The New Nation - Internet Edition

Int’l Dance Festival begins

Artistes presenting a dance sequence at the
Shilpakala Academy yesterday. Banglar Chokh

Staff Reporter

The first International Dance Festival was inaugurated at Shilpakala Academy in the city yesterday.

Rasheda K Chowdhury, Adviser for the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, was present as chief guest at the inaugural session and handed over certificates, crests among the winners of various competitions on the opening day, while artist Rafiqun Nabi inaugurated the programmes.

Sharful Alam, Secretary, Cultural Affairs Ministry, artist Mustafa Monwar and renowned dancers were present at the opening ceremony of the festival.

International Dance Day is on April 29. Shilpakala Academy and Bangladesh Dance Artist's Association (BDAA) have taken elaborate three-day programmes to observe the day where dancers from all parts of the country are taking part in the festival.

The three-day programmes include dance competition, dancing ceremony, rally, seminar and dancing affairs fair which will be held at the Academy, open places including Teachers and Students Centre (TSC) Chattar of Dhaka University and Rabindra Sarobar at Dhanmondi in the city.

Apart from the performances by the finalists of the nationwide dance competition, indigenous dancers demonstrated their traditions performing art forms on the opening day and also included a scheduled performance by the disabled dancers.

On the second day of the festival, a seminar on 'Impediments to Professionalism in Dance and Solutions' will be held today (Monday). Dr Shoma Mumtaz will present the keynote paper. Among others, Dr Karunamoy Goswami, Dr Afsar Ahmed and Rizwana Chowdhury Bannya are expecting to attend the seminar as discussants.

On Monday, second day of the festival, dance performance at three venues - Rabindra Sarobar, TSC and Central Shaheed Minar - will continue simultaneously.

Besides, a unique 'mela' (fair) will be held at the Shilpakala Academy venue that will display everything related to dance - costumes, jewellery, make up, musical instruments and more. The fair will also feature live performance.

"Nationwide events like this will generate more interest in the art from among the masses and will help the dancers attain the much deserved popularity," said an organiser of the festival.

JCD demands release of Khaleda

DU Correspondent

Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD), student wing of BNP, yesterday staged a demonstration at the Dhaka University campus in protest of filing case against their party activists and demanding release of their party chief Begum Khaleda Zia soon.

The demonstration, participated by a good number of leaders and activists of the organisation, was brought out from Madhu`s canteen and marched the campus.

Later, a rally was held at the Aparajeyo Bangla.

General Secretary of the organisatiuon Shafiul Bari Babu, senior vice president Sultan Salah Uddin Tuku, organising secretary Abdul Kader bhuiyan Jewel, Bazlul Chowdhury Abed, DU Unit president Hasan Mamun, general secretary Saiful Islam Firoz, Mamunur Rashid Mamun, Obaidul Haque Nasir and Akram Hossain, among others, participated in the programme.

JCD sources said a case was filed against a total of 40 JCD men by Tejgaon thana police on Saturday because of staging demonstration in front of Election Commission Secretariat.

From the Foreign Press: Soft landings and hard realities: The IMF thinks we can ride out this crisis, but there could be far worse news to come

Larry Elliott

It's the spring of 2009 and finance ministers from the G7 are once again gathered in Washington for the half-yearly meeting of the International Monetary Fund. After grim 2008 the economic skies are clearing. Growth has started to pick up; property prices have stabilised; financial markets sense better times ahead.

A year earlier the IMF described the crisis that erupted in August 2007 as the most profound shock to the global financial system since the Great Depression. Fortunately, however, the economic fallout from the losses made on sub-prime mortgage loans proved to be far less severe than the slump of the 1930s. There are sighs of relief all around at disaster narrowly averted.

This is the sort of outcome that the IMF and the G7 expect; a short-lived recession in the US; a period of sluggish sub-par growth for other developed countries; a modest slowdonw in the performance of the leading developing countries.

