proposals. For the cabinet secretary and generals in the Armed Forces Division, the proposed increase is Tk 5,000, for the prime minister’s principal secretary and lieutenant generals Tk 2,500 and for other secretaries and major generals Tk 1,000. The pay scale for judicial officers has been proposed to be implemented in nine categories with the highest amount at Tk 40,000 and the lowest at Tk 20,370. The finance ministry has proposed judicial allowance for the first time.
   The interim government on September 1, 2008 formed the National Pay Commission with former finance secretary M Mustafizur Rahman as its chairman.
   The commission submitted its report to the finance minister in April and proposed pay scales for civil servants ranging between Tk 4,500 and Tk 45,000 a month.
   The present (sixth) pay scale for government employees, implemented in January 2005, has 20 pay levels — the highest at Tk 23,000 and the lowest at Tk 2,400.

The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, Tuesday night called upon world leaders to create a separate adaptation fund with technology and capacity-building support for the most vulnerable countries and the least developed countries to climate change.
   ’If the developed countries could pump trillions of dollars for reviving the world economic situation, they could surely be equally generous to save us, themselves and the world,’ she said while exchanging views with the world’s leaders in a video conference from his official residence Jamuna in the capital.
   It is the second video conference in which the Bangladesh premier talked to the world leaders about the climate change issue. The first one was held on November 4.
   Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen chaired the conference when British prime minister Gordon Brown, president of Mexico Felipe Calderon, Norway prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd and Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi participated in the video conference titled ‘Copenhagen Commitment Circle with prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
   Regarding the adverse impact of climate change, the Bangladesh prime minister told the world leaders that the MVCs and the LDCs should be given priority and a separate fund kept for them as a group to this end, said AFM Gausal Azam Sarkar, DG (Europe) of the ministry of foreign affairs, while briefing newsmen after the meeting.
   During the hour-long meeting that began at 8:00pm, the world leaders discussed the various issues of global warming for which the LDCs are being the worst affected and the way out to save the people from the adverse consequences of natural calamities.
   ’The MVCs and the LDcs are worried that their legitimate demands are being sidelined by the disagreements in climate change negotiations between the developed and developing countries,’ Sheikh Hasina said.
   The Bangladesh premier said the MVCs and the LDCs don’t want conflicts arising out of politics on climate change, ‘as early and worst victims, we simply want priority in financial consideration,’ she added.
   Regarding the financial support for facing the climate change challenges, Sheikh Hasina said the MVCs do not consider equitable to put all the developing countries, including advanced ones with the MVCs and the LDCs in one group when considering financial benefits.
   ‘The MVCs don’t want adaptation, mitigation and technology transfer support to be in one basket,’ she added.
   Welcoming the British prime minister Gordon Brown’s climate financial proposal for facing the grim challenges of global warming, she said, ‘In terms of need, they are inadequate, but good as base to work with.’
   Sheikh Hasina said the world leaders should go further and beyond the EU proposal meaningfully.
   Referring to the vulnerability of Bhutan and Nepal due to climate change, she said some of their major glaciers are melting down at the annual average rate of 35 metres. She said they should need international support for adaptation measurers to control the excess water flow.
   The Bangladesh premier said despite very negligible contributions to global warming, Bangladesh is becoming the worst victim of the environmental hazard that should be addressed collectively.
   She said the international community, especially the rich countries, should come forward with their support so that Bangladesh and other affected countries could overcome the consequences of global warming.

