15 Aug, 2014

Shraban 31, 1421 Shawal 18, 1435 Regd. No. DA 6238 Vol 2, No 133

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 2014 | www.dhakatribune.com | SECOND EDITION

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9 | WORLD ANTI GOVT PROTESTERS MARCH TOWARDS ISLAMABAD

CALL IN THE GREEN TEAM

11 | OP-ED

14 | SPORT

GREAT MEN NEVER DIE

THE WIZARD WHO FAILED TO GET FRANCE TO FLY

Censorship in the true sense It was the beginning of a decades-long era of distorting country’s historical facts n Julfikar Ali Manik The killing of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family on August 15, 1975 might be the most gruesome political bloodshed in the country’s history, but the following day’s editions of the national dailies did not have any reflection of that whatsoever.

In fact, not just the following day, but for many years to come, publishing reports on the murders was nothing but a taboo for the newspapers. It was not until 20 years later that the brutal murders started getting wide media coverage in the mainstream newspapers.

The killing was the end result of a conspiracy hatched by some army officers and politicians, including senior Awami League leader Khandker Mushtaque Ahmed, who became the country’s president after the murders.

There were only four national newspapers in operation when the father of the nation and his family were killed.

They dailies were: state-owned Dainik Bangla and the Bangladesh Times; and privately owned and later nationalised Ittefaq and the Bangladesh Observer. Out of these four, only Ittefaq exists today – the other three have all been closed over the last three decades.

When analysed, the lead stories of all those four newspapers on their August 16, 1975 editions give the idea that it was just another murder from the  PAGE 2 COLUMN 1

P3 HOW HIS DAY COULD BE The Dhaka Tribune has talked to a number of protesters from those dark hours of the country’s history who risked their lives to speak up against the brutal killing, defying the martial law.

Some of the first protests were mostly concentrated outside Dhaka – in Kishoreganj, Barguna and Bagerhat districts to be specific. The protesters were mainly from the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB), its student wing Bangladesh Chhatra Union and the National Awami Party (NAP).

Some 19 young men from Kishoreganj led by former Chhatra Union leader Bhupendra Voumik Dolon brought out a procession in the district down. It was quite natural for them to expect a massive gathering, especially participated

Newspaper clippings from a few days immediately after the killing of Bangabandhu show how the media was muzzled

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Monsoon shows its real colours in Dhaka

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yesterday as the poor drainage network of the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority failed to route storm water out of the city.

Daily commuters, mostly office goers and students, were affected greatly as most areas of the capital went under knee-deep water. According to the meteorological department, 23mm rainfall was recorded in the capital yesterday morning.

Akhtaruzzaman, an office executive who was seen waiting in front of the main gate of his home at Purana Paltan for a rickshaw, said: “Rain water had clogged all the roads in the area. Not only me,but other offices goers and students could not get to their destinations on time.”

He further claimed that waterlogging had become a regular sight during the monsoon and residents of his area continue to face the hardship every year.

Shamima Sultana, a resident of  PAGE 2 COLUMN 4

an investigation of account documents, including a cheque book for an account at Islami Bank, found at the house in Sylhet where JMB leader Shayakh Abdur Rahman had been arrested.

The cable sent by then envoy Patricia A Butenis was published by WikiLeaks in August 2011 under the title “Bangladesh Bank fines Islami Bank Bangladesh for JMB related AML violations.”

The Islami Bank was previously  PAGE 3 COLUMN 2

 PAGE 2 COLUMN 1

Incessant drizzle and ankle-high logged water make life difficult for students in the capital’s Mogbazar yesterday

MEHEDI HASAN

Shariah banks, insurance WikiLeaks: Islami Bank firms to come under watch was fined thrice n Mohosinul Karim In the wake of allegations of militant financing against Shariah-based banks and insurance firms, the government has decided to monitor their expenditures of profits and corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds.

The national committee on militancy resistance and prevention under the Home Ministry made the decision at its meeting yesterday at the secretariat

chaired by State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal.

According to the committee, the major portion of the money spent on militant financing in the country comes from profits and CSR funds of banks and insurance companies operating under Shariah rules.

Asaduzzaman told reporters after the meeting that the committee had also asked the central bank to ensure  PAGE 2 COLUMN 5

n Tribune Report Islami Bank was fined Tk1 lakh by the central bank on April 5, 2006 for violation of the Anti-Money Laundering Law in connection with an account linked to Jama’at-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a radical Islamist group banned on February 13, 2005.

According to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, a US embassy cable dated April 6, 2006 says the fine followed

3 | News

5 | News

4 | News

Police yesterday and on Wednesday night arrested five persons in separate drives from different areas of Chittagong and seized 15,000 Yaba pills, 30 kilogrammes of marijuana and 30 litres of liquor from their possession.

The Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council is set to recommend updates to the existing BMDC act, suggesting new provisions including the power to secure support from law enforcement agencies to conduct mobile court drives.

The construction of a refueling station at Sylhet airport is still incomplete, making Hajj flights uncertain. It was said in March that international flights would start in June. ***

8 | World

Artillery shells hit close to the centre of Ukraine’s separatist-held city of Donetsk for the first time on Thursday, killing at least one person.

12 | Entertainment

Michael Jackson’s posthumous album ‘Xscape’ featured ‘A Place With No Name’ – Jackson’s rewrite of America’s ‘A Horse With No Name.’

BNP’s Mosharraf charged with money laundering n Adil Sakhawat The Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) yesterday filed charge sheet against BNP standing committee member Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain for allegedly siphoning off Tk9.54cr to England.

ACC director Nasim Anwar, who is also the case investigation officer, filed the charge sheet at the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court, the ACC’s public relations officer, Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya, confirmed to the Dhaka Tribune.

The charge sheet will be placed before the magistrate on Monday, following the weekend and government holidays, court sources said.

The commission, on August 7, approved the filing of a charge sheet against Mosharraf, who is a former health minister, after investigations into his assets by the anti-graft body revealed irregularities.

Although the ACC interrogated the BNP leader’s wife, Bilkis Akhter Hossain, she was not charge-sheeted because she was not found to be involved.

“During interrogation, Mosharraf confessed that he transferred the sum to his wife’s account but that his wife was not involved with the laundering, so she was spared from the charge sheet,” ACC director Nasim Anwar told the Dhaka Tribune.

According to the charge sheet, Mosharraf concealed information about illegally amassing over £800,000, roughly equivalent to Tk95,395,380, by abusing his power as health minister during the 2001-2006 BNP government.

The amount was deposited in a joint fixed-term deposit account of Lloyds TSB Offshore Private Banking in the

INSIDE The BNP has snubbed ruling party calls not to observe BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia’s 69th birthday on August 15, going ahead with plans to celebrate her birthday on National Mourning Day.

n Emran Hossain Shaikh After the murder of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family members, the killers and the plotters made everything sure for keeping people away from protesting the most heinous crime in the country’s history.

Unexpectedly, the first protests, mostly sporadic and disorganised in nature, came from the activists of some left-leaning political, instead of those from Bangabandhu’s own party the Awami League.

Hasina, Modi meet in New York in September n Abu Hayat Mahmud Residents in the capital suffered yet n Sheikh Shahariar Zaman again from unbearable waterlogging Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi will have a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September.

“There will be a meeting. The headquarters are working on it,” AK Abdul Momen, Bangladesh permanent representative to the UN, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.

Hasina had always had meetings with Manmohan Singh, former Indian prime minister, when he went to New York to attend the UNGA, Momen said.

“This will be their first meeting. We do not expect substantive discussion but from our side, it is expected that we will raise our long-pending issues, including Teesta water sharing and ratification of the land boundary agreement,” said an official of the Foreign Ministry.

Bangladesh and India were supposed to sign the Teesta agreement in 2011 during the visit of Manmohan Singh to Dhaka, but due to a strong opposition from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, New Delhi backtracked on its decision.

Both the countries signed the Land Boundary Agreement in 1974 and Bangladesh ratified it in the same year, but India is yet to ratify it.

Modi after assuming power stressed on having good relations with neighbours and visited Bhutan and Nepal in the last two months.

He also sent his Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj to Dhaka. During her visit, Sushma said New Delhi wanted to have good relations with its neighbours, including Bangladesh.

The Indian prime minister invited all heads of states and governments of all South Asian countries to attend

Leftists did some of the first protests

B1 | Business

Economists divided over Bangladesh Bank allowing private sector to borrow cheap foreign loans. The division surfaced during a discussion on monetary policy.

2

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Censorship in the true sense  PAGE 1 COLUMN 1

streets. The lead stories were all about Khandker Mushtaque becoming the new president and the brutal murders were mentioned negligibly.

Decades after the killing, the country’s apex court in a landmark judgment declared Khandker Mushtaque and his successors Justice Abu Sadaat Mohammad Sayem and Maj Gen Ziaur Rahman’s power takeover and military rule illegal.

Shortly before dawn on this day 39 years ago, the attack on Bangabandhu's residence at Road number 32 in Dhanmondi left 11 people – Bangabandhu, his wife, two daughters-in-law, three sons including 10-year-old Russell, a brother and three others – dead. Two of Bangabandhu's daughters – Sheikh Hasina, now the country's prime minister and Sheikh Rehana – survived the bloodshed as they were abroad.

State-owned Bangla daily Dainik Bangla’s 8-column banner headline on August 16 read: “Khandker Mushtauqe New President.” The shoulder read: “Sheikh Mujib killed: martial law and emergency rule enforced: armed forces pledge allegiance.”

The Bangladesh Times – the other state-owned English newspaper at the time – had an identical headline: “Mushtaque Assumes Presidency.”

The shoulder read: “Martial Law proclaimed in the country: Mujib killed.”

Both Dainik Bangla and the Bangladesh Times carried virtually unchanged a news report released by the state-owned news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS). Understandably, their first two paragraphs were also similar.

Bangladesh Times’s first paragraph was like this: “The Armed Forces of Bangladesh took over power in the ‘greater national interest’ under the leadership of the President Khondker Mushtaque Ahmed, toppling the former president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman early on Friday morning, reports BSS.” The second paragraph reads: “The former President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed at his residence during the takeover, it was announced.”

Apart from that single-line mention, neither of the reports published by the two dailies on their front pages had anything more on the murders.

Anyone reading the stories could have got the idea that only Bangabandhu and nobody else were killed on that night.

Some government officials including Col Jamil Uddin Ahmed, who sacrificed his life trying to save Bangabandhu, and some civilians were also killed by the army personnel; but nothing was reported on them and no related photograph was printed.

The Bangladesh Observer published the same BSS report with a banner headline: “Mushtaque becomes President.” The shoulder read: “Armed Forces take over: Martial Law proclaimed: Curfew imposed” and the standfirst in block letters read: “Mujib Killed: Situation remains calm.”

Ittefaq however was a little different – not because it published a different story but because it treated the story a little differently from the others.

Instead of putting it up as the lead, the story was given six columns on the right of the front page, a place generally allotted for the second lead story of the day.

The headline reads: “Armed forces take over state power under the leadership of Khandker Mushtaque.” The shoulder however was different from the others; it read: “Eliminating cor-

ruption nepotism: Declaration of the aim to establish justice and values.”

Although the credit line said it was one of the newspaper’s own report, the first two paragraphs were identical with the first two paragraphs of the BSS report that the other three dailies had carried.

There was no mention of Bangabandhu’s killing either in the headline or in the shoulder. In the body of the report, there was only one line that said: “Former president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed at his residence during the takeover;” and that was it.

Ittefaq, then the highest circulated daily, has historically been very close to the Awami League and Bangabandhu and played a crucial role during the 1971 Liberation War. On August 16, 1975, Ittefaq actually gave the lead treatment to its editorial which was titled “Historic New Journey.” That treatment was highly unusual.

The Bangladesh Times also published similar pieces as top items under the main 8-column banner headline. This newspaper, instead of calling it editorial, gave it the title: “Our Comment: On the threshold of a new Era.” Dainik Bangla published an editorial in the lower fold of the front page with the title: “A historic step.” Bangladesh Observer also prominently published an editorial item on the front page with the title: “Historical necessity.”

Golam Sarwar, now the editor of leading Bangla daily Samakal and then the executive editor of Ittefaq’s sister concern Purbani, told the Dhaka Tribune: “There was total censorship at that time... The military junta that took over after the killing of Bangabandhu, imposed the censorship.”

He narrated: “The entire nation was stunned... Everything was in total control of Dalim and his associates.”

Lt Col Shariful Haque Dalim took over the Dhaka radio station on that day and made an announcement about the bloody changeover and the establishment of their supremacy.

“So, everyone was scared,” Sarwar said.

“At that time, the authorities [of the newspapers] did not have the strength to defy the military junta. As a result, their journalists could not show the courage either,” the veteran journalist said.

“The situation at that time was not conducive [for a journalist] to do anything against the attitude that the owners of the newspapers possessed,” Sarwar explained the predicament.

Bangabandhu’s killing remained untold for long because the 1975 newspapers and the state-owned Bangladesh Television and Bangladesh Betar (radio) – then the only two broadcasters – were under full control of the illegal martial law rule of Mushtaque, Sayem and Ziaur Rahman.

After the killing of Bangabandhu, subsequent rulers wanted to wipe out the news and evidence of their killing mission. The Supreme Court in its judgment in the Bangabandhu murder case said: “A murderer is always a murderer and a terrorist is always a terrorist and is enemy to mankind and humanity and an offender in the eyes of the law. To protect and shelter such killers is a great crime, a great sin and sin spares none.”

The apex court of the country strongly criticised the moves made by subsequent governments after the assassination of Bangabandhu for barring the trial of the heinous crime and

News

instead rewarding the killers with top government posts.

Mushtaque, Sayem and Zia governments, by promulgating the illegal “indemnity ordinance,” barred the trial of Bangabandhu killers which kept his family from getting justice for decades.

The four newspapers then were publishing speeches of Mushtaque and also of Zia, who was appointed army chief nine days after Bangabandhu’s murder, and the activities of the martial law rulers.

On August 17, 1975, Dainik Bangla carried a tiny BSS report which was literally of one paragraph in length – it was on the burial of Bangabandhu.

The 37-word report read: “Former president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s body was taken to his village at Tungipara in Faridpur on Saturday by air and buried in his family graveyard with full respect.”

But decades later, when the tragic story of the killing and burial of Bangabandhu started surfacing in the newspapers, it became clear that the army personnel hurriedly buried the body of the founding father of the country with a level of respect that was everything but “full.”

After the killing, the newspapers turned into complete mouthpieces of the killers and the usurpers, who grabbed state power.

Senior journalist Toab Khan, who was press secretary to Bangabandhu until the bloodbath, is now an advisory editor of daily Janakantha. He said: “The newspapers then had to publish contents as per dictation and contents provided by the then illegal government.”

So, there was no scope for the newspapers to report on their own about Bangabandhu’s killing. Even when Gen Ziaur Rahman took over in late 1975, newspapers could not publish report on the issue.

Another veteran journalist Reazuddin Ahmed, now editor of The News Today, was a special correspondent at the Bangladesh Observer when Bangbandhu was killed. He said they could not cover Bangbandhu’s killing as “there was total restriction” on the newspapers.

After the bloodbath, Taheruddin Thakur, state minister for information in Mushtaque’s cabinet, used to brief journalists every afternoon at Bangabhaban, the official residence and office of the president.

“That briefing was our source of news... The situation at that time was completely against the freedom of press. In fact, the restriction imposed on press from the day Baksal was formed on June 16, 1975 [by the Bangabandhu government]... The Mushtaque government only reinforced those restrictions and imposed martial law... So, it was not possible to cover the killing of Sheikh Mujib on our own as journalists.”

After the formation of the Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (Baksal), the Bangbandhu government allowed only four newspapers and shut down the rest. Dainik Bangla and the Bangladesh Times were already stateowned and the Baksal government nationalised Ittefaq and the Bangladesh Observer.

War crimes trial campaigner and writer Shahriar Kabir was the assistant editor of the then state-owned weekly Bichitra, a sister concern of Dainik Bangla.

He said: “We tried to assign reporter to cover the killing of Bangabandhu but we were not allowed to do so by the military authority.” l

BNP’s Mosharraf charged with money laundering  PAGE 1 COLUMN 6

British Crown dependency of Guernsey. The account was jointly owned by Mosharraf and his wife Bilkis Akhter Hossain.

As the BNP leader had not taken permission from Bangladesh Bank to open the account abroad, it was a clear violation of section 5 of the Foreign Currency Control Act, 1947, sources said.

In the charge sheet, it was stated

that the former minister claimed that he had deposited the money while residing with his wife in the UK from 1969 to 1975 to study and work, but had failed to submit any documents authenticating the claim.

The ACC official said the commission would take initiatives to repatriate the money if the court found Mosharraf guilty of money laundering.

ACC Director Nasim Anwar filed the money laundering case with Ramna

police station against Mosharraf on February 2.

After the case had been filed, the former minister secured advance bail on February 10 from the High Court.

The anti-graft body then filed a petition with the Appellate Division, which later rejected his advance bail.

Khandaker Mosharraf was arrested on March 12 and is now in jail in connection with the case. l

Friday, August 15, 2014

Monsoon shows its real colours in Dhaka  PAGE 1 COLUMN 2

Shukrabad, said: “Most of the roads in my area have gone under knee-deep water following a short rainfall, my children could not go to school today.”

“Waterlogging is a serious problem in Shukrabad, Rajabazar and Indira road area, but the authorities concerned have taken no steps to resolve it,” she added.

This correspondent also found a similar scenario at city’s Mirpur, Kallayanpur, Mohammadpur, Azimpur, Lalbagh, Zigatala Kallyanpur, Kazipara, Taltola, Shewrapara, Kalabagam, Mouchak, Malibagh, Moghbazar, Shantinagar, Badda, Natun Bazar, Shahjadpur, Sayedabas, Jatrabari and others.

According to the Meteorological Department, Dhaka will be suffering from waterlogging in the coming days where rainfall is expected to be around 22mm to 44mm.

Wasa sources said the prime reason for the waterlogging problem in the city was mainly due to inadequate drainage.

Dhaka City has an area of 360 square kilometers and storm sewage pipes runs only for 280 kilometers, having diameters ranging between 450 to 3000mm. The city has box culverts running for 10.5 kilometers with 913.63 drains and 26 canals of around 60 kilometers with a width of 10m to 30m.

