The New Nation - Internet Edition

Tigers beat Kiwis in ODI: Ashraful back to form as Zunaed sparkles

Zunaed: M-o-M

Mashrafe Bin Mortaza celebrates after dismissal of
Jesse Ryder during the first ODI match of the BRAC Bank ODI
Series between Bangladesh and New Zealand at the Mirpur
Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium on Thursday. Focus
Bangla

A good number of female spectators of New Zealand
came to watch the first ODI of the BRAC Bank ODI Series
between Bangladesh and New Zealand at the Mirpur
Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium on Thursday. Banglar
Chokh

Two young women of Bangladesh watching the first ODI
match of the BRAC Bank ODI Series between Bangladesh and New
Zealand at the Mirpur Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium on
Thursday. NN photo

Sports Reporter

Bangladesh Cricket team registered a comprehensive seven-wicket victory over the visiting New Zealand Cricket team in the first One Day International (ODI) match of the BRAC Bank ODI Series at the crowd-packed Mirpur Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium on Thursday.

It is for the first time Bangladesh beat New Zealand in the ODI clash.

Earlier, The Tigers faced the Kiwis in eleven ODIs but lost in all the affairs.

Besides, Bangladesh won over nine countries which have ODI status. Bangladesh could not beat England and West Indies so far.

Coin-favoured Bangladesh decided to field first and got success as the Tigers restricted the Kiwis to 201 for the loss of nine wickets in the stipulated 50 overs.

In reply, Bangladesh sailed home in 45.3 overs making 202 for the loss of three wickets.

Bangladesh had a poor start as the hosts lost their first wicket for just 18 runs.

Later, Zunaed Siddique and Mushfiqur Rahim saved the team from the debacle adding together 67 runs in the second wicket stand.

After departure of Mushfiqur Rahim, Zunaed and skipper Mohammad Ashraful put on together 109 runs for the third wicket partnership. Zunaed made his maiden half century in his ODI campaign, Zunaed scored a superb 85 from 137 deliveries. He sent the ball eight times through the ropes.

He fulfilled his 50 runs playing 92 balls. Zunaed was caught by Jacob Oram off Mark Gillespie when the board was giving a reading of 194 for the loss of three wickets. Zunaed was adjudged the man of the match for his sparkling innings.

Skipper Mohammad Ashraful hit a captain's knock of unbeaten 60 off 56 balls. He cracked five fours and a six in his commanding innings. It is Ashraful's 15th ODI half century in his career.

Earlier, Mushfiqur Rahim scored 30 off 59 balls.

Scott Styris, Kyle Mills and Mark Gillespie took one wicket each.

Earlier, Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, the country's best medium pacer and spinner Abdur Razzak played the key role in wrecking New Zealand innings. Mashrafe Bin Mortaza bowled a splendid spell and finished as !0-3-44-3.

Abdur Razzak, who shone with the willow grabbing three wickets giving away 33 runs.

Besides, Shahadat Hossain and Shakib Al Hasan took one wicket apiece.

Jacob Oram, Jesse Ryder and Daniel Vettori added 57, 34, 30 runs respectively to The Kiwis total.

Oram hit four fours and a six in his 89-ball knock.

Tomorrow Bangladesh will take on New Zealand in the second ODI at the same venue. The match starts at 9.00 AM (Bangladesh Standard Time).

Durga Puja ends with immersion

Immersion of the idol of goddess Durga in the river
Buriganga on Thursday evening. NN photo

BSS, Dhaka

The five-day Durga Puja festival ended yesterday with ceremonial immersion of the idols of goddess Durga marking the 'Bisarjan' (Bijoya Dashami).

Durga is considered as a symbol of truth prevailing over the forces of evil and injustice. According to the Hindu religion, Bijoya Dashami is the special ceremony to reaffirm peace and good relations among people of the world.

President Professor Dr Iajuddin Ahmed, Chief Adviser Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed, BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia and Awami League President Sheikh Hasina greeted the Hindu community to mark the occasion.