The reason for this confidence is that the policy response to the crisis will prove more effective than the botched handling of the Wall Street crash. Contral banks have cut interest rates and pumped cash into the banking system. In the US an easing of monetary policy will shortly be accompanied by a $150bn tax cut.

Some economists-including the former US treasury secretary Larry Summers- believe that the bailout of Bear Steams last month will prove to be a cathartic moment. Once the Federal Reserve made it clear that it was prepared to do whatever it took to prevent leading. Wall Street institutions from collapsing sentiment staried to improve.

Should Summers be proved right, there is indeed, a possibility of a relatively soft landing for the global economy. The return of a modicum of stability to credit markets will be

followed by a pick-up in activity as the pro-growth policy markets start to feed through into stronger consumer and business confidence.

There are problems with this thesis, however. The first is that it is far too early to say that the worst is over, Henry Paulson, who does Summer's old job at the US treasury said he expected to see some impact from lower interest rates and tax cuts by the third quarter of this year. But that depends on the US housing market stabilising, because until it does there is a real risk of a vicious circle of foreclosures, collapsing consumer confidence, rising unemployment, bigger losses for US banks, tighter credit conditions and a falling stock market.

The IMF says that risks are still heavily weighted to the downside. It produced an alternative scenario in which there would be a further tighening of credit conditions, a far bigger drop in equity and property prices than it currently expects, a gloomier assessment of the prospects for long term productivity growth in the US, and an unwillingness on the part of foreign investors to continue buying US assets.

It already believes there is a 25% risk of a global recession; under this alternative scenario, it says there would be a deeper and longer period of falling growth in the US, accompanied by an extended period of weakness in the eurozone and spillover effects on the rest of the global economy through weaker trade flows and tougher credit conditions. This scenario looks just as realistic as the fund's baseline soft-landing forecast. For one thing, there is a clear disjunction between the idea that this is the biggest financial shock since the Depression and the idea that there will be only a short-lived and realtively mid impact on growth.

In addition, the soft-landing thesis conveniently ignores the other headwinds facing the global economy. These include rocketing commodity prices that are contributing to a sharp rise in imported inflation, severe downward pressure on the dollar that threatens toi become a disorderly plunge, the still sizeable global imbalances that have resulted in massive trade surpluses in Asia, and massive trade deficits in the US, which have been only slightly reduced by a cheaper greenback and weaker growth.

That list was supplemented last week by global hunger caused by rising food prices. The world has suddenly woken up to what should have been blindingly obvious; trying to solve the problem of climate change by using crops for biofuel was a short-term fix with potentially lethal result. If you encourage farmers to use land that would have produced food for fuel, the price of food will go up.

Gordon Brown considers this to be a serious crisis and is right to call for a global response. Yet apart from the humanitarian need to help those going hungry, rising food prices make it harder to avoid recession in the West, since they stifle consumer cinfidence and make policy-makers warier about cutting interest rates.

All in all, it would be little short of miraculous were the global economy to escape from the pricking of a colossal credit bubble with a slowdown that the fund is expecting to be far less severe than those in the mid-1970s, the early 1980s or the early 1990s. Indeed, the IMF says that the slowdown will be the mildest in the post-war era apart from that in 2001.

The history of the past 400 years suggests that bubbles develop no matter what safeguards are put in place by policy makers. But that does not mean that they should not try.

Rush to buy ICB mutual fund

Staff Reporter

The Dhaka Stock Exchange yesterday ended high following buying spree for mutual funds of Investment Corporation of Bangladesh after its declaration of Net Asset Value (NAV).

Brokerage houses sources said investors traded in market majors throughout the day rather than going for a specific sector. They said price of shares of oil companies, banks and cement in the yesterday's market went up while pharmaceuticals ended mixed.

Mutual funds issued by ICB enjoyed heavy buying following NAV declarations, sources said. Market experts said the day's trading was flat; prices of ICB mutual funds drove the indices slightly up.

"The trading pattern of mixed buying and selling led to an almost flat close. Heavy buying into ICB mutual funds pushed up the indices a bit," DSE vice president Ahmad Rashid Lali said.