However, the existing drainage system has not been capable of draining out storm water of the city during the monsoon season from May to October.

Talking to the Dhaka Tribune, a Wasa official, seeking anonymity, said underground drainage of the capital was far from adequate in handling storm water. The network needs to be expanded by another 40 percent, adding that the drains should be properly linked through a scientifically designed network.

The capital’s drainage network was designed to discharges storm water in the surrounding rivers. However, as the city is protected from river flooding by an encircled embankment, the water level of the surrounding rivers goes higher than the drainage level during the monsoon. As a result, the storm water fails to flow out into to the river and gets stuck in the drainage pipes.

Earlier in 2008, Dhaka Wasa undertook a Dhaka Water Supply and Sanitation project, in association with the World Bank, to reclaim 26 canals from grabbers. The project, however, ended in vain.

In the past 25 years, urban planners had pointed out several times that rapid urbanisation of Dhaka city had resulted in substantial increase in impervious area, created obstruction to natural drainage patterns, and reduced the detention basins, which in turn led to the shortening of the runoff concentration time and an increase of the peak flow.

Contacted, Dhaka Wasa Managing Director Taqseem A Khan termed the waterlogging to water congestion.

“The waterlogging had temporarily occurred due to heavy rainfall. However, to drain the extra water, we have installed pumps at different station including Rampura,” he said.

Wasa Deputy Managing Director (Administration) Md Ataur Rahman blamed fund shortages for the poor conditions of the drainage and sewerage system in the city.

“We have already contacted different donor agencies for their support to upgrade this sector,” he added.

Ataur also blamed the city dwellers for littering waste into canals and drains, thereby preventing the free flow of water into the rivers. l

Hasina, Modi meet in New York  PAGE 1 COLUMN 1

his swearing-in ceremony in May, but Hasina could not attend as she was in Japan at that time.

Joint consultative commission

Before the Hasina-Modi meeting at the UNGA, the foreign ministers of the two countries will have official talks, known as Joint Consultative Commission, in New Delhi to discuss all pending issues.

“The Indian foreign minister visited Bangladesh in June when it was decided that the ministers would have the JCC meeting at the earliest,” said another official of the Foreign Ministry.

This will be the third JCC meeting after it was launched in 2012.

Before the JCC meeting, there will be no foreign secretary level talks as it is the practice.

Before the first two Joint Consultative Commission meetings, the foreign secretaries held talks and hammered out the agenda for the meetings of their superiors.

The Modi-led government has a big vision to revive the Saarc region and they did not feel shy in sharing their ideas about how Bangladesh fits in the vision, the official said.

Sushma at a lecture in Dhaka on June 26 said: “Building a comprehensive and equitable partnership with Bangladesh is essential for the realisation of our vision of a stable, secure and prosperous South Asia.” l

Leftists did some of the first protests  PAGE 1 COLUMN 6

by those from the Awami League.

But they were very surprised to see very little or virtually no response from the people of Kishoreganj town. Syed Liyakot Ali Bulbul, a leader of the local unit of Awami League’s student front Chhatra League, was only one from his camp to join the procession.

Rafiq Uddin Panir, son of an influential local Awami League leader, also joined the procession – not because he was the leader’s son but because he was involved with the Chhatra Union.

Bhupendra Voumik Dolon, a lawyer by profession and now the president of the district unit of Ganatantri Party, told the Dhaka Tribune: “We heard about the killing early on August 15 morning on radio. We contacted several local Awami League and Baksal leaders including Baskal district secretary Muztafuzur Rahman and district Awami League secretary Mohiuddin Ahmed. Not only did they not respond, instead they warned us.”

He also said: “Despite their warning, we organised the procession from ethical grounds... If we took more time to make a decision, we would have never been able to bring out the procession.”

Another participant of Kishorganj procession Dr Halim Dad Khan said they had organised the procession risking their lives; “but everybody has forgot us over the last 39 years.”

The second instance of protest was reported from the southern district of Barguna. The then sub-division officer (SDO) Siraj Uddin Ahmed led a protest in which many government officials and political leaders including local lawmakers took part. The protest continued for three days as part of which they brought out processions and organised milad mahfils.

Siraj Uddin told the Dhaka Tribune that they had started the resistance with full enthusiasm but soon got frustrated because they were not getting any response from any other region of the country.

“I hoped the revolt would spread throughout the country. I communicated with the administration of some districts and sub-divisions over wire-

less but did not get any positive response. That was why we had to stop it on the third day,” Siraj Uddin, a former member of the Public Service Commission, said.

In Dhaka, the first attempt at a protest was made on August 24 by some student leaders. They were led by Mahbub Hasan, the then general secretary of the Dhaka University Central Students Union (Ducsu). They gathered at the Madhur Canteen on the university campus and brought out a procession for a brief while.

In October, Chhatra Union brought out two processions on the Dhaka University Campus on October 20 and 21 protesting the killing of Bangabandhu.

The first major protest in Dhaka took place on November 4 when Liberation War Sector Commander Khaled Mosharraf was in power for a brief period after a military coup.

A big procession was brought out in the capital in which most of the participants were from left-leaning organisations such as the CPB, Chhatra Union and NAP. Current CPB President Mujahidul Islam Selim told the Dhaka Tribune that they were making preparations to bring out a procession immediately after the killing of Bangabandhu; but they failed due to unavoidable circumstances.

“Under whose leadership and inspiration would we bring out the procession? Most of the Awami League leaders were waiting to get a call in the Mushtaq cabinet,” Selim said.

A leader who spearheded the November protest in Dhaka, said: “Bangabandhu had a difference in opinion with a section of the Awami League.

This section took advantage of that [after the killings] and leaned towards the Mushtaque government.”

One of the leftist leaders who took part in the Kishoreganj protest, said: “The Awami League leaders got involved with different kinds of corruption, especially those who were parts of relief committees. They were more interested in their personal welfare rather than politics. That was why they could not gather the courage to come forward and protest.” l

Shariah banks, insurance firms  PAGE 1 COLUMN 3

submission of reports on expenditures of the institutions to the ministry.

“The committee earlier asked Bangladesh Bank to order submission of the reports but only Islami Bank recently submitted its report to the ministry.

Intelligence agencies are now scrutinising the report,” he said.

“Violating the central bank’s order, none of the other Shariah-based banks and insurance firms submitted their reports.”

He said the law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies were ordered to examine the reports as the

institutions were suspected of financing militancy.

“We are also keeping an eye on the activities of NGOs, especially those based in Chittagong Hill Tracts. Their financial reports are also being examined to check militant financing,” said the junior home minister.

He said the three militants now on the run would be arrested shortly if they had not yet fled the country.

“It is true that they escaped from the grip of the law enforcers. We have taken steps to arrest them,” said Asaduzzaman. l

DHAKA TRIBUNE

News

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Friday, August 15, 2014

How Mujib’s day should have been on August 15 n Ahmed Zayeef and Arif Ahmed On August 15, 1975, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was scheduled to visit Dhaka University as “the first chancellor visiting the university in its 54 years’ history” – returning to the place he was once expelled from for raising his voice in support of underpaid employees.

The university authorities had planned an elaborate reception at the Teachers-Students Centre (TSC) for the day, while special supplementaries were published in national newspapers to mark the occasion.

The entire campus took on a festive look ahead of Bangabandhu’s visit, with colourful decorations put up to welcome the then president.

According to the programme’s invitation card, the event was scheduled to start at 11am and all invited persons were requested to attend by 10:45am.

For souvenirs to be presented to Bangabandhu, the university authority prepared a citation placed inside a decorated scroll, a crest with the university’s monogram, a silver-made tray also with the monogram, and a handkerchief made of sheepskin.

The then vice-chancellor of Dhaka University Prof Dr Abdul Matin Chowdhury was supposed to present the gifts on behalf of the teachers, students and employees of the university, conveying their support for the president’s success.

The five-paragraph-long citation read: “We are very happy to welcome you [Bangabandhu] for your first visit as a chancellor of the university. You are the first chancellor who is visiting the university in its 54 years’ history; that is why we are specially proud.”

To mark the visit, the university also published a special supplement, titled “Dacca University: A special supplement on the occasion of the August visit of the president and the chancellor.”

On the centrefold, there was a picture of Bangabandhu captioned “father of the nation.” The supplement also included messages from the then vice-president Syed Nazrul Islam and prime minister M Monsur Ali. Recalling the scheduled visit of Bangabandhu, incumbent VC AAMS Arefin Siddique said: “Bangabandhu was scheduled to go to the sociology department on that day. There, three children, including Sheikh Russel, were supposed to show respect to him by pouring flower petals from a decorated silver plate.”

According to the Daily Ittefaq edition published on August 15, 1975, Bangabandhu was also supposed to visit the University Laboratory School and the physics department. He was scheduled to place wreaths at a graveyard of martyrs located in the area adjacent to the university central mosque.

The then vice-president Syed Nazrul Islam and prime minister M Monsur Ali were supposed to accompany Bangabandhu during his visit.

Teachers and students of the university eagerly waited to welcome Bangabandhu at the university; but their wait never ended, as Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was brutally assassinated along with most of his family members in the first hours of August 15.

Meanwhile, the wooden-framed citation made for the programme had been missing for over 34 years, until Amir Hossain, a retired deputy registrar, found it at the registrar’s building on December 2, 2009. Amir found the document while rummaging through a pile of files inside a cupboard, while the crest and the box prepared for the programme were found inside a safe in the registrar’s office.

On August 17 last year, DU VC AAMS Arefin Siddique handed over the citation along with the other gift items to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to preserve these at the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in Dhanmondi.

Bangabandhu’s days at DU

In 1948, Sheikh Mujib took admission in the law department of Dhaka University. On March 26, 1949, the then DU executive council expelled Bangabandhu and four other students on charges of “instigating” a movement launched by class IV employees demanding increase of salaries and allowances.

Then a second year student, Mujib had extended his support to realise the demands of the university employees.

Although the DU executive council gave the expelled students a chance of forgiveness against a small fine and a guarantee of good conduct from their guardians, Bangabandhu stood his ground in support of the employees.

The expulsion of the four other students was withdrawn after they complied with the authority’s directive.

Commenting on Bangabandhu’s expulsion, Professor Arefin Siddique said: “The decision was undemocratic and unjust. That is why after 61 years, the university authorities withdrew the expulsion order on August 14, 2010.” l

Since he was a young man, Hasan Ali Sarker had always wanted to get closely acquainted with Bangabandhu, but the leader’s untimely death brought an end to his hopes. However, for the past 31 years, he has been taking care of the graves of Bangabandhu’s family members as he feels spiritually closer to them in this way MEHEDI HASAN

Jabbar indicted for offences committed during 1971 Liberation War n Udisa Islam The ICT1 yesterday framed five charges of crimes against humanity against former Jatiya Party lawmaker engineer Abdul Jabbar.

On its charge framing order, the tribunal said because Jabbar had been absconding, the trial has been started in absentia against the accused after complying with the provisions of Rule 31 and Rule 32 of the Rules of Procedure 2010.

Jabbar, who was allegedly the chairman of Mathbaria Peace Committee in Pirojpur in 1971, has been charged with genocide, murder, looting, vandalising and forced conversion committed during the nine-month war.

The tribunal mentioned that the fugitive played a key role in the formation of the Razakar Bahini and led the force in committing crimes in the Mathbaria area.

On May 11, the prosecution

submitted formal charges against Jabbar.

During hearing on the charge framing, state-appointed defence counsel Mohammad Abul Hasan termed the formal charge vague and unspecified allegation, and made elaborate arguments in support of discharging the accused.

After framing the charges, the International Crimes Tribunal 1 set September 7 for starting the trial through opening statements.

Prosecutor Zahid Imam was also present at the court room during yesterday’s charge framing.

According to the charges, Jabbar along with his accomplices forcefully converted 200 Hindus to Islam at Fuljhuri village in the last week of May 1971. Jabbar was also allegedly involved in the killing of two freedom fighters in Fuljhuri, as well as abetting and facilitating setting fire to 360 houses. He was also indicted for the offence of geno-

BNP presses on with Khaleda’s birthday despite AL objections n Mohammad Al-Masum Molla

App on Bangabandhu to be launched n Muhammad Zahidul Islam A mobile application on father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is likely to be launched today, Mujib’s death anniversary and the National Mourning Day, or tomorrow.

App development firm MCC Limited has accumulated Bangabandhu’s life sketch, including his early days, participation in political movements, portraits, letters written by him, interviews and other data.

The firm’s Managing Director Ashraf Khan said all necessary preparation to unveil the application were completed.

State Minister for ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak had asked to develop the app, he said.

Ashraf also said they would hand the app over to the Bangabandhu Memorial Trust, which would operate it finally. l

The BNP has snubbed ruling party calls not to observe BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia’s 69th birthday on August 15, going ahead with plans to celebrate her birthday on National Mourning Day. August 15 is observed as a day of mourning for the 1975 assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the murder of most of his family.

Senior AL leaders, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, have requested the BNP chief not to observe her birthday on August 15.

LGRD minister and general secretary of the Awami League, Syed Ashraful Islam, on Tuesday reiterated the request to Khaleda Zia during a Jubo League programme

at Suhrawardy Udyan.

He said: “There can be no consensus with those who celebrate fake birthdays on the National Mourning Day. We have extended our hands to her in the past, but Khaleda did not accept it.”

“Even if it really is her birthday, she can celebrate it on August 16 to show respect for Bangabandhu. We don’t object to her celebrating her birthday,” Ashraf said.

In a phone conversation last year, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina asked Khaleda Zia not to observe her birthday on August 15.

“You visited our Dhanmondi Road 32 residence several times.

You saw Sheikh Russel. When you observe your birthday on August 15, do you not remember Russel’s face?” In reply, Zia asked, “If some-

one is born on that day, can’t they celebrate their birthday?”

Maruf Kamal Khan, press secretary to BNP chairperson, said: “Madam usually does not observe her birthday. Party men come to her office with cakes and flowers.”

It has been reported that Khaleda’s marriage certificate allegedly lists her birthday as September 5, 1945, while in her first passport, it is allegedly dated August 19, 1946.

According to a curriculum vitae distributed to the media after taking oath as prime minister of Bangladesh in 1991, Khaleda was born in Feni on September 19, 1945.

The BNP observes Khaleda’s birthday on August 15.

The High Court, on July 27, 2008, found the decision of the BNP-led government to be illegal. l

WikiLeaks: Islami Bank was fined thrice  PAGE 1 COLUMN 5

fined in 2002 and 2004 for violations of the Anti-Money Laundering Law. The Detective Branch of police earlier this month said they had identified four businessmen from Dhaka who were financing the revival of the JMB by procuring land and setting up training camps in Bandarban and Cox’s Bazar.

A Bangladesh Bank report stated that the checking account was opened in February 1999 in the name of Saidur Rahman but lay dormant until January 2006, when eight deposits totalling approximately Tk415,000 were wired to the account from its branches in Gazipur and Savar by a person who identified himself as Javed Khan.

The funds were withdrawn from the account within a few weeks.

Saidur Rahman was the former ameer of Habiganj district unit Jamaat and is said to be the father of JMB’s information and technology section chief Shamim.

Documents also showed Saidur had accounts at the state-owned Rupali and Janata banks. The central bank review of those accounts revealed that the accounts were inactive and hence, it did not take any action against the two banks.

The cable says the BB action against Islami Bank was based on two violations of the law. First, the BB found that Islami Bank failed to adhere to the “know your customer” rule with respect to both the transfers of Javed and the account of Saidur, when he reactivated the account in early 2006. The BB also found that the large transactions

into and out of a previously dormant account should have triggered a suspicious transaction report.

5 employees suspended

In the cable, the envoy also wrote to Washington that Islami Bank had moved swiftly to conduct its own investigation of the transactions.

According to then executive president Abdur Rakib, the bank had suspended five employees, including the three branch managers, and was investigating 15 other employees for their involvement.

The cable also mentions a comment of then Citibank Bangladesh CEO Mamun Rashid: “They [Islami Bank] accept responsibility for the mistakes, they have taken action, and they are appropriately nervous about the lapses this revealed.” l

cide, for allegedly killing 22 unarmed civilian in October 1971 at Angulkata and Mothbaria villages.

The charge frame order also included the political and historical background of the accused. The tribunal stated that under Jabbar’s patronisation, Razakar Bahini was formed in Mathbaria area; while as per Jabbar’s direction, plan, and conspiracy, the Pakistani Army, Razakar Bahini and members of Peace Committee committed various crimes against humanity in 1971 in that area.

Jabbar, a former Muslim League leader, was elected a member of Provincial Assembly (MPA) in 1964.

He was also elected a lawmaker in 1986 and 1988 as a nominee of Jatiya Party, as well as serving as a vicechairman of the Jatiya Party central committee.

According to the investigation agency, Jabbar has been on the run since 2009. l

Pinak 6 owner sent to jail n Our Correspondent, Munshiganj A Munshiganj court yesterday sent Abu Bakkar Siddique, the owner of the Pinak 6 that sank in the Padma on August 4 with around 300 passengers on board, to the district jail.

The Munshiganj Judicial Magistrate’s Court also fixed August 18 for hearing a plea for seven days’ remand placed by police after presenting Siddique in the court.

Members of Rapid Action Battalion arrested Siddique around 3:15am on Tuesday from Agrabad Housing Society in Chittagong.

He was later brought to the RAB Headquarters in Dhaka and handed over to the police. l

Corrigendum In a report titled “Sayedee’s appeal verdict unlikely in August” published on July 24 in the Dhaka Tribune, there were some unintentional mistakes occurred due to technological glitches. We apologise for the errors.

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DHAKA TRIBUNE

News

Friday, August 15, 2014

BMDC to suggest update for existing act n Moniruzzaman Uzzal The Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council (BMDC) is set to recommend updates to the existing BMDC act, suggesting new provisions including the power to secure support from law enforcement agencies to conduct mobile court drives.

A draft of the proposed rules has been finalised and is likely to be submitted before the Health Ministry next month.

‘The council had been trying for four years to bring changes to the existing act; but bureaucratic complications had delayed the process’ Other recommendations by the BMDC reportedly include making it compulsory for all doctors to write their registration numbers on the prescription pads, increasing the number of BMDC executive members from seven to nine (treasurer as an ex officio and one from other members) and add two more members for the disciplinary committee (one former justice of the Supreme Court and one official who is not below the post of joint secretary of Law Ministry).