The last day rituals of the festival were marked, especially by exchange of Bijoya greetings among all devotees also those of other religious faiths.Braving inclement weather, thousands of devout Hindus joined colourful marches on the Dhaka's streets and elsewhere of the country as the idols were being carried to nearby rivers, ponds, canals and other water bodies for immersion after performance of Bijoya Dashami, the last and largely attended rite to bid farewell to Devi Durga.

Before removing the idols of Durga and other gods and goddess from the altars for immersion, the Hindu devotees danced and sang 'kirton' expressing their deep emotional pathos as 'Durga Maa' would soon leave her sons and daughters to reappear after another year.

President Iajuddin Ahmed and his wife Professor Dr Anwara Begum hosted a reception for the Hindu community leaders at Bangabhaban on the occasion of Durga Puja.

The President expressed his satisfaction over the celebrations of Eid and Durga Puja festivals in quick succession and in a very peaceful and cordial manner. Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser for Fisheries and Livestock Manik Lal Samaddar, Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, Sri Lankan High Commissioner V Krishnamoorthy and Nepalese Ambassador Pradeep Khatiwada were also present on the occasion.

This year, Durga Puja was celebrated at 22,000 mandaps, about 1,000 more than the last year, across the country. In the capital city, the puja was held at 165 mandaps, including Dhakeshwari Mandir, Ramna Kali Mandir and the newly established Gulshan Mandir.

The main rituals of the five-day celebration included formal opening of the puja called 'Shahsthi Puja', Arati every day, Kumari Puja at Ramkrishna Mission, Sandhya Puja, offering Anjali, distribution of 'mahaprasad' and Bijoya Dashami on the last day of the festival.

The city's main puja procession with the image of Durga began from Dhakeswari Temple at 5.40 pm and reached Waizeghat on the bank of the Buriganga at 6.50 pm.

A huge number of Hindu devotees on about 100 trucks joined the procession led by leaders of Bangladesh Puja Udjapon Parishad and Mohanagar Puja Committee including Maj Gen (retd) CR Dutta, Dr Neem Chandra Bhowmik, Swapan Kumar Saha, Kajal Devnath, Sattyendra Chandra Bhakta, Tapash Paul, Advocate Subrata Chowdhury, Bina Saha and Naba Saha.

Different socio-cultural organizations of the Hindu community as well as temple management committees arranged blood donation programmes and distributed clothes among the poor on the occasion.The authorities enforced the tightest possible security around the 22,000 Puja mandaps or makeshift venues decorated with flowers and multi-coloured lights for smooth celebration of the Hindu community's greatest religious festival.

Elite anticrime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) troops joined with armed police, including antiriot units, bomb squads and plainclothesmen and ansars, to guard Hindu temples and puja mandaps where devotees and visitors had to make their way through security devices and sharp vigilance.

The Home Ministry also directed law-enforcers to coordinate with local puja committees for celebration of the festival in peace and tranquility.

Leaders of Bangladesh Puja Udjapan Parishad and Mohanagar Puja Committee expressed their satisfaction over the smooth ending of the festival.

They thanked all, including Muslims as well as politicians and leaders of different professional groups, for visiting the mandaps to encourage the celebration of the festival.

"We particularly thank members of the law-enforcement agencies for their sincere help in staging Durga Puja." Leaders of Bangabandhu Sangskritik Jote led by its General Secretary eminent actress Advocate Tarana Halim visited Ramana Kali Mandir on the occasion of Bijoya Dashami yesterday.

France’s Le Clezio wins Nobel literature prize

Le Clezio

AP, Stockholm

France's Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for works characterized by "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" and focused on the environment, especially the desert.

Le Clezio, 68, is the first French writer to win the prestigious award since Chinese-born Frenchman Gao Xingjian was honored in 2000. The decision was in line with the Swedish Academy's recent picks of European authors. Last year's prize went to Doris Lessing of Britain.

The academy called Le Clezio an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."

Le Clezio made his breakthrough as a novelist with "Desert," in 1980, a work the academy said "contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants."