Sitting on delivery orders in order to delay the supply of sugar to the markets caused abnormal rises in the price of the sweetener in the month of Ramadan, said the official probe body.
   The commerce ministry’s committee, formed to investigate the sugar scandal, detected a nexus of millers and wholesalers which was responsible for playing foul and making uncertain the availability of sugar in the country’s markets in order to jack up its price.
   The committee, however, refrained from naming all but two of the big fish who were allegedly involved in the ‘racketeering’, sources in the committee told New Age.
   ‘We have found manipulation of delivery orders by certain identified quarters that caused an abnormal rise in sugar prices during the holy month,’ said a member of the committee.
   There was no time limit until recently for supplying sugar as per delivery orders, which was fully taken advantage of by unscrupulous millers and businessmen.
   The refiners gave the documents of the delivery order (DO) to the wholesalers who, instead of supplying it to the markets, held on to the document to delay supply, create a shortage and thus push up prices. Some suppliers sold the DO document at a profit to other dealers who also delayed the supply of sugar to create a crisis and jack up prices. But now the government has set a time limit before which the sugar lifted from the refineries must be supplied to the markets, so the scope for creating crises and hiking prices has been considerably diminished.
   The sugar price in the Ramadan surged to Tk 75 from Tk 35 per kilogram despite withdrawal of import duty charged earlier at a rate of Tk 4,000 per tonne of unrefined sugar, and slashing of the duty on per tonne of refined sugar to Tk 3,000 from Tk 7,000.
   The committee, headed by additional secretary of the commerce ministry Mustafa Mohiuddin, submitted the report to the commerce secretary, Feroz Ahmed, last week. It is not yet clear whether the findings of the report will be made public.
   ‘We are examining the probe committee’s report…Let us see if it can be made public,’ said Feroz Ahmed when asked about the fate of the report. The commerce ministry formed the committee one month ago in response to the public criticism that was raging because of the unaccountable price-hikes of sugar.
   An intelligence agency’s report had earlier identified four sugar refineries and eight wholesalers who were found to have been involved in market manipulation which causing the prices to shoot up to unprecedented heights.
   At one stage the home ministry, acting on the commerce ministry’s recommendation, issued warrants of arrest against eight wholesalers, but none of them was detained. The commerce minister, Faruk Khan, later denied his involvement in the issuance of the warrants of arrest.
   The probe body suggested further reduction in the time limit for supplying sugar as per delivery orders to 15 days from the recently imposed limit of 30 days. The suggestion is aimed at stopping the selling of delivery orders for creating crisis or for making extra money, said committee sources.

The government on Tuesday initiated a move arrange BRTC buses for major educational institutions in the capital to carry students to ease traffic congestion.
   ‘We have decided to allow educational institutions in the capital to use BRTC buses to carry their students during school hours on a temporary basis so that students do not need individual vehicles,’ the education minister, Nurul Islam Nahid, said after an inter-ministerial meeting at the secretariat.
   The education ministry convened the meeting on the introduction of school buses by individual institutions to ease traffic congestion in the capital.
   Many students go to schools and colleges in their vehicles owned by them, causing a tailback on the road and in residential areas as most education institutions do not have transport services for their students.
   The education minister said the school authorities had been asked to directly contact the Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation so that buses could be used to ferry students from different city points during school hours.
   The decision was made at the meeting also attended by the state minister for LGRD and cooperatives Jahangir Kabir Nanak, Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation chairman MM Iqbal, director general of the directorate of secondary and higher education Noman Ur Rashid, the Dhaka Transport Coordination Board’s additional director SM Salehuddin, joint commissioner (traffic) Safiqur Rahman and representatives of major educational institutions in the capital.
   Nahid said all had admitted that cars carrying students were adding to traffic congestion around certain reputed schools and colleges.
   The meeting suggested the school authorities should make arrangement with the BRTC for the introduction of bus services for their students. The buses will ferry students from certain points on certain routes.
   The schools which have the financial ability must have a parking space and should procure buses for their students.
   As for school timing, the minister said the school authorities could re-adjust their timing to their convenience during winter if they faced problems with the present schedule fixed by the government.
   The meeting also requested guardians to send in their children by school bus instead of sending them in cars or jeeps.
   The guardians have also been requested to drop their children at a certain distance and not to park their vehicles in front of schools.
   Meeting sources said traffic police would take special care in ensuring security of the school children.
   BRTC officials said they would provide buses according to the demand of educational institutions.
   ‘The BRTC is offering attractive packages to educational institutions for hiring its buses and a number of school authorities have already responded positively to the offers,’ a senior BRTC official told New Age.
   The government on November 1 ordered new timing for city educational institution to ease traffic congestion.
   Government primary schools and kindergartens, in keeping with the new schedule, start at 9:30am and close at 4:15pm.
   Secondary, higher secondary and English-medium schools, madrassahs and colleges start between 7:30am and 8:30am.
   Class hours for single-shift schools will, however, not be less than six hours and for double-shift schools, it will not be less than five hours, according to the official order.

