saturday, JANUARY 9, 2010 Poush 26, 1416, muharram 22, 1430 Hijri

   Leading news  Back Page  Editorial   Analysis  Viewpoints   International   Business/Economy   National   Sports    Back

Leading News

TALKS IN CtG
BD, Myanmar place proposals on maritime boundary demarcation

UNB, Chittagong

Bangladesh and Myanmar both placed their respective proposals on demarcation of the maritime boundary as they opened here Friday two-day talks on a positive note to resolve the dispute over the mineral-rich waters of the Bay of Bengal.
There were, however, no concrete decisions on the first day of negotiations, taking place following diplomatic maneuverings after the two neighbors averted a near-confrontation when Bangladesh started the process of gas exploration in the Bay leasing out hydrocarbon blocks to foreign oil companies and Myanmar sent in naval fleet for gas exploration within the disputed continental shelf of the Bay.
On the first day of the two-day meeting, Bangla-desh proposed to fix the maritime boundary following the 'Principle of Equity' of the resources while Myanmar recommended maritime boundary as per line-based equidistance system.
A 13-member delegation from each side is taking part in the crucial meeting that began at 9:30am at Hotel Agrabad. The high-level bilateral meeting for the first time will conclude today (Saturday) after dealing with the proposals from the two sides.
Additional Secretary of the Foreign Ministry Rear Admiral (retd) Khorshed Alam is leading the host side while Deputy Foreign Minister Yu Maung Myint heading the Myanmar delegation. After the first-day meeting was over, the Additional Foreign Sec-retary told reporters that the meeting discussed only issues relating to the system of identifying the maritime boundary. "But, no decision was taken at the initial stage," he said.
Expressing confidence about a fruitful ending of the meeting, Khorshed Alam said both the countries would have to try to reach an effective solution for fixing the maritime boundary.
The Myanmar Deputy Foreign Minister also appeared hopeful about a fruitful solution of the problem.
The dispute was created over maritime boundary between the two neighboring countries as Bangladesh protested against Myanmar's move for lifting mineral resources from a block in the deep sea during the last Caretaker Government.
Later, Bangladesh formally raised the issue at the Arbitration Tribunal of the United Nations in October, 2009 for a solution. On the other hand, neither Bangladesh nor India could extract mineral resources from gas-and-oil blocks in the deep sea as both the countries claimed the blocks as theirs, said a Foreign Ministry source from the meeting.
The sources said Myanmar and India have claimed 18 out of 27 blocks of Bangladesh in the deep sea for long. After 22 years, Bangladesh and Myanmar sat in a meeting in 2008 to demarcate the water delimitation, but the talks ended in failure.
The Foreign Ministry sources said Myanmar's attitude towards resolving the dispute over maritime boundary was "positive" this time around.

 We should not play kids game With Tipaimukh
Morshed Khan on PM's India tour

UNB, Dhaka

Former Foreign Minister M Morshed Khan said thorny issues must be removed through visionary approach by political leaderships to foster a good relation and meaningful cooperation between Bangladesh and India.
Khan, however, feels a lack of requisite preparation for bringing about such a change in the bilateral ties through the Prime Minister' s forthcoming visit to India at an important juncture on the diplomatic front.
"It's not a difficult task. The issues are not such that cannot be resolved. It needs visionary approach and open mind," he said in an interview with UNB on the eve of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to New Delhi.
The Prime Minister leaves for New Delhi on Sunday evening for a four-day tour-at a time when new governments are in office in both the countries in changed political milieus that experts think could provide chances for making a breakthrough in resolving the longstanding issues.
Many of these are considered irritants and date back to the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 at the end of the colonial British rule, such as border demarcation, water sharing of common rivers and exchange of enclaves.
On the sharing of Teesta River waters, Morshed Khan said both sides had discussed the issue many times, the ministerial JRC meeting was held in August 2005 and it was ready to strike a deal.
When the Bangladesh side had requested the Indian side to sign the agreement on the sharing of the Teesta River, New Delhi came up with new proposal for signing sharing agreement on all the common rivers to avoid repeated amendments to the Indian constitution, he recalled the staggering diplomatic dilemmas.
"We told them if it required 30 years to sign the Ganges water-sharing agreement, how many years it would need to sign agreements on sharing of waters of all the 54 common rivers without fixing a parameter," Khan said.
The ex-Foreign Minister admitted lack of coordination of different ministries as "we could not project the 'give-and-take' approach effectively. This is our weakness".
On demarcation of the remaining 6.5 kms of land boundary, settlement of adversely possessed lands and exchange of enclaves, Khan said the joint working group on land boundary has already submitted its reports to the Foreign Ministry and the Home Ministry. It is not hard now to reach a final decision on demarcation.
"There must be a change in our mindset to take a practical approach," he said, adding: "bureaucratic attitude should be guided by political leadership and directions."
On the controversial Tipaimukh dam, he said agony of the people of the northeastern states of India has been amply demonstrated, which is a common cause, and more so at a time when the whole world has taken a new approach to environmental issues.
"We should not play kid's game with Tipaimukh," he said, adding that the Bangladesh parliamentary delegation went to India for sightseeing instead of approaching the JRC.

 Khaleda blames govt for Bakir's 'unnatural death'
She demands judicial inquiry

UNB, Dhaka

BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia has blamed the present government for the death of BM Bakir Hossain, joint secretary of Jatiyatabadi Sramik Dal, in police custody and termed it "clear violation of human rights and against the rule of law."
In a statement Friday, she said: "The mysterious death of Bakir without treatment is not acceptable at all. The present government can't avoid the responsibility of this death. It's a clear violation of human rights and against the rule of law."
Khaleda further said: "None is safe from the inhuman torture unleashed on the nationalist forces across the country during the tenure of the present government."
She demanded judicial inquiry into Bakir's "unnatural death" and hoped that the government would take immediate steps in this regard.
Bakir, president of Bang-ladesh Bank Employees Federation and member of the newly announced national executive committee of BNP, died in custody at the city's Apollo Hospital at about 2:30 pm on Thursday.
Earlier, he was taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) after he fell unconscious in jail on December 22.

  PM's India visit will be new beginning in ties: Ashraf
BSS, Dhaka

Terming Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's upcoming visit to India as very crucial, Awami League General Secretary Syed Ashraful Islam said Friday that it will be a new beginning in terms of bilateral ties between Dhaka and New Delhi.
"The biggest achievement of Sheikh Hasina's visit to India will be reestablishment of relations of trust and souls between the two neigbouring countries and it will be turned into an epoch-making ties, he told a roundtable at Jatiya Press Club.
Ashraf, also the LGRD and cooperatives minister, firmly believe that the goals that Sheikh Hasina is taking with her to India will be hundred percent successful.
"Sheikh Hasina is ready to take the relations between Bangladesh and its neighbouring countries like India and China to another step," he added.
Anti-Communalism and Extremism Mancha arranged the roundtable on 'Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's upcoming visit to India. President of Communist Party of Bangladesh Manzurul Ahsan Khan, Gono Forum Presidium Member Pankaj Bhatta-charya, Politburo Member of Workers Party Bimal Biswas, Gano Azadi League President Alhaj Abdus Samad, Professor Dr Anwar Hossain, Profe-ssor Dr Mosharraf Hossain, Professor M Akhtaruzza-man, Maulana Fariduddin Masud, Editor of the Bhorer Kagoj Shyamal Dutta, valiant freedom fighter and businessman Mir Mostafizur Rahman took part in the discussion, among others.
Convenor of Anti-Communalism and Extre-mism Mancha Professor Ajoy Roy presided over the roundtable, while Advocate Tobarak Hossain was the moderator.
Ashraful said Sheikh Hasina's upcoming visit to India is completely political not diplomatic and the political visit has no specific agenda. "The expectations from the visit are obviously very high, but one of its elements is to improve situation," he said.
Stressing the need for building up confidence between the two countries, he said problems of two sides regarding development of relations will have to be resolved and it will be reciprocal, not one sided.
Ashraful also said the present government has also taken steps to improve the relations with China and to this end, he referred the recent visit of an AL delegation to China.

   Case filed accusing 10 in Rajshahi student killing
BSS, Rajshahi

A murder case has been lodged against 10 leaders and workers of Rajshahi Polytechnic Institute (RPI) unit of Bangladesh Chhatra League in connection with the Thursday's RPI students violence that left one student dead.
City unit president of Bangladesh Chhatra Moitree Motiur Rahman lodged the case with Boalia Model Police station Thursday night.
According to the police sources, main accused of the case are RPI unit president of BCL Nizam Uddin and unit leaders Nazmul Huda, Shariful Islam, Jahidul Islam, Saddam, Rahim, Rokan, Matin and Masum. Meanwhile, the campus situation remains peaceful since the morning and the students vacated their dormitories as the institute has been declared closed sine die. Police, so far, arrested four BCL leaders and workers- Naheed, Shariful, Manik and Nabin in connection with the killing. On the other hand, the city unit BCL, in an emergency meeting, declared the RPI unit organizational activities of the BCL suspended for an indefinite period following the untoward incident and expelled the unit president Nizam Uddin from the organization for his alleged involvement in the incident.
It may be recalled, Rajshahi Polytechnic Insti-tute was closed sine die Thursday following an attack on the leaders of Bangladesh Chhatra Mait-ree reportedly by Bangla-desh Chhatra League acti-vists that left a Maitree leader dead. The deceased was identified as Rezanur Chowdhury Sunny, vice-president of Polytechnic unit of Chhatra Maitree.
Police and witnesses said a group of 10-15 BCL men attacked Chhtra Maitree polytechnic unit president Kazi Motaleb Hossain Jewel, vice-presidents Rezanur and Bulbul Ahmed with lethal weapons in front of the administrative building at about 10am.
They hacked the Maitree leaders indiscriminately, leaving them injured
seriously.

   Bus crash kills 7 in Bandarban
BSS, Bandarban

At least seven people were killed, five of them instantly, and over 30 others injured as a bus carrying a group of Buddhist devotees fell into a gorge near the Bandarban town, police and witnesses said.
They said five of the victims died instantly while the two others succumbed to wounds on way to or at Chittagong Medical College Hospital as they were rushed to the facility.
"The bus caught fire and was burnt as it plunged into the 60 feet ditch exposing many of the wounded passengers also to burn injuries," said a local journalist who witnessed the crash.
He said villagers and firefighters rushed the scene and rescued the injured people extinguishing the fire while senior district administration and military officials based in Bandarban visited the scene to oversee the rescue operation.
Officer in charge of the Bandarban Sadar police station Jahangir Alam told BSS that the devotees hailed from Jobra village of Hathazari thana of Chittagong, who came to the hill district town to see a Buddhist spiritual leader at Buddhadhatu monastery alongside sightseeing.
"They represented different age groups and trades," Alam said but added that most of the dead and injured people were elderly people and the victims also included women and children.
The witnesses said the bus crashed at Manur Tek area of Bandarban- Keranihat road and then fell into the roadside ditch at around 11.30 am.
Police said eight of the injured passengers were being treated at a local facility in Bandarban while the others were sent to Chittagong as most of them were critically injured.

Back Page

PM sees stronger cooperation between Bangladesh and India

UNB, Dhaka

Chairman of the organizing committee of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 Sharad Pawar Friday requested Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to attend the inaugural ceremony of the global cricketing extravaganza at Bangabandhu National Stadium in Dhaka.
Pawar, also a senior Indian minister and incumbent Vice-President of the International Cricket Council (ICC), made the request when he paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her official residence in Jamuna on Friday afternoon. The Prime Min-ister accepted the invitation and wished success of the World Cup Cricket 2011 which will be co-hosted by Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. During the meeting, Sharad Pawar highly praised visionary and able leadership of the Prime Minister and congratulated her on the Awami League-led Grand Alliance's massive victory at the December 29 general election as well as completion of one year of her democratically elected government.
Pawar noted that Hasina had led the nation successfully to restore democracy in Bangladesh.
The Prime Minister highlighted her government's various initiatives taken for development of agriculture and achieving national food security like in the previous tenure of Bangladesh Awa-mi League.
"Poverty is the biggest enemy of Bangladesh as well as other South Asian countries," she said, adding that since its assumption of office, her government has given priority to the agricultural sector to attain food security for the people.
She also mentioned the potential of stronger cooperation between Bangladesh and India in the agricultural sector. In this regard, Sharad Pawar, the Indian Minister for Agriculture, mentioned the 'Ceres Award' Sheikh Hasina was given for outstanding success in agricultural development and attaining food security.
As sports and cultural affairs came up for discussion, Pawar lauded Hasina for her and her government's enormous interest in development of sports and culture. "We all know how much you are enthusiastic about sports and culture," said the Indian government leader. In reply, the Prime Minister mentioned that during the first AL-led government, Bangladesh became ICC champion and attained the test status. But, for some time later on, Bangladesh team could not play at desired level as the then government could not continue hectic efforts like the AL government.

  India keen to borrow saline-tolerant rice variety from Bangladesh: Sharad

BSS, Dhaka

The visiting Indian Agricu-lture Minister Sharad Pawar on Friday said her country was keen to borrow Bangl-adesh's saline tolerant rice variety to boost agriculture outputs in the states of West Bengal, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.
"Our states of West Bengal, Orissa and Andhra have similar problems of saline intrusion, draught and cyclones like Bangladesh. And we want to fight such odds together," Sharad Pawar said after a close door meeting with his Bangladesh counterpart Begum Matia Chowdhury at a local hotel.
"Firstly, India and its people are extremely happy with the return of democracy in Bangladesh," Sharad said adding the present government has brought stability in Bangladesh. He said a number of unsettled bilateral issues would be discussed in New Delhi next week when Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina would pay a three-day official visit to India.
"The Indian government is giving tremendous importance to Sheikh Hasina's visit to New Delhi and things are moving in a very positive approach from both sides," said the Indian Minister, who had long experience of running ministries, including the defense ministry of India. Begum Matia Chowdhury said the present government has been attaching highest importance to the uses of surface water to boost agriculture outputs in Bangladesh. She, however, insisted that the availability of water in trans- boundary rivers must be ensured to use optimum uses of surface water for agriculture purposes.
"My prime minister is not like others that she would forget to raise the water sharing issue during her visit to India," said an outspoken Matia, who believed that fruitful results would come out from Sheikh Hasina's visit.Matia said agriculture in Bangladesh were identical to many of parts of India because of the close proximity of the two countries. India needs saline-tolerant rice variety, while Bangladesh needs draught-resilient varieties from India. She said steps are underway to grow more rice, pulses, vegetables, fruits and oil seeds in both the countries using bilateral experiences.