That novel, which also won Le Clezio a prize from the French Academy, is considered a masterpiece. It describes the ordeal of Lalla, a woman from the Tuareg nomadic tribe of the Sahara Desert, as she adapts to civilization imposed by colonial France at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Swedish Academy said Le Clezio from early on "stood out as an ecologically engaged author, an orientation that is accentuated with the novels 'Terra Amata,' 'The Book of Flights,' 'War' and 'The Giants.'"

Le Clezio told Swedish Radio he was busy reading when a member of the academy phoned him on his wife's telephone to announce the news.

"I am very touched and very emotional, it is a great honor for me," he said.

Le Clezio described himself as "born of a mix, like many people currently in Europe." He said while he was born in France, his father was British.

He was already planning to travel to Sweden later this month to receive another award - the Stig Dagerman prize, which honors efforts to promote the freedom of expression.

Since Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe won the award in 1994, the selections have had a distinctly European flavor. Since then 12 Europeans, including Le Clezio, have won the prize. The last U.S. writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993.

Last week, Academy Permanent Secretary Horace Engdahl told The Associated Press that the United States is too insular and ignorant to challenge Europe as the center of the literary world. The comments were met with fierce reactions from across the Atlantic, where the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation offered to send Engdahl a reading list.

"I was very surprised that the reaction was so violent. I don't think that what I said was that derogatory or sensational," Engdahl told AP after Thursday's prize announcement.

He added that his comments had been "perhaps a bit too generalizing."

Asked how he thought the choice of Le Clezio would be received in the United States, he said he had no idea.

"I'm not aware that there are today any anti-French sentiments in the U.S.," Engdahl said.

"He's not a particularly French writer if you look at him from a strictly cultural point of view. So I don't think this choice will give rise to any anti-French comments," he said. "I would be very sad if that was the case."

Le Clezio has spent much of his time living in New Mexico in recent years. He has long shied away from public life, spending much of his time traveling, often in the world's various deserts.

He has published several dozen books, including novels and essays. The most famous are tales of nomads, mediations on the desert and childhood memories. He has also explored the mythologies of native Americans, who have long fascinated him.

Engdahl called Le Clezio a writer of great diversity.

"He has gone through many different phases of his development as a writer and has come to include other civilizations, other modes of living than the Western, in his writing," Engdahl said.

Le Clezio was born in Nice in 1940 and at eight the family moved to Nigeria, where his father had been a doctor during World War II. They returned to France in 1950.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed Le Clezio's win.

"A child in Mauritius and Nigeria, a teenager in Nice, a nomad of the American and African deserts, Jean-Marie Le Clezio is a citizen of the world, the son of all continents and cultures," Sarkozy said. "A great traveler, he embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values in a globalized world."

In addition to the 10 million kronor (US$1.4 million) check, Le Clezio will also receive a gold medal and be invited to give a lecture at the academy's headquarters in Stockholm's Old Town.

The Nobel Prize in literature is handed out in Stockholm on Dec. 10 - the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896 - along with the awards in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics. The Nobel Peace Prize is presented in Oslo, Norway.

Ginseng jabs kill 3 after melamine poisoning

Agency, Beijing

Three people have died in south-western China after receiving an injection of Siberian ginseng extract.

The deaths, announced on China's health ministry web site, occurred in Yunnan province after six hospital patients received the injections.

It said sales and use of the ginseng extract had been suspended.

The ministry is also trying to dampen fears about melamine poisoning of milk, which has killed four babies and made thousands ill in a months-long scandal.

It said that 10,666 babies remained in hospital receiving treatment for renal problems caused by the melamine contamination of baby milk formula. Eight of those are seriously ill, the government said.

The ginseng injection was manufactured by Wandashan Pharmaceutical, based in the north-eastern Chinese province of Heilongjiang.

Siberian ginseng is often used in China to treat heart disease and thrombosis.