A suicide car bomb tore through a crowded shopping street in Pakistan on Tuesday, killing 30 people in the third militant attack to strike the nuclear-armed country in as many days.
   The bomber blew up his vehicle in the heart of the northwest town of Charsadda on a road lined with fruit and juice shops, ripping off shop roofs and littering the ground with slippers, human flesh and broken push carts.
   The United States has put Pakistan on the frontline of its war against al-Qaeda and has been increasingly disturbed by deteriorating security in the country where attacks and bombings have killed about 2,500 people in 28 months.
   ‘I was buying something before closing my shop. A car was parked on the other side of the road and all of a sudden there was a huge blast,’ said Hazrat Ali, a shopkeeper with shrapnel wounds to his chest and forehead.
   ‘There was smoke and darkness everywhere. I passed out,’ he told AFP.
   The blast damaged signboards and at least six vehicles, including two buses, during the afternoon shopping rush in the town’s most popular market.
   ‘At least 30 people died in the Charsadda blast and more than 100 wounded,’ North West Frontier Province information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told AFP. Seven children and three women were among the dead, police said.
   The wounded were being treated in Charsadda and the north-western capital Peshawar, on the edge of Pakistan’s tribal belt that US officials call the most dangerous place on Earth and a chief al-Qaeda sanctuary.
   The government blames increasing attacks on Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which is the target of a major ongoing offensive and which wants to avenge the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud by a US missile in August.
   Charsadda is the ideological centre of the secular Awami National Party, which is currently governing NWFP, and the town has been struck by a series of deadly bomb and suicide attacks targeting ANP leaders.
    ‘The bombing today was the militants’ reaction to the ongoing anti-Taliban operation in South Waziristan,’ said NWFP law minister Arshad Abdullah.
   Pakistan authorities, embarrassed and weakened by the deluge of attacks, repeatedly bat aside suggestions that security services, which have a history of supporting Islamist groups in a bid to counter rival India, could do more.
   ‘It is a war-like situation and foolproof security is not possible in such a situation. Our police force is geared up for any emergency... They are motivated and tackling terrorism with great courage,’ said Abdullah.
   The police said all the victims were civilians, following a similar pattern in which militants have increasingly put market places in the crosshairs of their violent campaign to destabilise the US-backed government.

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on Tuesday said that the terming of the accused in the Sheikh Mujibur Rahman murder case as ‘killers’ by the government before delivery of the court’s verdict was not ‘appreciable’ [worthy of being appreciated].
   The five-member Appellate Division’s bench, led by Justice Tafazzul Islam, made the remark after Death Row convict Syed Faruque Rahman’s counsel, Khan Saifur Rahman, complained to the court about the government’s statements, both in the media and the court, branding the accused as ‘killers’ before completion of the hearing of the appeals.
   ‘How can the government term the appellants as killers before you have delivered your verdict?’ Saifur complained to the court in his instant reaction to the submission made by the Supreme Court Bar Association’s president, AFM Mesbahuddin, during the 27th day of the hearing of the appeals against the High Court’s verdict that had upheld the death sentence of 12 former army personnel.
   Mesbahuddin, glancing at the defence, told the court that there are lawyers who can defend the founding president’s killers when the whole SCBA wants the killers to be executed. ‘It is indeed unfortunate to see some lawyers standing up to defend the killers.’
   Instantly Saifur stood up and tried to gain the judges’ attention until he was allowed to have his say. Saifur then asked the court, ‘Can the government refer to the appellants as killers before you have delivered your verdict?’
   Justice SK Sinha replied that it was Mesbahuddin’s submission.
   ‘It is the Supreme Court not the lower court which considered them guilty and sentenced them to death,’ was Saifur’s rejoinder.
   Citing a recent comment made by law minister Shafique Ahmed before the media that the government is expecting the execution of the condemned prisoners before December 16, Saifur said, ‘It is sub judice before the court has delivered its verdict, so such a remark should not be made.’
   Justice Md Abdul Aziz replied that that the law minister had expressed his personal opinion.
   Justice Tafazzul Islam, however, said that such statements on a matter that is sub judice cannot be appreciated by the court.
   Before Mesbahuddin’s submission, state counsel Ajmalul Hossain requested the court to observe in their verdict that the courts and their adjuncts should not fail to ensure justice even in critical periods so that evil forces cannot come into power. ‘After 15 August, 1975, a man unconstitutionally grabbed power and held on to it for 16 years, but no judge took suo moto action against his undemocratic government,’ Ajmalul pointed out.
   The people have seen a catastrophe in the justice delivery system as the trial of the Sheikh Mujib murder case could not be completed even in 34 years, he said.
   When Sheikh Mujib’s security officer went to Lalbagh thana in 1976 to lodge a case against the killers, said Ajmalul, the OC refused to register the case and told him, ‘Not only will you die but you will also get me killed. Come when the situation changes.’
   ‘Such a situation is still prevailing in the country and will continue to do so,’ said Ajmalul.
   He further said that the members of the police, administration and court, from top to bottom, violated their oaths and did not take any steps to bring the killers to trial.
   ‘The rule of law was damaged by reinstating the dismissed and retired army officials, who were involved in the carnage of 15 August, 1975, in service,’ he added.
   Tawfique Nawaz, another state counsel, said that the heinous act of August 15 in 1975 had assaulted the very Constitution itself. ‘If that is not taken into account, the judgment will remain incomplete,’ he argued.
   Abdul Matin Khasru argued that the culture of indemnity was introduced after the killing of Bangabandhu ‘in violation of the rule of law and human rights’.
   The hearing was adjourned till 9:30am today when Anisul Huq, the chief state counsel, will make his submission for half an hour, before the reply by the defence counsels.