  Mirza Fakhrul calls for unity of nationalist and Islamic forces
TBT Report

BNP senior joint secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said country's nationalist and Islamic forces will have to be united as national independence and sovereignty are facing a great challenge. He made the call while addressing a discussion meeting on 'does Bangladesh fail to ensure security of foreign deployments' organised by Nat-ional People's Party (NPP) at the National Press club on Friday.
Mirza Alamgir said country's independence and sovereignty are facing a crisis due to the plot of a neighboring state. Countrymen are in confused situation whether its independence and sove-reignty will be protected or not. Under this circumstance, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is going to visit India. If any anti-nation agreement is signed between the two states and longstanding disputes including Tipaimukh dam is not resolved, resistance against the government will have to be formed in organised way.
He said the ruling Awami League is a great fascist political party which has been proved through its earlier activities. It does not care for democracy, public opinion and country's national interest. In order to protect country's independence and sovereignty and ensure public interest, national unity is a must which can compel the ruling party to uphold country's interest abroad. BNP standing committee member Salauddin Qader Chowdhury said with a view to strengthening Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's hand, the nationalist forces will extend their all sorts of assistances, so that she can uphold the country's interest during India visit.
During her visit, Tipaimukh dam related feud will have to be resolved. Barriers on the way of entrance of Bangl-adeshi goods to Indian market will have also to be resolved. After coming back, you (PM) should take necessary steps to ensure trial of chief of the immediate past caretaker government Fakhruddin Ahmed and the then army chief Moeen-U-Ahmed, he said.

   Govt won’t tolerate violence on the campus: Syed Ashraf
BSS, Dhaka

Awami League General Secretary Syed Ashraful Islam Friday said that they were not feeling self- complacency in the success of the government, rather, based on that success, they were determined to work in the coming days for national prosperity.
"We had taken part in the election with some vision, and our final goal is to achieve this," he said at a press conference marking the publication of the party mouthpiece 'Uttaran' at Dhanmondi office of the party.
He said the government would not tolerate any violence or hooliganisms on the campus in the name of student politics. Four Chhatra League leaders were arrested in connection with killing a student in Rajshahi, he said.
Claiming that the government is successful in most of the areas with some exception, Syed Ashraf said public poll represents that people are happy with the government's performance.
The government would have been more accountable if BNP took part in parliament session and focus on the mistakes of the government, he said adding 88 percent people of the country is not liking the BNP's continuous boycott.
About the prices of essentials, AL general secretary said we have tried to bring down the prices. But, it is not logic that the price will always remain same, he said adding "we are trying to bring down the prices of essentials."
"The market was under control of a syndicate ..., we could break down the consortium," he said. On the killing in the name of crossfire, Syed Ashraf said we believe in rule of law and oppose all extrajudicial killing.
Focusing on the BNP's conditions for joining parliament, he said they are raising demand one after another. He said only the court can withdraw the corruption cases, the Speaker has no authority to withdraw the cases. "But they are showing them up in all parliamentary committees except in the 'main stage', he said hoping that they would come to parliament from next session. About the High Court verdict of nullifying 5th amendment of the Constitution, Syed Ashraf said we are waiting for the Supreme Court order. The matter, if required, might be discussed in parliament, he added.

   Musclemen capturing fire-ravaged Malibagh slum
5,000 fire victims living under open sky amid severe cold

UNB, Dhaka

Around 5,000 people at the city's Malibagh Slum that was ravaged by a fierce fire nearly two months back have been passing their days under the open sky amid severe cold.
Locals said the slum was gutted in November this year, just a week ahead of Eid-ul-Azha, damaging valuables and shanties of the hapless people.
"We've been passing our days under the open sky amid severe cold, as we've lost whatever we had in the fire. You can't imagine what a painful life we're now leading," Maleka Banu, a victim who hails from Mymensigh, told UNB. Sources said a section of musclemen are capturing the slum taking advantage of the fire incident. "They're reconstructing the fire-ravaged shanties and renting those at Tk 1000-1200," said a local resident wishing not to be named.
The slum dwellers urged the authorities concerned and voluntary organizations to come forward to rehabilitate them and thus assuage their sufferings.
Apart from lack of shelter, the slum dwellers have long been facing acute crisis of drinking water and sanitation and health facilities.
According to locals, over 10,000 people take water from only four tube-wells in the neighborhood for drinking and household use. As the slum is situated on a dirty wetland, three is no adequate water supply.
Mohammad Ramzan Miah, a van-puller who hailed from Dinajpur, said they have to pay Tk 100 a month per family in toll for taking water from these tube-wells connected with WASA water supply lines.
"Fetching water from the tube-wells is not that much easy. We have to stand in long queues to have a pitch of water," Ramzan said.

   Post and Telecom Ministry takes Tk 6,000 cr projects last year

BSS, Dhaka

Ministry of Post and Teleco-mmunications undertaken Taka 6,000 crore projects, issued 364 licenses and made the Telecom and Post Office Act time befitting in order to expand the telecom sector.
Different wings of the ministry including BTCL, BTRC, Bangladesh Teletalk Ltd undertook short and long term plans aiming at building a 'Digital Bangladesh'.
The Postal Department has undertaken a Taka 32 crore project to bring 84 post offices under automation. It has introduced mobile money order service and receiving vehicle taxes through IT. Steps have also been taken to fill up a few thousands of vacant posts.
Talking to BSS, Post and Telecommunications Secr-etary Sunil Kanti Bose said, expansion of international telecommunication services, improving quality of services, increasing accessibility, creating competitive environment and amending Telecomm-unications Act-2009 are among the success achieved in this sector.
He said investment in telecom sector would be easier following legal amendment and illegal operation of VOIP will be stopped. Steps have been taken to spread internet facilities in remote areas of the country, he added. BTCL has introduced 'one country one rate' system and call charges per minute has been fixed at 30 paisa per minute from July 1 last, which was Taka 1.50 during the period of four-party alliance government.

  Sri Lanka overpowers Bangladesh
TBT Report

Upul Tharanga and Mahela Jayawardene struck centuries as Sri Lanka overpowered Bangladesh by nine wickets in the Idea Cup Tri-Nation cricket at Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium, Dhaka on Friday.
Sri Lanka scored 252 for one in 42.5 overs in reply to Bangladesh's 249 for nine in 50 overs. Needing 250 runs to win, the Sri Lankan opening duo frustrated the Bangladesh bowlers punishing them from the outset of the innings and scoring 215 runs in the opening stand.
Upul Tharanga struck his eighth one-day ton when he scored an unbeaten 118, while Mahela Jayawardene was out for 108. Naeem Islam took the only wicket for Bangladesh when Jayaw-ardene edged a quicker delivery to wicketkeeper Mushfiqur Rahim, who took a fine catch to pull off the only success for the hosts in the 38th over of the innings.
Earlier, Bangladesh scored 249 for nine in its stipulated 50 overs after being asked to bat first by the Lankans, who defeated Bangladesh by seven wickets in their first round meeting in the competition. This is for the first time Bangladesh failed to reach the 250-run mark in this triangular competition but the most important thing in the Bang-ladesh innings was that its captain Shakib Al Hasan returned to the form as the all rounder scored the highest 47 runs to boost the team's total.

Editorial

Control unruly BCL activists

Within a day of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's pledge in her address to the nation to introduce a healthy and positive trend in country's politics her young followers belonging to Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) killed an activists of Chhatra Maitree in Rajshahi on Thursday rather posing a threat to her good intention . A group of BCL activists launched an attack on the leaders of Bangladesh Chhatra Maitree, a front organisation of Awami League's grand alliance partner Workers Party leaving Rezanur Chowdhury Sunny, vice-president of Polytechnic unit of Chhatra Maitree dead and several others injured over establishing supremacy in the Rajshahi Polytechnic Institute. Police arrested four BCL men suspecting their involvement in the incident. Later, the polytechnic authorities decided to shut down the institute for an indefinite period. The students were also asked to vacate their dormitories.
What has happened in Rajshahi is very unfortunate and unwarranted. But such atrocity is nothing new on the part of BCL activists who have committed some other incidents of this sort since AL assumed power in January last year. After the massive electoral victory of the grand alliance the pro-AL Chhatra League activists were engaged in occupying forcibly the seats in different residential halls of various universities ousting the rival students from there and also locked in armed clashes among themselves over supremacy. Although the occupation drive has ended, inter-party clashes and the in-fighting in Chhatra League are still continuing.
Since the Awami League assumed office in January, 2009, two students were killed, more than 1,000 injured and about 25 educational institutions were closed following Chhatra League's infighting or clashes with other student organisations even before the Rajshahi incident. Apparently fed up with the bloody infighting in and extortion, toll collection and tender-manipulation of the BCL activists Sheikh Hasina has quit the post of the 'Organisational Head' of BCL. But nothing has been able to dissuade the BCL activists from creating violence.
On February 18 last year before Sheikh Hasina's arrival at Paltan Maidan, the venue of a reunion marking the 61st founding anniversary of the Bangladesh Chattra League (BCL), two groups of BCL members scuffled and pelted chairs at each other. Later, Sheikh Hasian in a speech to the Chattra League workers cautioned them against getting involved in criminal activities such as terrorism and extortion. But, in utter disregard of her advice and warning, BCL activists clashed and traded gun shots with rivals in own and opponent organisation.
Only three days before the Rajshahi incident BCL celebrated its 62nd founding anniversary. Fastoons and placards seen on this occasion read : ' BCL -62 years of struggle, bravery and tradition.' But one may genuinely ask as to whether incident like the one that took place in Rajshahi on Thursday was the manifestation nowadays of the 'struggle, bravery and tradition' of Chhatra League which once was in the forefront of country's all struggles for people's rights from Language movement to freedom struggle?
Commenting editorially on the activities of a section of unruly activists of BCL this paper had observed on August 10 last year that in clear defiance of the will of the Prime Minister a group of Frankensteins are in the making in one of the associate organisation of her own party. Before they could strike to undo her policies and the path set by her, she should deal with these evil force with a heavy hand. But that was not done and all have seen the results in Rajshahi. Against this backdrop, the worried people can urge the Prime Minister to control the unruly BCL activists and she has to do this in her own political interest as well.

  Police as people’s friends

Pesident Zillur Rahman on Thursday asked the members of the police force to behave frankly and cordially with people at all situations. "You must remember that the ideal of police is to serve the people. Prove through your deeds that police is people's friends," he said while addressing a function at Bangabhaban marking the 'Police Week-2010'.
Describing police force as a traditional institution of the country, the President said responsibility of police is to ensure security of people's life and property along side maintaining the law and order. "As a law-enforcing agency the role of police is indispensable in establishing rule of law in the country."
Both the observation and advice given by the President in his speech are significant. The police personnel are supposed to serve the people as their friends and earn their confidence through selfless and dedicated services. But in our country we seldom find the police in such pro-people role. Rafter, they often appear to be hostile to the people and reluctant to serve the people with sincerity. This trend should come to and end.
Police personnel work under different limitations, strains and difficulties. They are ill-paid and ill-equipped. Moreover they have to work under political influence in most cases. Police can serve as people's friends only if these issues are resolved by the government and the condition of the police force is improved.

Analysis

Fuming Over Nothing

In any Indo-Pak conflict-may there never be one again-we will be the David, or should be the David, to India's Goliath.

Ayaz Amir

Our national anger, of which we have an unusually large store, should be directed at clearer targets. Before working ourselves into a lather of excitement, which we do all too readily given the slightest provocation, we should be clear in our minds what we are getting angry about.
What did Indian army chief Gen Deepak Kapoor really say that has us so upset? His reported remarks were that India was modifying its military doctrine to include the possibility of a two-front war-that is, against China and Pakistan. What's wrong with this?
From India's point of view-and Gen Kapoor, after all, heads the Indian not the Pakistan army-the possible threat India faces is from China and Pakistan, not the Maldives or Burma. Just as the possible threat we face is from India, not Uzbekistan or Sri Lanka.
If an Indian army chief were not to envisage the possibility of a two-front war, and mull over the means of waging it, he would deserve to be sacked. Just as Gen Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani would be shirking his responsibility if under his watch the Mily Ops Directorate were to ignore the possibility of Pakistan being engaged simultaneously on both the eastern and western fronts.
Military planning is not about certainties but contingencies, about situations that could arise. And one not forearmed, to state the obvious, is foredoomed. Whether India attacks us or not is beside the point. Given our history, and our history of distrust, it's only common sense, not strategic brilliance, to be prepared for the possibility, near or remote as it may be.
It was the Times of India which first reported Gen Kapoor as saying, "The plan now is to launch self-contained and highly mobile 'battle groups'…adequately backed by air cover and artillery fire assaults for rapid thrusts into enemy territory within 96 hours."
General Heinz Guderian would have approved. This reads like something out of a Wehrmacht blitzkrieg manual. And it would be highly surprisingly, and the highest dereliction of duty, if General Headquarters in Rawalpindi were similarly not programmed to take the fight into Indian territory, should hostilities break out. Armies plan for victory, and rapid victory at that, not attrition or picnic parties.
In any Indo-Pak conflict-may there never be one again-we will be the David, or should be the David, to India's Goliath. If we are to prevail, David's path should be ours, boldness and decisiveness our weapons. This is the only way to counter a bigger enemy.
We live in a dangerous environment. Thanks to Afghanistan and the American presence there, and the assorted engines of terrorism brought into being by previous fixations and earlier follies, our region counts as one of the most dangerous flashpoints on the planet.
So the luxury of taking anything for granted is not ours. But even as we go arming ourselves against the worst, the least we owe ourselves is to read the minds and words of our adversaries correctly.
After so many years of independent existence we should be able to see things dispassionately. Gen Kapoor was not flaming the fans of war. He was not indulging in war-mongering, he was carrying out a risk-assessment of the threat that India, to his mind, faces.
He has spoken of enhancing India's strategic reach into the Indian Ocean. Had our economy been in better shape, and if we had not shown such a talent for making a mess at home, we would have been talking of spreading our reach into the Arabian Gulf and beyond. And no one would have blamed us. Now what we have is a nuke capability in jarring contrast to our iron begging bowl.
China is attaining superpower status because of its growing economic might. It became a nuclear power in 1964 but is emerging as a giant on the world stage only now. As India's economy grows so will its great-power ambitions.
The answer to this is not to sulk or go red in the face but, to the exclusion of other things, concentrate on our economy. Balancing our accounts is our number one problem, greater even than the threat from the Taleban. If our economic base remains brittle and our begging bowl is the only thing that helps us survive, no amount of military muscle will do us any good or make us look strong.
Gen Kapoor is also being berated in the Pakistani media for having said in November last year, "The possibility of a limited war under a nuclear overhang is still very much a possibility at least in the Indian sub-continent."
There is nothing inaccurate about this, else why would we have such a large standing army? If there was no threat of a conventional war with India we would be well advised to disband half our forces and send them home. Sadly, the nuclear overhang has not made the threat of conventional war go away. Wisdom in any full measure has yet to dawn on the sub-continent.
Let's not forget, Kargil was not a full-fledged war engaging the bulk of the armies on both sides. But it was a serious conflict nonetheless which had every potential of getting out of hand, had not President Clinton eventually helped pull our chestnuts out of the fire. For the foreseeable future we are doomed to have a touchy relationship with India, unless through vision and statesmanship, of which there are no early signs around the corner, we are able to transcend the dictates of geography and history.
But sixty years on the world stage is a long time to be around, at least enough to leave the apprenticeship of nationhood behind. As part of this growing-up it is high time we learnt to react with calmness to things coming from across the border, even if they happen to be blustery and provocative.
If we cast our minds back to the summer of 1998, India's nuclear tests were followed by some very provocative statements on the part of L K Advani and the like. As a result of those statements our national morale was said to have been badly affected. Our response eventually, I am sure, was calibrated to the tests and not the statements. But the way this entire situation was played out in the media it almost seemed as if Pakistan was responding to the statements. Gen Kapoor's two-front war assessment has been read in Pakistan almost as a declaration of war, and everyone responding to it has done so with a mixture of anger and heightened alarm.
From Gen Kayani has come this warning: "Proponents of conventional application of military forces, in a nuclear overhang, are charting an adventurous path, the consequences of which could be both unintended and uncontrollable." The foreign minister has been livid as has been the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen Tariq Majeed.
Has all this wordiness been necessary? Are we such an insecure nation that a single misinterpreted statement can so unsettle us? If a riposte was necessary, a one-liner from the Inter-Services Public Relations would have served the purpose. Something like, "Everyone is entitled to his fantasies", delivered with an ironic curl of the lips.
Philip, Alexander's father, sent Sparta a message: "If I enter Laconia, you shall be exterminated." He received just one word in answer: "If". When French marshals turned their backs on him in Paris, Wellington merely said, "I have seen their backs before." The cultivation of calm and brevity would improve our tone as a nation.