The six patients suffered "serious ill effects" including chills, vomiting and sudden drops in blood pressure after receiving the injections at the Number Four People's Hospital in Honghe prefecture on Sunday.

Some went into a coma. Three of the six died on Monday, official media reported two days later.

The State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) says it has isolated two problematic batches of the extract, made from a herb called "ciwujia", and has urged immediate nationwide reporting of any adverse effects.

The Associated Press reports that a man who answered the telephone at Wandashan's marketing department in Heilongjiang, in China's north-east, said the company had stopped selling the herbal injection and had sent the two batches to the SFDA for testing.

The man was reported as saying the company had used ciwujia in its products for more than 30 years without any problem.

He added that the injectable form of the herb was relatively new, saying: "I haven't heard of any bad reaction [to] this injection before."

China's pharmaceutical industry is highly lucrative but poorly regulated.

Last year, the country's former top drug regulator was executed for taking millions of dollars in bribes to approve substandard medicines, including an antibiotic that killed at least 10 people.

Govt set to hold polls under emergency: Big parties seem to have softened stance

Pulack Ghatack

The Government is serious to hold the general election under the state of emergency and apparently has become successful in softening tough negative stances of some politicians, after winning international support to it.

Education and commerce adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman yesterday ruled out any possibility of lifting the state of emergency, which he said was necessary to protect voters, the women and minorities in particular.

Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed in an interview with the Time magazine in New York also asserted that the interim government wanted to continue with the state of emergency until general election as "emergency will help control the use of money and muscle power during the polls".

Post-election violence, intimidation and vote buying were a reality in Bangladesh, which necessitated elections under emergency, Dr Zillur argued yesterday.

He said, "The international community realised the matter and the European Union too would also realise it soon."

Meanwhile, the United Nations and the United States of America (USA) have already given green signal to continuation of the emergency unto election and are ready to send observers to cover the much awaited December 18 polls. But the biggest victory of the Government in this regard seems to be in winning support of Bangladesh Awami League (AL), which leads the biggest political front, and enjoys popular support.

Awami League is now valuing the holding of the election with participation of all the parties more rather than stressing withdrawal of the emergency rule.

The party has no objection to participate in the election under the emergency rules, but fears that its arch rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) may find it as an excuse for boycotting the election which may frustrate the whole arrangement.

Following a presidium meeting on Tuesday, acting general secretary of AL Syed Ashraful Islam said the issue of the state of emergency would create no problem during the elections if the government only renamed the Emergency Powers Rules.

"The rules in the current emergency law can be converted into general rules. But if these rules under the name of emergency law are enforced, then some parties will get an excuse to boycott the elections," he told reporters.

However, BNP is still insisting on lifting the emergency, which would bar many of its leaders, convicted of corruption, to contest the polls.

Meanwhile, the policymakers of the Government are hopeful to woo BNP participate in the election under emergency.

BNP has some other demands to which it want to secure government assurance, a highly placed source in the government told The New Nation yesterday.

"You will see BNP to take part in the election. Many top level BNP leaders are more concerned about their pending cases with courts. Problems and prospects rest there," said the source holding important government portfolio.

The military-backed interim Government, that took a serious move to clean up endemic political corruption soon after its inception, is now working hard to come out of it by resolving political complexities through negotiations with parties.

But, as the emergency rule is the basis of all its tasks, the government was serious in soliciting international support about holding the election under emergency, which appeared as a stumbling block to the general elections.

The Chief Adviser and the Foreign Adviser held series of meetings with the diplomats to woo their support for holding the parliamentary election under emergency rule.

Now, the United States government has decided to send election observers to cover the general election in December, even if the emergency is not lifted, said US ambassador James F Moriarty on Tuesday.

UN resident coordinator Renata Lok Dessalian on Monday expressed her support to the Caretaker Government's decision of holding upcoming parliamentary elections under state of emergency.

US admn ponders owning stakes in banks

AP, Washington

The Bush administration is considering taking part ownership in certain U.S. banks as an option for dealing with a severe global credit crisis.

An administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no decision has been made, said the $700 billion rescue package passed by Congress last week allows the Treasury Department to inject fresh capital into financial institutions and get ownership shares in return. This official said all the new powers granted in the legislation were being considered as the administration seeks to deal with a serious credit crisis that has caused the biggest upheavals on Wall Street in seven decades and continues to roil global markets.

Supporters of this approach, such as Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., argue that injecting fresh capital into U.S. banks who want to participate in the program would be an effective way to bolster banks' balance sheets and get them to resume lending. Taxpayers would benefit because the government would receive an equity stake in the bank in return for providing the capital.

"This idea would, at a minimum, complement the administration's planned approach of buying up troubled assets and may prove to be the most promising tool of all in Secretary Paulson's kit," Schumer said in a statement.

A decision to inject capital directly into financial institutions in return for ownership stakes would be similar to a plan announced Wednesday by Britain.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told reporters that Treasury was moving quickly to implement the $700 billion rescue effort and he specifically mentioned reviewing ways to bolster the capital of banks.

"We will use all the tools we've been given to maximum effectiveness, including strengthening the capitalization of financial institutions of every size," Paulson said at a Wednesday news conference.

Asked whether he would try something like the British plan, Paulson said: "We have a broad range of authorities and tools. t We've emphasized the purchase of liquid assets, but we have a broad range of authorities. And I'm confident we have the authorities we need to work with going forward."

The administration so far has stressed its major goal is to purchase bad loans from financial institutions.

Paulson said that while the financial market turmoil has hurt the economy, the administration is moving quickly to begin the largest financial system rescue effort in history.

Even with the program to buy bad assets from financial institutions, he said, some banks will fail. He also called for patience, saying "the turmoil will not end quickly and significant challenges remain ahead."

In an attempt to help stop the financial crisis from causing a global economic recession, the Federal Reserve and other central banks cut interest rates in a rare coordinated move Wednesday.

Paulson called the coordinated rate cuts "a welcome sign that central banks around the world are prepared to take the necessary steps to support the global economy during this difficult time."

Paulson on Monday selected Neel Kashkari, 35, an assistant Treasury secretary, to be the interim head of the new program. In his remarks Wednesday, Paulson said the administration would move quickly to nominate someone to fill the job permanently.

Paulson said he was consulting with President Bush, congressional leaders and presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain before choosing someone to fill the job permanently. The post requires Senate confirmation, something Paulson predicted could occur in November.

The administration has been rushing to implement the program, which cleared Congress last Friday. Paulson said it would be several weeks before the program makes its first purchases of troubled assets.

"U.S. and global financial markets continue to be severely strained," Paulson said at the briefing called to preview the upcoming weekend meetings of finance officials of the Group of Seven major industrial countries, the 185-nation International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The global credit crisis was expected to be the major agenda item at those talks.

Govt-BNP talks on Oct 15: Electoral issues to be discussed

Staff Reporter

BNP leaders at a meeting yesterday has decided to sit with the caretaker government on October 15 for dialogue to remove all hurdles facing the party as regards registration.

To this effect a special committee of the party has been formed.

"BNP will sit with the government for a dialogue and the committee would carry out preparatory tasks prior to the dialogue," Chowdhury Tanveer Ahmed Siddiqui, convener of the committee told the media after a meeting of the committee at the party's central office at Naya Paltan in the city.

The meeting discussed the dialogue agenda and the demands of the BNP to be placed to the government for participating in the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

The other members of the special committee are MK Anwar, Vice Chariman, Nazrul Islam Khan, Joint Secretary General, Abdul Mannan former lawmaker and Rizvi Ahmed, Office Secretary of the BNP.

Replying to a question over the issues of the dialogue with the government Chowdhury Tanveer said the committee has been preparing a list of the discussion points and developing a set of recommendations.

Asked whether to join in the parliamentary elections he said BNP is an election-oriented party and wants to participate.

On the issue of five point-demands previously made by BNP, he said the special committee would also raise those demands to the government.