The army headquarters on Tuesday said harsh legal action would be taken against army officers if their involvement in the bomb attack on Awami League lawmaker Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh was proved after investigation.
   A release issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations Directorate also said investigation of the involvement of army officers in the attack was continuing.
   The release referred to news reports printed by various daily newspapers on Monday and Tuesday on the alleged involvement of some army officers in the bomb attack.
   ‘The army headquarters sincerely expects the media to refrain from publishing any report on the army without due confirmation of the facts,’ said the release.
   Taposh, a nephew of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, came under bomb attack when he was leaving his office at Motijheel by car at night on October 21.
   The lawmaker for the Dhaka 12 constituency escaped unhurt, but 12 others were injured by the blast.
   Taposh filed a case with the Motijheel police on October 22 alleging that relatives and associates of the death row convicts of the August 15 killing were involved in the bomb attack.

Pakistani Taliban have started a guerrilla war against the army and will wage a tough, protracted fight in the insurgents' South Waziristan stronghold, a Taliban spokesman said on Tuesday.
   The army went on the offensive in South Waziristan, a lawless ethnic Pashtun region on the Afghan border, on October 17, aiming to root out Pakistani Taliban militants behind a wave of violence in urban areas.
   The offensive is closely watched by the United States and other powers embroiled in Afghanistan, as South Waziristan's rugged landscape of barren mountains, patchy forest and hidden ravines has become a global centre of Islamist militancy.
   Soldiers have been advancing into the militant heartland from
   three directions, have captured a string of important bases and entered the Taliban headquarters in the town of Makeen, the army said.
   But Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq played down the militants' losses.
   'They are capturing roads while our people are still operating in the forests and mountains,' Tariq told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
   'We have started guerrilla war against the Pakistani army. We've carried out several actions against the army and inflicted heavy losses on them,' he said.
   According to army figures, 486 militants have been killed since the offensive began while 48 soldiers have died.
   There has been no independent verification of casualties as reporters and other independent observers are not allowed into the war zone except on an occasional trip with the military.
   The violence has unsettled trade on Pakistan's stock market and the main index was 1.07 per cent lower at 8,840.58 at 0752 GMT (2:52am EST) in thin trade.
   Tariq vowed a long, tough fight.
   'They thought they would capture Waziristan easily but the fight
   in Waziristan will be tougher than in Kashmir,' he said.
   Indian security forces have been battling separatist guerrillas in the disputed Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir since 1989. Tens of thousands of people have been killed.
   The militants have stepped up attacks in town and cities since the offensive was launched, killing several hundred people.
   Asked about the attacks, most carried out by suicide bombers, Tariq said: 'Whoever harms our movement will be given a lesson.'
   The government says Tariq's real name is Raees Khan Mehsud.
   It has offered a reward of $5 million for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of 19 top Pakistani Taliban members, including Tariq and leader Hakimullah Mehsud.