Ayaz Amir is a distinguished Pakistani commentator and Member of National Assembly (parliament).

  The curse of Muslim lands

So what kind of Islam these lunatics think they believe in when they send young, impressionable 13-year olds to die who haven't even experienced what life is?

Aijaz Zaka Syed

Terrorism, they say, is the weapon of the weak. But in our case it has become the weapon against the weak. Suicide bombing is not something invented by Muslims. It's perhaps as old as homicide. Japan's harakiri comes to mind. But perhaps no people have suffered it, and because of it, as much as Muslims have in recent years.
So what drives a suicide bomber? And what kind of cause, however noble, makes you kill completely innocent people peacefully going about their day-to-day business-people who haven't harmed anyone and do not pose any threat to anyone? And how can those faceless men, whatever their motives, ever think they would be forgiven, let alone rewarded in the next life for their despicable acts against defenseless people?
Is this what Islam really preaches and stands for? If not, as we all know it doesn't, why aren't our religious scholars, leaders and wise men raising a storm and doing more to stop these mad men bent on tarnishing the image of a noble faith and its billion plus followers?
I have often struggled with these questions every time innocent people are killed in a terror attack or suicide bombing. And these questions have been troubling me again since the mind-numbing attacks on a Muharram procession in Karachi and a volleyball match in Pakistan's north last week. The unparalleled scale of the attack on the Ashura procession in Karachi, Pakistan's financial-commercial capital and political nerve center, has shaken a country that has long been used to the daily mayhem of this kind. Nearly 50 people were killed and 500 injured in the attack. But more than the loss of precious lives, it is the devastation wreaked on the country's biggest city that will haunt Pakistan for a long time to come. Thousands of businesses, shops and commercial establishments were destroyed in no time, incurring losses worth billions of dollars. And the attack on the heavily attended volleyball match in the troubled Northwest killed 75 villagers, and left scores maimed.
None of those watching the match or attending the Muharram procession had anything to do with the Western wars in Afghanistan-Pakistan or Iraq. They had no sympathy or affiliation whatsoever with the United States and the West. Then why have they been targeted? More important, what have the planners and perpetrators of these devastating attacks against unsuspecting bystanders achieved? But whoever said there is any higher purpose or noble objective behind all this madness? There's no method in the madness. This is an all-consuming monster that distinguishes not between so-called friends and foes.
As regular readers would know, this writer has been doing his bit to question, critique and confront the games big powers have been playing in the Middle East and Arab-Muslim world for centuries. And I have gone to great lengths to point out repeatedly why the US and Western policies in the Middle East are to blame for much of the mess you see in the Muslim world today, from Palestine to Pakistan. And this writer has underscored the fact that groups like Al-Qaeda have been birthed and fuelled by Western double standards and unjust, callous policies in the Muslim world. And that even in the face of increasing threats from extremist groups and the evidence of a clear link between the cause and effect, the West has tenaciously refused to address, review and change its fundamental policies in the greater Middle East. But that's a different story altogether.
The Western actions cannot be an excuse for the kind of extremist violence that is being visited on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Why are innocent people being made to pay for the Western policies and sins? And how does it help the so-called cause of these so-called defenders of Islam when they target innocent people for that matter? This death cult is the ultimate injustice and calumny against a faith that celebrates peace, reason, moderation and justice in all spheres. Why Islam literally means peace!
So what kind of Islam these lunatics think they believe in when they send young, impressionable 13-year olds to die who haven't even experienced what life is? The Karachi attack and the terror strike on the volleyball match are only the most recent instances of crimes committed in the name of a great faith. Pakistan's recent history, and that of the Middle East, is replete with such vile and craven crimes against humanity. Tens of thousands of innocent people have died in this mindless violence targeting bazaars, mosques, schools, hospitals...you name it - little ever knowing why they had to die and for what.
True, the self-styled Coalition of the Willing has visited a great deal of horror on Iraq and Afghanistan. But we are not any less indebted to the nihilists who kill and murder with impunity in our name. Let's face it: Some of the worst crimes against Muslims have been committed in the name of Islam by people who claim to be our defenders and champions. In fact, they are worse than the West because they pretend to be our friends and allies before they hunt us from within.
If the invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan are not our friends, the folks who live in our midst to kill us from within like a cancer are not our friends either. This is the reality Muslims have to confront, and confront it now - before it's too late. And this is the message we have to send across the Muslim lands and around the world.
I do not know how many people, especially Muslims, paid attention to this year's Haj sermon. Addressing the white sea of three million pilgrims from around the world in Makkah, and by extension the larger Muslim world, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh used unusually strong language to draw attention to the issue that has become the bane of the Islamic world. While Islamic scholars, including those leading the prayers at the most sacred mosque on the planet, have been talking about the growing cult of the suicide bomber and warning against extremism, this is the first time anyone has condemned the menace with such force and in such unequivocal terms. Warning Muslims around the world against the extremists, the grand mufti termed the specter of terror and suicide attacks as "the curse of Muslim lands." He singled out the extremism and the death cult of suicide attacks as the "most serious problem" facing the Muslim community today.
This is the message that has to be taken far and wide with the force and conviction with which it was delivered. This is a matter of life and death, literally. Religious scholars, politicians, intellectuals, the media and ordinary Muslims have to come together, deploying all resources and means at their disposal to free ourselves of this stigma presenting the real, pristine visage of Islam before the world.
Too much innocent blood has been spilled and too many innocents have died in the name of our faith. It's time to say enough is enough! Please, not in our name! For God's sake, not in our name!

Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Dubai-based commentator. Write to him at aijaz.syed@hotmail.com
 

Viewpoints

Prophet's Promise to Christians

The document is not a modern human rights treaty but even though it was penned in 628 AD, it clearly protects the right to property, freedom of religion, freedom of work, and security of the person.

Dr Muqtedar Khan

Muslims and Christians together constitute over fifty per cent of the world and if they lived in peace, we will be half way to world peace. One small step that we can take towards fostering Muslim-Christian harmony is to tell and retell positive stories and abstain from mutual demonisation.
I must remind both Muslims and Christians about a promise that Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, made to Christians. The knowledge of this promise can have enormous impact on Muslim conduct towards Christians. Muslims generally respect the precedent set by their Prophet and try to practise it in their lives.
In 628 AD, a delegation from St. Catherine's Monastery came to the Prophet and requested his protection. He responded by granting them a charter of rights, which I reproduce below in its entirety. St. Catherine's Monastery is located at the foot of Mt. Sinai and is the world's oldest monastery. It possesses a huge collection of Christian manuscripts, second only to the Vatican, and is a world heritage site. It also boasts the oldest collection of Christian icons. It is a treasure house of Christian history that has remained safe for 1400 years under Muslim protection. Here goes the Promise to St. Catherine:
"This is a message from Muhammad bin Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.
Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.
No compulsion is to be on them. Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries. No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims' houses.
Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God's covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate. No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight. The Muslims are to fight for them.
If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray. Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants. No one of the (Muslim) nation is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world)."
The first and the final sentence of the charter are critical. They make the promise eternal and universal. The Prophet asserts that Muslims are with Christians near and far straight away rejecting any future attempts to limit the promise to St. Catherine alone. By ordering Muslims to obey it until the Day of Judgment, the charter again undermines any future attempts to revoke the privileges. These rights are inalienable. The Prophet declared Christians, all of them, as his allies and he equated ill treatment of Christians with violating God's covenant.
A remarkable aspect of the charter is that it imposes no conditions on Christians for enjoying these privileges. It is enough that they are Christians. They are not required to alter their beliefs, they do not have to make any payments and they do not have any obligations. This is a charter of rights without any duties! The document is not a modern human rights treaty but even though it was penned in 628 AD, it clearly protects the right to property, freedom of religion, freedom of work, and security of the person.
When I look at Islamic sources, I find in them unprecedented examples of religious tolerance and inclusiveness. They make me want to become a better person. I think the capacity to seek good and do good inheres in all of us. When we subdue this predisposition towards the good, we deny our fundamental humanity.


Dr. Muqtedar Khan is Director of Islamic Studies at the University of Delaware and a fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, US.

  Mr Bush all over again

It is the moral burden of the leadership of the most powerful nation on earth to explain to the rest of the world actions of a state that has broken all laws in the book by which nations have hitherto conducted their business.

Dr Muzaffar Iqbal

Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab wrought what he wrought with his explosives which would not explode. Thus, it is the moral burden of the leadership of the most powerful nation on earth to explain to the rest of the world actions of a state that has broken all laws in the book by which nations have hitherto conducted their business. From Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib and from the drone attacks that regularly violate the sovereignty of Pakistan (a state whose leadership seems to have ransomed the honour of its people for a few crumbs from the king's table), the writing on the American wall of justice glows red when compared to the madness of one Abdul Mutallab who may turn out to be the greatest hoax of the new century (so far). The issue at hand is the knee-jerk reaction of President Obama and his administration, reminiscent of the bullying of his predecessor, a reaction that is utterly out of proportion and devoid of any moral justification save the myopic view of the self-assuming role of saving American lives at the expense of others.
With one failed attempt, Mr Obama has shed all his colouring and now talks exactly like Mr Bush. His words state what Bush used to: all other human beings are somehow less human than Americans. Had that not been the case, Mr Obama would have stopped the drone attacks in Pakistan in respect of the lives of innocent women and children. He would have apologised for what had been done to the prisoners of war in that outpost of humanity called Guantanamo Bay; he would have gone to Iraq and wept at the graves of Iraqis mercilessly killed by American bombers. He would have read out loud the dark record of covert CIA operations all around the world -- a record that no other nation can match.
He would have asked: "Is it not strange that when Americans kill, no one is supposed to mourn those deaths, no country is allowed to take any measures against continuous American attacks, but it is always the other way around." When seven CIA agents were killed in Afghanistan last week, the most obvious question that should have been asked was: what were they doing there? Why were they there in the first place?
But no one asked that question, at least not in America. Instead, glowing tributes were paid to them; their work was hailed. Obama said those killed were "part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens, and for our way of life." "Our way of life" is exactly what Mr Bush would have said on this occasion. And when Mr Obama wrote a letter to CIA employees, saying the victims had "taken great risks to protect our country" and that their sacrifices had "sometimes been unknown to your fellow citizens, your friends, and even your families", he sounded just like George W Bush.
The CIA agents, who were working from the 'forward operating base Chapman' in Afghanistan, reportedly used for US drone attacks on Pakistan, have all become American heroes, but thousands of Afghans who have been killed by CIA operatives and American forces find no mention on the lips of the American president. In fact, the inhumane attitude of American officials can be judged from the actions of those who distributed some money in the Tagab Valley not too long ago; this story tells what they think of other lives.
Col Greg Julian, the top US spokesman in Afghanistan, led the Americans to the far-flung village of Inzeri in Tagab valley. Americans had $40,000 which they were going to distribute to relatives of 15 people who were killed in a US raid. The Americans had arrived in the village after a lot of pressure was exerted on the Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates had admitted to a senate committee that "civilian casualties are doing us enormous harm in Afghanistan." The villagers were brought close to 15-newly dug graves. The village consisted of a small homes made out of stone and mud, set high in a steep, rocky valley just 30 miles north of Kabul. The villagers were asked to produce a list of the dead, but no one could as there was no one the in village who could read and write. Finally, the payments were made in local currency and the US officials said some words which no one could understand. But it is the words of the man who helped oversee the payments which tell the real attitude of Americans toward those they had killed: Lt Col Steven Weir, the military lawyer who helped oversee the payments, made a statement that "payments were not an admission by the US that innocents were killed. It's a condolence payment."
Weir added: "The villagers said none of them were in the Taliban, just peaceful individuals from the village. So by this payment they will understand it's not our goal to kill innocent people. This may help them understand we're here to build a safer and more secure Afghanistan." When asked if the US was paying money to relatives of people that it had wanted to kill or capture, Weir said: "If we did accidentally shoot someone, we want to make that right, and if we have to pay money to someone who didn't deserve it ... it's kind of like it's better to let nine guilty people go free than to jail one innocent person."

The writer is a freelance columnist. Email: quantumnotes@gmail.com

  There is a hole in the heart of the Middle East’s “only democracy”

Journalists can be put into jail in Israel and newspapers forcibly closed (judicial review is allowed) for defying the Censor.