Dr Zahedul Hoque Basunia, registrar of the BMDC, told the Dhaka Tribune that the addition of the new rules was essential for conducting the BMDC activities.

Although the BMDC Act 1982 was

updated by the Health Ministry in 2010, some limitations in the updated act meant that the council was still unable to take necessary action against the alleged doctors, he added.

Sources said the Health Ministry would hold a meeting regarding the BMDC act this month.

Several BMDC officials told the Dhaka Tribune that the council had been trying for the last four years to bring changes to the existing act; but bureaucratic complications at the Health Ministry had been delaying the process.

Seeking anonymity, an executive member of the BMDC said even though the council sometimes received information regarding the violation of the law, no punitive measure could be taken as there was no option to conduct a mobile court drive under the existing act.

In order to carry out a drive, the BMDC has to submit requisition to law enforcement agencies; however, those agencies are not bound to accept the request as there is no specific rule written in the act.

If the BMDC had the power to conduct mobile court drives and received the support of law enforcers, then the activities of the BMDC would be more visible, the executive member added.

Although the BMDC had several times issued circulars directing all doctors to write their registration numbers on their prescription pads, only a small number of doctors had reportedly complied with the directive so far.

Flouting the BMDC rules, many doctors continue to claim fake expertise by including abbreviations of specialised medical degrees – not recognised by the BMDC – on their signboard, prescription pad or visiting card. l

Massive potholes, which get filled with stagnant water whenever there is a brief spell of rain, means pedestrians and commuters have to face constant struggles while using the roads adjacent to the Postagola bridge in the capital’s Shyampur. The photo was taken yesterday MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

Nahid: Enhancing education quality still a challenge n Rabiul Islam

Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid yesterday said it was still a big challenge to enhance the quality of education with limited resources in the country.

He came up with the view a day after the country saw a tremendous pass rate of 78.33% in Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examinations.

Responding to some quarters’ question on the quality of education amid

such results, he said: “It is not possible to increase the quality of education overnight as we have limitations, including efficient teachers.

“However, we have been working on increasing the quality of education. We have to continue it.”

Nahid added: “The number of enrollment [from class I to class IX] is now as many as 44.4 million, which was only 15 million a few years back.”

A total of 70,602 students have achieved GPA 5 in the HSC exams this

Two carjackers beaten to death n Our Correspondent, Chapainawabganj

Two motorcycle lifters were beaten to death on the Thainagar road in Sadar upazila yesterday.

The identity of the deceased could not be known immediately.

Police said local people caught them red-handed while they were trying to snatch a motorcycle and beat them serverely, leaving them critically injured.

On information, police rescued them and sent to Shibganj Hospital where doctor declared them dead.

OC Ashikur Rahman said the bodies were sent to Sadar Hospital morgue. l

IUT to hold debate competition n Tribune Report With the slogan “Debating for Knowledge Dissemination,” the debating society of Islamic University of Technology is scheduled to organise the IUT Inter Varsity Debating Competition on their campus today.

Forty teams from different universities will participate in the competition this year. The finale will be held on August 17 at The Westin Dhaka, where Huseyin Muftuoglu, the Turkish ambassador, will be present the chief guest. l

Claiming that there is no shortage of seats in higher education institutions, he emphatically said it would not happen that students were failing to pursue higher education because of seat crisis.

The minister was talking to reporters after attending a seminar on Global Maritime Challenges and Role of Maritime Higher Education in Bangladesh at a city hotel.

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Maritime University authority organised the seminar. l

Five get death penalty for murder

Chhatra Kalyan Trust awards distinguished personalities n Tribune Report Bangladesh Chhatra Kalyan Trust, a voluntary organisation working for students’ welfare, in association with Daffodil International University arranged a discussion and award giving programme at Jatiya Press Club in the capital on Saturday.

Eminent educationist Professor Shafiq Ahmed Siddiq was present at the event as the chief guest who handed over crests to Professor SM Nazrul Islam, VC of BUET, Professor Rafiqul Haque, VC of Bangladesh Agriculture University, and Professor M Lutfar Rahman, VC of Daffodil International University for their contribution to education, says a press release.

Belal Ahmed, Deputy Director (PR) of North South University was awarded for his contribution as PR and communications personal. l

year. Even after achieving such a score, many students have been found to be failing in university admission tests in the past few years.

About the failure of GPA 5 achievers in university admission tests, Nahid said the quality of a student could not be assessed in one hour’s test.

The existing admission test system has been followed just in the interest of coaching business worth Tk32,000 crore, he said, adding: “It is time to review the admission test system.”

n Md Sanaul Islam Tipu

Transparency International Bangladesh Trustee Board Chairman Sultana Kamal addresses journalists at a press conference on the National Broadcast Policy at a city hotel yesterday. Story on Page 16 RAJIB DHAR

City Bank gets Euromoney Best Bank in Bangladesh award n Tribune Report Euromoney, a leading global financial publication read by high-ranking financial decision makers in over 100 countries, gave City Bank the ‘Best Bank in Bangladesh’ award on Wednesday, says a media release.

The award was given in a programme in Hong Kong titled Euromoney’s Awards for Excellence 2014, in presence of 500 leading bankers from across the globe, while City Bank’s MD

and CEO Sohail RK Hussain received the prize on behalf of the bank.

In the Euromoney’s citation, it was said: “During a period of political and economic instability, City Bank of Bangladesh thrived and it embraced change in a way its rivals struggled to match.”

Sohail said: “This [the award] will further reinforce our determination to continue to execute our strategy in order to creating value for our clients and shareholders.” l

Three children held with Tk2.74lakh

n Tribune Report Police recovered Tk2.74 lakh from three children yesterday in Gabtoli Bus Terminal in the capital and detained them when they were giving confusing statements about the money.

The detainees are Sohrawardi, 14, Sagor, 13 and Hridoy, 10.

Sources said the police searched their body on suspicion and recovered the money near Kobirajbari, situated at the opposite side of the terminal.

Rafiqul Islam, OC of Darus Salam police station told the Dhaka Tribune: “They said they earned the money through sewing work and kept the money with a person named Sohel,” he said.

When the police went to Sohel's house in Shekhertek area of Mohammadpur for query, Sohel refused to recognize the children.

Meanwhile, Gabtoli Bus Terminal police outpost InCharge Nuruzzaman said: “They said that they got the money in a bag abandoned near a dustbin.” l

A Dhaka court sentenced five people to death yesterday with four of them being in absentia in connection with a 2006 murder at Nowkhanda village in Gopalganj’s Maksedpur.

Speedy Trial Tribunal 3’s Judge A B M Sajedur Rahman delivered the verdict in a crowded courtroom.

The death row convicts are Lalin Shikder, Monir Hossain, Swapan Mollah alias Dalim, Obaidul Sheikh alias Ewadul Sheikh and Tapan Kazi alias Bagha. Of them, only Obaidul is now behind bars.

Six others were also acquitted as the charges brought against them could not be proved in the murder case. They are Md Mokarram Sikder, Md Rezaul Kazi, Sheikh Rony Ahmed, Wahedul Mina, Md Farid Mina and Ahsan Kazi.

The case was such, Lalin Shikder was friends with Shipon Kazi alias Ju-

nun and they had a business together.

Later, a love relationshop developed between Lalin’s sister and Junun.

Lanin having learned for this asked Junun to marry his sister, but Junun refused sparking a conflict between them. He, along with the other accused, then premeditated and perpetrated the murder in the village on June 30, 2006.

Junun’s mother Moriam Bibi then filed a murder case with Maksedpur police station. After investigating the case, Detective Branch of police submitted a charge sheet before a Gopalganj court against the 11 accused on July 17, 2007.

The court framed charges against the accused in the case on February 17, 2010. Later in December 2012, it shifted the case to Speedy Trial Tribunal 3 in Dhaka for quick disposal.

A total of 14 prosecution witnesses gave depositions before the court in the case. l

DHAKA TRIBUNE

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Friday, August 15, 2014

Works on refuelling station at Sylhet airport yet to finish n Mohammad Serajul Islam, Sylhet The construction of a refueling station at Sylhet’s Osmani International airport is still incomplete rendering direct Hajj flights to Jeddah uncertain.

In March this year, the airport authority said it would be able to operate international flights from June.

Then, Project Director Aminul Haq said around 70% of the work had been completed as the construction of three of the total five section of the station had finished.

It is not possible to fulfill the HAB’s demand. Now we are spending time on seat arrangements. Within a few days we will meet with HAB leaders The project involving Tk51.18 crore began in January 2012 under the supervision of Padma Oil, a state-owned petroleum company.

The project was scheduled to end in June last year, but it was delayed because of several reasons. The deadline was later extended to June of this year, increasing the budget to over Tk53.15 crore.

“Lack of refueling station is the main obstacle for operating direct flight from Sylhet to Jeddah,” said Md Akbor Hossain Howlader, commercial officer of the Biman Bangladesh Airlines, Sylhet Office.

Airport sources said about 7,000 pilgrims would perform Hajj from Sylhet region this year while the figures was 5,500 last year.

The Bangladesh Biman operates two transit flights (Sylhet-Dhaka-Jeddah) every year except 2007 when direct flights operated from Sylhet airport to Jeddah airport.

Later, the direct flights have been suspended for a lack of refueling station at Sylhet airport.

Since then, the Hajj Association of Bangladesh (HAB) has been demanding seven direct flights from Sylhet Airport to Jeddah airport. Transit flights take more time and is inconvenient for the pilgrims, the HAB sources said, adding that it was necessary to operate direct flights to make it easier for travelling pilgrims.

Johirul Kobir Choudhury, president of HAB Sylhet region, said: “Regarding seven direct flights, we have placed our demands to the Biman authority a few days ago.

“As the Biman authority has yet to respond, we are feeling a certain sense of uncertainty.”

The Bangladesh Biman should take immediate steps in this regard as thousands of people are going to perform Hajj from this region this year.

He also threatened that the association would go on tough movement to press home the demand for launching direct hajj flights from Sylhet to Jeddah.

Mentioning refueling stations as a problem, Biman Official Md Akbor Hossain Howlader said: “It is not possible to fulfill the HAB’s demand. Now we are spending time on seat arrangements.

Within a few days we will meet with HAB leaders.”

The announcement to make Sylhet Osmani Airport as the third international airport came in December 20, 1998.

The airport’s digitalisation process started in 2004. Later, international flight at the airport kicked off in March 12, 2006 which however stopped after a few days since there was no refuelling system.

The refuelling station project started in 2012 after the decision of its construction was taken in 2010, following the promise of Sylhet 1 constituency Awami League candidate Abul Maal Abdul Muhith in the parliamentary election in 2008. l

Protesting the recent attacks in Gaza, the Gono-Adhikar Sangram Committee burns an effigy of US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the capital's Shahbagh yesterday RAJIB DHAR

Five held in major Chittagong drug busts n Tarek Mahmud, Chittagong Police yesterday and on Wednesday night arrested five persons in separate drives from different areas of Chittagong and seized 15,000 Yaba pills, 30 kilogrammes of marijuana and 30 litres of liquor from their possession.

Law enforcement agencies estimated that the seized contraband was worth Tk48.09 lakh.

Karnaphuli police station officers nabbed a truck driver and a Yaba peddler from Chittagong city’s Moijjartek area near Shah Amanat Bridge on Wednes-

day at around 10:15pm as they were entering the port city with 15,000 pieces of Yaba hidden in an empty gas cylinder attached to the truck, police said.

The arrestees, Abul Kashem, 40, and Ali Hossain, 31, are both from Teknaf upazila of Cox’s Bazar district, said Assistant Commissioner (AC) Mohammad Jahangir of Port Circle of Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP).

Akbar Shah police station officers nabbed Azizul Islam, 45, of Matlob, Chandpur district, with 30 kilogrammes of marijuana from the City Gate area yesterday at around 6am.

n DU Correspondent

n JU Correspondent

Information Technology Minister Abdul Latif Siddique said Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the architect of free and sovereign Bangladesh.

He gave a speech at a programme yesterday in Jahangirnagar University to mark the 39th death anniversary of Bangabandhu.

He said: “Bangabandhu was a symbol for the nation where people can find themselves and their identities as Bangali” The programme was chaired by VC Farzana Islam while Parliament Member Dr Enamur Rahman and former VC Prof Shariff Enamul Kabir were present as special guests. l

WEATHER

The online admission process for the first year honours courses at Dhaka University for 2014-15 academic session began yesterday.

DU Vice-Chancellor Dr AAMS Arefin Siddique inaugurated the admission process at the central admission office of the university.

Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury attends a photo exhibition on Bangabandhu at Shilpakala Academy yesterday DHAKA TRIBNUE

Finally, they make it to exams n CU Correspondent

MODERATE RAIN FRIDAY, AUGUST 15 DHAKA TODAY TOMORROW SUN SETS 6:32PM SUN RISES 5:34AM FORECAST FOR TODAY Dhaka

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Rajshahi

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Rangpur

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Khulna

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Barisal

29

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YESTERDAY’S HIGH AND LOW

23.5ºC Feni

Source: Accuweather/UNB

Caught between red tape, two students were finally able to sit for a third-year course examination they had failed at Chittagong University (CU) yesterday.

As per rules, a student cannot attend next year’s course exams unless they take their previous course exams.

Cutting across almost a year-long red-tape, Sowmen Das Jewel, a former assistant secretary of CU BCL unit and a girl student secured their special order on Tuesday while their fourth year final exams were to be held yesterday.

In two days of gap between the date of the duo’s special order and that of their honours final year regular exams, authorities however expressed their inability to take their exams.

Though the exams of IR final year course no 401 was postponed because of coinciding with that of another department at 11am on the third floor of the Exams Hall.

PRAYER TIMES 4:15am 5:33am 12:03am 4:29pm 6:32pm 7:52pm SourceL IslamicFinder.org

Witnesses said Jewel and another girl student put the exam hall and their department chairman’s room under lock and key at 11am a hour before their exams (already postponed) and.

The CU proctor and police rushed in and opened the examination hall after a few minutes while the chairman’s room was opened around after half an hour.

Departmental sources said the CU vice chancellor gave the special order on May 25, but it took so long before the order finally reached the duo. The department however scheduled the exams of Course no 401 without taking the special examination, upsetting the duo so much.

IR Department Chairman Mohammed Fisal said it was quite impossible for them to take the duo’s exam in two days.

CU Proctor Siraj Ud Dowla blamed the incident lack of cooperation between the department and two students. l

Student beaten by BCL men n RU Correspondent

Fajar Sunrise Jumma Asr Magrib Esha

(Crime and Operation) Banaz Kumar Majumder and Deputy Commissioner (Port Zone) Saiful Islam were present at the press conference.

Satkania police station officers nabbed two people, Md Jalil, 30, and Babul, 40, from in front of the Satkania Resort, a community centre in the Keranirhat area of Satkania upazila on Wednesday night as the duo attempted to sell 30 litres of liquor brought from Potiya upazila, said OC Khaled Hossain of Satkania police station.

Three cases were lodged with the respective police stations. l

DU admission process begins

'Bangabandhu architect of Bangladesh'

33.4ºC Jessore

He was detained while unloading the contraband from the storage space of a passenger bus from Chandpur and packing it into sacks, Officer-in-Charge (OC) Abdul Majid of Akbar Shah police station said.

CMP authorities held a press conference at CMP headquarters yesterday around 11:30am where CMP Commissioner Md Shafiqul Islam said police had discovered the city’s drug spots and the increased number of drug recoveries was the result of more targeted drives.

CMP Additional Commissioner

A group of activists of the Bangladesh Chhatra League of Rajshahi University unit allegedly physically assaulted a student yesterday when he protested against the harassment of two female students.

The victim Iftekhar Shahriar, a third year student of law department, is undergoing treatment at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital.

Campus sources said Shahirar along with two of his friends was returning home, when they reportedly found

BCL RU unit activist Abu Khaer Mostafa Rinet verbally abusing female students near Tukitaki Chattar. Later, BCL RU unit Deputy Human Development Affairs Secretary Sabrun Jamil Shusmoy and an activist named Hirok also allegedly joined Rinet.

When Shahriar raised his voice against the harassment, they started beating him, leaving him critically injured.

RU unit BCL President Mizanur Rahman said they would take actions against the BCL men after investigation.

Later, police arrested Rinet and Hirok. l

Human chain protests police assault on DU teacher

n DU Correspondent

Students and Teachers of Dhaka University yesterday formed a human chain on campus and demanded the punishment of policemen who allegedly assaulted a sociology department teacher of the university.

Hundreds of students and teachers under the banner of “DU General Students” formed a human chain in front of the Arts Building to press home their demands. They urged the university authority to take necessary measures against the accused.

Earlier on August 6, Dr Samia Lutfa, the victim, was allegedly attacked by policemen in the capital’s Badda area when she went there to extend her hand to aid the Tuba garment workers.

Dr Samina Lutfa at the human chain said garment workers are facing repression whenever they raise their voice for their rights. Similarly, people who supported them are also attacked.

“Such shameful repression on workers will besmirch our image to the global community, despite being efficient producers of garments.” l

“The online admission process will continue till August 31,” the VC said.

Admission test of “Ka” unit will be held on September 12, “Kha” unit on September 19, “Ga” unit on September 5, “Gha” unit on September 26, and “Cha” unit on September 13.

The admission seekers are asked to visit www.admission.univdhaka.edu for detailed information. l

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World

Friday, August 15, 2014

Shells hit Donetsk, Russian aid turns back n Reuters, Donetsk

peated it could not enter until Ukrainian authorities had cleared its cargo.

The caravan of 280 trucks left the Moscow region on Tuesday, looking to take aid to Luhansk region, in eastern Ukraine, where the main city is held by the separatists.

The pro-Western Kiev government says the humanitarian crisis is partly of Moscow’s making and has denounced the dispatch of aid as an act of cynicism.

It is also fearful that the operation could become a covert military intervention

by Moscow to prop up the rebels who appear on the verge of defeat.

Moscow, which denies charges - also voiced by the West - of arming the rebels with tanks, missiles and other heavy military equipment, has dismissed as “absurd” suggestions it could use the convoy as a cover for invasion.