The foreign minister, Dipu Moni, has said the upcoming Copenhagen talks must have the provision of giving funds to the affected countries in the ‘form of grant, not loan’ to help people to adapt to climate change.
   Addressing the Climate Vulnerable Forum in the Maldives on Tuesday, the minister also said the developed countries must allocate necessary funds in addition to their overseas development assistance to victim countries.
   She said some 20 million people in Bangladesh would turn environmental refugees by 2050 due to climate change which would inundate 30 per cent land of the country.
   ‘The Copenhagen conference must agree on an adaptation fund with adequate resources at its disposal,’ Moni said in her speech made available to the media by the foreign ministry in Dhaka.
   ‘Adaptation and technology transfer funding must come in the form of grants, not loans, and more importantly this financing must be distinct from and in addition to the already committed ODA,’ said the foreign minister.
   She urged the developed countries to immediately fulfil their commitment of overseas development assistance to the developing and the least developed countries.
   The Maldives government organised the two-day conference of countries considered to be hugely affected by climate change. Leaders of 17 countries have been taking part in the Male conference before the crucial Copenhagen talks in December.
   The leaders will adopt the Male Declaration that will be placed in Copenhagen as a means of putting pressure on the international community to combat climate change.
   Negotiations are still on whether the climate vulnerable countries will get funds as loan or in the form of grants.
   She said the climate vulnerable countries were not polluters, but sufferers of global warming.
   The foreign minister said Bangladesh spent over $10 billion to build structures such as coastal polders and embankments to fight natural calamities.
   But climate change, she said, would increase frequency of natural disasters and cause damage to the structures.
   Moni said Bangladesh needed more funds to carry out dredging of major rivers and reclaiming of land in future to fight the consequences of climate change.
   ‘Such activities would entail huge costs, and therefore, I call upon the international community to underwrite these expenses,’ she said.
   ‘This is a question of our survival as a nation.’
   Representatives from Bangladesh, Barbados, Costa Rica, East Timor, Ethiopia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, the Maldives, Nepal, the Philippines, Rwanda, Vanuatu and Vietnam have attended the Male conference.
   According to the prediction of the International Panel Climate Change, chain island nations such as Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu may be wiped out from the world map by 2100 if the international community fails to reduce green house gas emission according to the present levels.

India’s environment minister came under fire Tuesday from scientists for denying climate change was causing Himalayan glaciers to melt and disputing the work of the UN’s top global warming body.
   The environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said Monday there was no ‘conclusive scientific evidence’ linking global warming to the melting of the glaciers and questioned work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
   The IPCC, a UN body regarded as the world’s top authority on climate change, has warned Himalayan glaciers are receding faster than in any other part of the world and could ‘disappear altogether by 2035 if not sooner’.
   Shresth Tayal, a glaciologist with The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, rejected a new report from an Indian scientist presented by Ramesh that denied the link between rising temperatures and receding ice.
   ‘This report is incomplete. It has been written with a biased approach,’ said Tayal, who labelled the findings ‘self-contradictory.’
   ‘Do you think any scientist needs to prove that warming causes melting of ice? If there is heat, ice is bound to melt.’
   Tayal criticised the Indian government for endorsing the report by geologist Vijay Kumar Raina, saying it should have analysed the results before making it public.
   IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri also blasted the research by Raina, calling it ‘unsubstantiated’ and said Ramesh’s support of it was ‘arrogant.’
   ‘I cannot see what the minister’s motives are. We do need more extensive measurement of the Himalayan range but it is clear from satellite pictures what is happening,’ he told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
   Ramesh admitted some glaciers were receding but said the rate was not ‘historically alarming’ as projected by the IPCC, the Hindustan Times daily reported.
   ‘The health of the Himalayan glaciers is poor, but according to the (research) paper the doomsday prediction of the IPCC and Al Gore is also not correct,’ Ramesh said, referring to former US vice-president and climate campaigner Al Gore.
   Raina, who authored the research, echoed Ramesh, saying ‘nothing abnormal is happening to Indian glaciers.’
   ‘There’s no evidence of climate change,’ said Raina, according to the Hindustan Times newspaper.
   Pachauri likened the explanations to ‘climate change deniers and schoolboy science’.
   India’s attitude to the IPCC and other international findings on Himalayan glaciers has been marked by nationalist sentiment, with Ramesh repeatedly stressing that most research on the subject is done by non-Indians.