Lifting state of emergency, some amendments to the Representation of People's Order (RPO), to withdrawal of all cases filed against party chairman, leaders and activists and deferring the upazila polls are among the demands made by BNP.

Asked if BNP will go for registration by the Election Commission's (EC) deadline on October 15, Nazrul Islam Khan said " We hope our dialogue with the government will help remove all the hurdles facing as regards registration,".

He said it is unimaginable to hold elections without BNP.

Pakistan police Hq bombed: 10 killed

AP, Islamabad

Bombings killed 10 people and wounded at least 14 in Pakistan on Thursday, including an attack in a police complex in the capital the same day lawmakers huddled for a private briefing on the militant threat facing the country.

The deaths happened in the nation's volatile northwest, where al-Qaida and Taliban militants have established bases near the Afghan border.

Four children, two police and four prisoners died when a roadside bomb exploded under a prison vehicle in the Dir region, government official Sher Bahadur Khan said. Initial reports indicated a school bus was caught in the blast, but others said the children were walking. Ten people were wounded.

In Islamabad, an apparent suicide car bombing severely damaged an anti-terror squad building and wounded at least four police in the heavily guarded Police Lines neighborhood. The explosion occurred just moments after a man delivered candy to the facility and police were examining whether the events were linked.

Some body parts were found that might belong to a suicide bomber, Islamabad Police Chief Asghar Gardaizi said.

In recent weeks militants have stepped up attacks on security, government and Western targets in Pakistan, reaching well beyond the northwest border areas. A Sept. 20 suicide truck bombing in Islamabad killed 54 and severely damaged the Marriott Hotel.

The latest incident in Islamabad happened amid tight security for the briefing of lawmakers at the Parliament building. No one immediately took responsibility.

Ambulances streamed into the smoke-filled police complex after the blast.

The front section of the three-story, red-brick building was destroyed and a staircase had collapsed. Shoes were strewn among the rubble. Gardaizi said at least four people were hurt; others put the wounded toll as high as nine. Police commando Gulshan Iqbal told

The Associated Press he was sitting at a nearby barrack when a "Suzuki car hit the anti-terror squad barrack and exploded with a big bang."

He said the main building was largely empty because many officers were guarding Parliament and other areas of Islamabad.

"About 10 people were inside at the time, and we saw six or seven injured," he said.

Gardaizi said a man in a green car had driven up to the building, entered and handed boxes of candy to a person inside. He later left the building and within moments the explosion occurred, Gardaizi said.

It was unclear what happened to the delivery man. Gardaizi said authorities would probe why a civilian vehicle was allowed in the area.

The attacks in Islamabad and Dir drew condemnation from the prime minister of Pakistan, where the military says suicide attacks have killed nearly 1,200 people since July 2007, most of them civilians.

The statistics also said 1,368 security force personnel had been killed since late 2001, when Pakistan's former military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, allied the country with Washington in its war on terror.

The young civilian government called the joint Parliament session in an effort to build a national consensus on the Muslim nation's role in the U.S.-led war on terror.

Many in Pakistan believe the alliance with the U.S. has increased violence in their nuclear-armed country. The U.S. has shown impatience with Pakistan by launching cross-border missile strikes in the northwest, where al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is rumored to be hiding.

On Wednesday, lawmakers were shown images of militants killing people, according to two attendees who requested anonymity because like others at the meeting they were sworn to secrecy. Statistics on militancy were also given, one said, declining to divulge specifics.

Ahmed Shujaa Pasha, an army general tapped to take over Pakistan's main spy agency in the coming days, led the briefing. The topics included Pakistan's military offensives against insurgents in tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

Thursday's portion of the briefing was devoted to questions and answers, but lawmakers walked away unhappy, complaining that much of the data shared was available in media reports.

Khurram Dastagir, a lawmaker from the opposition party of ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, told Dawn News channel that legislators wanted to know if there was any written agreement between Pakistan and the U.S. to fight militants.

"We would like to know what agreements have been made, what understandings_ if there is no written agreement as we have been told - what understandings have been given to the U.S.," Dastagir said.