In Geneva, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which would be responsible for distributing the aid in Ukraine, said: “The question of border crossing procedures and customs clearance (for the convoy) still have to be clarified between the two sides.” l

Artillery shells hit close to the centre of Ukraine’s separatist-held city of Donetsk for the first time on Thursday, killing at least one person, as a large Russian aid convoy rumbled towards the border.

With Ukrainian government forces tightening the noose on pro-Russian separatists, shelling rocked Donetsk, sending frightened residents rushing for cover, witnesses said.

It was not immediately clear if the artillery was fired by government or rebel forces.

Two shells landed 200 metres (660 feet) from the Park Inn Radisson, one of the city’s main hotels, shattering windows. The blasts opened up a yawning hole on the third floor of an apartment block and left a broad crater on the pavement.

Nearby, a body covered by a sheet lay stretched out on the blood-stained ground.

A huge Russian convoy carrying 2,000 tonnes of water, baby food and other humanitarian aid drove through southern Russia towards the frontier, while Kiev re-

A woman collects shrapnels after a shelling in Donetsk yesterday. Heavy shelling smashed into the centre of Donetsk, once a bustling city of one million. Fierce clashes between government forces and rebel fighters have killed 74 civilians over the last three days in east Ukraine’s war-torn Donetsk region, local authorities said today AFP

NewLink says Ebola vaccine trial could start in weeks n Reuters

Reduction Agency (DTRA) for more pre-clinical toxicology studies, including stepped-up manufacturing, to allow human trials to begin quickly. The vaccine was developed by scientists at the Public Health Agency of Canada.

“DTRA said, ‘we want this to move quickly,’” Link said. “Before that, I’d have said it would take eight to 10 months before we could launch human studies, but now it’s a matter of weeks.”

Only one treatment, made by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals , had even begun human safety trials, while the others had been tested only in non-human primates.

In addition to NewLink, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline is awaiting approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin a human safety trial of an experimental vaccine, possibly as soon as next month .

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that two experimental Ebola vaccines were set to enter clinical tri-

NewLink Genetics Corp, which licensed an Ebola vaccine developed

by Canadian government scientists, has enough doses on hand to launch the first human safety trial of an Ebola vaccine this summer, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

The company has also lined up two contract manufacturing companies and possibly a third and will be able to produce tens of thousands of vaccine doses within “the next month or two,” Dr Charles Link said in an interview.

The largest Ebola outbreak in history, which has killed more than 1,000 people in West Africa, has lent an unprecedented urgency to efforts to develop vaccines and treatments, which for years had largely languished.

Last week, the Ames, Iowa-based company’s wholly owned subsidiary, BioProtection Systems Corp, received $1m from the United States Defense Threat

Gaza-Israel toll: women, children and civilians July 8 - Aug 14 breakdown* by UNOCHA Total Palestinians killed 1,965

Known civilians 1,417

Children 458 Women 238 Civilian men

721

Unknown status

322

Members of armed groups

226

Israeli soldiers Civilians in Israel

64

3 *Preliminary data

Humanitarian crisis in Gaza More than 9,980 injured Including 3,000 children 370,000 People in emergency shelters or with host families 100,000 people’s homes in Gaza have been destroyed or severely damaged

Buildings destroyed or damaged Residential structures Schools Including 25 destroyed or severely damaged

92

Beit Lahiya

177

Beit Hanun Jabaliya

38

Gaza city

158 GAZA

46

Deir al-Balah

159

165

35

Khan Yunis

134 Rafah

ISRAEL

20 5 km Source: UNOCHA/PCHR

als in the coming weeks and that there could be enough early-stage data to consider their emergency use late this year.

“There is a way to fast-track clinical trials,” WHO Assistant Director-General Marie-Paule Kieny said.

WHO’s interest has acted like a starter’s pistol in the race to get Ebola drugs or vaccines into the field. On Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, wrote in an essay in the New England Journal of Medicine that «production scale-up» of ZMapp is under way but will take time.

ZMapp is the cocktail of antibodies, produced by Mapp Biopharmaceutical of San Diego, given to two American medical workers who contracted Ebola and were evacuated to Atlanta.

Also on Wednesday, Canada’s Tekmira Pharmaceuticals said it was discussing options for its experimental Ebola treatment with governments and other agencies, including the WHO. l

Erdogan urges his party to forge ahead with new constitution n Reuters, Ankara Turkish president-elect Tayyip Erdogan urged his AK Party on Thursday to secure a stronger parliamentary majority next year to enable them to re-write the constitution, signalling no let-up in his drive to strengthen the presidency.

Erdogan secured his place in history as Turkey’s first directly elected head of state on Sunday, taking him a step closer to the presidential system he covets for the European Union candidate nation and Nato member state.

His opponents fear an increasingly authoritarian state under Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than a decade, and whose Islamist roots and intolerance of dissent they fear is taking Turkey further away from Western values.

“I said before that the presidential

elections would be the starting gun for the 2015 (general) elections,” Erdogan told a meeting of AK Party provincial leaders in a speech broadcast on Turkish television.

“Our target should be to acquire at least a majority to establish the new constitution. I don’t believe that you will compromise on this,” he said.

Erdogan will have to break formal links with the AK Party he founded 13 years ago once he is sworn in as president on Aug. 28. He wants a pliant successor as leader of the party, likely also to be his next prime minister, in order to secure a stronger parliament majority in polls next June. Should his influence over the party wane, Erdogan could struggle to force through the constitutional changes he wants to create an executive presidency - a reform which requires either a two thirds majority in parliament or a popular vote. l

Israeli-Palestinian talks face major hurdles as new truce begins n Reuters, Jerusalem/Gaza Israel and the Palestinians have given themselves five days to come up with a comprehensive agreement to end the war in Gaza. While that is a welcome extension on past ceasefires, there is still a dangerously long way to go to bridge their differences.

After agreeing to Egypt’s proposal to extend the halt in hostilities until Aug. 18 - a deal clinched with barely an hour to run on the previous, 72hour pause - Palestinian and Israeli negotiators left Cairo to consult with their leaders.

One Palestinian faction headed for Ramallah, the main city in the West Bank, to meet Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, while some representatives of the Islamist group Hamas flew to Qatar to see Khaled Meshaal, their leader in exile, and others returned to Gaza.

Few precise details of the indirect negotiations have emerged, but the broad outlines are well known: the Palestinians want an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza, an extension of the strip’s maritime and security boundaries and the building of a sea port and reopening of an airport in the enclave.

For their part, the Israelis want an end to rocket fire from Gaza, the full demilitarisation of the territory, and for Abbas’s PA to take over responsibility for managing Gaza’s 12 km (7.5 mile) border with Egypt at Rafah, an effort to prevent the smuggling of weapons and other military-use equipment.

In any negotiation, no party ever ends up getting everything it wants.

But perhaps nowhere in the world is it harder to secure compromises than in the Middle East, making Egypt’s high-stakes mediation particularly touch-and-go.

While Hamas, which controls Gaza, is likely to accede to the PA taking over administration of the Rafah border, and Israel can agree to loosen maritime restrictions and allow a freer flow of goods into Gaza, steps beyond that become trickier.

Sticking points

Israel has made clear that any discussion of a Gaza sea port is not going to happen now, and Hamas has said it has no intention of disarming. And therein lies the rub.

In an interview this week, Yair Lapid, Israel’s finance minister and the leader of its second largest party, called demilitarisation the overriding goal.

Without it, the cycle of violence in Gaza - Hamas firing rockets, Israel responding with air strikes - was only likely to continue.

lence replaces negotiation.

Yet Hamas is equally determined that it cannot and will not give up its arms, which are inherent in the struggle to end what it sees as Israel’s occupation of the whole of historical Palestine, not just the West Bank.

“We are a resistance movement.

If we accept removing our arms, the very reason for our existence gets negated,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas’s spokesman. “Arms of the resistance are linked to ending the occupation of Palestinian lands.”

Tighter oversight

Hamas is likely to accede to the PA taking over administration of the Rafah border “Our goal is simple: keeping the security interests of Israel, bringing back the PA to Gaza, and then disarmament or demilitarisation of Gaza,” Lapid told Reuters.

“We understand that the other side of this equation is the rehabilitation of Gaza.”

Israel will not deal directly with Hamas, which it regards as a terrorist organisation. However, after a seven-year rift with Abbas that left it in sole control of Gaza, Hamas signed a unity agreement in April that acknowledges a role for the PA. At the beginning of the Gaza war, Abbas was critical of Hamas’s actions, but Hamas now appears to accept that if it wants to be able to pay public workers and retain influence, it needs to let the PA take back some authority in Gaza, which will help open the purse strings.

With four wars in the past eight years, the most recent having killed 1,945 Palestinians, mostly civilians, as well as 64 Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel, recent Gaza history clearly shows the human toll when vio-

The best that might be hoped in terms of demilitarisation is the end of rocket fire from Gaza, tighter oversight of Hamas’s armed wing and other militant groups and more restrictions on who bears arms beyond Gaza’s police force.

But even then, any of those steps will be heavily contingent on what steps Israel is prepared to take on the sea port or reconstruction of Gaza’s demolished airport.

Without strict monitoring of how goods moving into Gaza are used - for the reconstruction of buildings rather than the digging of a new tunnel network, for example - Israel is likely to be very reluctant to provide more breathing room.

How that monitoring is carried out and by whom is another issue, all of which will have to be painstakingly detailed if trust is to be established on both sides. All the while, one or two loose rockets from Gaza or Israeli troop movements that unsettle Hamas have the potential to reignite the conflict.

That said, after a month of intense fighting - with a huge cost in lives lost, destroyed infrastructure and traumatised families on both sides of the border - there would appear to be little appetite in Israel or Gaza for more bloodshed.

With two 72-hour ceasefires having largely held and a new 120-hour one in place, at least both the Palestinians and Israelis are now intently focused on the nitty-gritty steps needed to secure a longer-lasting peace. l

Police fire tear gas, stun grenades at Missouri protesters n Reuters, Ferguson Mo Police in Ferguson, Missouri, fired tear gas, stun grenades and smoke bombs to disperse some 350 protesters late Wednesday, the fourth night of racially charged demonstrations after police shot to death an unarmed black teen.

Some demonstrators hurled rocks at police as others scattered, while smoke engulfed the area. A Reuters reporter saw two young men preparing what looked like petrol bombs in a bus-stop shelter, their faces covered by bandanas. Police said protesters had thrown petrol bombs at officers.

Protesters have gathered every night since Saturday when 18-yearold Michael Brown was shot to death in the mostly black suburb of St. Louis, during what authorities said was a struggle over a gun in a police car.

Some witnesses say he was outside the car with his hands up.

Police have deployed camouflage-clad officers in body armor, including one manning a rifle on a tripod atop an armored car, to Ferguson.

“I’ve had enough of being pushed around because of the color of my skin.

I’m sick of this police brutality,” said one protester, who gave only his first name, Terrell, 18. “I’m going to keep coming back here night after night until we get justice.”

A St Louis alderman, Antonio French, was among some 10 people arrested on Wednesday evening, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper reported.

About 40 protesters have been arrested since Saturday.

National figures from President Barack Obama to civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton have called for a peaceful response to the shooting.

Obama, who is vacationing on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard, was briefed on Wednesday night about events in Ferguson by senior advisor Valerie Jarrett and US Attorney General Eric Holder, the White House said.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said in a series of Twitter messages he would visit the area on Thursday, and urged “law enforcement to respect rights of residents (and) press” with the hopes that the “ongoing crisis” does not compound Saturday’s “tragedy.” l

Hamas: Peace deal must meet people’s demands n Agencies Hamas has said it will not sign a peace deal with Israel that fails to meet the demands of its people.

Khalil al-Haya, the Palestinian group’s negotiator at the talks in Egypt seeking to stop fighting in Gaza, said on Thursday they were negotiating with a difficult side “versed in procrastination.”

“We are keen on having an agreement concluded. It must satisfy the demands of our people,” said al-Haya during public address in which he briefed the people of Gaza on the progress of the talks.

Haya said Hamas would continue to demand the end of what he called “unjust incursions” and a permanent lifting of the siege imposed by Israel on Gaza in 2006.

The comments came hours after the truce between Hamas and Israel was extended for five days as negotiators from both sides press ahead with the talks in Cairo.

Members of the Palestinian delegation said they would return to Cairo on Saturday night to begin more talks on Sunday.

Egyptian and Palestinian sources told Reuters news agency Israel had tentatively agreed to allow some supplies into Gaza and relax curbs on the cross-border movement of people and goods, subject to certain conditions.

“It was a war of necessity not a war of choice. We had no choice but to defend ourselves,” al-Haya said.

“We are united and are unified in blood and dead bodies. We are one front, one side, one body ... We are all enaged in one battle defending our people. The war is the beginning of liberation.

Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Gaza, said Haya was vague about the precise stage the talks have reached.

A renewed truce between the two sides appeared to be holding despite a shaky start.

The Israeli military on Thursday said fighters in Gaza breached the truce and fired eight rockets at Israel and that in response, aircraft targeted multiple “rocket launchers and terror sites” across the enclave. l

DHAKA TRIBUNE

World

9

Friday, August 15, 2014

Anti government protesters march towards Islamabad n Reuters, Lahore Pakistan Thousands of anti-government protesters began to march on the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Thursday from the eastern city of Lahore, raising fears about political stability and prospects for civilian rule in the nuclear-armed country.

Two protest groups - one led by cricketer-turned-opposition politician Imran Khan, and the other by activist cleric Tahir ul-Qadri - are heading to the capital to demand that a government they condemn as corrupt steps down.

Both marches were initially banned but late on Wednesday the government said Khan’s march could go ahead. On Thursday, police announced that Qadri could also march, despite previous calls for his arrest by the provincial government.

Khan and Qadri are not officially allied though both are sworn enemies of the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose party swept an election last year in the first transfer of power from one elected government to another in coup-prone Pakistan’s history.

Qadri, a Muslim preacher turned political activist who usually lives in Canada, says he wants to see the government out by the end of the month. His supporters, many from a network of Islamic schools and charities, have been involved in several

NEWS BITES

Saudis give UN $100m ‘to fight terrorism’

n AP Saudi Arabia has handed over a cheque for $100m to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to help finance the UN’s centre to combat global terrorism.

The UN chief welcomed the gift at a ceremony in his office and said the recent upsurge in terrorism in a number of countries and regions - most dramatically, the Islamic State group’s takeover of a large swath of Syria and Iraq - “underscores the challenge before us.”

Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, who presented the cheque with the Saudi UN ambassador, stressed that “terrorism is a scourge and an evil that affects all of us.”

He said it can only be dealt with if all countries and peoples unite to deal with the threat.

“We believe that the United Nations can play a very strong and very effective role in mobilising the efforts of the world to counter this evil,” al-Jubeir said. “Terrorism knows no religion. It knows no ethnicity. It has no nationality. It has no humanity. It has no compassion. It has no justice,” he said. l

deadly clashes with police.

Qadri promises the country much if his movement triumphs.

“Every homeless person will be provided housing; every unemployed person will be given a job; low paid people will be provided with daily necessities,” Qadri said in a speech on Thursday.

One of Qadri’s main complaints is that the killing of his supporters by police is not being properly investigated. About 2,000 of his supporters have been arrested, police say.

Last week, he called on his supporters to retaliate if attacked by police, raising fears of violence.

Election complaints

The protests and fears of clashes have fuelled tension in the country of 180-million people, beset by an Islamist militant insurgency, chronic power shortages and a sluggish economy.

The political confrontation has revived concern about the central issue in Pakistani politics: competition for power between the military and civilian leaders.

Any threat to Pakistan’s stability alarms its allies and neighbours, who fear rising religious intolerance and the Islamist militants who find refuge there.

Some officials had accused elements within the powerful military of orchestrating the protests to weaken the civil-

ian government. The military has declined to comment but has previously said it does not meddle in politics.

Many analysts doubt whether the military wants to seize power, but there is a widespread perception it could use the opportunity to put the civilian government under its thumb.

Despite those perceptions, Sharif is relying on the military for security in the face of the challenges. As a result, the government is likely less determined to pursue polices the military objects to, such as the prosecution on treason charges of former military leader Pervez Musharraf, analysts say.

Khan said he was cheated in the general election in May last year and wants a proper investigation into his complaints.

His supporters were exuberant despite a huge traffic jam as they tried to set off on the 370-km (230-mile) journey to Islamabad on Thursday, an Independence Day holiday inPakistan.

Khan travelled in a modified, bulletproof shipping container with windows. Many of his supporters carried sleeping mats and food, determined to camp on Islamabad streets until their demands were met - including a demand for Sharif to resign.

“I was treated at his cancer hospital free of cost,” said 50-year-old housewife Aasia Khan, referring to a charitable hospital that Khan set up in memo-

Supporters of Canada-based preacher Tahir-ul-Qadri, hold sticks as they march in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore yesterday. Thousands of protesters have set off from the Pakistani city of Lahore to march on the capital in a bid to unseat the government they claim was elected by fraud AFP ry of his mother. “I owe him a lot and will support him until I die.”

Khan’s political ambitions were for years dismissed but he built up sup-

close ties with the United States.

He won 34 seats in the 342-seat lower house of parliament in the last election. Sharif’s party won 190 seats. l

Governor of Iraq’s Sunni heartland secures US support

Iraq: UN sounds alarm on humanitarian crisis

n Reuters, Baghdad

n BBC

The governor of Iraq’s Sunni heartland Anbar Province said he has asked for and secured US support in the battle against Islamic State militants because opponents of the group may not have the stamina for a long fight.

Ahmed Khalaf al-Dulaimi told Reuters his request, made in meetings with US diplomats and a senior military officer, included air support against the militants who have a tight grip on large parts of Anbar and the north.

Dulaimi said the Americans had promised to help.

“Our first goal is the air support.

Their technology capability will offer a lot of intelligence information and monitoring of the desert and many things which we are in need of,” he said in a telephone interview.

“No date was decided but it will be very soon and there will be a presence for the Americans in the western area.”

The was no immediate comment from US officials.

A dramatic push by the Islamic State through northern Iraq to the border with the semi-autonomous Kurdish region alarmed Baghdad and drew the first US air strikes on Iraq since the withdrawal of American troops in 2011.

US involvement in Anbar is a far

more sensitive matter.

The region was deeply anti-American during the US occupation, with everyone from ordinary Iraqis to powerful Sunni tribes to al Qaeda taking up arms against US troops.