Journalists and freedom fighters have said practicing democracy and freedom of opinion in true spirits would be the best way of showing respect to the soul of AZM Enayetullah Khan, whom they billed as a lifelong campaigner for free media.
   They said this at a meeting organised Tuesday by the National Press Club in remembrance of Enayetullah Khan, a legend in Bangladesh journalism and founding editor of New Age and Weekly Holiday, on the fourth anniversary of his death.
   ‘Enayetullah Khan used his pen to uphold democracy and freedom of opinion,’ Weekly Holiday editor Sayed Kamaluddin said.
   Iran-born academician Dr Tirdad Parvaz said he had been an admirer of Enayetullah’s articles for many years.
   Columnist Sadek Khan said Enayetullah Khan was the icon of the civil society, which is now divided and commercialised.
   Workers Party of Bangladesh president Rashed Khan Menon MP said the vacuum created in analytical journalism following the death of Enayetullah Khan could be felt in reports on parliament sessions being published in different media.
   BNP joint secretary general Selima Rahman said Enayetullah Khan could have played a important role in showing the society and the country a way out of the persisting crisis.
   Professor Naila Zaman Khan described Enayetullah as a legendary person. ‘Almost all members in our family were habituated to reading the columns of Enayetullah Khan in Holiday,’ she said.
   Freedom fighter Habibul Alam Bir Pratik said the young generation of his time was eager to win affection and attention of Enayetullah.
   Enayetullah’s widow Nazma Chowdhury said the late journalist still remains as a source of inspiration for his colleagues, relatives and admirers.
   She handed over a painting inscribed with portrait of Enayetullah to the press club authority.
   National Press Club president Shaukat Mahmud, who presided over the meeting, said Enayetullah was an independent thinker and intellectual who represented the silent majority in his 40-year career.
   Press club general secretary Kamal Uddin Sabuj, poet Abu Saleh and journalists Mostafa Kamal Majumder, Ershad Majumder and Kazi Rawnak Hossain also participated in the discussion.
   ASM Shahidullah Khan, chairman of the editorial board of New Age, was present at the function.
   A prayer session was held seeking divine blessings for the departed soul of Enayetullah Khan, who died on November 10, 2005 in Canada after prolonged illness.

The Power Development Board has sent a proposal to the Power Division for the establishment of a company which will install four coal-based power plants.
   'We have submitted a proposal for the establishment of a company, which will be a shell company of the board and will act as a special-purpose vehicle for the installation of four 500MW coal-based power plants on a public-private partnership scheme,' said board's chairman Alamgir Kabir told New Age on Thursday.
   The government has planned to install four coal-based plants at Chittagong, Mongla, Meghnaghat and Jajira, near the proposed Padma Bridge.
   Alamgir said it was proposed that the company should be called either Bangladesh Coal Power Company Limited or the Coal Power Company, Bangladesh.
   The power secretary, Abul Kalam Azad, told New Age on Monday they were reviewing the PDB proposal and the division would approve the formation of the company in due course.
   Alamgir said they initially had a plan to appoint some PDB officials to the coal power company to carry out a feasibility study and start the tender process.
   For each power plant, a separate company will be formed where the participating private or international company and the power board's coal power company will have stakes.
   'The participating private or international company is likely to have major stakes in each power plant and the PDB will provide land and infrastructure, which would be turned into equity of the PDB's coal power company,' he said.
   The government is, meanwhile, set to hold three road shows in London, New York and Singapore in December 15-22 to seek investment of international financial and power companies in coal-based power plants and four other independent power plants.
   The power board projected around $3 billion investment would be needed for the four coal-based power plants and $10 billion to achieve the target of additional 7000MW power generation by 2014.