He said Pasha had declined to answer some questions because they were policy-related. The government should bring in other agencies including the Interior Ministry to offer a broader view on what was causing the spread in militant activity, Dastagir said.The session is expected to resume Monday.

Bangladesh- Bhutan trade accord in Nov

Syful Islam

Bangladesh and Bhutan are going to sign a Trade Agreement (TA) in November with a view to boosting trade between the two countries, informed sources said.

Bhutan recently in a letter expressed its interest to ink the deal in November when it's Minister for Economic Affaits Khandu Wangchuk is scheduled to visit Bangladesh to attend a business conference of the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI).

Commerce Ministry sources said the deal is now awaiting for vetting from the Ministry of Law Affairs and expected to get approval by next week. Later it will be sent to the Advisory council for approval.

Bangladesh and Bhutan have very little volume of bilateral trades, which always remains in favour of the latter. According to the available statistics during the July 2007-March 2008 period Bangladesh imported goods worth US$ 10.80 million from Bhutan while its exports to Bhutan amounted to only US$ 0.78 million.

The major items Bangladesh imports from Bhutan are vegetable and mineral products, chemicals, prepared foodstuffs, beverages, fruits, vinegar, tobacco, timber, wooden products and textile items. Bangladesh, on the other hand, mainly exports woven garment, computer accessories, dry food and frozen fish besides pharmaceutical products.

A Commerce Secretary level trade talks was held between Bangladesh and Bhutan in Thimpu from August 12-15 where Bhutan's Economic Affairs Secretary Dasho Sonam Tshering termed Bangladesh an important trading partner of the country. He hoped that signing of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) would further promote trade and economic cooperation between the two countries. The Bhutanese part proposed that the two sides should agree on duty free treatment to various products for signing FTA.

However, the Secretary level talks could not reach any final decision time regarding signing FTA or duty free treatment and left it for policymaker's decision.

The meeting also discussed signing of Agreement on Trade between the two countries that has recently expired. The Bhutanese side referred to the importance of keeping the agreement functional and advantages associated with the signing the agreement in entirety. The Bangladesh side agreed to the Bhutanese proposal.

The meeting agreed that Tamabil port will be included as entry and exit point and necessary measures will be taken immediately in this connection.

The two sides agreed on the need to build linkages between respective standards and testing organisations for working towards the ultimate objective of mutual reorganisation of standards.

Train derails in Jamalpur

UNB, Jamalpur

Train communications on the Jamalpur-Mymensingh route remained snapped for hours as a freight train derailed at Piarpur rail-station here yesterday morning.

Railway sources said the engine of the Jamalpur-bound 'Jamalpur Special Goods Train' veered off the tracks at about 10am at the down point of Pirarpur station.

On information, a relief train from Mymensingh reached the spot to remove the engine from the track.

"Rail communications on the route could resume at 4pm," said one source.

Dacoit Shahid’s associate lynched

Staff Reporter

A close associate of 'Dacoit Shahid' was lynched and four others were arrested at Wari in the city on Wednesday night.

Police said five accomplices of Shahid went to Babuli Villa at 24/1, Rankin Street of Wari at about 8:45pm and demanded Tk one crore as toll on behalf of 'Dacoit Shahid' who is believed to be hiding in India at present. They exploded two homemade bombs at the premises to create panic among the family members and scare away the neighbours.

But the neighbours rushed in on hearing the sound of the blasts and nabbed Russel, 20. He was beaten severely. Police rescued him from the mob and took him to the DMCH where the doctors declared Russel dead.

Before death, Russel identified his associates as Faruk, Raqibul Hasan Rocky, Habibur Rahman Rubel, and Aashik. They were later arrested from different hideouts. Police said they were wanted in a number of criminal cases.

Earlier on Tuesday, a man identifying himself as dacoit Shahid made a phone from India to the owner of Babuli Construction and Consultant Limited asking him to pay Tk one crore to his men with a threat on his life.