The United States mounted its biggest offensive of the occupation against a staggering variety of Islamist militants in the city of Falluja in Anbar, with its soldiers experiencing some of the fiercest combat since the Vietnam War. Eventually, the US military was able to persuade some of its most die-hard Sunni opponents to turn against al Qaeda, which is seen as less hardline than the Islamic State. l

The UN has declared its highest level of emergency in Iraq as a humanitarian crisis follows the rapid advance by Islamic State militants in the north.

Kurdish officials said the situation in Dohuk city, with 150,000 refugees, was now critical.

But the US said a rescue mission to aid thousands who fled to Mt Sinjar was unlikely as it had found fewer people and better conditions than expected The UN estimates that 1.2 million Iraqis have been internally displaced.

The three other countries that have the same emergency status are Syria,

South Sudan and the Central African Republic.

The declaration by the UN of a “Level 3 Emergency” would “facilitate mobilisation of additional resources in goods, funds and assets to ensure a more effective response to the humanitarian needs of populations affected by forced displacements,” said UN special representative Nickolay Mladenov.

The situation of displaced people on Mount Sinjar remained critical, he said.

The UN had estimated that tens of thousands of people, most from the Christian and Yazidi religious minorities, were besieged on the mountain after being forced to flee their homes. l

Indian plane dives 1,500m as pilot ‘sleeps’

GUN-SALUTE FOR HIS HOLINESS

n Agencies

India clears bill to replace collegium system

n Agencies

Parliament cleared on Thursday a bill that will facilitate setting up of a commission for the appointment of judges, replacing the much-criticised 20-year-old collegium system, a move some jurists said they would challenge in the Supreme Court.

A day after passage in the Lok Sabha, the Constitution Amendment Bill, was cleared by the Rajya Sabha with 179 votes in favour and one abstention of noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani, while the National Judicial Appointments Commission Bill, 2014 was approved by voice vote. l

port, in particular among students.

The one-time playboy cricket star developed a reputation as a conservative maverick and questioned Pakistan’s

South Korean troops fire heavy artillery to welcome Pope Francis upon his arrival at Seoul Air Base in Seongnam yesterday. Pope Francis arrived in South Korea looking to fuel a new era of Catholic growth in Asia AFP

India’s civil aviation regulator has ordered Jet Airways to suspend two pilots after a flight to Brussels dived 1,500 metres, forcing air traffic controllers to issue an emergency warning.

The Times of India said the captain was on a scheduled rest break when the plane dropped over Turkey, putting it at an altitude assigned to another aircraft last Friday.

Air traffic controllers in Ankara had to issue an emergency warning to the co-pilot on duty, who the paper said “did not notice that the aircraft had lost altitude” because she was using her tablet computer at the time.

The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Thursday said it had summoned the captain and co-pilot for questioning over what it called a “serious incident” during the flight

from Mumbai to Brussels while it was reportedly carrying 280 passengers.

“Both the pilots have been taken off the roster pending inquiry,” said the regulator in a statement.

“Additionally, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau has been asked to conduct a detailed investigation into the incident.”

The airline said it had launched its own investigation.

“Safety is of paramount importance to Jet Airways, as is also the welfare of our guests and crew,” it said in a statement.

Jet Airways, in which Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways has a 24 percent stake, is India’s second-biggest carrier.

India’s air passenger market has expanded at breakneck speed, but many companies are laden with debt due to fare wars, high fuel costs and shoddy infrastructure. l

From jihad to pop culture, Islamists present new face on Web n Reuters, Washington

The jihadist calling himself Abdullah caused a brief stir on the Internet this week - but not, to his disappointment, because of his backing for Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

Instead, his comments posted on Twitter over the death of US actor Robin Williams went viral, prompting a blizzard of facetious questions about his film tastes.

Until recently, Islamist militant websites were a largely dark and hidden corner of the Internet, rarely seen by outsiders beyond the intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Increasingly, however, groups like the Islamic State - a former al Qaeda affiliate until recently known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) - are using the same platforms as everyone else, often in English.

Other militant Islamist Twitter users also weighed in on Williams, most welcoming his death, in part because of a 2002 satirical sketch in which he

lampooned jihadists. Some also mentioned his visits to US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While Abdullah said he hoped the actor was now burning in hell, he exchanged tweets with another militant about their mutual enjoyment of Williams’ 1995 children’s film “Jumanji.”

He then found himself in multiple conversations about his movie taste, revealing his favorite Disney film was “The Lion King.” Website Buzzfeed collated a list of that and similar tweets from other jihadists, further fuelling the conversation (http://www.buzzfeed. com/jaimieetkin/jihadis-are-tweetingthat-they-hate-robin-williams) “ This is kinda awkward,” Abdullah tweeted in successive messages. “I’m actually worried that people will start to follow me because they wanna hear about my favorite movies instead of reporting jihad.” “I’m here to report news, not rate romantic comedies.”

The true identity of Abdullah - who tweets under the handle @mujahid4life - is unknown. His account de-

scribes him as 19 years old, a supporter of the Islamic State and its aim of a Sunni Islamic caliphate. It adds that he is “anti-democracy,” opposed to Shi’ite Islam and “harsh on kuffar,” a derogatory term for non-Muslims.

His profile picture shows a young man in a balaclava and military fatigues in a desert. His use of words and spelling suggests he may be British. Security experts and officials say several hundred Britons or more have fought in Syria and Iraq.

“Assuming these are genuine, it’s a great example of how weird and interconnected everything has become,” John Bassett, a former senior official at British intelligence agency GCHQ and now a fellow at Oxford University, said of the Robin Williams tweets. “Increasingly, some of these people come from the same background we do and they use exactly the same tools.”

Verifying the authenticity of the account is impossible and Abdullah did not respond directly to a tweet from Reuters.

Varied PR

Having fought Syrian government forces for more than two years, ISIL - now the Islamic State - has taken over much of north and central Iraq in recent weeks.

While it does not appear to have an official web presence or Twitter account, it does boast a growing number of online supporters and activists. Despite periodic calls to do so, Twitter has not blocked their accounts. Even if it did, experts say, they would simply reappear under another label.

In general, the Islamic State appears much more confident on the Internet and social media than counterparts such as Somalia’s al Shabaab, Nigeria’s Boko Haram, or the al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and north Africa.

In March, ISIL - now disavowed by al Qaeda - published a second annual online report of its activities, a 400page document including statistics on attacks.

“Al Qaeda and its affiliates have al-

ways been a disparate group and that means the PR effort can also be very varied,” says John Drake, a Middle East expert for London consultancy AKE. “With ISIL, you have a variety of people with different life experiences and views. That’s coming through more now.”

In between dozens of tweets expressing commitment to sharia, disregard for international law and anger at other Muslim groups for not backing the Islamic State against US airstrikes, Abdullah made a similar point.

“Is it so hard to imagine I 1) support #IS (and) 2) watch movies?” he wrote.

Some militants welcome the new voices.

“IS needs a face to the West who grew up there, understands the sentiment, is articulate but also knowledgeable Islamically,” wrote @AmreekiWitness, a Islamist Twitter user whose account calls for the conquest of the Americas.

Current and former Western security officials say they take the online

militant chatter seriously, including periodic threats to attack America and the West.

If users are based in western countries themselves, they risk being arrested under counter-terrorism or hate crime legislation. If they are in conflict areas such as Syria or Iraq, they may be harder to stop, but again may be identified and then prosecuted on their return.

There is no doubt Twitter accounts such as Abdullah’s make Islamist fighters seem more accessible and closer to the mainstream. That might, some security experts worry, help them attract new recruits.

For now, however, that familiarity seems also to produce contempt.

Anti-Islamic State tweets from Western users have become increasingly widespread.

“Can’t wait to see how many of you become martyrs tonight,” wrote one US Twitter user, referring to US bombing raids against Islamist fighters in Iraq. l

10

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Editorial

Friday, August 15, 2014

CODE-CRACKER

Look forward in remembrance

T

hirty-nine years have passed since the brutal assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and all but two members of his family.

As the nation recalls the dark events of August 15, 1975 which plunged the nation into a series of coups and military rule for 15 years, we should strive to look forward in hope.

Bangladesh’s independence today is the most important legacy of the leadership provided

by Bangabandhu. Having articulated the case for independence, his inspiration held the people together during the liberation war.

It is a tragedy that he was not able to live to lead the nation longer towards his vision of a peaceful and prosperous Sonar Bangla. It is sobering that it took years of impunity before the law eventually acted to try his killers.

We need to remember today that while he faced numerous difficulties and huge challenges after independence, Mujib demonstrated much pragmatism and statesmanship in his dealings with other nations, and his postindependence vision can still inspire a better future today.

The National Day of Mourning should not be a partisan occasion.

It should be an opportunity for people of all views and allegiances to reflect on Bangabandhu’s vision and on how the nation can best move forward.

Despite many achievements since the 70s, huge numbers still languish in need of a more peaceful and prosperous future.

We hope all our political leaders today can move forward with this in mind, and act on Bangabandhu’s vision to take Bangladesh forward.

Be heard Write to Dhaka Tribune FR Tower, 8/C Panthapath, Sukrabad, Dhaka-1207 Email letters.dt@dhakatribune.com Send us your Op-Ed articles: opinion.dt@dhakatribune.com www.dhakatribune.com Join our Facebook community: https://www.facebook.com/DhakaTribune

In conversation with Band Lalon August 9

Having articulated the case for independence, his inspiration held the people together during the liberation war

Toughen consumer safety laws

U

nsafe, poor-quality products are routinely sold across the country.

Despite rising public concern and the passage of the Consumer Rights Protection Act in 2009, the government is failing to ensure cheap and accessible redress mechanisms for ensuring consumer rights.

The low priority given to consumer issues is one factor behind the rampant violations of food safety laws. While public and media attention has ensured that many retailers and consumers alike are seeking to provide assurance that food is sold safe from poisonous levels of chemicals, the authorities need to take much firmer action on all aspects of consumer protection.

Particular attention needs to be paid to product safety standards.

A new study by the Environment and Social Development Organisation NGO has found that 97% of toys surveyed contained high concentrations of lead, bromine , cadmium, and chromium.

Exposure to high levels of heavy metals is especially detrimental to young people and has been cited as increasing the risk of children developing learning disabilities and hormonal problems.

New laws are needed to prevent exposure to toxic chemicals through toys. At present, the Bangladesh Standards Testing Institute does not regularly examine toys in their laboratories, as there is no law or regulation requiring such monitoring.

The government must bring in clear regulations so that all toys sold in the country are certified as containing no harmful levels of chemicals.

Inspection to ensure safe levels is required whenever Bangladeshi toy producers export to overseas markets such as the EU. There is no reason why the government cannot insist on similarly safe standards when toys are imported or sold within the country.

New laws needed to prevent exposure to toxic chemicals through toys

Sourav Deyya Chakma “Most of the musicians of the country are frustrated about the dilapidated situation of the audio industry. What is your comment?

‘The truth is that the audio industry is dying.

The telecommunication companies are not standing by any rules and are responsible for the demolition of this industry. They are not giving any royalty to the artistes, but they are making money

Rampant extortion on Gazipur’s highway

August 10

Mushfiqur Rahman Colin I was an eyewitness of this story when moving through this way the day before yesterday. A police officer blocked our vehicle for checking purposes, but I was wondering why his nameplate was blanked.

He was blocking vehicles randomly just to harass travelers in the name of routine checks and those who managed to give him money got released.

Rashid Zaman Bangladeshi motorway? When the people in power are extortionists, what do you expect from thugs in the corner?

Now minister terms journalists ‘disgusting and dirty’ August 9

Arch Bishop We should be thankful in that he is at least being honest about what his government really thinks of the free press, what it wants to do with it, and what the real purpose is of the Broadcast Policy.

In unambiguous terms, the minister has said he wants to blow journalists up and the Broadcast Policy is meant to “control” them. After this refreshing honesty, if any journalist or civil society member still believes that the Awami League has changed its heart from the “one party, four newspaper” Baksal dictatorship, then whose fault is it?

Foreign satellite channels to pay double to enter Bangladesh August 10

Shakib Rahman It should be more than double.

out of their talent. By using songs as welcome tunes and jingles in commercials, the telecoms are the only ones benefiting from the entire process. They are taking these songs from the CP (content provider) instead of buying directly from the musicians and disseminating them in the cell phones through their network. The telecom industry is getting 90% profit from the sale of a song and 5% goes to the CP, and whatever is left, the artist receives it. This is sheer exploitation.

‘The big picture is that if an artiste is not being sponsored by a telecom company, their situation is like that of a beggar. Now, musicians are knocking the doors of telecoms to support them, which should not be the case.

It is a pity. Once talent was acknowledged by producers and listeners, the telecom industry have seized their recognition and are doing a monopoly business by creating a chain which is destroying the audio industry.’”

Good answer!

How to solve: Each number in our CODE-CRACKER grid represents a different letter of the alphabet. For example, today 5 represents O so fill O every time the figure 5 appears.

You have two letters in the control grid to start you off. Enter them in the appropriate squares in the main grid, then use your knowledge of words to work out which letters go in the missing squares.

Some letters of the alphabet may not be used.

As you get the letters, fill in the other squares with the same number in the main grid, and the control grid. Check off the list of alphabetical letters as you identify them.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

SUDOKU How to solve: Fill in the blank spaces with the numbers 1 – 9. Every row, column and 3 x 3 box must contain all nine digits with no number repeating.

Israel and Middle East August 8

An aware Muslim “Gaza in ruins” was your front page headline. One destroys before rebuilding, and in this case, it seems to be work in progress, to make all of Gaza into a “permanent” part of Israel. The determined Israelis seem to have unending lust for territories, and the extermination of the Palestinians. The realities of Palestine today should make all Arabs ponder where they are heading. Israel appears to believe that might and money can carve them out right for them. In reality, they control world finance today.

Already they are teaching the Palestinians a bitter, harsh, and cruel lesson, which Jordan has already learned. Iraq has been doing a favour to Israel unilaterally, and will be ready for the “fall” once they are bled dry in the civil war.

One should read Robert Fisk’s book, “Pity the Nation,” which is a vivid portrayal of the miseries of the Palestinians and the Lebanese. Will the Arabs please wake up to the realities that face them?

Identify energy guzzlers August 9

Engr SA Mansoor This refers to the PM’s energy adviser’s public statement about reining in energy and power guzzlers. Using our local coal for power generation should be strongly taken up as a priority, to conserve our limited natural gas resources and reduce the import of fuel for power generation.

We should utilise solid waste to generate methane gas for power. This has extensively been done in almost all urban areas in Thailand, and in many villages too. We, on the other hand, spend money to lay sewage pipelines in urban areas, and to process it and dump it into our rivers.

On another note, a positive way to conserve energy usage should be to provide import tax rebates for the import of energy and fuel-efficient plant equipment and vehicles. This can be easily done, and is the logical and proper way to go about energy conservation in Bangladesh.

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Fold in cloth (5) 5 Soft sheepskin leather (4) 8 Hostility (6) 9 Christmas song (5) 10 Agitate (4) 11 Stair handrail post (5) 12 Tree (3) 15 Becomes firm (4) 18 Pleasure trips (5) 21 Fish eggs (3) 22 Anon (4) 24 Insect (4) 25 White heron (5) 28 Sophisticated (6) 29 Edges (4) 30 Indian monetary unit (5)

DOWN 1 Strike-enforcing group (6) 2 Corn spike (3) 3 In a short time (4) 4 Roofing item (4) 5 Tricks (5) 6 Inn’s attendant for horses (6) 7 And not (3) 13 Behold! (2) 14 Place holding objects of interest (6) 16 Towards (2) 17 Becomes established (6) 19 Bellows (5) 20 Accordingly (2) 23 At hand (4) 24 Distant (3) 26 Wildebeest (3) 27 Corded fabric (3)

Sangakkara runs between wickets during third day of opening Test match against Pakistan

CALVIN AND HOBBES

August 10

YESTERDAY’S SOLUTIONS CODE-CRACKER

CROSSWORD Attapar Rezoan What a play by Sangakkara!

PEANUTS

Mohammad Ashraful Jr. He’s a legend.

40 killed in Iran plane crash August 10

Hena Rashid Omg … another!

Mashrur Mobin And the crashes continue.

SK What’s wrong with the world, and airlines??

MO Something’s gone wrong with aviation.

SUDOKU

DHAKA TRIBUNE

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Friday, August 15, 2014

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Great men never die

Concerned with mankind

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n Nadeem Qadir

may be the most fortunate person, and also the most unfortunate person at the same time. I remember when I met the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and also when I witnessed his brutal killing along with most of his family members on August 15, 1975.

My mother, tired of a life without her husband and bringing up her children with no help from her siblings, decided to meet Bangabandhu to get a suitable job. But her repeated request to meet him was possibly ignored by his office staff.

So one fine morning, along with my siblings, I accompanied my mother to that famous house on Road 32 in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi residential area.

The guard stopped us at the gate. My mother just replied that she was the wife of martyred freedom fighter Col Qadir, and walked into the premises

BANGLADESH OLD PHOTO ARCHIVE

of the house. Somebody ushered us to the ground floor drawing room to wait as Bangabandhu was getting ready to go to the office.

I waited in the verandah. Suddenly, I saw the great man. A towering figure with a very kind face was coming down the stairs. I greeted him. He asked: “Who are you, my child?” I said my mother has come to see him. My mother Hasna Hena Qadir joined us and gave her identity.

Bangabandhu asked his aides to take us to Ganabhaban located at Hare Road. We rushed, and he welcomed us at the guestroom of his office. He recalled that he met my father, martyred freedom fighter Lt Col M Abdul Qadir after his release from the Agortala conspiracy case. Bangabandhu cried and assured my mother he would take care of her.

He first gave her a job as a section officer in the Social Welfare Ministry – my mother’s first ever job. She did not enjoy that, and requested Bangabandhu

to post her abroad for our better education as well as peace of mind. Bangabandhu approved immediately, and asked my mother to keep in touch with his Foreign Minister Dr Kamal Hossain, who was present at Ganabhaban.

But after the 1975 murders, her posting never took place.

Bangabandhu took me and my little brother on his lap, and gave us Tk500 each for chocolates. I still remember that love and affection, something that I feel when I meet his proud daughter Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Those meetings with Bangabandhu were the fortunate part of my life.