Neena Vyas

For more than 60 years Israel has been at war with its neighbours. And for more than 60 years this has been used by the State of Israel to censor its press. When Israeli rockets killed hundreds of people in the Gaza strip this time last year, when its bombs and missiles flattened three U.N. schools, most Israelis were kept unaware of the facts by their own newspapers. They had to turn to the internet or the BBC or the CNN.
Never mind the country's way of waging war has led to it being indicted for war crimes by a U.N. committee headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, the people there are rightly proud of their democracy. If in India we like to boast about being the "biggest democracy in the world", in Israel every now and then one can hear someone say "In the Middle East, Israel is the only country that has a western style democratic polity."
Israel has a healthy multi-party system that functions on the basis of proportional representation and a polity in which coalition governments have become the norm rather than the exception. Around 30 political parties represent varied and often contrary views. The press is free to report on the different political viewpoints and express views critical of government policy, even in the sensitive matter of Israel's conflict with its neighbours and its illegal occupation of territories after the 1967 war beyond the British mandate of 1948. But when it comes to spot news related to the conflict - and internationally that is often what makes the headlines - there is simply no question of the flourishing and "free" Israeli press straying from the path declared to be politically correct by the censor. Of course, there are newspapers and columnists extremely critical of their government's policy and they do get published. But, the government likes to "protect" its citizens from the gory factual details of Israeli military operations and the devastation that they bring to people just across the so-called border with Gaza or with areas under the Palestinian National Authority or even Lebanon.
As Israeli columnist Gideon Levy of the Haaretz newspaper wrote about Israel's 34-day war with Lebanon in 2006: "The devastation we are sowing in Lebanon doesn't touch anyone here and most of it is not even shown to Israelis. Those who want to know what Tyre looks like now have to turn to foreign channels - the BBC reporter brings chilling images from there, the likes of which won't be seen here..."
And again, when Israel carried out waves of airstrikes in the Gaza strip starting December 2008, Israelis were not always aware of what their defence forces were doing to young and old, women and children. Many more than 1,000 Palestinians were killed in that war, which also left 13 Israelis dead. The bombing of three U.N. schools in Gaza earlier this year made headlines all over the world, except Israel, where reporting of the event was at best scanty, agency reports of the time noted.
A big hole in the democratic setup is the existence and power of the official Censor, which the otherwise "free" press willingly subjects itself to. Through separate "agreements" with the Israeli government and the Censor, the fourth estate subjects itself to screening - 14 subjects are covered by the censorship law although it is security-related issues that are in effect rigorously scrutinised, said the Editor of Yediot Aharonot to a group of visiting Indian journalists invited by the Government of Israel.
In casual conversation with a number of people - ordinary people, some diplomats, a writer, a film director, a few journalists, inmates of a kibbutz and others - during this visit, the predominant view of the conflict that emerged was: "Palestinians deserve what they are getting; they are fighting among themselves - there is no unity of purpose or mind between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas; Israel wants peace but is forced to retaliate when Hamas slams rockets into Israel …" And finally, the conversation almost always ended with a direct or indirect reference to the Holocaust and the remark "We want peace, but Israel is fighting for its survival."
In Israel, unlike India, there would be almost no question at all of the press trying to take a critical view of any military action. There are numerous instances of news stories from Kashmir - a most recent example is the coverage of the Shopian deaths and there was the earlier case of young boys playing cricket being killed by the security forces - forcing the government to investigate allegations of human rights violations by our armed forces.
But that would be rare, if not impossible in Israel. The only time journalists feared getting into trouble with the government in India was the period of the Emergency between 1975 and 1977, when even unfavourable political coverage of the Congress was frowned upon.
The overarching censorship prevalent in Israel is not news to journalists covering the Middle-East. The Associated Press (an American news agency) has entered into an agreement with the Israeli censor that all its correspondents would abide by the censorship rules. Peter Hounam, a BBC correspondent, was forced to apologise for refusing to submit to the Israeli Military Censor the tapes of a recorded interview of Mordechai Vanunu, when he was released from an Israeli prison after serving an 18-year long sentence for blowing the whistle on the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons programme. Hounam's apology was a condition for permission to re-enter Israel. Journalists can be put into jail in Israel and newspapers forcibly closed (judicial review is allowed) for defying the Censor.
Last year in December when Israeli jets struck Hamas-ruled areas, Israeli newspapers had little or no information for their readers on the huge casualties suffered by civilians in Gaza. The issue of reporting facts (not opinion) went before the former President of the Supreme Court of Israel, Aharon Barak, who ruled that when in conflict, "the right to live" would supersede "the right to free expression." The Court justified its ruling citing the "existential nature of security issues" facing Israel.
May be India's "free press" went overboard when the Mumbai terrorist attack took place last year. There was dismay that television showed in real time NSG commandos being dropped at the "war" zones - clearly that would give the information away to terrorists holed inside. But, in Israel the press would normally not write about the Gaza action that many believe fits the legal meaning of "war crime."
A visitor to Israel would be almost immediately struck by a pervasive siege mentality, although it is the worst kept secret in the region that militarily the Zionist state has no rival in the region. And Israelis know this. Each time an Israeli is killed in a terrorist attack or by a suicide bomber, the retaliation by Israel on unsuspecting innocent people in Gaza or Lebanon is ferocious. Since an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was kidnapped by the Hamas in Gaza, more than 127 people have been killed in Gaza in "retributive justice." Currently the Israeli government is negotiating the swapping of Shalit with Palestinian prisoners held by it.
During a brief interaction, Noah Klieger - the oldest correspondent of Israel's largest circulated newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, and a Holocaust survivor - said: "If we wanted, there would be no Gaza, no Palestinian Authority. We can liquidate Gaza in one hour, finish it off …the same for other areas under the Palestine Authority. This I am saying on record." And "off the record" he had something similar to say about Iran. His view was the "humaneness of Israel" was demonstrated by the fact that it had not completely finished off every living thing in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority territory. At the same time he claimed his newspaper had no one political line: "Our editorials reflect all shades of opinion, pro-Arab as well as anti-Arab views."
What is alarming is that Mr. Klieger was apparently an influential journalist of the Hebrew language newspaper that sells copies equal to two-thirds of the entire Jewish population of Israel.
What about the Military Censor? He did not think it was unpleasant or a problem at all. "We are Israelis and we don't want to [write or say anything that would] threaten our security." A foreign newspaper may be free to say Israel has nuclear bombs, "I cannot and do not say so."

International

Kayani calls for greater intelligence sharing
Dawn Online

Pakistan’s Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani said militancy could only be eliminated by greater intelligence sharing between Pakistani and Nato forces about the movements of Taliban militants.
General Kayani made these remarks while talking to a four-member US congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain who called on him at GHQ in Rawalpindi yesterday.
Overall security situation in the region was also discussed.
General Kayani said Pakistan has legitimate interests in promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan and urged that US must remain sensitive to Pakistan's core national interests and concerns.
He said that US actions should remain on the Afghan side of the border and only Pakistani forces should have the right to carry out attacks against militants in Pakistan.
Earlier on Thursday, Kayani called on President Asif Ali Zardari and briefed him on the army's operational preparedness, overall security situation and the drive against militancy and extremism.
Gen Kayani met the president after a conference held at the General Headquarters. The conference, presided over by the army chief and attended by Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman, discussed operational preparedness with focus on integration and coordination between the two forces.
According to a senior security official, the conference, which was held two days after a meeting of the cabinet's defence committee, discussed measures taken by the armed forces to meet any threat to country's security.
The official said the ground troops, with coordinated aerial support, had achieved successes in military operations in Swat and tribal areas and the conference decided to put in place an effective coordination mechanism between the two services to thwart any attack.
The conference was held against the background of a statement recently made by Indian Army Chief Gen Deepak Kapoor about waging war against Pakistan and China simultaneously.
The official said the acquisition of modern weaponry by India was a matter of concern for Pakistan and, therefore, the hostile statement by Gen Kapoor could not be taken lightly.

  Pakistan, US divided over new operation in tribal area
Xinhua, Islamabad

Over the issue of military operation against Taliban militants in Pakistan's tribal area, the United States and Pakistan seemed divided as the latter would prefer to pursue its own national interest, said Pakistani analysts.
Political analyst Farrukh Salim told Xinhua on Thursday that Pakistan and the U.S. have divergent interests as Pakistan wants to target the militant groups who are creating trouble for Pakistan and are responsible for violence in the country.
A suicide hit killed seven CIA employees on Dec. 30, 2009 in Afghanistan. The attack was allegedly linked to the Taliban network run by Sirajuddin Haqqani who bases itself in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan.
It was reported that American officials have stepped up pressure on Pakistan to root out the Haqqani network, whose fighters pose one of the greatest threats to American forces in Afghanistan.
However, Pakistani officials claimed that Haqqani has not attacked the Pakistani state.
Defence analyst Rahimullah Yousafzai said that the Pakistani government has signed an agreement with Malvi Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir, chiefs of two separate strong groups of Taliban based in North Waziristan, to isolate Hakemmulah Mehsood, the Tehrek-e-Taliban chief based in abutting South Waziristan.
"So at this moment when problems of militancy is going on in other parts of the country, operation against Haqqani is not possible as that may turn the two groups in North Waziristan against the country, and thus would increase difficulties of the government and the military already engaged on several fronts," Yousafzai said.
Pakistan launched a series of operations against the violent militants in Bajaur Agency, South Waziristan, Khyber Agency, Kurram Agency and other areas in the Federal Administered Tribal Area (FATA) in 2009. Washington said Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion were holed up in the semi-autonomous tribal belt.
Mehmood Shah, defense analyst and former secretary of FATA, told Xinhua that Pakistan would not carry out operation in North Waziristan as it is more important to clear off other tribal areas which are adjacent to Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, where the militants penetrated to other cities of the country.
Pakistani army spokesman Athar Abbas, the Director General of Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), confirmed that Pakistan itself would decide areas of its operation and no pressure in this connection would be accepted from outside.

  I don't need favour of foreign powers: Karzai
AFP, Kabul

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, whose fragile government is propped up by more than 100,000 foreign troops, said Friday he does not need "the favour" of the international community.
The US and NATO have 113,000 troops fighting a Taliban-led insurgency trying to topple Karzai and destabilise the war-torn, impoverished and corrupt country.
With more than 500 international troop deaths in 2009, the war is becoming more deadly for foreign and Afghan troops alike as it drags into its ninth year since the Islamist regime was toppled in 2001.
Diplomats in Kabul say without the Western military presence, Karzai's government would soon collapse as the Taliban is spreading its footprint across the country and setting up shadow administrative and judicial systems.
"I have to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, I have to be legitimate and have the trust of the Afghan people if I am to be a good president," Karzai told Al-Jazeera Television, with Western forces set to rise this year to 150,000, and Kabul receiving billions of dollars a year in aid.
"The legitimacy of my government has to be given by the Afghan people.
"With the international community, I don't have to have their favour.
They are here for a purpose, which is the fight on terror, and we are working with them for a purpose, which is the stability and safety of Afghanistan, so we have a common purpose."
Karzai began a second five-year term in November after being declared the winner of an August president poll that descended into a ballot-stuffing farce, with investigators finding that about a million votes for Karzai were fake.

  Hillary to seek Japan assurance on military bases
Reuters, Washington

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will ask Japan to recommit to the U.S. security pact and Okinawa military bases when she meets Japan's foreign minister next week, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.
Clinton will meet Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada on Jan. 12 in Honolulu to discuss the U.S.-Japan relationship, which has come under strain due to a row over relocating the Marine Futenma airbase on Okinawa island.
Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the Obama administration's top diplomat for Asia, told a news briefing that Clinton would underscore that military cooperation was a critical component of a broad and healthy relationship.
"We want the Japanese government to support strongly a robust military, and particularly Marine, commitment on Okinawa and elsewhere," Campbell said.
"This is a security alliance at its core, and security issues are important in a complex and changing Asia. We want a very clear set of statements on the part of the Japanese government on the desire to continue to work closely with us."
Clinton's stop in Hawaii at the start of a trip to Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea will also feature a speech on U.S. views of Asia-Pacific security at a time when the rise of China is challenging the accepted status quo.
Japan-which for almost 50 years has been bound in a security alliance with the United States-has seen relations sour following the election last year of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, whose Democratic Party has sought to take a more independent foreign policy.
That has been most visible in the dispute over Futenma, a U.S. military airbase since 1945 and one of several American military installations on Okinawa.

  Burmese whistle-blowers sentenced to death
BBC Online

Two Burmese officials have been sentenced to death for leaking details of secret government visits to North Korea and Russia, the BBC has learned.
The officials were also found guilty of leaking information about military tunnels allegedly built in Burma by North Korea, a source in Burma said.
A third person was jailed for 15 years, the source added.
The military rulers in Burma (Myanmar) have so far made no public comments on the case.
The source told BBC Burmese that Win Naing Kyaw, a former army major, and Thura Kyaw, a clerk at the European desk of Burma's foreign ministry, had been sentenced to death by a court in Rangoon on Thursday.
They were found guilty of leaking information about government visits to North Korea and Russia, which reportedly took place in 2008 and 2006.
The two men were also convicted of leaking details of a network of tunnels reportedly being built in Burma.
It is thought the tunnels were built to house communications systems, possible weapons factories and troops in the event of an invasion.
The third man, Pyan Sein, was given 15 years in prison on Thursday.
Burma still has capital punishment, but it has not carried out executions in recent years.

  Churches attacked in deepening row over use of word ‘Allah’

France24

Three Malaysian churches have been targeted with firebombs, leaving one badly damaged, in an escalating dispute over the use of the word "Allah" by non-Muslims. Muslim groups are organising a nationwide protest Friday.
AFP - Three Malaysian churches have been targeted with firebombs, leaving one badly damaged, in an escalating dispute over the use of the word "Allah" by non-Muslims.
As Muslim groups prepared to hold nationwide protests Friday, police stepped up security around churches after one in suburban Kuala Lumpur was set ablaze in a midnight attack that gutted its ground floor.
Molotov cocktails were thrown into the compounds of two other churches but did not cause serious damage.
Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein appealed for calm amid the conflict over the use of "Allah" as a translation for "God" by Christians, and moved to assure minorities in Malay-dominated Malaysia that "they are safe".
"I take the events that happened last night very seriously," he told a press conference. "We want to assure the public that this was not a coordinated and well-planned action."
"Let's hope for the best in a few hours' time," he said of the protests planned for after Friday prayers, centred on the national mosque in the capital.
Police chief Musa Hassan said officers had been deployed to protect churches around the country and to monitor protests at mosques, following the attacks and phone threats against churches.

  Sri Lanka rejects UN execution video claims
BBC Online

Sri Lanka has angrily rejected UN claims that footage which apparently shows extra-judicial killings by Sri Lankan troops is genuine.
The government described a UN inquiry into the video's authenticity as "highly subjective and biased". It says the footage was "fabricated".
UN human rights investigator Philip Alston earlier said three independent experts confirmed it was authentic.
The video shows a man dressed as a soldier shooting a man in the head.
The footage was allegedly filmed in January during the final stages of Sri Lanka's bloody war with Tamil Tiger rebels.
After a man in army uniform shoots a naked, bound and blindfolded man in the back of the head, the video shows the bodies of eight others in a field nearby. Mr Alston has called for a war crimes investigation.
'Crusade'
"We don't accept his conclusions and we believe his conclusions are highly subjective and biased," Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said of Mr Alston's investigations into the footage.
"We believe he is on a crusade of his own to force a war crime inquiry against Sri Lanka."
Mr Samarasinghe said the government's own investigation into the footage revealed that it was riddled with "discrepancies and shortcomings". Mr Alston said that three independent experts had confirmed the video was authentic.
"The conclusion clearly is that the video is authentic," he said on Thursday.
He named the three investigators as Peter Diaczuk, an expert in firearms evidence, Daniel Spitz, a prominent forensic pathologist, and Jeff Spivack, an expert in forensic video analysis.

 Iran strike could destabilize Middle East: Pentagon
Reuters, Washington

A strike on Iran could be "very, very destabilizing" and have unintended consequences for the Middle East, the top U.S. military officer said, stressing that diplomacy was crucial.
Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. military was prepared for any eventuality in Iran, despite being stretched by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He pointed to potential resources in the Navy and Air Force.
"We have certainly focused on Iran for a long time and recognize ... what the potential could be," Mullen said, adding he was "very comfortable" with U.S. capabilities.
Mullen said authorities in Tehran were "on a path that has strategic intent to develop nuclear weapons and have been for some time"-a charge Iran denies.
"I think that outcome (of a nuclear Iran) is potentially a very, very destabilizing outcome ... on the other hand, when asked about striking Iran, specifically, that also has a very, very destabilizing outcome," Mullen told a gathering at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think-tank. Mullen said he worried about "unintended conseque-nces" of either scenario, adding "that part of the world could become much more unstable, which is a dangerous global outcome." Tehran already has been hit with three rounds of U.N. sanctions for refusing to comply with demands that it halt sensitive nuclear activities. The United States and its allies have said it is time for a fourth round of sanctions, but diplomats say Russia and China are resisting.
MORE UNREST
Mullen said he was closely following recent events in Iran and added that he was sure incidents of unrest will continue.
In the bloodiest unrest since the aftermath of a disputed June presidential poll, eight people were killed on Dec. 27 and over 40 reformists, including advisers to opposition lea-der Mirhossein Mousavi, have been arrested since.
"I think we just need to be mindful obviously of those events, of what's going on there, and clearly the need to continue to, I think, aggressively address the potential nuclear weapons issue," he said. President Barack Obama has offered Iran the possibility of deeper eng-agement with the United States if it cooperates on removing fears about its nuclear program and on other issues. This reversed the policy of Obama's predecessor George W. Bush, who had advocated isolating and punishing Iran.
Obama had given Iran until the end of 2009 to respond to his overtures and to an offer from six major powers of economic and political incentives in exchange for a suspension of Iran's nuclear enrichment program. Iran ignored the deadline.
The powers negotiating with Iran are U.N. Security Council permanent members United States, Russia, China, France and Britain, plus Germany.
"One of the things that I think is so important is that we continue internationally, diplomatically, politically-not just 'we' the United States but the international community, continue to focus on this to prevent those two outcomes," Mullen said.
He added that it was important "to continue, where possible, to engage and have a dialogue."
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has similarly expressed support for diplomacy, saying military action would only delay the country's nuclear progress temporarily.