The benchmark general index rose sharply on the opening bell and remained stable until midday trade. It however maintained a downward curve to finish 7.76 points, or 0.25 percent higher at 3087.10.

The DSI or all-share price index ended on 2606.92, rising 7.32 points, or 0.28 per cent from the previous day.

The bourse's blue-chip DSE-20 edged up 6.37 points, or 0.26 per cent, to close at 2401.25.

Turnover slipped to Tk 2.99 billion from Wednesday's Tk 3.02 billion, with 16,955,897 shares changing hands.

Of the traded issues, 85 advanced, 151 declined and eleven remained unchanged.

AB Bank topped the turnover board, rising 2.05 per cent to Tk 3759.50.

UCBL ended on Tk 4986, up 1.77 per cent after Thursday's losses while Delta BRAC Housing fell 0.84 per cent on profit taking to close on Tk 1550.

Pharmaceuticals major Square Pharma continued to gain. It finished at Tk 4610.50, up 0.97 per cent while ACI continued its losses from Thursday, declining 1.4 per cent to Tk 302.70.

IFIC Bank and S Alam Cold Rolled Steels rose on buying pressure.

Polls not acceptable minus Hasina: AL

UNB, Dhaka

Awami League leadership on Sunday said the incumbent caretaker government is 'isolated from the people' and alleged that the country is now on the way to ruination through the activities of this government.

"There is no alternative to elected government… only an elected government can solve all the existing crises of the country. This government cannot deliver because it is isolated from the people," AL senior presidium member Amir Hossain Amu said. He asked the government to hold the parliamentary election first after freeing detained party chief Sheikh Hasina.

Amu was addressing an extension meeting of Awami Jubo League, the youth front of the party, presided over by its acting Chairman Dr Mijanur Rahman at its Bangabandhu Avenue office. Another presidium member Abdur Razzaq said that AL is now observing peaceful programmes like hunger strike and signature campaign, but the party would go for a strong movement to meet their five-point demands including unconditional release of Sheikh Hasina. "We will unite people through launching a movement and free our leader.

We will participate in the parliamentary election after freeing her," he said and warned the government that the party would not accept any election ahead of the parliamentary elections.

AL presidium member Tofael Ahmed said that if Sheikh Hasina is not freed the party would go for a tough movement to free her.

"Our street movement would be turned into a mass upsurge to realize our five-point demands, but we don't want to go for that," he said, urging the government to release Sheikh Hasina before going for street agitation.

Tofael said they don't want any elections prior to the parliamentary polls and Sheikh Hasina's release is essential to make the parliamentary polls acceptable.

Jubo League leaders at the meeting assured the top AL leaders that they would do everything according to the direction of the central leaders to make their countrywide token hunger strike programme scheduled on April 29 a success.

Rice dumping in Ctg: Dozens of officials face investigation

Chittagong Correspondent

Dozens of officials of different departments involved in the process of carrying, unloading, clearing, storing and quarantining of the rice called 'rotten' and subsequent dumping move of the lot have reportedly been brought under investigation.

Members of the joint forces backed by the public and private agencies concerned have started looking into the issue with more importance after hopeful outcome of the physical examinations of the rice's food value.

Though mysteries behind the dumping initiative of the rice are not yet unveiled, practicality and physical examinations have so far done on the called "rotten bulk" has already started letting people sniff deeper conspiracy in it. Top military officials here in the port city saw the rice yesterday and were convinced of its quality that did not match the statement of the food department. They reportedly found the rice consumable other than it's over moisture contains.

Laboratory test of the rice's sample is also suggested. Moisture test on the rice sample was not disappointing. The sample had damp ranging from 15 to 19 percent. Nutrition expert believe that the moisture contain above 15 percent may slightly degrade the rice quality but it should not be unfit for human consumption.

The officials set together at the Artillery Centre at Halishahar this afternoon and reviewed the possible retrieval of the rice's food value. Agencies concerned have also been directed to workout the ultimate intention and the beneficiaries of the dumping bid.