In my professional life, I spent nearly 18 years with AFP, one of the top international news agencies of the world along with AP and Reuters. There, I often came across attempts to distort history when it came to Bangabandhu and his role in our 1971 Independence War. I always tried to correct it despite knowing that one of my colleagues had a very different ideological mindset,

and worked with the Pakistan Army all through 1971 as a reporter.

I wrote a report on June 26, 1996, about Bangabandhu getting his overdue state honour after Sheikh Hasina brought the Awami League to power in 1996 after 22 years. I almost lost

Mausoleum in Tungipara a few days back, I was happy to notice that the new generation now knew the nation’s correct history. They spoke of following the footsteps of the great leader in building a Golden Bengal.

Bangabandhu wrote in his diary in

I was happy to notice that the new generation now knew the nation’s correct history

my job for using the term “country’s founding father” while referring to Bangabandhu. The subtle distortion of history had started in 1975, and continued forcefully until 2006, with a little break between 1996 and 2000.

But when I visited Bangabandhu’s

1973: “As a man, what concerns mankind concerns me. As a Bangalee, I am deeply involved in all that concerns Bangalees. This abiding involvement is born of, and is nourished by love, enduring love, which gives meaning to my politics and to my very being.”

As I stood in front of Bangabandhu’s grave, I remembered those words which I had written many times, and thought I was among the most fortunate of Bangladeshis, as I had the chance to get his love and affection, but at the same time, the most unfortunate, as I had to see him killed and witnessed attempts to tarnish his image by lies, lies, and more lies.

It is true, great men never die.

Despite all attempts, he lives on in the hearts of millions of people around the world.

A Western journalist asked me in New York: “What kind of people are you, that you killed the man who had given you a country, and the right to speak in your mother tongue?” I had no answer, and I still don’t. We should be ashamed, and correct what wrong has been done. We should do our best to make Bangladesh a Golden Bengal. l Nadeem Qadir, a senior journalist, is a UNCA Dag Hammarskjold Scholar in journalism.

The man who took a bullet for Bangabandhu n Enayetullah Khan

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n the dawn of August 15, 1975, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman made one of his final phone calls to his military secretary Col Jamil Uddin Ahmad. He had been attacked, Bangabandhu told Col Jamil, and the residence on Road 32 was surrounded.

Then the line went dead.

On a night when conspiracy was afoot and uncertainty gripped the city, and with the country’s leadership seemingly paralysed, Col Jamil did not shrink from doing his duty. He called senior officers, including the chief of army staff, Gen Shafiullah, and told them to send in troops. He then ordered the Presidential Guard Regiment, charged to defend Bangabandhu, and headed for Road 32 immediately.

Calmly holstering his service revolver, Jamil tried to reassure his wife and children: “Bangabandhu is in danger. How can I not go?”

“Look after my daughters,” was his final request before he mounted his jeep and headed off into the darkness.

Arriving in front of Sobhanbagh mosque, Col Jamil found that the PGR convoy had halted. He demanded to know the reason, and was told that there were army units ahead and that there was gunfire. He tried to convince the troops to march forward. Then realising that time was running out, he

got into his jeep and prepared to drive into Road 32 himself.

The valiant patriot was shot dead as he sat in his jeep and embraced martyrdom, trying to save the leader whom he had, like many others, sworn to protect. It was the steadfast adherence to his principles that guided Col Jamil in the final moments of his life.

On a night when many brave souls hesitated, Jamil did not waver. It was the supreme test of courage and honour – and he passed with flying colours.

A man of extraordinary character, Col Jamil had been held hostage in Pakistan during the Liberation War. But his integrity and professionalism as a career army officer led him to be appointed military secretary to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in an independent Bangladesh.

Gen Shafiullah, who had trained with Jamil at the Pakistan Military Academy, had this to say when remembering his slain comrade many years later: “Jamil Bhai, myself, and

Jamil tried to reassure his wife and children: ‘Bangabandhu is in danger. How can I not go?’

It was not until about 2pm on August 16, 1975 that the family of Col Jamil learnt anything definitive about his fate. A call came from Gen Shafiullah, whom Col Jamil had asked at dawn to send troops to Bangabandhu’s rescue.

Mrs Jamil answered the phone and the chief of army choked as he broke the news of her husband’s death. Bangladesh had lost a true patriot.

the few Bangalee officers who were in Pakistan in those days had a regular liaison among ourselves. That was the time when Bangalee nationalism was at its budding stage. As members of the majority of the population of Pakistan, we saw it the hard way how small our representations had been in the armed forces. Whenever we met, we used to talk about this. Jamil Bhai’s

sense of nationalism was the strongest among us, and at times he would burst out in anger and desperation.”

In 2010, Jamil was promoted posthumously to the rank of Brig General, and awarded the Bir Uttam in recognition of his valour as he was killed trying to save Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib on the fateful morning of August 15, 1975.

That the recognition was so late in coming is a sign of the polarisation of our country, where even supreme acts of courage and sacrifice are seen through the lens of partisanship. For the nation, it’s a belated reminder of the man’s greatness. And it is also a time to reflect on what the actions of this true hero meant to Bangladesh’s history in general.

“Jamil’s soul will be in peace and I will also die in peace,” Jamil’s eldest daughter Tehmina Enayet said. “My father was an honest officer. I’m proud that my father sacrificed his life for such a great leader.”

Brig Gen Jamil’s deeds outlive his mortal existence. He answered his country’s call, and did not hesitate to lay down his life in the line of duty.

When the nation stood at a crossroads, Brig Gen Jamil displayed the moral courage that marks a great soldier and a true hero. l Enayetullah Khan is Editor, Dhaka Courier and Editor in Chief, United News of Bangladesh (UNB).

The man who did not waver

COURTESY

12

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Entertainment Michael Jackson’s new video out on Twitter Entertainment nDesk Michael Jackson’s posthumous album “Xscape” featured “A Place With No Name” - Jackson’s rewrite of America’s “A Horse With No Name.”

That track now has a new music video which premiered on Twitter. The video is directed by Samuel Bayer (Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Blind Melon’s “No Rain”). In addition to clips of two people dancing, this one features some rare behind-the-scenes and out-take footage shot during production of his 1991 “In the Closet” video. l

Friday, August 15, 2014

I don’t enjoy working in TV any longer: Jyotika Jyoti n Hasan Mansoor Chatak Jyotika Jyoti is passing her heydays, especially in terms of acting on the silver screen. The actress will be appearing in an upcoming flick “Anil Bagchir Ekdin,” a film based on iconic author Humayun Ahmed’s novella, directed by Morshedul Islam and Sumon Anwar’s upcoming drama serial “Bijli.”

Dhaka Tribune caught up with the actor to talk about her upcoming releases:

How do you feel about playing a character created by Humayun Ahmed?

I read the novella “Anil Bagchir Ekdin” during my childhood and interestingly I got the book as first prize in an essay competition. I never thought that one day I will get the opportunity to portray the role of Anil Bagchir’s sister Atoshi.

I think working in the film will be the turning point of my acting career.

And your role in “Bijli?”

am excited about the outcome of “Anil Bagchir Ekdin.” Recently, I worked in a TV drama titled “Baba” with a fantastic storyline where I have acted alongside seasoned artistes like Toukir Ahmed and Abul Hayat. I have also appeared in a short film titled “Gorto,” an experimental work and I really enjoyed it.

What is your dream role?

I do not have any specific dream role. I would rather work with good directors.

Jyotika Jyoti emerged as an actor by appearing on the silver screen in “Ayna” directed by Kabari Sarwar but came into the limelight with “Nondito Noroke,” directed by Belal Ahmed which was her second film. Her work in Tanvir Mokammel’s films “Rabeya” and “Jibondhuli” established her as one of the most promising actors of the big screen. l

“Bijli” is about gangsters in slum areas, their life and struggles. I will be playing the wife (Fatema) of the ringleader who was a quiet woman at first but is forced to become rude and unrelenting as she had to fight many demons. I have never portrayed a role like this before.

Film

Most Welcome 2 Maleficent Transformers: Age of Extinction (3D) X-Men: Days of Future Past (3D) Edge of Tomorrow (3D) Star Cineplex, Level 8 Bashundhara City Panthopath Tejgaon Hercules 3D Most Welcome 2

The Fault in Our Stars Hero Honeymoon Noah 3D Godzilla 3D Blockbuster Cinemas Ka- 244, Pragati Avenue Kuril

Exhibition

Jolchhobi

By Shahnoor Mamun Time: 12pm – 8pm

Alliance Francaise Simple Pleasures of Life Photography Exhibition Time: 3pm – 8pm, Drik Gallery, Road No. 8A, Dhanmondi

Theatre

As Kaifi Azmi’s voice narrates couplets as a prelude, people at both borders experience much emotional trauma (toofan) and illustrate the crucial point that the common man “was listening to neither Geeta nor Quran” as they killed and displaced their neighbours. So the “Garam Hawa,” the scorching, simmering and debilitating wind is not a climatic phenomenon, but communalism, political bigotry and intolerance.

Garam Hawa was made in 1973 and is set in a small neighbourhood in Agra, North India.

It was directed by MS Sathyu.

It was the final film in a series of four films screened in various venues in the capital during Partition Week, an event created by the Bayaan Collective, from August 10-14. Dhaka Tribune was media partner for the event. l

Nowadays, the quality of TV dramas have gone down drastically. I do not enjoy working in the medium any longer. I am constantly getting offers to work in cinema and therefore I want to devote my time there and try to create a lasting impression on the audience.

A role that you enjoyed recently.

After working in “Jibondhuli” I

Chhayachokro

By Theatre Art Unit Time: 7pm – 9pm Experimental Theatre Hall, BSA

Bari's meditations on life portrayed n Shadma Malik

Hello Yellow

Channel 9 10:00pm Starring Aupi Karim and Partho Barua, the single episode drama revolves around Aupi who always keep herself engaged with her pet cat named Yellow. Partho tries to impress Aupi buying gifts for the cat. Aupi is impressed by Partho’s attention to her pet and accepting Parto’s proposal they get married but the dire situation arises when Partho could not stand the cat anymore.

From a ceramicist to a sculptor and finally a painter, Niamul Bari shows his dynamism and versatility in his latest solo exhibition which is going on at the Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts. With 82 artworks on display, “Momentary Histories” is an array of colourful and different size canvases done in an assortment of mediums.

Bari's work is unique in the sense that the artist offers variety by incorporating his experience with sculpture in his canvases. By adding objects he had collected over time, he integrates texture and dimensions to his pieces by layering his work with thick application of colour with means such as knife and hand tools. His experiences from residing in Bangladesh, his stint at the legendary Shantiniketan and his sixteen years of residing and working in the US as an artist resonate from his artworks which show his meditations on life.

Niamul Bari with veteran artist Munirul Islam and architect Shamsul Wares in the exhibition KHAN HASAN MUHAMMAD RAFI A repetitive pattern of bold colours are eminent on his canvases which on closer inspection reveals different spectrum.

Many of the art pieces displayed in the show are done mostly in black as the artist has a habit of working in a dark room.

The pieces will leave the spectators speculating on his interpretations. While experimenting,

Bari subconsciously gives a spiritual effect to his paintings. His artworks posses drama, symbols, and brilliant work of strokes.

Residing and working in the US at present, the abstract expressionist Bari also had the opportunity to display his works in Japan, Nepal, Bhutan and India.

The current exhibition will continue till August 30. l

The Wolverine

Star Movies 9:30pm Based on the celebrated comic book arc, this epic action adventure takes Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), the most iconic character of the X-Men universe, to modern day Japan. Out of his depth in an unknown world he will face a host of unexpected and deadly opponents in a life-or-death battle that will leave change him forever.

Holiday

Zee Cinema 12pm Akshay Kumar’s latest blockbuster film Holiday grossed the box office with approximately 145 crores globally. The film promises to offer viewers an insight into the life of a soldier through an interesting plot.

The final film for Partition Week, “Garam Hawa” was screened yesterday at 12.00pm at Independent University Bangladesh.

Based on an unpublished short story by Ismat Chughtai the file was adapted for the screen by Kaifi Azmi and Shama Zaidi, and portrays the turbulence in the family of Salim Mirza (Balraj Sahni), the lead protagonist who believes in the idea of a united India. Though a Muslim, Mirza wants to stay back in post-Partition North India, firm in his belief that Gandhi’s death would act as a harbinger for communal harmony.

A scene from Garam Hawa

Your take on TV dramas of recent times.

TODAY IN DHAKA

Garam Hawa screened for Partition Week n Entertainment Desk

Audrey Hepburn’s granddaughter poses for Harper’s Bazaar n Entertainment Desk Iconic actress Audrey Hepburn’s granddaughter Emma Ferrer stepped into the world of modelling.

Ferrer, 20, has posed for the cover of the September issue of US Harper’s Bazaar magazine, reports contactmusic.com.

Her photograph is shot by Micheal Avedon, the grandson of famed phtographer Richard Avedon, who coincidentally labelled Hepburn his muse in 1950s.

The campaign features the brunette beauty channelling Old Hollywood glamour in a silver Lanvin feathered gown - a style made timeless by her legendary grandmother.

Ferrer didn’t ever get to meet her grandmother, who passed away from cancer a year before she was born in 1993. However, the young model has come to know a lot about the famous actress via her father Sean Hepburn Ferrer.

“I remember seeing a photo of her jumping on a trampoline - I believe this was before I understood that she was famous. But I remember thinking that she looked like a friend I wish I could have had,” Ferrer told a magazine. l

Supreme Court gives green signal to Aamir Khan’s PK

Bindu plays a girl of red light district n Entertainment Desk A single-episode drama titled “Jonaronney Jonaki” starring Bindu in the lead role will be aired today on Maasranga TV at 7:40pm. Written and directed

by Maruf Hossain Sajib, the drama portrays the struggle for survival of a vulnerable and lonely girl.

The story follows Nilima who comes from a small town to the mega city Dhaka to fulfil her cherished dreams. As she is new to the city and

does not know anybody, she feels like a fish out of water. For the first few days, she goes without food. Weak with starvation and desperate to slake her hunger, she finally turns into a sex worker with the help of a man named Hafiz.

Gradually, Nilima becomes economically solvent but her concealed desire of having a loving family like every other girl keeps on haunting her. She finds herself in a continuous fight with her reality and conscience. l

n Entertainment Desk Aamir Khan must be very happy as his upcoming film “PK” finally received green signal from the Supreme Court yesterday. Despite controversy over his nude picture on the poster of the movie, Aamir Khan finally managed to get the apex court’s nod.

The court dismissed a plea filed against Aamir and director of film “PK” for allegedly showing nudity in the movie. The court said these are matters of art and entertainment and let them remain so.

It added that any restrictions on release of film would affect constitutional

right of the film makers. It suggested that the petitioner may not watch the film if he does not like it but religious facets should not be brought into this. l

Did you know?

There were billboards at the SSC celebrating Mahela Jayawardene’s career as he began his final Test

Sport

Friday, August 15, 2014

14 Ribery retires

from French int’l duty

14 Fired-up Pakistan

rattle Sri Lanka in second Test

DHAKA TRIBUNE

13

15 United hire first

ever wheelchairbound coach

Wahed, Sajib win Kruif’s heart n Shishir Hoque

A combo of photos showing Bangladesh forward Wahed Ahmed (L) and winger Hemanta Vincent Biswas in action during the friendly game against Bangladesh Army at the Army Stadium yesterday

MUMIT M

Halsall set to be Tigers’ new fielding coach n Tribune Desk The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) landed a major coup yesterday when they confirmed the appointment of Richard Halsall as fielding coach of the national team for the impending tour of the West Indies.

Halsall, who is a former Zimbabwean and first-class cricketer, has already reached the Caribbean to join the Tigers ahead of the three-match ODI series that will be followed by a Twenty20 international and two Tests.

Before joining the Tigers, Halsall performed his duties as an assistant

coach with the English national side for four years. The 45-year old’s current contract with England expires in October this year. BCB acting CEO Nizamuddin Chowdhury informed once Halsall’s contract comes to an end, he will be permanently assigned as fielding coach of Bangladesh pending clearance from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).

“After getting clearance from the ECB, the new fielding coach will be appointed permanently. His contract with the ECB will expire this October,” said Nizamuddin.

Prior to his role as the English assis-

U-23 too good for Bangladesh Army n Raihan Mahmood

National football coach Lodewijk de Kruif’s new strategy of exploiting the flanks relentlessly whilst penetrating the opposition defence savoured success as the Bangladesh Under-23 side defeated Bangladesh Army 3-1 at the Army Stadium yesterday.

De Kruif deployed a 4-4-2 formation with Sohel Rana and Vincent Hemanta operating in the wings while skipper Mamunul Islam and newcomer Atikur Rahman Fahad played as the attacking and defensive midfielders respectively.

Wahed Ahmed and Aminur Rahman Sajib were positioned as forwards while the defence line comprised of Raihan, Yasin, Keshto Kumar and Yamin Munna. Raihan and Yamin surged forward with their bursts of pace whenever it was required.

On a wet and soggy pitch, Bangladesh displayed better football in the

Suarez ban upheld, training allowed n AFP, Geneva Luis Suarez on Thursday failed to win a reprieve from his four-month ban for biting Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini at the World Cup, but got a green light to resume training.

The decision means that the 27-yearold striker remains unable to make his debut for his new club Barcelona until October 25, but can at least train with his team-mates and be involved in promotional activities. He is also barred from taking to the pitch with Uruguay for nine consecutive official matches.

“The CAS Panel found that the sanctions imposed on the player were generally proportionate to the offence committed,” the court said in a statement. l

first half. Ball-controlling was organised and passing was efficient as the national side scored all the three goals in the first half. The Army men hardly tested debutante goalkeeper Russell Mahmud Liton.

However, in the second half De Kruif changed seven players following which the national side lost their control. A mistake by the Bangladesh defence led to Army’s consolation goal.

Fahad and Vincent exhibited enterprising football while Sajib impressed with his runs. Mamunul also put in some good distributions. Compared to the first half, the Army side fared better in the second half as they were reliant on the counter-attack.

Bangladesh took the lead in the 10th minute after Sajib danced down the left flank carrying a Wahed long ball forward. Sajib cut a low cross towards Wahed’s path and he dummied it leaving

Vincent free at the left edge of the box.