  Israeli air strikes hit 7 targets, killing several Palestinians
France24

At least three Palestinians were killed when Israeli aircraft bombed border tunnels used to smuggle go-ods between Egypt and the Hamas-ruled Gaza strip, according to Palestinian medical sources.
AFP-Israeli air strikes hit seven targets in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip early Friday, killing three men and wounding another, Palestinian medics said.
The casualties occurred near Gaza's border with Egypt when Israeli jets bom-bed tunnels which Palestinians use to smuggle goods into the besieged coastal strip, medics and Hamas security officials said.
The Israeli military confirmed it conducted air raids in response to rocket and mortar fire into Israel, which caused no casualties.
The Israeli air force hit two smuggling tunnels in Rafah and another tunnel near Gaza City designed "for infiltration into Israeli territory in order to execute a terrorist attack," the military said in a statement.
The "terror tunnel" was dug a kilometre (less than a mile) from the border, it said. A weapons-manufacturing facility in Gaza City was also hit, the statement said.
On Thursday, Israeli planes dropped thousands of leaflets over the Gaza Strip warning residents to steer clear of the border after Palestinian militants fired mortar rounds into Israel.
The letters, which were dropped over northern Gaza and Gaza City, warned residents not to go within 300 metres (yards) of the heavily secured border with Israel. Gaza militants have fired more than 280 rockets or mortar rounds at Israel since it ended a devastating offensive against the territory on January 18, according to the military.

  Iraq bars 14 politicians, parties from election
AFP, Baghdad

Fourteen Iraqi politicians and parties linked to Saddam Hussein's Baath party have been barred from taking part in March elections, in a blow for efforts towards national reconciliation.
The decision to ban them from the polls, the second since Saddam's ouster after a US-led invasion in 2003, was made by Iraq's Independent Commission for Justice and Accountability in a bid to purge parties alleged to have been sponsored by diehard elements of the banned Baath party.
Among the most prominent politicians banned was Saleh al-Mutlak, a secular Sunni lawmaker who heads the National Dialogue Front.
"It is clear that this decision is against the law and the constitution," Mutlak told a press conference at his party's headquarters in central Baghdad. "We will go to the Iraqi courts and we will try to deal with this issue through the appeals court.
If the courts are not exposed to political pressure, we are sure that we will win." He added: "We are fighters, and we will continue to fight (if the appeal fails)."
Any appeal would be heard by a federal court, and it was not immediately clear how long it would take for a ruling to be made.

  Paris and Kigali pledge to improve ties after diplomatic freeze

France24

Rwanda and France have pledged to improve ties after a lengthy freeze in diplomatic relations, however Rwanda's main genocide survivors group has once again called for Paris to apologise over the 1994 massacres.
AFP -Rwanda and France pledged Thursday to improve ties after a lengthy freeze in diplomatic relations triggered by a French judge issuing arrest warrants for top aides to President Paul Kagame. "We are convinced that our two countries must move forward together," said Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo after talks with her French counterpart Bernard Kouchner in Kigali.
"We have a common history. We have had difficulties. We are ready to discuss them and move on. We are beginning a new phase in our shared history." The two countries announced a resumption of ties in November, three years after Kigali-angered by charges that nine top officials in Kagame's regime were behind the death of a former president-broke off relations.
Kouchner's one-day visit, the first by a French government official since the November decision, is designed to give ties a much-needed boost.
Rwanda and France have since named envoys to each others' countries. Kigali appointed Jacques Kabare, while Paris is awaiting Kigali's approval for its nominee.

  Obama takes responsibility for lapses, sets reforms
Reuters, Washington

President Barack Obama took ultimate responsibility for security lapses that allowed the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner and ordered reforms aimed at thwarting future attacks.
Obama outlined the new steps, including tightened passenger screening and expanded terrorism watchlists, as the White House released a declassified account of what went wrong leading up to the Dec. 25 incident in which a Nigerian man allegedly came close to blowing up a flight from Amsterdam.
With an eye to the potential political fallout over his administration's response, Obama again sought to reassure Americans he was doing everything possible to fix intelligence faults and beef up security to prevent further attacks. "I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer.
For ultimately the buck stops with me," Obama said at the White House. "As president I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people, and when the system fails, it is my responsibility."
Addressing Americans about the near-disaster for the second time in three days, Obama said he was ordering implementation of reforms to plug the security gaps exposed by the attempted bombing, including wider distribution of intelligence and expanded use of body-scanning technology at airports.

  How online life distorts privacy rights for all
BBC Online

People who post intimate details about their lives on the internet undermine everybody else's right to privacy, claims an academic.
Dr Kieron O'Hara has called for people to be more aware of the impact on society of what they publish online. "If you look at privacy in law, one important concept is a reasonable expectation of privacy," he said. "As more private lives are exported online, reasonable expectations are diminishing."
The rise of social networking has blurred the boundaries of what can be considered private, he believes - making it less of a defence by law.
We live in an era that he terms "intimacy 2.0" - where people routinely share extremely personal information online. "When our reasonable expectations diminish, as they have, by necessity our legal protection diminishes."
Dr O'Hara, a senior research fellow in Electronic and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, gave the example of an embarrassing photo taken at a party.
A decade ago, he said, there would have been an assumption that it might be circulated among friends.
But now the assumption is that it may well end up on the internet and be viewed by strangers.
Raging debate
Privacy has long been a thorny issue but there were very few court cases until that of former motorsport boss Max Mosley in 2008.

  International nuclear bank -helping world peace?
BBC Online

In 1953, eight years after the American nuclear bombing of Japan, President Dwight D Eisenhower laid out a vision that he called Atoms for Peace.
The United States and the Soviet Union, he suggested, should make joint contributions from their stockpiles of uranium that would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of man-kind. It was too idealistic for its time. The Cold War was intensifying. At its heart was the competing strength of nuclear arsenals with the apocalyptic scenario of Mutually Assured Destructions - that nuclear conflict would obliterate both sides.
But now, more than 50 years on, the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme has pushed the Eisenhower vision into reality.
In November, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made a deal with Russia to stockpile 120 tonnes of nuclear fuel in a plant at Angarsk near Irkutsk. And in 2010, the IAEA is expected to come to a more encompassing arrangement with Kazakhstan to keep 60 tonnes of uranium at a plant in the east of the country. The aim is to convince some 60 developing countries planning to use nuclear power in the near future that they do not need to go down Iran's path of enriching their own uranium.
As long as they adhere to IAEA regulations, nuclear fuel supplies will be guaranteed regardless of their politics or human rights record.
"This is something that is a visible quantity of nuclear material," says the IAEA's Tariq Rauf. "It will provide user countries with a greater assurance that the material would be available to them and they would not have the need to build their own enrichment facilities."
Crisis solution?
When the Soviet Union collapsed, Kazakhstan made a decision to rid itself of the large quantity of nuclear weapons left behind. Despite its own questionable record on human rights and democracy, it has been held up by the West as a role model in nuclear non-proliferation.
The BBC was given unprecedented access to the planned storage site for the international nuclear fuel bank, at the sprawling Ulba metallurgical factory in Ust Kamenogorsk - a remote, once-closed Soviet city specialising in fuel production.
The fuel would be kept in a cavernous warehouse with a wired-off section at one end. At present, it contains cylinders of uranium hexafluoride gas, used in one of the processing stages of creating nuclear fuel.
At the other end is a rail track from where the fuel could be transported under the strictest security to Iran, North Korea or any country that called upon it - as long as it was a signatory to the initiative. Kazakhstan would officially cede sovereignty of the area to the IAEA, so that storage site and surrounding area would become diplomatic territory like the United Nations' complex in New York. The IAEA would own the nuclear fuel and have complete jurisdiction over its use.
"There is plenty of storage space," explains Anatoly Kushovsky, the plant's director of operations. "And behind that wall there, we have another whole section. We have many years experience in handling nuclear materials and if this deal goes ahead, it could be a key to solving the nuclear crisis."

Business/Economy

Jobless hits 10pc across eurozone
AFP, Brussels

Ten people in a hundred who could be working are now unemployed across the 16 countries that use the euro, the EU said on Friday as the human cost of the economic crisis was laid bare.
New figures for November 2009 showed that the seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate hit a miserable 10.0 percent, with 102,000 more people left without their own income compared to October.
In Spain, one of continental Europe's biggest economies, the rate has now hit a shocking 19.4 percent.
Experts have repeatedly expressed fears of a double-dip recession on the Iberian peninsula, which could itself stunt nascent recovery among neighbours already struggling with unfavourable exchange rates against the dollar and the Chinese yuan.
And trade figures released on Friday by the German national statistics office showed that China has surpassed euro powerhouse Germany as the world's leading exporter for the first time-further dampening fears of a meaningful recovery throughout 2010.
Unemployment is the last indicator to turn around as economies re-configure to get over the pain of recession.
As if to underline the problem, the world's biggest brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev announced Friday it plans to cut 10 percent of its 8,000-strong workforce across Europe.
While Europe formally exited recession in the third quarter of last year, with 0.4 percent eurozone growth and downwards-adjusted 0.3 percent growth across the EU as a whole, figures confirmed on Friday, still-rising jobless numbers will act as a brake on consumption and economic renewal.
Already, the latest data showed that more than three million people have exited the eurozone workforce over the past 12 months, when the rate stood at 8.0 percent, and almost five million more across the full, 27-member European Union.
The Eurostat agency estimated that 22.899 million men and women across the EU-which also takes in non-euro and recession-mired Britain as well as eastern industrial powerhouse Poland-were out of work in the run-up to Christmas. Of those, 15.712 million were in the euro economy.
The unemployment rate throughout the EU as a whole was registered at 9.5 percent in November.
Male unemployment rose much more sharply over the past year than female unemployment, with youth unemployment having increased at a similar rate, by almost a third.
More than one in five among the under-25 age group are now out of work both in the eurozone and the full EU.
Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight analysts said that the figures will likely "rise significantly" still, despite being held down to an extent by even sluggish growth and "government jobs support in a number of countries (most notably in Germany)." He added that "modest wage growth" would also impede growth prospects.
The wider picture was illustrated sharply on Thursday by a fall in euro retail sales and with the Bank of England leaving its key interest rate at a record low. Fears abound for stretched households across the continent over the impact of rising credit repayments when interest rates begin to rise.
Meanwhile, analysts also cite a real risk that action to slash Greece's massive public deficit will only trigger a severe contraction in its economy there.

 EU warns Greece no bailout as officials assess action plan
AFP, Athens

The Spanish EU presidency on Thursday warned struggling Greece it could not expect a bailout by the rest of the bloc as EU officials scrutinised the country's plans to reduce a mountain of debt.
Missions from the European Commission and Europe Central Bank are on a three-day visit to Athens to assess the Socialist government's plan to rescue the economy amid deep scepticism in the financial markets.
Greek finances are in a parlous state, with the public deficit estimated at 12.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2009, compared with an EU upper limit of just 3.0 percent.
Its total public debt, of accumulated past annual deficits, is put at 113 percent of output for 2009 and is set to rise further, compared with the EU limit of 60 percent.
In Madrid, Spain's Secretary of State for European Affairs Diego Lopez Garrido said economic coordination within the EU was necessary "but there is a limit, which is no bailout."
He said there could be no easing of this rule in the 16-nation euroszone where each country had to make sure its finances were in order.
"Each country has a responsibility on (the) budget," he told a news conference. "You have to address the risk of (the) budget" in each country.
After EU officials met Georges Zanias, who is overseeing the Greek action plan, they went into talks with Finance Minister Georges Papaconstantinou and other departments ahead of their departure on Friday.
Greece is supposed to submit a comprehensive plan of action to the EU later this month to show that it can bring its public finances back into line. Minister Papaconstantinou said the Greek measures "aimed at the reconstruction of the national economy ... (and) involved major changes in both the financial and fiscal sectors." They also involved changes to the way the budget is formulated, and to the way the state and the economy is organised, he added.
Minister of the Economy Louka Katseli said the government's programme planned to get the country through the crisis in three years.
Athens' measures aim to get the public deficit down to 8.7 percent of GDP this year and then to 3.0 percent by 2012.
Analysts said there are widespread concerns that if the problems in Greece are not properly handled, they could raise questions about the wider eurozone-an issue the Spanish EU presidency was clearly addressing.
"While there are growing signs that pressure from the markets is forcing Greece to put its fiscal house in order, there is a real risk that it will result in a catastrophically large economic contraction," analysts at Capital Economics in London commented. "Such an event could eventually lead default to become an increasingly attractive option."
They said that given an earlier European Central Bank warning that other eurozone countries would not automatically provide a bailout, a further rise in the steep interest rate Greece has to offer to attract lenders was possible.
"The government may ultimately be forced to scale back its fiscal plans," they said.

  Dubai projects 16.9pc budget deficit in 2010
AFP, Dubai

The government of the financially troubled Dubai announced on Thursday a projected 2010 budget deficit its of six billion dirhams (1.63 billion dollars/1.13 billion euros), or 16.9 percent of expenditure.
Income is projected at 29.4 billion dirhams (8.01 billion dollars), a 12 percent drop from 9.1 billion, the head of the department of finance, Abdulrahman al-Saleh, said in a statement carried by WAM state news agency. Spending is projected at 35.4 billion dirhams (9.63 billion dollars), down 6.5 percent from last year's 10.3 billion.
Saleh said 30 percent of spending, or 1.9 billion dollars, has been earmarked for investment expenditure "to upgrade and complete infrastructure projects."
In past years, Dubai has channeled large sums of money into building a modern infrastructure, including a metro link and numerous wide highways.
Saleh said the deficit represents just two percent of the gross domestic product of the emirate, whose economy had been hit badly by the global financial crisis, which crippled its once-booming and vital real estate sector.
Dubai also narrowly escaped a debt catastrophe last month. Its major state-owned Dubai World nearly defaulted on some of its debt, but was rescued by a last-minute lifeline of 10 billion dollars from neighbouring Abu Dhabi. Dubai's debt, mostly owed by its state firms, is around 100 billion dollars.
Despite the crisis, Dubai inaugurated this week the world's tallest tower which rose 828 metres (2,717 feet).
Known since construction began as Burj Dubai, the tower was renamed as Burj Khalifa, after the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan, who is also the ruler of oil-rich Abu Dhabi.