"It is necessary to see why this bulk has been earmarked for dumping without thorough examinations and particularly when the nation is facing food grain hardship," a military official commented saying no culprit will be spared.

Informed sources hinted that several officials of the food department might get trapped into the rice-dumping plot apart from their mentors and accomplices. Some of them may also face questioning by the detectives and the taskforce soon.

Meanwhile, some of the rice collected from the rotten bulk was cooked and served among some of the military men yesterday night. None of the military men fell sick after taking that rice. No physical illness was also reported from the poor people who retrieved the dumped rice and took it by now.

Earlier, the joint forces intercepted a dumping bid where more than 45 metric tons of rice came as relief materials from Pakistan for the SIDR victims were gathered for throwing away. The lot had been declared grossly rotten and totally unfit for human consumption.

Officials of the food department denied talking to the press especially on the rice-dumping issue.

SAARC Secy Gen due tomorrow

BSS, Dhaka

Secretary General of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Dr Sheel Kanta Sarma will pay a three-day official visit to Bangladesh from April 29.

This will be the first visit of Dr Sarma since assumption of the office of secretary general of the eight nation grouping, an official source of the ministry of foreign affairs said yesterday. Dr Sarma will be accompanied by his wife.

During the visit he will pay a courtesy call on Chief adviser Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed. He will also call on foreign adviser Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury. He will meet foreign Secretary Touhid Hossain on April 30.

The foreign secretary will host a lunch in honour of SAARC Secretary general, which will be attended ,among others, by the ambassadors of the member countries.

During the visit the SAARC Secretary general will discuss the ongoing SAARC projects in different areas of regional cooperation.

Bush pokes fun at his successors

Internet

US President George W Bush poked fun at his potential successors during his last White House Correspondents' Association dinner. The president said he was surprised they were not in the audience before making jokes at their expense.

Referring to Republican candidate John McCain's absence, he said: "He probably wanted to distance himself from me."

The annual dinner dates back to 1924 and is attended by media personalities, celebrities and politicians. President Bush also put forward mock excuses on behalf of the Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Taking a jibe at controversies which have dogged their campaigns, he said: "Hillary Clinton couldn't get in because of sniper fire and Senator Obama's at church."

He was referring to Mrs Clinton's "mis-speak" when she erroneously claimed she faced sniper fire on a trip to Bosnia in the 1990s; and Obama's pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who criticised America in fiery sermons.

The president admitted to being a "little wistful" at his final dinner, and video clips of his previous performances were broadcast.

He finished by conducting the US Marine band in a medley of patriotic marches.

Bush was followed by Craig Ferguson, host of US television's the Late Late Show.

Scottish-born Ferguson asked Bush what he was planning to do after leaving office, suggesting: "You could look for a job with more vacation time."

The president has been criticised for the amount of time he has spent away from the White House during his presidency.

Vice-President Dick Cheney, Ferguson said, "is already moving out of his residence. It takes longer than you think to pack up an entire dungeon".

The White House Correspondents' Association presented its annual awards during the dinner on Saturday in front of a crowd of VIPs, including author Salman Rushdie, singer Ashlee Simpson and actors Ben Affleck and Pamela Anderson.

Bush's appearance at the event continues a tradition begun by US President Calvin Coolidge in 1924.

Two youths shot at in city

Staff Reporter

Two youths were shot and wounded by terrorists in separate incidents in the city's Moghbazar and Rampura areas yesterday.

Witness said terrorists opened fire on Ohidul Islam Apu, 28, son of Oliur Rahman near Moghbazar T&T Colony at about 6:00pm, leaving him critically injured. Ohidul was rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital in critical condition. In another incident, snatchers shot rod mechanic Rafiqul Islam, 25, son of Abdul Hakim, at Purbo Rampura at about 5:00pm.

They also snatched away Tk 20,000 and a mobile phone set from him.

Injured Rafiqul was taken to DMCH for treatment.