Vincent slammed the ball home with a low right-footer.

Vincent made it 2-0 just two minutes later. Playing a neat one-two with Wahed, Vincent was unmarked at the centre of the box and pounded a shot past Army custodian Sarwar.

In the 41st minute it was Wahed’s turn to get his name on the scoresheet.

Taking control of a Sajib cross, Wahed managed to dribble past two defenders before unleashing an upward drive towards the top of the net.

Army reduced the margin in the 53rd minute as defender Tutul Hossain Badshah’s back pass was poorly cleared by goalie Liton and the ball was picked up by Army midfielder Sakib who beat Liton in the far post.

Amidst heavy downpour and a lack of light, the game was called off about 15 minutes before stipulated time. l

tant coach, Halsall was the fielding consultant of England for two years from 2008-2010. He was also the fielding coach of Sussex County Cricket Club from 1998-2006.

Born in Zimbabwe but brought up as a Lancastrian, Halsall is highly regarded in the England set-up. When he was appointed as the fielding coach in 2008, he was the first ever appointment made by England in the fielding department. He was credited with improving England’s fielding performances drastically and was revered by former England team director, Andy Flower.

With Halsall’s appointment,

Sylhet on cards for Nepal warm-up n Raihan Mahmood The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) plans to host one of the national Under-23 side’s practice matches against Nepal outside the capital with Sylhet being mooted as the possible venue.

BFF general secretary Abu Naeem Shohag confirmed the news. “We are on the verge of confirming the arrival of Nepal. The matches will be played on August 25 and 28. We will confirm the tour tomorrow and we have also planned to play one match outside the capital for the promotion of the game.

Initially Sylhet is the first priority but it can be changed,” said Shohag.

Following the two warm-up matches against Nepal, the Bangladesh U-23 team are poised to play another friendly in Malaysia on their way to Incheon, South Korea to take part in the 17th Asian Games. l

Broad fit, India await Ishant return n AFP, London

Had India, who’ve now won just one of their last 18 Tests on foreign soil, been offered the chance to arrive at The Oval 2-1 down with one to play in this fivematch series before their tour started, they might have taken up the offer.

A tightly-packed schedule of five Tests in the space of 42 days has done India few favours as they head to south London for the start of the series finale on Friday. Just a few weeks ago, India beat England by 95 runs in the second Test at Lord’s to go 1-0 up in the series.

But that success was sealed by fast bowler Ishant Sharma exploiting England’s vulnerability against the short ball with a Test-best return of seven for 74.

Alastair Cook’s men still have prob-

Bangladesh’s coaching staff is almost complete with the exception of the physiotherapist.

Former Sri Lankan cricketer Chandika Hathurusingha was recently assigned as head coach while former Zimbabwe captain Heath Streak is the bowling coach of the Tigers. Mario Villavarayan is the strength and conditioning coach while Ruwan Kalpage was recently appointed as the Tigers’ assistant and spin coach. Outgoing physio Vibhav Singh will soon vacate his post and the subsequent appointment of a new physiotherapist will complete Bangladesh’s set-up. l

Bangladesh national team head coach Lodewijk de Kruif praised the new attacking pair of Wahed Ahmed and Aminur Rahman Sajib but alongside also admitted he is yet to find the right players for the wings.

After U-23 national team’s comfortable 3-1 victory over Bangladesh Army in their third practice match yesterday, the Dutch coach said he has to play with a 4-4-2 formation due to the lack of quality wingers in the squad.

“I think the first half was very good.

We played very organised. It was not possible for us to train at BKSP everyday because of the rain,” said Kruif after the game. He added, “But when we look at our team we know we have trouble on the wings. Number 11 and number 7. Like we know in Holland, Robben and Van Persie play on the sides. We don’t really have those players or we have those players but not yet ready, not get mature so that they can play there.”

“We tried something new today with 4-4-2 formation, like diamond in the midfield. They played very well in the first 45 minutes with discipline.

They played like I taught and played like our commitment. We were organised and the opponents could do nothing,” added Kruif.

In the absence of national in-form striker Zahid Hossain Emily, Aminur Rahman Sajib paired with Mohammedan star Wahed Ahmed in the front two role. Kruif was full of praise of the attacking duo.

“Wahed together with Sajib make a lot of steps. I’m very happy with him (Sajib) because he is very serious, dedicated and also worked very hard. And about Wahed, he was the top scorer of the league (among the local players).

He can score very easily when he gets into position,” said the Dutch coach.

Kruif seemed to be content with the performance of his defenders in the opening half where Raihan, Kesto, Yeasin and Munna completed the back four. He also said the game was a very good learning process for the team.

The final 20-man list for the 17th Asian Games will be revealed today as Kruif confirmed Denmark born Bangladesh midfielder Jamal Bhuiyan’s inclusion in the squad. l

lems to address as well as their bouncer issues, particularly the extent of the gap between the threat of the new-ball pairing of Broad and James Anderson and back-up seamers Chris Woakes and Chris Jordan.

Anderson now needs just eight wickets to surpass Ian Botham’s England Test record of 383 and Broad, who could play in a face mask, will be keen to follow up his man-of-thematch effort in taking six for 25 in India’s first innings in Manchester.

If Broad is not fit, or England decide to drop either Woakes or Jordan, then rejuvenated Middlesex fast bowler Steven Finn is waiting in the wings.

That England now have to worry about complacency is a welcome change. l

Messi, Maradona to play for peace in Gaza n Tribune Report Pope Francis has planed to host a celebrity football match in September to promote a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing crisis in the Gaza Strip.

The exhibition game will take place on September 1 at the Olympic Stadium in Rome with “all-star players” like FC Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and the legendary – and contentious - Diego Maradona taking the pitch for the event.

The match will be hosted by the Pupi Foundation, a Buenos Aires-based charity founded by the Argentine soccer player Javier “Pupi” Zanetti, as well as the Pontifical Academy for Social Science.

Besides Messi and Maradona, Brazilian star Neymar is expected to play along with Yossi Benayoun, an Israeli National Team star, along with former Italian star Robert Baggio, a renowned Buddhist, and former French player Zinedine Zidane, who professes Islam.

Maradona posted on his Facebook page that he was excited and honored to

be invited by the Pontiff to play for the cause in Rome.

“It is an honor to be invited by Pope #Francis, to participate in the Interreligious Match for Peace, on September 1st, at the Olympic Stadium of Rome,” the Facebook post said.

“More than anything, the goal is to show the coexistence of different religions on the soccer field,” a spokesperson for the Pupi Foundation told Fox News Latino.

He added that the funds raised in the event will go to Scholas Ocurrentes, an organization sponsored by the pope to better education standards across the world, as well as the Pupi Foundation, which focuses on family values and children’s rights.

The idea of the match, officially called Partita per la Pace (Match For Peace), was communicated by Pope Francis to Zanetti when they met in Rome back in April of 2013.

However, the current war between Israel and the pro-Palestinian group Hamas gives an additional impetus to the reason for the game. l

14

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Sport

Friday, August 15, 2014

Dortmund beat weakened Bayern in Super Cup n AFP, Berlin Borussia Dortmund ensured former star striker Robert Lewandowski’s return to the Ruhr ended in disappointment on Wednesday as they beat an under-strength Bayern Munich 2-0 to win the German Super Cup for the second successive year.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Gabonese international striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored Dortmund’s goals

RESULT Dortmund Mkhitaryan 23, Aubameyang 62

2 0

Bayern Munich

while the match proved costly for Bayern as Spanish international midfielder Javi Martinez appeared to suffer a serious right knee injury.

For Dortmund and coach Jurgen Klopp it provided a measure of consolation for having lost to Bayern in the Cup final last season as well as finishing distant runners-up in the league.

And while it leaves Bayern coach

Ribery retires from French international duty n AFP, Berlin

Pep Guardiola seeking his first win in the match in two attempts, the former Barcelona handler was without several of his established stars.

German World Cup winning midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger and wingers Arjen Robben of the Netherlands and Frenchman Franck Ribery were among those missing.

Bayern Munich’s Spanish international Javi Martinez looks set for a long spell on the sidelines after suffering a serious knee injury during Wednesday’s German Super Cup with Borussia Dortmund.

The 25-year-old defensive midfielder, who moved to Bayern in 2012 for 40 million euros ($53 million) after impressing at Athletic Bilbao, required lengthy medical treatment after landing awkwardly following a tackle by Dortmund defender Marcel Schmelzer on the half-hour mark. He was replaced

by Brazilian defender Dante.

According to German media reports the injury is to his cruciate ligaments and Bayern Munich’s sporting director Matthias Sammer admitted to German broadcaster ZDF it didn’t look good. l

Dortmund’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (with Spiderman mask) and teammates celebrate a goal against Bayern Munich during their Super Cup in Dortmund on Wednesday

The wizard who failed to get France to fly n AFP, Paris Franck Ribery’s decision to retire from international football brings to an end a chapter of his career that more often than not saw him fail to perform to the standard he achieved with his club Bayern Munich.

The brilliance and trickery the winger has shown for Bayern since moving there in 2007 has rarely been on display for France, and it was noticeable in his absence that their performances did not suffer at the World Cup in Brazil in June.

The decision means the 31-year-old - who scored 16 goals in 81 appearances since his debut in 2006 -- has closed the door on trying to erase years of international disappointment by seeking a final chance of glory when France host Euro 2016.

He admitted to Kicker magazine - in the same interview where he announced his retirement -- that his international career could not be considered a resounding success.

“There have been highs and lows,” he said.

While 2013 saw Ribery produce probably the best football of his career, 2014 has so far been an unmitigated disaster.

In a remarkable 12 months last year, Ribery was arguably the star in a Bayern Munich side that won the Champi-

French winger Franck Ribery has announced his retirement from international football, he said in an interview with the German magazine Kicker.

Bayern Munich’s Ribery, 31, the winner of the 2013 UEFA European Player of the Year award, has won 80 caps for France since his international debut in 2006.

“I am retiring. I realised the time had come,” he said, adding that he had taken the decision “for personal reasons”.

“I want to spend more time with my family, to concentrate on playing for Bayern Munich and also to open the way for the many other young talented players in the national side.

“You have to know when to stop and the time has come to call it a day.

“And we saw during the World Cup that France have nothing to worry about as far as the future is concerned.”

Ribery was forced to sit out Wednesday’s German Supercup match with Borussia Dortmund with a knee injury but hopes to be fit for the first match of the Bundesliga season against Wolfsburg on August 22.

He joined Bayern from Marseille in 2007 for a then club record fee of EUR25 million ($33 million), and has won four Bundesliga titles and one Champions League crown with the Bavarian club.l

ons League, German title, the German Cup, UEFA Super Cup and Club World Cup. Named as player of the year by European football’s governing body UEFA, he was a strong contender for the FIFA Ballon d’Or for the world’s best player. In the end he had to settle for third behind Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

That setback set off a bout of depression and the series of injuries that led to his withdrawal from the World Cup just prior to the start.

Ribery, whose face was scarred in a car crash as a child, earned his move to Bayern from Marseille for a then club record fee of EUR25 million ($33 million) on the back of his finest set of performances for the national side at the 2006 World Cup finals.

There he helped France reach the final where his performances alongside Zinedine Zidane suggested he could have the same inspirational effect on the national side as the 1998 World Cup winner who was to retire after the tournament.

However, that was to prove wide of the mark.

He failed to sparkle at either Euro 2008 or the 2010 World Cup finals where under coach Raymond Domenech’s erratic direction the French exited both times in the first round.

To rub salt into the wound, he was

also banned for three internationals for his role in the player revolt after Nicolas Anelka was sent home early following a foul-mouthed tirade at Domenech.

Off the pitch, too, he has also been embroiled in controversy.

Ribery and French team-mate and close friend Karim Benzema faced charges of having sex with an under-age prostitute. After a four-year inquiry and a trial, both two were cleared in January this year.

He was also brought to task by former Marseille team-mate Mathieu Valbuena who revealed how Ribery and Samir Nasri, who has also announced his international retirement in recent days, made his life a misery, taunting him over his lack of height. Valbuena stands just 5ft 6in (1.67m) tall.

“Despite it being over I still have a bad memory of what went on,” said Valbuena, who more than made up for the absence of Ribery at the World Cup with some outstanding performances.

“To be systematically singled out for bad jokes really hurts.”

Ribery said on being told he would not be fit to play in Brazil it was like ‘killing his soul’ but on Wednesday he accepted that time had moved on.

“You have to know when to stop and the time has come to call it a day.

“And we saw during the World Cup that France have nothing to worry about as far as the future is concerned.” l

REUTERS

FACT FILE Name : Franck Ribery Birthdate : 07/04/1983 Birthplace : Boulogne-sur-Mer Height : 1.70m Weight : 62kg Position : Attacking midfielder Clubs Boulogne (2001-2002), Ales (20022003), Brest (2003-2004), Metz (2004Jan. 2005), Galatasaray (TUR/Feb. 2005May 2005), Marseille (2005-2007), Bayern Munich (GER/since 2007) International appearances : 81 International goals : 16 International honours World Cup finalist (2006) International debut: 27/05/2006, France-Mexico (1-0) Last international appearance: 05/03/2014, France-Netherlands (2-0) Club honours Champions League: winner with Bayern Munich (2013) German Championship: winner with Bayern Munich (2008, 2010, 2013, 2014) German Cup: winner with Bayern Munich (2008, 2010, 2013) German Supercup: winner with Bayern Munich (2012) Club World Cup: winner with Bayern Munich (2013) European Supercup: winner with Bayern Munich (2013) Turkish Cup: winner with Galatasaray (2005) Other honours UEFA Player of the year (2013)

10 PREMIER LEAGUE TRANSFERS FOR 2014-15

TOP

DIEGO COSTA

ELIAQUIM MANGALA

ALEXIS SANCHEZ

CESC FABREGAS

ANDER HERRERA

Atletico Madrid (ESP) to Chelsea; £32 million

Porto (POR) to Manchester City; £32 million

Barcelona (ESP) to Arsenal; £30 million

Barcelona (ESP) to Chelsea; £30 million

Athletic Bilbao (ESP) to Man United; £29 million

Despite a spending cap imposed on them by UEFA for contravening Financial Fair Play regulations, Manchester City found the funds to bring France centre-back Mangala to the Etihad Stadium. The 23-year-old spent three years at Porto, winning two league titles, and has played three times for France.

Twelve months after smashing their transfer record to sign Mesut Ozil, Arsenal flexed their financial muscles again with a big-money move for Chile’s star forward Sanchez, who can play wide or as a central striker. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said that Sanchez would “add power, creativity and much quality to our squad”.

After a mixed three years with Barcelona, 27-year-old former Arsenal captain Fabregas returns to the Premier League with Chelsea. The goal-scoring midfielder will come up against his old employers for the first time on October 5, when Arsenal visit Stamford Bridge.

Bruising Brazil-born striker Costa, 25, joined Chelsea after firing Atletico Madrid to the La Liga title last season with 27 goals. Had a chastening experience at the World Cup with adopted country Spain, but Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho hopes he will be the final piece in his title jigsaw.

Following an aborted transfer in the summer of 2013, Basque midfield organiser Herrera became the first new recruit of the post-David Moyes era at Old Trafford. Has impressed in pre-season with his slick distribution.

ROMELU LUKAKU

LUKE SHAW

ADAM LALLANA

LAZAR MARKOVIC

FRANK LAMPARD

Chelsea to Everton; £28 million

Southampton to Man United; £27 million

Southampton to Liverpool; £25 million

Benfica (POR) to Liverpool; £20 million

New York City FC (USA) to Manchester City; loan

Another Southampton player who sought pastures new after breaking into the England squad, attacking midfielder Lallana left St Mary’s after eight years of service. The versatile, two-footed 26-year-old can play in any position in support of the striker.

A 20-year-old Serbia international, winger Markovic is one of the attacking players who Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers hopes will soften the blow of Suarez’s departure. Scored seven goals in 49 appearances in 2013-14 as Benfica won the domestic treble and reached the Europa League final.

After 13 years at Chelsea, 36-year-old England midfielder Lampard left for new Major League Soccer outfit New York City FC, only to be immediately loaned to their sister club Manchester City. He will come up against his former Chelsea team-mates for the first time on September 21.

Amid renewed competition for places at Chelsea, 21-year-old Belgium striker Lukaku elected to join Everton on a permanent basis, having scored 16 goals while on loan at Goodison Park last season. Everton broke their club record to sign him, but manager Roberto Martinez said he was “worth every penny”.

After a fine 2013-14 campaign, which saw him named in the Professional Footballers’ Association Team of the Year and supplant Ashley Cole in the England squad, 19-year-old left-back Shaw joined United in a move that made him the fourth-most expensive defender in history.

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Sport

Friday, August 15, 2014

15

QUICK BYTES

BCB postpones women’s league The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has postponed the second semifinal and final of the Metropolitan Women’s Cricket League 2014 due to rain.

The second semifinal of the league was scheduled to be held yesterday where Abahani Limited were set to face Khelaghar Samaj Kalyan Samity.

The BCB will announce the revised dates of the second semifinal and final after the weather improves. Earlier, Mohammedan Sporting Club Limited sealed their place in the final after beating Gulshan Youth Club by 99 runs in the first semi final.

–Tribune Desk

Abidal retires from France squad Defender Eric Abidal, who underwent a liver transplant in 2012, has become the latest French player to announce his retirement from international football.

Abidal, 34, capped 67 times for his country, follows Bayern Munich winger Franck Ribery and Manchester City midfielder Samir Nasri in bringing down the curtain on his international career.

Now playing for Olympiacos in Greece after spells with Barcelona and Monaco, Abidal told Catalan radio station Rac1 he had been upset at not being selected for the World Cup in Brazil. “It’s over,” he said late Wednesday. “I have not held a press conference or said anything. I am saying it for the first time today but I am more than certain that I will no longer join the national team.”

Abidal, who played for Barcelona for six years from 2007, was first diagnosed with a liver tumour in March 2011 and a year later underwent a transplant.