  JAL shares drop as bankruptcy looms larger
AFP, Tokyo

Japan Airlines (JAL) took another dive on the Tokyo stock market Friday following news reports that the government is finalising a bankruptcy option for the debt-ridden carrier.
Shares in Asia's biggest airline sank 11.8 percent to close at 67 yen.
The Japanese government is now finalising a plan to have JAL file for bankruptcy with a guarantee of public support so it can continue operations, Jiji Press and Kyodo News said.
Transport minister Seiji Maehara and newly-appointed Finance Minister Naoto Kan held a closed-door meeting Friday morning with the state-backed Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp., which is overseeing JAL's restructuring.
Japan's government has pledged to avoid a collapse of the former state-owned carrier, but has refused to rule out bankruptcy proceedings, which could aid JAL's restructuring but would likely leave investors out of pocket.
Asked if the government is ready to provide support in case JAL filed bankruptcy, Kan told reporters the government was "fully considering such a situation." Maehara separately said: "Our stance is that we would like the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp. to rebuild (JAL) with public funds."
The body will decide on the carrier's rescue plan on January 19, likely using a prepackaged bankruptcy, the Asahi Shimbun reported on Friday.
Earlier reports said the turnaround body is preparing a 300 billion yen (3.2 billion dollars) investment if the airline files for bankruptcy while intending to ask JAL's creditors to waive a further 300 billion yen in loans to the airline. The carrier is seeking its fourth government bailout since 2001 to enable it to keep flying in the face of mounting debts. The airline, which lost about 1.5 billion dollars in the six months to September, has said it plans thousands of job cuts and a drastic reduction in routes as part of its efforts to return to profitability.
JAL may slash more than 10,000 jobs and book a massive restructuring charge of 1.13 trillion yen in the financial year ending March 31, the Nikkei business daily reported Thursday without naming its sources.
JAL has been offered financial assistance by both American Airlines and Delta Air Lines, which are competing to take a stake in the Japanese company and increase their share of the lucrative Asian market.
Media reports suggest JAL is leaning towards forging a capital tie-up with Delta and join the SkyTeam global alliance, leaving the OneWorld group, which includes American Airlines.
But the Wall Street Journal reported this week that American Airlines had increased its investment offer by 300 million dollars to 1.4 billion dollars, raising the stakes in the bidding war.

  US loses 85,000 jobs in December
AFP, Washington

The US economy lost 85,000 jobs in December while the unemployment rate held at 10.0 percent, the government said Friday in a report dashing hopes of a turnaround in the ailing labor market.
The Labor Department report on nonfarm payrolls was a disappointment to those hoping for growth in jobs, which is critical to recovery from recession.
The figure was far worse than the consensus expectation for no change in overall employment levels, and came amid a wide array of predictions ranging from steep losses to modest gains.
But in revising data for prior months, the report showed a net gain of 4,000 jobs in November instead of a loss of 11,000 previously reported.
The agency also revised its October estimate to show a loss of 127,000 jobs in October instead of 111,000.
In December, the goods-producing sector shed 81,000 jobs including 27,000 in manufacturing and 53,000 in construction.
The services sector lost a modest 4,000 jobs, with a loss of 10,000 in retail offset by gains in education, health care and professional services.
Government sector employment fell by 21,000 in the month.
Average hours worked, sometimes seen as a proxy for economic activity, was unchanged in December. Average hourly earnings meanwhile rose 0.2 percent.
The civilian labor force fell by 661,000 in the month, suggesting that more people are stopping their search for employment.
"The unchanged unemployment rate of 10 percent understates labor market slack, since labor force participation fell sharply," said Sophia Koropeckyj at Moody's Economy.com.
"Accordingly, the broader measure (of unemployment) increased to 17.3 percent," she said.

  US stocks mostly higher ahead of key unemployment data
AFP, New York

US stocks ended mostly higher Thursday as tra.ders awaited the December unemployment and nonfarm payrolls report to gauge the strength of the government-backed recovery from recession.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 31.97 points (0.30 percent) to 10,605.65 at the market close.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 1.04 points (0.05 percent) to 2,300.05, while the broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 index advanced 4.39 points (0.39 percent) to a preliminary close at 1,141.53.
Blue chips perked up from morning doldrums after a two days of weak gains, lifted by retailers' same-store sales numbers that beat market expectations and an advisory from financial regulators on interest rate risk management that raised speculation about a Federal Reserve interest rate hike.
"Retail sales data for December encouraged hopes for an improvement in the economy," said Scott Marcouiller at Wells Fargo Advisors.

  Panasonic aims to expand solar battery, 3D TV ops
AFP, Tokyo

Panasonic Corp. said Friday it aimed to be Japan's top maker of solar cells within about three years as part of an increased focus on environmental technology.
The company also sees three-dimensional (3D) televisions as a new core of its thin-screen TV business, Panasonic president Fumio Otsubo told a new year press conference. The company will expand its solar cell business by incorporating the technology of Sanyo Electric, which joined the Panasonic group last year.
Panasonic will invest 100 billion yen (1.07 billion dollars) by early 2016 to increase production of Sanyo's 'HIT', one of the world's most efficient solar cells, Otsubo said.
As well as setting its sights on being the leader in Japan, the company aims to become one of the world's top three solar cell makers within about six years, Otsubo said. Otsubo stressed the need to explore new business areas amid tough global competition against foreign rivals such as South Korea's Samsung.
Samsung is so big that it will remain difficult for Panasonic to compete with its existing products, Otsubo said.
"Rather than chasing the sales volume, we must look to competing in quality," he said. "I think the most significant factor will be 3D TV," he said.
"With 3D TV and its related products, including camera recorders and editing tools, we will strengthen our television operations to make it one of factors to go against Samsung," he said.
The company, which is expecting a net loss of 140 billion yen for the year to March 2010, will further expand its effort to go after global customers while exploring new business areas in bids to return to profit, he said.
Production will also be shifted to foreign countries, he said.

  Size and diversity makes India ‘slow moving elephant’
AFP, New Delhi

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday likened India to a "slow moving elephant" whose sheer size, population and diversity affects its ability to implement key policy decisions. In a speech to a gathering of overseas Indians in New Delhi, Singh sought their "active involvement" in speeding up economic growth and social development in Asia's fourth largest economy. "We are all legitimately proud of India's vibrant democracy. But I cannot say that we have delivered in full measure on the enormous promise and potential of our country," Singh said.
"It is probably true that we are a slow moving elephant but it is equally true that with each step forward, we leave behind a deep imprint. "There is a price that we pay in trying to carry all sections of our people in national development." Many among the 25 million-strong overseas Indian community are attending the annual two-day event.
Singh's remarks followed criticism from Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian-born billionaire chairman of ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel maker, that India was not prepared to handle big ticket investments.
Mittal, who has threatened to scrap a 20-billion dollar project to build two major steel plants in eastern India because of problems with land acquisition, said red tape at every level of government was a major obstacle.
"The entire country is to be blamed for the delay in execution of projects," he told reporters here.
In his address Singh, who launched India's market reforms as finance minister in 1991, said he hoped the country would achieve a growth rate of seven percent in 2009-10.
"We are equally optimistic that we can return to and sustain an annual growth rate of nine to 10 percent in a couple of years," he said adding: "The Indian diaspora could do more to inter-link Indian industry with global markets."
To strengthen bonds between overseas Indians and their mother country, Singh said the government was working on allowing them the right to vote in the next general election scheduled for 2014.

  Spain dreams of ‘economic government’ in Europe
AFP, Madrid

Spain plans to use its EU presidency to push for a form of European "government" on economic issues, with the promise of rewards for members who meet binding targets-and the threat of sanctions for those that don't.
The Spanish government intends to launch the initiative at an EU summit in Brussels on February 11 which will focus on ways to revive sluggish growth, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told reporters late Thursday.
In launching the potentially controversial initiative, Madrid is clearly posting its desire to play a leading role in European affairs despite the new leadership dynamic created by the Lisbon reform treaty, under which Belgium's Herman van Rompuy has become the European Union's first permanent president. Spain hopes the EU can agree on a replacement for the bloc's long-term growth strategy known as the Lisbon Agenda, which was supposed to make it the world's most competitive economy by 2010 but never achieved its aims as governments were under no obligation to conform.
Spain, which began its six-month EU presidency stint on January 1, now plans to learn from that failure and introduce a new 10-year growth strategy.
"It is vital to have a new kind of strategy for 2020, to make it more efficient," said Zapatero. The new 2020 plan "must include incentive measures, and corrective measures" for states that fail to fall into line, he said.
He mentioned information technology and energy as sectors where this could be applied. Spain's Secretary of State for European Affairs Diego Lopez Garrido said the idea would be to reward countries with EU aid when they meet the binding targets, and to sanction those that do not.
That would imply that the EU would have the right to oversee national budgetary priorities, in addition to the existing Stability Pact which imposes limits on public deficits for eurozone members.

  Greece orders alcohol, tobacco tax hike to counter crisis
AFP, Athens

The Greek government on Friday announced an immediate 20-percent increase in tobacco and alcohol taxes as it fended off EU pressure for drastic action to fix the crippling budget deficit. Experts from the European Commission and European Central Bank demanded to know "in detail, when and how" the necessary measures would be taken during talks with Greek leaders before leaving on Friday, a finance ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Finance Minister Georges Papaconstantinou announced the tax increases as he reaffirmed the need for the country to establish financial credibility in Europe where Greece's troubles have raised fears over the stability of the eurozone.Greece, whose public spending deficit rose to 12.7 percent of output last year and debt to 113 percent of gross domestic output, has to present its crisis programme to the European Union by the end of the month.The Socialist government is aiming to bring the public deficit to below three percent of GDP, the limit imposed by the eurozone, in 2012.Greece's tobacco and alcohol taxes are among the lowest in Europe.
Announcing the tax increses in an interview with Mega television, Papaconstantinou denied press reports that he plans to increase sales Value Added Tax on goods or to end the 14th month salary that most workers get.The minister acknowledged that the EU pressure was difficult for the government to accept.
"None of us is overjoyed to see a group of European officials going from ministry to ministry and proposing various things," said Papaconstantinou. According to the finance ministry source, the EU experts demanded that Greece put the emphasis on balancing the budget by 2012 and making the economy more competitive.
The EU wants a "tighter timetable" for making cuts in health spending and clamping down on non-payment of welfare taxes, said Secretary of State for Employment George Koutroumanis. The government has said it will get the spending deficit down to 8.7 percent in 2010 by cutting government spending and a campaign against tax fraud. Pension reforms are to be proposed by April.
But many newspapers predicted even greater EU pressure on the government which was only elected in October.
"The controllers are demanding a reduction in pensions, the extension of the retirement age, more cuts in health spending and greater control of arms expenses," the pro-government To Vima newspaper said.
The Naftemboriki business daily said "the EU demanded convincing answers. The European controllers expressed doubts."
Greece will have to endure monthly visits by EU officials from February as part of the tighter surveillance ordered by the country's European partners, the finance ministry said.The Spanish EU presidency warned Greece on Thursday that it should not expect an EU bailout. Papaconstantinou told the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 that "we will solve our fiscal problems alone"
"We have not asked for, and do not expect any help from the European Central Bank or a member state from the European Union", Papaconstantinou was quoted as saying.

  Taiwan to start trade talks with China this month
AFP, Taipei

Taiwan's Premier Wu Den-yih said on Friday his government will begin negotiating with China later this month on a major trade pact in a bid to sign the agreement in May.
"The initial contacts will start on January 20," Wu told reporters. "It would be best if we could sign the deal in May. I am looking forward to it."
Taiwan's China-friendly government is eager to conclude the trade pact, known as the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), which it says could lift growth and boost employment.
Wu noted some public scepticism, stressing that his government will only strike the deal with the consent of the public and parliament.
"We cannot neglect the people's feelings ... we have to let them understand why our country and our industries need ECFA in order to stay competitive," he said.
The needs are even more pressing now after China and countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) decided to establish the world's biggest free trade area, he said.
But the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, which favours independence from China, opposes the pact, fearing it would increase Taiwan's reliance on China and imperil the island's separate status.

  Sony makes eco-friendly mini laptop
AFP, Las Vegas, Nevada

Sony unveiled a mini notebook computer aimed at the hearts of environmentalists.
Vaio W Series notebooks have chassis made of plastic consisting of about 20 percent recycled compact disks and will be shipped in a "stylish reusable" carrying cases made from recycled plastic bottles.
"The W series is so green it doesn't have a printed manual," Sony president Stan Glasgow said while unveiling the line at the Consumer Electronics Show taking place in Las Vegas. "Sony is out to lower the power consumption of products and greenhouse gas emissions at its facilities."
Vaio W series machines were billed by Sony as ideal "secondary" personal computers for light tasks, Internet browsing, and online social networking.
The notebooks have high-definition, 10.1-inch screens and hard drives with 250 gigabytes of storage. Vaio W notebooks come in "sugar white" but the interiors are, naturally, green. Vaio W notebooks were available for pre-order online Thursday at sony.com/pr/wseries at prices starting at 450 dollars (US).

  Toyota Prius Japan’s top-selling car in 2009
AFP, Tokyo

Toyota's fuel-sipping Prius was the best-selling car in Japan last year, becoming the first hybrid to top the annual rankings, industry figures showed on Friday.
Toyota sold 208,876 petrol-electric Prius vehicles in 2009, far ahead of the runner-up, Honda's non-hybrid Fit, which sold 157,324, according to the Japan Automobile Dealers Association. The rankings exclude popular mini-vehicles with engines of up to 660cc. The Prius has been Japan's top-selling car since May, when Toyota-the world's largest automaker-rolled out a cheaper, revamped model boasting a fuel-efficiency of 38 kilometres per litre.
Prius sales almost tripled in 2009 from the previous year, while Honda's Insight hybrid ranked fifth with sales of 93,283 vehicles, the association reported.
Japanese automakers have made strides with hybrid cars because of high oil prices and growing concern about emissions blamed for global warming.
Sales of hybrids are also getting a boost from the government incentives in Japan for drivers to purchase less polluting vehicles.
Automakers hope that the popularity of fuel-efficient vehicles, helped by government tax breaks, will re-energise the flagging auto market, which has been battered by the global economic downturn.
But hybrids face competition from pure electric vehicles. Mitsubishi Motors has rolled out its "i-MiEV" mini-electric car while Fuji Heavy Industries launched the Subaru Plug-in STELLA.