Athens has assured Dhaka of legalising Bangladeshis overstaying in Greece without valid documents, expatriates' welfare ministry officials said.
   The development resulted from a recent meeting between the Greece authorities and expatriates' welfare minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, who had been in Athens attending a global seminar on migration.
   'The process of legalisation has already started,' the minister told reporters Tuesday at his secretariat office.
   At present, 10,000 to 15,000 Bangladeshis are staying without valid visas in Greece on top of some 30,000 documented immigrants.
   Mosharraf, who attended a seminar titled 'Global Forum on Migration and Development' in the Greek capital, said Greece showed interest in recruiting manpower from Bangladesh for sectors like shipping, garments, agriculture and tourism.
   He said the government is strictly monitoring the overseas recruitment process to prevent job-seekers from being cheated.
   Licences of seven recruiting agencies were cancelled for violation of rules and regulations of license conditions in last 10 months. Three other companies are under watch.
   The ministry recovered Tk 100 million from dishonest recruiting agencies and refunded the amount to the cheated job-seekers.
   Non-resident Bangladeshis remitted $8,802.61 million in last 10 months, when some 401,505 people went abroad for jobs despite the negative impacts of global financial recession on the overseas job markets, the minister said.

Maoist activists on Tuesday blocked all roads in and out of Nepal's capital Kathmandu in the latest stage of a two-week protest against the government.
   Riot police stood on guard as hundreds of activists waving Maoist flags rallied at the main entry and exit points to the capital, but an AFP reporter at the scene said the protest appeared peaceful.
   Nepal's Maoist-led government fell in May after the president halted their attempt to sack the head of the army, and the party is holding a fortnight of nationwide protests against the new administration.
   'We want to hold a peaceful protest to reiterate our commitment to democracy,' party worker Prakash Acharya told AFP. 'In a democracy, peaceful protest should be allowed.'
   The police inspector, Angur Gharti Chhetri, said hundreds of people had been left stranded by the blockade.
   'Not a single private or public vehicle has passed since early morning, although they are letting ambulances, diplomatic vehicles and tourist buses operate,' he told AFP.
   The protest has so far remained peaceful.'
   The Maoists, who fought a 10-year civil war against the state before winning landmark elections in 2008, want the president to apologise for preventing the army chief's removal - a move they say was unconstitutional.
   Their protest will continue on Thursday and Friday with a blockade of government buildings in the capital.
   They initially threatened to shut Kathmandu airport, but backed down under international pressure.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led left parties on Tuesday lost key seats in elections held in two of their heartland states, weakening them further and paving the way for the ruling Congress government to speed up reforms.
   In West Bengal, ruled by the world's longest-serving democratically elected communist government, the Trinamool Congress, an ally of the ruling Congress party, won seven of 10 by-elections, while the Congress won one.
   In Kerala, the Congress party won by-elections held in all three seats, defeating the communists.
   'The weakening of the left will make it more easy for the Congress-led government in New Delhi to carry out its economic reforms,' said Abhirup Sarkar, an economist with the Indian Statistical Institute.
   'The job becomes easier for the government.'
   The communists provided crucial support for the earlier Congress-led federal government from outside, allowing stakes sales in some state-run firms but blocking reforms in the insurance, pension and banking sectors.
   They withdraw support last year over a civilian nuclear deal signed with the United States.
   In this year's April/May parliamentary polls, the communists won just 24 parliamentary seats, down from 60 earlier.
   Experts said an aggressive land acquisition drive for industry in West Bengal has seen the left alienate rural voters - the backbone of its support for decades - and send them into the folds of the opposition Trinamool Congress.
   In Kerala, party infighting led to the downfall of the left.
   West Bengal, which has been ruled by the communists since 1977, is going to the polls in 2011 to elect a new 294-member assembly and could well lose the elections, experts say.