Haji Selim jailed for 13 years

bdnews24.com, Dhaka

A Dhaka court Sunday sentenced former Awami League lawmaker Haji Mohammad Selim to 13 years in jail in his absence on twin charges of suppressing wealth information and accumulating illegal wealth.

Special judge Md Sirajul Islam also fined him Tk 10 lakh with a legal binding that the convict will have to serve another year in prison in failure to pay the fine.

The Special Judge's Court-7 in the Sangsad Bhaban also sentenced Selim's wife Gulshan Ara to three years in jail for assisting him in accumulating wealth.

The court fined her Tk 1 lakh and she will stay six more months in jail if she fails to pay the fine. Both the accused are on the run.

The sentences will be effective from the day of their surrender or arrest.

Selim's jail terms-10 years for earning illegal wealth and three years for concealing information-will run back-to-back.

The court also ordered authorities to confiscate illegally obtained wealth worth Tk 27 crore.

Anticorruption Commission assistant director Mohammad Mahbub Alam filed the case with Lalbagh Police Station on Sept 24 last year.

ACC deputy director MD Abu Sayeed, also investigation officer in the case, pressed charges against Selim and his wife by submitting a chargesheet to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's Court for Dhaka on Apr 1.

The chargesheet said Selim had earned illegal wealth of Tk 26.92 crore, inconsistent with his known source of income.

He suppressed wealth information about Tk 10 crore in the wealth statement submitted to the graft watchdog.

Selim's wife Gulshan assisted her husband in stashing away Selim's Tk 4.88 crore in her ownership, the chargesheet said.

Selim and Gulshan recorded Tk 59.37 crore in their statements to the ACC.

Karzai unhurt after parade attack

Hamid Karzai.

BBC Online

At least one person has been killed and 11 were hurt in an attack on a military parade in the Afghan capital Kabul attended by President Hamid Karzai.

Security forces whisked Karzai and other dignitaries away and hundreds fled as shots rang out. Two MPs were reported to be among the wounded.

The parade was a celebration to mark 16 years since the overthrow of the country's Soviet-backed rule.

A spokesman for the Taleban said the movement had carried out the attack. He said they had not targeted Karzai directly, but wanted to show how easily they could get access to such events.

The BBC's Alastair Leithead in Kabul says the fact that they were able to get so close despite such tight security is worrying for both the government and the international community.

The Taleban spokesman said six militants had been deployed near the parade with suicide vests and guns. Three of them were killed and the other three arrested, he added.

In a live TV address after the incident, Mr Karzai confirmed that there had been arrests.

"Fortunately Afghan security forces quickly surrounded them," he said. "Some of them were captured." "Everything is calm, rest assured." Karzai has frequently been the target of assassination attempts in recent years.

Later UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown phoned Karzai to express his relief that he was safe and reaffirm his support for the Afghan government.

The parade, in central Kabul, was part of Afghan National Day celebrations, marking the capture of Kabul from the Soviet-backed government by the mujahideen in 1992. The national anthem was being played when the attack started.

Live TV showed President Karzai standing on a huge stage surrounded by a crowd of MPs, cabinet members, military commanders and foreign diplomats.

Automatic weapons were fired into the crowd and two people, apparently MPs, were seen slumping into their chairs.

The US and UK ambassadors and the Nato military commander were among dignitaries bundled away by security forces.

UK ambassador Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who was in the front row, told Reuters news agency: "It was coming to the end of the 21-gun salute. I saw an explosion and a puff of dust to the left of the parade and then heard the crackle of small arms fire from all directions. "After some hesitation my bodyguard frog-marched me away."

Live TV coverage of the event was cut off shortly afterwards, and the state channel switched to music.

Sirajudin, a police officer at the scene, told the Associated Press news agency he saw two people firing AK-47 assault rifles from a house toward the area of the stage. At least one explosion followed the gunfire, and security forces returned fire. Soldiers dressed in ceremonial garb were seen running from the scene.

Our correspondent says there was a sense of panic in the streets, with people unsure how serious the incident had been.

The event, which had been shrouded in tight security for days, was cancelled soon afterwards.