National

Organic fertilizer could be produced from city garbage: expert

UNB, Dhaka

Getting rid of the city's huge garbage is no easy task, but its recycling can help keep it at minimum level apart from turning it into organic fertilizer, according to an expert.
"About 5000 tons of domestic refuses are dumped everyday in Dhaka city and its suburban areas," said Dr Mohammed Ataur Rahman, Director of Programme on Education for Sustainability of the IUBAT - (International University of Business Agriculture and Technology).
Dr Ataur Rahman said at least 500 tons of organic fertilizers worth Tk 2.5 to 10 lakh can be produced everyday from the garbage. "Such organic fertilizers contain all the nutrients which may even remain absent in the manufactured ones," he told the UNB correspondent.
He said proper garbage management is essential as dumping wastes into drains causes various problems. "Much of what we throw away still has value and over half of what we throw away is recyclable."
Dr Ataur described house refuses like the trashes of vegetables and food, and the refuses of poultry and cattle farms, slaughter houses as green garbage. "We can produce organic fertilizers from these refuses."
He said there are some other non-degradable synthetics like plastic, polythene, synthetic fibers, foams, rubber, metals, glasses and ceramics. "By recycling these we can produce household appliances."
In Dhaka city, he said, garbage is mindlessly dumped in drains, open places and pits, if available nearby, creating public nuisance. "As garbage management is very poor, the fast degradable refuses start degrading sending bad odor into the air and polluting the environment. And ultimately the garbage is dumped in low-lying areas for land filling."
Dr Ataur said: "Green garbage is a biomass and of course it's the accumulated valuable soil nutrients which are coming from the crop-producing areas. The precious nutrients should go back to their origin. We must recycle them and ensure their reuse."
He said the responsibility of the city dwellers is not to mix non-degradable synthetics like polythene, plastic, metals, furs and feathers with the green garbage like vegetable and food refuses. People should dispose the green garbage separately in garbage pits for microbial decomposition to make compost or organic fertilizer."
Dr Ataur suggested that people should use jute or cotton bags, paper, bamboo baskets and natural fiber or woven shopping bags for easy degradation.
He said polythene, plastics, rubber, glasses, metals, feathers and furs could be stored separately for selling and recycling.
"People should not also use detergents, pesticides and aerosols indiscriminately as microbes and other living creatures around us could help digest those directly or indirectly. The things which we cannot digest, microbes can do easily and the decomposers are the parts of nutrient cycles and are also the parts and parcel of living soils."

  Quality potato seed demand could be met with local production

Country's demand for around 6 lakh tons of quality potato seeds every year could be easily met with local production by setting up more tissue culture laboratories, UNB reports on Friday.
"It's possible to meet the local demand for quality potato seeds by raising the number of tissue culture laboratories in the country," said an official at the Ministry of Agriculture preferring anonymity.
Of the total demand, he said, Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation (BADC) supplies around 3 percent quality seeds and the private sector around 2 percent while import accounts for around 1.5 percent, and the rest 95 percent are being produced by local farmers.
The BADC has four tissue culture laboratories for seed production apart from one used only for research purpose, he said.
"There's a good scope for improving the quality of seeds through increasing the tissue culture laboratories. It'll also be possible to provide industrial variety of seeds as per demand for plantation in due time apart from building up our own stock," said the official.
According to him, around 9,000 tons of potato seeds are imported every year from different countries, especially the Netherlands, spending around Tk 120 crore (Tk 130 per kg).
Two new tissue culture laboratories-one in Domar in Nilphamari and another in Kashimpur, Gazipur-were set up in June, 2009 under a project titled 'Development and Multiplication of Agricultural Seeds'.
These two laboratories have a capacity to produce around 3 lakh plantlets a year, but there was a production of around 37,500 plantlets since June 2009 to last December. "It'll be possible to provide around 30,000 tons of certified seeds or Truthfully Level Seed (TLS) by 2012-13 from the two laboratories," said an official of the project.
The 2nd phase of the project, aiming to enhance the productivity of the tissue culture laboratories, is also under process, according to the official.
He said as potato is a very technical crop, it is vulnerable to viral attack. "So, it's necessary to ensure quality seeds through tissue culture, as it reduces the risk of viral attack."
Under the first phase of the project, trainings were imparted to farmers and BADC officials across the country while around 4,500 farmers received training last year.
"Despite some constraints such as lack of cold storage facilities and erratic power supply, potato farming has a bright prospect as the average yield of potato per hectare is around 15 tons compared to 4 tons of paddy," the official said.
He said the production could be raised to 30-35 tons per hectare if quality seeds through tissue culture could be ensured at the farmers' level.

   Successful farming of flood tolerant paddies ushers a new era

BSS, Rangpur, Jan 8

Successful farming of the flood tolerant variety paddies in recent years have ushered a new era in the country's agriculture sector to produce an additional 60 lakh tonnes paddy annually and ensure food security, rice- scientists said.
The farmers have already completed harvest of the flood tolerant paddies in six northern districts this season and got excellent yields in between 4.0 and 4.5 tonnes paddy per hectare even after 16 days submergence during the last flash floods.
However, the flood-tolerant paddy fields, which remained submerged for 17 to 23 days, yielded only 2.5 and 3 tonnes paddy per hectare, Principal Scientific Officer and Head of Rangpur Regional Research Station of BRRI Dr Abdul Jalil Mridha told BSS on Friday.
Under the assistance of Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) and eight NGOs, 960 farmers cultivated the submergence paddies in 64 hectares in Rangpur, Lalmonirhat, Kurigram, Gaibandha, Nilphamari and Sirajganj this year.
Director General (DG) of International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) Dr Robert S Zeigler during his recent visits here observed the tremendous successes achieved in farming flood tolerant variety paddies in northern Bangladesh.
He highly lauded the ongoing joint collaboration of IRRI with Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) under the assistance of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in conducting research and popularizing cultivation of the flood tolerant variety paddies through GO-NGO collaborations.
During the two-day visits, the DG expressed his full satisfaction and said the success in farming flood tolerant variety paddies will definitely ensure food security of Bangladesh and turning it into a food-exporting nation in near future.
Dr Zeigler made these comments in presence of renowned rice- scientists while visiting flood tolerant variety ripe paddy fields, exchanging views, addressing farmers' gatherings and the paddy cutting ceremonies in Rangpur and Kurigram.
He put special emphasis on extensive research and suggested the farmers to make their children educated in agriculture science for innovating newer technologies fit for the next centuries to meet food demand of the whole mankind.
Observing tremendous field level successes in farming flood tolerant paddies since 2006 in Bangladesh, Dr Zeigler hoped that Bangladesh government would soon approve the paddy seeds to make those easily available to the farmers for large-scale farming.
Programme Leader and Plant Breeder of IRRI Dr David J Mackill, Director (Training) Dr. Noel P Magor, IRRI Liaison Scientist for Bangladesh Dr MA Hamid Mian, Regional Coordinator of Stress Tolerant Rice for Poor Farmers in Africa & South Asia (STRASA) programme Dr US Singh, accompanied him.
Consultant of STRASA Dr MA Bari, Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Genetic Resource Division of BRRI Dr Khairul Basher, former CSO and Head of Agronomy Division of BRRI and Dinajpur Hub manager of CSISA Dr MA Mazid, Dr Abdul Jalil Mridha, were present.

  Boro cultivation likely to be hampered
UNB, Rangpur, Jan 8

Cultivation of Boro paddy is likely to be hampered in the current season as seedbeds prepared for transplantation have been damaged due to severe cold coupled with dense fogs persisting all over the Rangpur and Dinajpur regions for the last several weeks.
Farmers failed to protect their seedbeds from the affect of cold even after spraying medicine. The situation has been prevailing in all 35 upazilas in eight districts of greater Rangpur and Dinajpur region.
Farmers are apprehending that there might be crisis of seedlings as a large number of seedbeds have been damaged in the region due to the biting cold.
Full-swing Boro cultivation would be delayed as the farmers would have to prepare fresh seedbeds. At least 35 to 40 days would be required for maturity of seedlings, local farmers said.
Hossain Mia, a farmer of Kaunia upazila in Rangpur, said his 8 decimal boro seedbeds have been destroyed hue to the cold and fog which he prepared spending Tk 1000.
Another grower in the same upazila Aminul had procured quality Boro seeds at high prices for preparing 12 decimal seedbeds with a hope to get good yield but his hope was shattered due to the shivering cold. He said he will have to borrow money at high rate of interest for preparing fresh seedbed again.
According to the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), a total of 39.717 hectares of land were brought under Boro seedbeds in eight districts of greater Rangpur and Dinajpur region in the current season.
The districts are Rangpur, Kurigram Nilphamari, Gaibandha, Lalmonirhat, Dinajpur, Thakurgaon and Panchagarh.
Of the total land, 28.590 hectares were brought under high yelling variety, 10.874 hectares under hybrid and .253 hectares under local variety.
The official sources said some 7,64,723 hectares of land have been earmarked for Boro cultivation in these districts in the current season. But the farmers are apprehending that the target of Boro cultivation won't be achieved in these districts in the current season due to seedling crisis.
Deputy Director of DAE, Rangpur, has confirmed that seedlings in many areas have turned yellowish due to cold and dense fog. The additional director of the department, however, admitted the seedling damage caused by the cold saying that they could not yet estimated the extent of the

  Restaurant owner Iqbal Wahhab gets OBE award
BSS, Dhaka

Restaurant owner Iqbal Wahhab was awarded with 'Order of the British Empire' (OBE) in the New Year's honours list recently.
Wahab, founder of the Cinnamon Club and Roast, won the OBE, one of the highest honours in the UK, in recognition to his public service and services for promotion of the hospitality industry, said a press release.
Iqbal is the chair of the Department of Works and Pensions Ethnic Minority Advisory Group in the Britain for over three years.
He is also a board member of the Prince of Wales's charities and was recently made chair of the Mayor's Fund for London Business Club.
The OBE recipient has a plan to develop the roast brand and a major social enterprise project around food in 2010.
Wahab graduated at the London School of Economics and worked as a journalist in the National Press for three years and in 1991 he set up a public relations firm that specialized in food, drink and restaurants, and later he launched Tandori magazine in 1994.
In 2007, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in business administration by the University of East London, the release added.

  Sharad Pawar discusses Grameen Bank programs with Prof Yunus

UNB, Dhaka

Indian Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar Friday met with Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus at Grameen headquarters discussing the details of Grameen Bank's operation.
Pawar was accompanied by his wife Pratibha Pawar, his daughter Supria Sule MP, Minister of State for Rural Development of Maharashtra Jayant Patil and Minister of State for Higher and Technical Education for Maharastra Rajesh Ankushrao Tope.
They came here Thursday and leave on Sunday.
A release of the Grameen Bank said Pawar and his daughter have been following the work of Grameen and are exploring the possibilities introducing microcredit programs following Grameen in India, particularly in Maharastra.
Pawar who visited the Nobel Peace Prize gallery wrote: Grameen Bank has shown the path to resolve the most difficult problem of the world that is poverty. Poverty less globe is not a dream, it will be reality."

  Govt. to take all possible measures for welfare of people
BSS, Dhaka

Food and Disaster Management Minster Dr Abdur Razzaque Friday said the government will take all possible measures for the welfare of the people.
He said this while distributing of blankets among the cold hit people in Boubazar area at Hajaribag in the city.
Lawmaker Barrister Fazle Noor Taposh, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative Renata Lok- Dessallien, Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Food and Disaster Ahmed Hossain Khan and Director General of Department of Relief and Rehabilitation Md Jahirul Haque, among others, were present on the occasion.
Razzaque said more winter clothes will be distributed for protecting the people from cold.
He said the government has started distribution of blankets from the month of November in different districts of the country.
The minister said 2,36,500 blankets already have been distributed across the country.
UNDP donated 35,000 blankets to the Ministry of Food and Disaster management to distribute among the cold hit people. Of them, 1000 blankets were distributed among the people of Boubazar area.

  Probe launched on police officer’s reported suicide
BSS, Dinajpur

The police administration Friday launched an enquiry into the death of officer in charge of Ghoraghat police station Zakir Hossain a day after he reportedly shot himself dead after altercations with his wife, officials said.
They said they district police administration formed a two-member investigation committee comprising an additional police superintendent and a police inspector which already launched the probe.
"We have already launched the investigation," committee chief and additional police super Sumit Chowdhury told BSS.
Police sources earlier said Hosssain, 43, died at Bogra Shahid Ziaur Rahman Hospital minutes after he shot himself on forehead using his official revolver at his in-law's house at Namajgarh in Bogra town Thursday night reportedly after an altercation with his wife Nurjahan Akhtar Lipi.
Acting police super of Bogra Mohammad Sujayetul Islam Suja said Hossain went to his in law's house leaving his station without prior permission of the authorities, hours after his wife lodged a written complain with him alleging that he was engaged in extra-marital affairs with several women.
She also complained her husband used to assault her for protesting his activities and on the same day Suja summoned Hossain and advised him to resolve the feud with his wife amicably.
The couple was parents of four daughters.
Police said ahead of pulling the trigger, Hossain also severely beat his wife, who was now being treated at a hospital.

Sports

Bangladesh scores 249 for nine
AFP, Dhaka

Sri Lanka boosted their hopes of qualifying for the triangular one-day series final when they restricted Bangladesh to 249-9 in their third league match here on Friday.
They currently lead the points table with two wins from as many matches, followed by India (1/2) and Bangladesh (0/2). Each side will play four league games before the top two make it to the final on January 13.
Bangladesh made a sound start after being put in to bat in the day-night match when Tamim Iqbal (21) and Imrul Kayes (42) added 44 for the opening wicket.
But Sri Lanka never allowed the hosts to build big partnerships, with seamers Thissara Perera and Nuwan Kulasekara, and off-spinner Suraj Randiv grabbing two wickets apiece.
Skipper Shakib Al Hasan (47), Raqibul Hasan (43), Mushfiqur Rahim (32) and Mohammad Mahmudullah (24 not out) were the other notable contributors.
The highest stand of the innings was 77 for the fourth wicket between Raqibul and Shakib.
Sri Lanka made three changes from the side that beat India in the previous match, replacing Chanaka Welegedara, Suranga Lakmal and Muthumudalige Pushpakumara with Kula-sekara, Malinga Bandara and Mahela Jayawardene.
Bangladesh retained the side that lost to India by six wickets on Thursday.
Scorecard
Bangladesh:
Tamim Iqbal lbw
b Randiv 21
Imrul Kayes lbw
b Perera 42
Mohammad Ashraful
run out 13
Raqibul Hasan c Randiv
b Perera 43
Shakib Al Hasan c
Tharanga b Thushara 47
Mushfiqur Rahim c
Bandara b Randiv 32
Mohammad Mahmu-
dullah not out 24
Naeem Islam b Kula-
sekara 5
Abdur Razzak run out 1
Rubel Hossain c Sanga-
kkara b Kulasekara 0
Syed Rasel not out 7
Extras: (b1, w13) 14
Total: (for nine wickets;
50 overs) 249
Fall of wickets: 1-44 (Iqbal), 2-73 (Ashraful), 3-88 (Kayes), 4-175 (Raqibul), 5-199 (Shakib), 6-211 (Rahim), 7-223 (Naeem), 8-227 (Razzak), 9-231 (Hossain).
Bowling: Kulasekara 10-1-48-2 (w2), Thushara 9-0-67-1 (w6), Randiv 10-1-40-2, Perera 10-0-32-2 (w1), Bandara 10-0-44-0 (w4), Samaraweera 1-0-17-0.
Toss: Sri Lanka
Umpires: Simon Taufel (AUS) and Shahid Saikat (BAN).
TV umpire: Enamul Haque (BAN).