Pro-BNP white panel teachers of Dhaka University have alleged that they are being discriminated in promotion and that the university authorities are biased towards the ruling Awami League-backed blue panel.
   They lodged the complaints with vice-chancellor Professor AAMS Arefin Siddique at his office Tuesday.
   Eight house tutors of Masterda Surya Sen Hall resigned protesting the promotion of a junior teacher as house tutor by the provost but the authority did not take any step against the provost, they said.
   The white panel teachers criticised the university authorities for not taking any punitive action
   against Bangladesh Chhatra League members who
   were found involved in tender manipulations and other offences on the campus.
   They alleged that cartoonist Professor Rafiq-un-Nabi was holding the office of dean of Faculty of Fine Arts even after his service expired in June, and demanded fresh election to the post.
   They called for convening selection committee meeting to appoint teachers at different departments including pharmaceutical technology, pharmaceutical chemistry, clinical pharmacy and pharmacology, chemistry, physics, statistics, mathematics, Islamic studies, Islamic history and culture, world religion, marketing, management studies, public administration and psychology.
   Professor Arefin Siddique, the vice-chancellor, said that it was a routine meeting where white panel teachers discussed overall situation of the university and placed their demands.
   White panel teachers led by Arts faculty dean Professor Sadrul Amin also met pro-VC Professor Harun-or-Rashid on the day.

Vitaly Ginzburg, a Russian physicist who survived Stalin's purges by working on the Soviet atomic bomb project and later won the Nobel prize for physics, died in Moscow late on Sunday after a long illness.
   He was 93.
   Ginzburg won the 2003 Nobel physics prize for developing the theory behind superconductors, materials which allow electricity to pass without resistance at very low temperatures. He shared the prize with British-American Anthony Leggett and Russian-born US scientist Alexei Abrikosov.
   But Ginzburg's career as a Soviet scientist almost ended when he took as his second wife a woman arrested in 1944 and sentenced to three years in labour camps for supposedly plotting against Stalin's life. State anti-Semitism was flourishing and an attack on Ginzburg was published in a journal.
   'I can only guess what fate awaited me in this situation at this time,' Ginzburg wrote in an autobiographical article written for the Nobel prize committee. 'I think that it would have cost me dear but I was saved by the hydrogen bomb.'
   Ginzburg wrote that he worked together with fellow Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov - later a famous dissident - on the Soviet H-bomb project and said they developed the two key ideas which made it possible to create the device.
   But in 1951, Ginzburg was dismissed from the atom bomb project as Stalin led a fresh campaign of anti-Semitism which aimed to blame Jews for the Soviet Union's problems and exile them into labour camps.
   'It was a tremendous luck that the great leader did not have enough time to carry out what he had planned to do and died, or was killed, on 5th March 1953,' Ginzburg wrote in the article.
   He said he and his second wife Nina Yermakova had celebrated the day of Stalin's death ever since as a 'great festival'.
   Ginzburg was active in public life after the demise of the Soviet Union, signing letters and giving interviews hitting out at official indifference to fundamental science in modern Russia.’

Barack Obama this week makes his first trip to Asia as president, leaving behind a host of domestic problems with a visit that recognises the region's economic and diplomatic importance to the United States.
   The trip, which starts on Thursday, will take Obama to an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Singapore.
   But the critical leg will come in China, where Obama will have to navigate an increasingly complex relationship with the country that is the largest holder of US foreign debt and its second-largest trading partner.
   'I see China as a vital partner, as well as a competitor,' Obama told Reuters in an interview before the trip.
   'The key is for us to make sure that that competition is friendly, and it's competition for customers and markets, it's within the bounds of well-defined international rules of the road that both China and the United States are party to, but also that together we are encouraging responsible behaviour around the world,' he said.
   He will also visit Japan and South Korea.

The Criminal Investigation Department in Chittagong will grill the former director of National Security Intelligence major general Enamur Rahman in connection with the sensational arms haul case today, officials said.
   Enamur Rahman, ranking brigadier general, was posted as NSI director while the consignment of weapons was unloaded at Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Limited jetty in 2004, officials added.
   'We want to quiz Enamur Rahman to find lead in the arms haul case as he worked as NSI director at that time,' said the CID investigation officer ASP Mohammad Moniruzzaman.
   'So we sent a notice asking him to appear at CID office on Wednesday to face questioning in connection with this arms case,' Moniruzzaman added, saying, 'we are going to call some other persons soon for quizzing'.
   The police seized 10 truck loads of arms from the CUFL jetty on April 1, 2004.