  Official launch of World Cup Cricket in Dhaka today
UNB, Dhaka

The Bangladesh segment of the ICC Cricket World Cup (CWC) 2011 will be officially launched today evening at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in the city.
ICC Vice President and Chairman of the Central Organizing Committee (COC) of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 Sharad Pawar will attend the function marking the official launch of the ICC World Cup.
Earlier, in the morning, he will preside over a meeting of the central organizing committee of event at the Dhaka Sheraton Hotel.
Sharad Pawar, also a senior Indian Union Minister, will address a press conference at the ballroom of Sheraton Hotel today afternoon.
ICC Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat, Tournament Director Prof. Ratnakar Shetty, Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) President AHM Mustafa Kamal and Central Organizing Commi-ttee Convener Mahbubul Anam will be present.
ICC Vice-President Sharad Pawar, who arrived in the capital Thursday on a four-day visit to Bangla-desh, is scheduled to leave Dhaka on Sunday (Jan 10).
Bangladesh will host eight matches of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, including the opening match and two quarter-finals.
Bangladesh will play the World Cup opening match with former world champions India on February 19 at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur.
The grand opening ceremony of the World Cup Cricket will also be held in Dhaka on February 17, 2011. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will be the chief guest at the inaugural function.

  England to play Pakistan T20s in Dubai
AFP, London

England will play two Twenty20 matches against Pakistan in Dubai next month ahead of its tour of Bangladesh, the England and Wales Cricket Board announced Friday.
The matches will take place on February 19 and 20. The senior England squad will leave Dubai on February 21 for Dhaka, where they will play two one-day tour matches before the start of the three-match ODI series against Bangladesh.
England's second-string Lions side will also tour the United Arab Emirates (UAE) next month with their programme featuring T20 matches against England, the UAE and Pakistan 'A' followed by a further three 50-over matches against Pakistan 'A.'
ECB Managing Director, England Cricket, Hugh Morris said: "We are delighted to have agreed in partnership with Pakistan Cricket Board and Dubai Sports City such a comprehensive programme of cricket in the UAE for both England and England Lions.
"The two T20 Internationals against the current world champions in this format of the game will be an exciting challenge for the England team and provide important additional T20 international experience before the next ICC WT20 tournament in the Caribbean in April.
"The combination of three T20 matches and three 50-over matches for the England Lions team to be played at Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi will also provide those players with an excellent opportunity to push their case for selection for the England One-Day side as we continue to build not only for the World T20 in West Indies later this year but also for the ICC World Cup in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh."

  Glover bounces back
AFP, Kapalua

US Open champion Lucas Glover survived a double-bogey at the opening hole to seize the lead in the first round Thursday at the SBS Championship, the US PGA Tour season-opener.
Glover rallied mid-round, playing nine holes from the fifth in nine-under par.
He capped a seven-under 66 with a tap-in for birdie that gave him a one-stroke lead over a group of five players: Australian Nathan Green, Scotland's Martin Laird, Dustin Johnson, Matt Kuchar and Nick Watney.
It was a further shot back to Argentina's Masters Champion Angel Cabrera, British Open champ Stewart Cink, Sean O'Hair and John Rollins.
The other major champion in the field, which includes only winners from 2009, was South Korea's PGA Champion Yang Yong-Eun, who carded a 70.
Glover's day did not get off to an auspicious start when a wayward four-iron led to a double-bogey.
But Glover bounced back with eagles at the par-five fifth and ninth - throwing in a birdie at six as well.
He then made four birdies in a row from 10, gave a shot back with a bogey at 16 and then claimed sole possession of the lead with his closing birdie.
Defending champion Geoff Ogilvy of Australia carded a 69 on a Plantation Course that finally saw the customary Tradewinds conditions rather than the Kona winds that prevailed during practice rounds earlier in the week. "It was a totally different golf course with the Kona winds blowing," Laird said. "Some of the holes we were hitting four- or five-irons into earlier in the week, we were hitting sand-wedges into today."
Laird and Green each had seven birdies and one bogey. Laird, who played in the first group of the day, reeled off four of his birdies in a row from the 13th.
Only two players in the 28-man field - Heath Slocum and Mark Wilson - were over par. Glover, who captured the US Open at weather-whipped Bethpage Black last year, said he was able to shrug off his early miscue, knowing plenty of scoring opportunities awaited.
"I knew there were a lot of birdies," he said. "I saw some scores early and I knew guys were making birdies, and if I played well, I could get something going. So just don't rush anything. Be patient."
At the fifth he hit a six-iron to 18 feet for eagle, and he hit a three-wood to 30 feet for an eagle at nine. "Obviously, I'm happy to be getting started again," Glover said. "I played and practiced when I could, but it might be tough to hit a three-iron off of a hanging lie."

   Clijsters and Henin set up fascinating final
AFP, Brisbane

Belgian comeback queens Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin followed the script to the letter on Friday to reach the final of the Brisbane International tennis tournament.
Henin demolished third seed Ana Ivanovic 6-3, 6-2 to win the first semi-final while Clijsters was made to work much harder before overcoming unheralded German Andrea Petkovic 6-4, 6-2.
Henin, granted a wildcard to play this week, was ruthless as she disposed of Ivanovic in just 65 minutes.
There were no signs of any of the rustiness she displayed in her epic three-set win over Melinda Czink in Thursday's quarter-finals as she broke Ivanovic three times in either set.
And while Ivanovic, like Henin a former world number one, was able to break the Belgian's serve in each set, Henin came back even harder to break back almost immediately and underline her complete dominance.
"I'm in the final of my first tournament back-it's a great feeling," Henin said.
"It's a surprise of course, because it's not as easy as it may seem, because 18 months with no competition is not that easy."
Clijsters looked on course for a similarly easy ride when she broke Petkovic in the opening game of the match.
But the German refused to buckle to her more illustrious opponent and broke back later in the set to get the match back on even terms.
However, the greater experience of Clijsters began to tell and she gradually wore her opponent down, taking the match in one hour and 20 minutes.
Henin and Clijsters have set the tennis world alight since their respective comebacks.
Clijsters, who retired in May 2007 and had a baby girl, set the ball rolling when she came back midway through last year to sensationally win the US Open.
Soon after that triumph, Henin announced she too would end her retirement at the start of this year, with the Brisbane International marking her return to the court.
From the moment Clijsters, 26, and Henin, 27, found themselves in opposite halves of the draw, the prospect of the pair meeting in Saturday's final has been the tournament's main talking point.
Fierce rivals on the court, their careers have also been marred by speculation of severe rifts off the court.
Henin, while admitting they weren't close friends, was keen to play down any talk of bad blood.
"Just because we are from the same country does not mean we have to be best friends," she said.
"(But) there is so much respect between the two of us. "I know sometimes people would love to hear that there have been problems between us but it's not the case. "I respect her personally and I respect her play and I think it's the same for her." Henin said it was simply a case of two different personalities.
"We are so different. We have good memories of when we were younger and we were travelling a lot to the same tournaments, but after that we grew up differently-we went in different directions," she said.

  Barca and Real target first wins of 2010
AFP, Madrid

It has been a stuttering start to the new year from all-conquering Barcelona and the treble winner hopes for its first win of 2010 on Sunday at promoted Tenerife.
Barcelona was let off the hook last weekend when its 1-1 home draw against Villarreal went unpunished - as Real Madrid drew 0-0 at Osasuna - so it still holds a two-point lead over its rival but confidence was dented further by Tuesday's 2-1 Kings Cup first leg defeat to Sevilla at Camp Nou.
"We have had an unlucky start to 2010 failing to win either match, but there is no need to panic," said midfielder Sergi Busquets. "The results will start coming very soon and we'll be playing for all the titles at stake."
Barca must do without top-scorer Zlatan Ibra-himovic through suspension but Argentine Lionel Messi will be back. The club is also boosted by the return of Argentine centre-back Gaby Milito who played his first competitive match since April 2008 against Sevilla after cruciate knee ligament injuries threatened to end his career. Tenerife has a decent home record losing just two of its eight matches and is the only promoted side not in the bottom three although it is only two points above the drop zone. Real had a midweek rest having already exited the Kings Cup and after a scoreless draw at Osasuna the league's top-scorers hope to get back on the goal trail with a home victory over high-flying Real Mallorca on Sunday.
"The point against Osasuna left a bitter taste in our mouth but now we have to focus on getting three points against Mallorca," said Real striker Gonzalo Higuain. Real boss Manuel Pellegrini must do without the suspended duo of Lass Diarra and Sergio Ramos for the Mallorca visit but Brazilian Kaka may return as he recovers from a groin injury.

  Nadal admits to loss of confidence
AFP, Doha

Rafael Nadal, seeking his first ATP World Tour title in eight months, admitted after reaching the semi-finals of the Qatar Open that he has been suffering from a crisis of confidence.
"I have had a lot of problems in the head," the former world number one said after winning 6-1, 2-0 when his opponent, the Belgian qualifier Steve Darcis, retired after only 35 minutes of very one-sided action.
"I have had under-confidence and things in the head - but that's life. You have to accept problems and you have to come back. I am trying. We will see what happens in the next six months."
For someone who has been conspicuously stable while closing out matches, rarely letting slip opportunities to win when they present themselves, Nadal's words superficially contained an element of surprise.
However, he has had increasing problems with arthritic knees, suffered from a stomach ailment, and reportedly been affected by the recent break-up of his parents' marriage.
The 24-year-old Majorcan took only two days' break over Christmas before returning to training and is here in Doha with his mother, though not his uncle-coach Toni. Appa-rently he will link up in Melbourne for Nadal's defence of the Australian Open title the week after next.
Nadal was asked whether the media has been too impatient with him - suggesting that he is not the player he was, for having reached just one final since returning from a three-month absence in August.
"We will see in a few months," Nadal replied amicably. "Everyone is free to talk. I can say nothing against them. I didn't win against the best players.
"But that's tennis - you can't be all the time one hundred percent. I am ready to try and win tournaments, but you never know what will happen. You have to work every day, every week, and wait your moment."

  Ferguson faces exam from former pupil
AFP, London

Alex Ferguson faces an exam from a former pupil this weekend as Manchester United seeks to bounce back from its FA Cup exit at the hands of League One leader Leeds United by beating the Premier League's form team.
Alex McLeish's Birmingham has confounded pre-season predictions it would struggle with an 11-match unbeaten run in the league that has left them in a battle for European places rather than the scrap against relegation that so many had predicted for them.
United meanwhile have had to endure an extended inquest into the Leeds defeat at a time when there is a renewed focus on the level of the club's debt and the restrictions it imposes on manager Sir Alex Ferguson's ability to strengthen a squad that, at times this season, has been severely weakened by injuries.
Ferguson will relish the challenge presented by McLeish, whom he managed as a player for both Aberdeen and Scotland, and veteran winger Ryan Giggs played down suggestions that the defending champions are on the verge of a crisis.
"It has always been the same here, one defeat and it is a disaster," Giggs said. "That is never going to change. But we don't get carried away with that, just the same as we wouldn't get carried away if we had won 10 on the bounce."
United emerged from the festive season having cut Chelsea's lead at the top to two points heading into a month in which the Londoners will have to do without Didier Drogba, Salomon Kalou, Michael Essien and John Mikel Obi, who have flown to Angola for the African Nations Cup.
Carlo Ancelotti's side travel to Hull for a lunchtime fixture on Saturday with Michael Ballack arguing that, despite a recent blip in form, the Italian coach is doing a good job.
"We have had too many coaches during my time at Chelsea and that is not a good idea if you want success," the Germany captain said.
"Jose Mourinho, Avram Grant and Luiz Felipe Scolari all came and went before Guus Hiddink had some time with us last season, but it feels like Carlo is here to stay and that has to be good news.
"This team has connected with Ancelotti and all the players believe he is a man who can work for us, which is a tribute to him because he has come into a dressing room full of highly experienced players who all have their own opinions and beliefs."
Arsenal will again be without injured skipper Cesc Fabregas for Everton's visit to the Emirates, but manager Arsene Wenger can call upon fit-again Czech midfielder Tomas Rosicky, who signed a new contract at the club earlier in the week.

  Venus Williams overpowers Zheng Jie
AFP, Hong Kong

American Venus Williams overpowered Zheng Jie at an exhibition match in Hong Kong on Friday, with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over her Chinese opponent.
Zheng, ranked 35 in the world, took an early 2-0 lead in the first set but Williams powered back to overtake the 26-year-old Chengdu native.
Williams, a seven-time Grand Slam winner, continued the pressure in the second set, blasting Zheng with her powerful serve.
"Every game was close," Williams said after the match.
"I really had to work for it."
The American struggled for much of 2009, losing her Wimbledon crown to sister Serena and then crashing out of the Beijing Open in October.
Earlier Friday, Japan's Ayumi Morita beat 24-year-old Argentine Gisela Dulko 7-5, 3-6, and 10-4 in a tiebreak.
The Hong Kong tournament features four teams with three players each-representing Russia, Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific-in singles and mixed doubles play.
The tournament, which wraps up Saturday, comes before the Australian Open later this month, the first Grand Slam of the season.

  Sadharan Bima makes flying start
UNB, Dhaka

A blistering century by Naim Sadat helped Sadharan Bima KS make a flying start in the Metropolis 2nd Division Cricket League outplaying Kakrail Boys Club by huge 229 runs at the Dhaka University ground Friday.
BCB President AHM Mustafa Kamal formally inaugurated the league at the university ground. BCB Director-cum-Media Committee Chairman M Jalal Yunus and BCB Director and CCDM Chairman GS Hasan Tamim were also present.
Batting first, Sadharan Bima scored a massive 327 for all in 44.2 overs with Naim Sadat making 103 off just 53 balls featuring 10 fours and eight sixes.
In reply, Kakrail Boys were bundled out for 98 runs in 17.5 overs with Sujon making 22 runs. Champak grabbed six wickets for six for 46 runs.
In the day's other matches, Farashganj SC (203 for 9 in 42 overs) defeated Dhanmondi Cricket Academy (151 for all in 32.2) by 52 runs at the BKSP ground while Nabin Sangha (180 for 1 in 38.3) beat East End Club (179 for all in 48) by nine wickets at Fatullah Stadium.

  Strauss slams South Africans over ball-tampering claims
AFP, Cape Town

England captain Andrew Strauss said on Thursday that he believed South Africa's claims about ball tampering during the third Test at Newlands were 'malicious'.
The South Africans made it known they had drawn the attention of match referee Roshan Mahanama to an alleged changing of the condition of the ball but did not make an official complaint.
The umpires viewed footage which showed fast bowler Stuart Broad stepping on the ball and James Anderson running his fingers down the seam but decided to take no action.
"We're not particularly happy about it and I strongly refute the allegations," said Strauss.
"I really don't feel there was any concerted effort on behalf of any of our players to alter the state of the ball. I appreciate that some of that footage didn't look amazingly good but I don't think it was malicious.
"I think to a certain extent the South Africans announcing it to the media without being totally clear in their minds what they were going to do, whether they were going to put in a formal complaint, was a little bit malicious.
"Ball tampering is a very sensitive subject and if you're going to make allegations you have to be very clear or confident about exactly what the other team are doing."
England held out to draw the third Test ensuring that they cannot lose the series - the fourth and final test begins next Thursday in Johannesburg.