–AFP

Farah bounces back to take European gold Normal service was resumed by Mo Farah as the world and Olympic 5,000m and 10,000m champion emerged from months of illness and disappointing form to win the 10,000m title at the European Athletics Championships on Wednesday. The 31-year-old Briton pulled clear of Ali Kaya, the naturalised Turkish runner formerly known as Stanley Kiprotich Mukche of Kenya in the final 100m to win the fourth European track title of his career in 28 mins 08.11sec. “I really wanted to run the Commonwealth Games but couldn’t, so this means a lot to me,” said Farah, who was congratulated on his lap of honour by his good friend, Olympic 100m and 200m champion Usain Bolt. Farah’s Great Britain team-mate Andy Vernon snatched the silver medal from Kaya, clocking 28:08.66. Farah was one of three British winners, making four golds in two days following Jo Pavey’s victory in the women’s 10,000m on Tuesday.

–AFP

Sri Lankan cricketer Mahela Jayawardene (C) is congratulated by Pakistan cricketers as he arrives on the pitch to bat during the opening day of the second Test at the Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) Ground in Colombo yesterday

Fired-up Pakistan rattle Sri Lanka n AFP, Colombo Mahela Jayawardene scored four streaky runs in his last Test as Pakistan’s bowlers dismantled Sri Lanka’s first innings at the start of the second and final match in Colombo on Thursday.

The hosts, who won the toss and elected to bat on the easy-paced wicket, found runs hard to come by against the steady attack and plodded to 261-8 by stumps on the opening day at the Sinhalese Sports Club.

Upul Tharanga hit 92 and fellow opener Kaushal Silva made 41, but Sri Lanka lost seven wickets on either side of the tea interval after coasting at 144-1.

Pakistan’s two left-arm seamers Junaid Khan and Wahab Riaz toiled man-

fully under the hot sun to share seven wickets and lead a spirited display by the tourists seeking a series-levelling win.

Junaid ended the day with four for 69, including two wickets in the first over with the second new ball taken towards the end of the day’s play. Riaz had three for 66.

Sri Lanka’s skipper Angelo Mathews made 39 when he was caught behind off Riaz for what became the last delivery of the day.

Tharanga put on 79 for the first wicket with Silva and 65 for the second with Kumar Sangakkara, but missed his century when he fell to a sharp catch by Azhar Ali at short-leg off Riaz.

Sangakkara, who hit 221 in the first Test in Galle which Sri Lanka won by

United’s Shaw out for a month Manchester United defender Luke Shaw has suffered a hamstring injury and will miss the opening game of the season against Swansea City on Saturday, the club announced Wednesday. The England international, a pre-season signing from Southampton, is likely to be sidelined for around four weeks after the 19-year-old became the world’s most expensive teenage footballer when he joined United for £27 million ($45 million, 34 million euros) in June. Shaw missed the 2-1 friendly victory against Valencia at Old Trafford on Tuesday due to the problem and now faces a frustrating wait before making his competitive debut for the club. Earlier on Wednesday, United confirmed that the left back had been given the number three shirt for the coming season following Patrice Evra’s departure for Juventus.

–AFP

DAY’S WATCH Ten Cricket 10:30AM Pakistan Tour of Sri Lanka 2014 2nd Test, Day 2 Sony Six 12:45AM Scottish League 2014 Falkirk v Rangers 7:00AM Major League Soccer 2014 Houston Dynamo v Philadelphia Union Star Sports 1, 3, HD1 4:00PM India Tour of England 5th Test, Day 1 Star Sports 2, HD2 Pro Kabaddi League 8:15PM Delhi v Mumbai 9:30PM Pune v Patna

Sohail Rehman is pictured with Man United striker Robin van Persie

INTERNET

Federer advances with milestone win n AFP, Cincinnati Roger Federer became the first man to win 300 matches at the ATP Masters 1000 level, beating Vasek Pospisil 7-6 (7/4), 5-7, 6-2 on Wednesday in Cincinnati.

The victory in just over two hours put the 33-year-old world number three into the third round of his final tune-up tournament for the US Open.

The Swiss great, who had notched his 200th Masters match win against Lleyton Hewitt at Cincinnati five years ago, arrived at the tournament he has won five times off a runner-up finish to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in Toronto.

He delivered a dominant third set to finally subdue the 46th-ranked Pospisil, who was a finalist last month in Washington. He stretched his career record over the Canadian to 3-0.

While Federer safely followed top seed Novak Djkokovic into the third round, three of the men’s top nine were toppled.

Number five Milos Raonic was untroubled by wild card Robby Ginepri 6-2, 6-2. Sixth seed David Ferrer fought through three tiebreakers to beat German Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-7 (4/7), 7-6 (7/4), 7-6 (7/4), and eighth-seeded Andy Murray advanced with a smooth, 6-3, 6-3 victory over Portugal’s Joao Sousa.

Women’s top seed Serena Williams advanced on cue, downing Australian Samantha Stosur 7-6 (9/7), 7-6 (9/7), but third-seeded Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova stumbled out of the gate.

Ukrainian teenager Elina Svitolina toppled the Czech 6-2, 7-6 (7/2). The defeat comes on the heels of Kvitova’s third-round exit at Montreal in another blow to her build-up to the US Open - the last Grand Slam of the year that starts on August 25 at Flushing Meadows.

Wimbledon finalist Eugenie Bouchard was another casualty, falling to Svetlana Kuznetsova in three sets. l

AFP

SCORECARD, DAY 1 Sri Lanka 1st innings U. Tharanga c Ali b Riaz 92 K. Silva c Sarfraz b Junaid 41 K. Sangakkara b Riaz 22 M. Jayawardene lbw b Ajmal 4 A. Mathews c Sarfraz b Riaz 39 L. Thirimanne c Sarfraz b Junaid 20 N. Dickwella lbw b Junaid 24 D. Perera lbw b Junaid 0 D. Prasad not out 4 Extras: (b4, lb6, nb5) 15 Total (for eight wickets, 85.1 overs) 261

seven wickets, managed just 22 when he was bowled by a superb in-cutter from Riaz.

- Standing ovation for Jayawardene Pakistan’s fielders lined up to greet Jayawardene, a 37-year-old veteran of 149 Tests, to the crease as firecrackers went off in the stands and some 3,000 home fans gave him a standing ovation.

But the star batsman, who was dropped by wicket-keeper Sarfraz Ahmed off Junaid just before tea, fell in the first over after resumption when he was trapped leg-before by Saeed Ajmal.

Ajmal, who will have his bowling action tested at the end of the month after being reported by the umpires in Galle, bowled 29 overs to take one for 67.

The SSC, which has been Jayawardene’s home ground since his early

days, was decorated with giant posters of the elegant batsman, many of them highlighting his career-best score of 374 at the same venue in 2006.

The Old Boys’ Association of Nalanda College, where Jayawardene studied, set up a special stand at the ground for his classmates, current students and the college band.

Left-handed Tharanga survived a difficult stumping chance when he was on 24 as a ball from Ajmal rose alarmingly and struck the wicket-keeper on the left ear.

Lahiru Thirimanne (20) was caught behind off Junaid, an over after being dropped in the slips off the same bowler.

Sri Lanka made two changes from the side that won the first Test to take the lead in the two-match series. l

United hire first ever wheelchairbound coach n Internet

Argentina’s San Lorenzo lift Libertadores Cup

Manchester United have announced the club have added Sohail Rehman to their back-room staff, a young coach from Yorkshire who also just so happens to be the first wheelchair-bound coach to have ever been hired to train able-bodied professional players.

Rehman, who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy and has been in a chair since the age of 13, gained his requisite FA badges in 2013 after coaching at Sunday League level for years, with United signing him up to help nurture their young flock at the club’s academy.

The 22-year-old United fan has described joining his boyhood club’s coaching ranks as his “dream job”. l

San Lorenzo, the Argentine club who can number Pope Francis among their loyal supporters, lifted the Libertadores Cup for the first time in their history on Wednesday when they beat Nacional Asuncion of Paraguay in the final.

A goal from the penalty spot in the 36th minute by Nestor Ortigoza was enough to give San Lorenzo a 1-0 victory in the second leg, having held Nacional to a 1-1 draw in the first leg in Paraguay last week.

But the home defence, well-marshalled by Mauro Cetto, had to withstand a Paraguayan onslaught and were somewhat fortunate to hold out for victory.

The Paraguayans came to attack and as early as the first minute carved out

n AFP, Buenos Aires

Fall of wickets 1-79 (Silva), 2-144 (Sangakkara), 3-167 (Jayawardene), 4-177 (Tharanga), 5-215 (Thirimanne), 6-249 (Dickwella), 7-249 (Perera), 8-261 (Mathews).

Bowling Junaid 21-5-69-4, Riaz 16.1-2-66-3 (nb5), Rehman 19-4-49-0, Ajmal 29-4-67-1

a scoring chance through Derlis Orue, whose shot cannoned off the post.

The only goal, when it came, was against the run of play, a penalty awarded for handball against defender Ramon Coronel.

Ortigoza made no mistake with his spot-kick and sent the 40,000 capacity crowd wild in celebration of what was undoubtedly the most important goal in the club’s 106-year history.

Nacional dominated the second half, but squandered clearcut scoring chances through Marcos Riveros in the 65th minute and striker Freddy Bareiro 12 minutes from time. It had been a different story in the first match when San Lorenzo had the lion’s share of play and only conceded an equaliser in the third minute of stoppage time at the end of the game. l

FIFA RANKINGS

1. Germany 2. Argentina 3. Netherlands 4. Colombia 5. Belgium 6. Uruguay 7. Spain (+1) 8. Brazil 9. Switzerland 10. France

11. Portugal 12. Chile 13. Greece 14. Italy 15. Costa Rica (+1) 16. Croatia (+1) 17. Mexico (+1) 18. USA (-3) 19. Bosnia 20. England

Spain gain a place in FIFA rankings n AFP, Paris Spain move up one place to seventh alongside Brazil in the latest FIFA world rankings in the only movement in the top 10.

World Cup winners Germany still top the list, ahead of beaten finalists Argentina, in the August 14 rankings.

Costa Rica, who reached the World Cup quarter-finals, move up a place to 15th, their highest ranking since the classification began in 1993. l

Argentina’s San Lorenzo players holds up the trophy after winning the Copa Libertadores 2014 final second leg match against to Paraguay’s Nacional at Pedro Bidegain stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Wednesday AFP

16

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Back Page

Friday, August 15, 2014

Speaker blasts JS officials for lax security Orders legal action against those aiding outsiders’ illegal activities on JS premises the sergeant-at-arms (chief security n Kamran Reza Chowdhury officer of the Jatiya Sangsad), told the Parliament Secretariat official Salahuddin Md Amin, arrested for his alleged involvement with a fake army major, unlawfully wrote the address of his Gopalganj house in his business card with an intention to prove 'strong' connections with the Awami League.

Salahuddin boasted that he came from the prime minister's district and the authorities could not take any action, despite having been involved with many unlawful activities such as renting MP hostels to the outsiders in exchange of money.

l JS caretaker Salahuddin used Gopalganj card to cover his misdeeds such as misuse of MP hostels for years l Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury warned that employees sheltering outsiders on parliament premises will be handed over to police l Probe committee formed to find out the persons aiding the fake army major who was arrested Tuesday night However, the authorities could not remove him from the post of hostel caretaker after the recovery of a woman's body from the rooftop of MP hostel in 2012.

“We found him involved in many irregularities and we brought the matter to the notice of Syed Ahmed sir [additional secretary]. But once he told me, 'I cannot tell him anything; this is my failure',” Commodore M Ashraful Haq,

Dhaka Tribune.

He said, “This time we have been able to catch him red-handed.”

Salahuddin and fake major Mahmud Hasan were arrested on Tuesday night at the chamber of Narail 1 MP Kabirul Haque on charge of trespassing and cheating.

Mahmud Hasan posing as an army major used to show people that he maintained the offices on the Jatiya Sangsad premises. The security employees very often allowed his Allion car with flag stand without checking.

Many people came to him for lobbying with the ministers, MPs and other influential officials for contracts and job in exchange of money.

Salahuddin had the keys of all rooms on six blocks of the MP hostel near the Jatiya Sangsad building. He allowed Mahmud Hasan at the chambers of the MPs while they were outside Dhaka.

“He [Salahuddin] will not be spared at all. His Gopalganj identity will not save him,” Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury told the Dhaka Tribune.

Angered by Tuesday's incident, yesterday she summoned all the employees of the hostel and security wings, asking the sergeant-at-arms to take legal action against those employees found involved in aiding the outsiders in carrying out illegal activities on the Jatiya Sangsad premises.

She had formed a probe committee, headed by Parliament Secretary Ashraful Moqbul, to investigate the incident, asking it to submit the findings within next seven days.

“Writing this permanent address in the official business card is motivated. This is basically cheating people,” Ashraful Moqbul told the Dhaka Tribune. l

Continuous rainfall throughout the morning caused the already-congested city streets to experience longer tailbacks yesterday. The photo was taken at Hatirjheel

bKash agency man shot in capital n Tribune Report

TIB: National broadcast policy conflicting with constitution

Miscreants shot an employee of a bKash agency and took away Tk4 lakh from him in Khilgaon of the capital yesterday noon.

Asif Hossain Tutul, 24, was admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) after the shooting at Goran human haulier stand around 2:30pm. He was a supervisor at Al Jaz Trading, an agent of bKash.

Shipon, a shopkeeper in the area, said Tutul was intercepted by a group of people and they shot him when he attempted to resist them.

Tutul was taken to a local hospital but on-duty doctors suggested the victim be shifted to DMCH because his condition was critical.

DMCH doctors said Tutul sustained bullet injuries in his throat and stomach.

Delwar Hossain, an official of Al Jaz Trading, said the incident took place outside the office.

“There were three muggers. They blasted crude bombs to create panic.

As the passers-by ran away in fear, they shot Tutul, snatched the money and fled," he said.

Delwar said Tutul was returning to the office with money collected from shops, adding: “On May 20, muggers snatched Tk20 lakh from two of our officials by threatening them with firearms at Rajarbagh. Police have not yet been able to recover the money.”

Deputy Commissioner of Motijheel division Ashrafuzzaman said the agency was advised to seek police escort for carrying a large sum following the May 20 incident, but officials paid no heed.

"We are trying to arrest the muggers," he said. l

n Tribune Report Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) has said the recently formulated National Broadcast Policy is conflicting with the country’s constitution, human rights and the Right to Information Act. “The policy has been formulated in a unidirectional way to restrict freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of expression,” Sultana Kamal, TIB chairperson, said while addressing a press conference at Hotel Abakash in the capital yesterday.

The cabinet approved the broadcast policy on August 4 with a provision that television and radio cannot broadcast any news that may tarnish the image of the country’s law enforcement agencies and the armed forces. It has drawn widespread criticism from all stakeholders.

Sultana Kamal said: “The government claims the policy has been formulated to make mass media accountable

by elevating the fundamental rights and personal freedom of citizens, but we think the policy is clearly aimed to control the freedom of press.

“The policy has not been formulated following the due process as it has not been discussed in parliament.”

In regard to the provision on not broadcasting news on the armed forces or law enforcement, she said: “The law states media can broadcast news on any member if he/she breaches disciplines of the forces or engages in unlawful activities, but how would the media immediately know who breaks the law?

She added: “The RTI Act does not allow anyone to get information about the armed forces while the implementation of the policy will create a culture of impunity among the agencies and people will lose confidence in them.

“These are not government agencies, rather these are state agencies employed by the state with tax paid by

MEHEDI HASAN

us. So, they are accountable to us. The media is the most important tool to ensure accountability.”

Addressing the programme, TIB Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman said some provisions of the policy can easily be misinterpreted, which might be subject to the risk of motivated, subjective and arbitrary interpretations.

“The law clearly contradicts with the RTI Act 2009. Meanwhile, there are some unclear provisions in the policy, which can easily be misinterpreted.

When the policy is unclear, the rule will also not be clear,” he said.

The organisation had recommended that the government form an independent broadcast commission to implement the policy.

“While formulating the policy and rules related to broadcasting, the government should discuss the issues with stakeholders to avoid any such misinterpretation,” the executive director said. l

National Mourning Day today n Tribune Report Dissatisfaction remains, as the nation observes the thirty-ninth death anniversary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman during National Mourning Day today, because justice has only been partially implemented in the heartless political killing that destroyed a family and hobbled a nation.

The attempt to smother justice and the litany of dirty political tricks to stamp out the trail of blood in Bangbandhu’s murder is a long one.

Even when, five years ago, it appeared that justice was finally being done in a long-awaited Supreme Court judgement, the government was still unable to implement it in full because half of the convicted killers, each handed down a death sentence, were still at large.

In its verdict on November 19, 2009, the Supreme Court ordered the death sentences of 12 convicted killers to be carried out. Of the twelve convicts, five were in jail, and seven were absconding.

The assassins who gunned down Bangabandhu at his residence at Dhanmondi Road 32 also murdered Bangabandhu’s wife, Begum Fazilatunnessa Mujib; sons Sheikh Kamal, Sheikh Jamal and 10-year old Sheikh Russell; and daughters-in-law Sultana Kamal and Rosy Jamal.

Sixteen others, who were at the house, were also killed.

Bangabandhu’s daughters, Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana survived because they were abroad at the time.

When the Awami League formed its first government in 1996 after the military interregnum, they gave August 15 its due place in history by declaring National Mourning Day. President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina both spoke on the occasion of National Mourning day.

Today is a public holiday. The national flag will be hoisted at half mast and black flags will be hoisted around the country as the nation mourns the killing of the nation’s founding father. l

Editor: Zafar Sobhan, Published and Printed by Kazi Anis Ahmed on behalf of 2A Media Limited at Dainik Shakaler Khabar Publications Limited, 153/7, Tejgaon Industrial Area, Dhaka-1208. Editorial, News & Commercial Office: FR Tower, 8/C Panthapath, Shukrabad, Dhaka 1207.

Phone: 9132093-94, Advertising: 9132155, Circulation: 9132282, Fax: News-9132192, e-mail: news@dhakatribune.com, info@dhakatribune.com, Website: www.dhakatribune.com

B3 Global stocks rise, led by Wall Street rebound

B4 Robo-cook: android

restaurant boots up in China

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 2014 www.dhakatribune.com/business

Sharp fall in industrial loan disbursement Loans disbursed by banks and non-bank financial institutions registered 0.51% negative growth in fiscal year 2013-14 n Jebun Nesa Alo The country’s industrial term loans registered negative growth in the fiscal year 2013-14 due to sluggish business expansion activities in the backdrop of the then prolonged political unrest and increased inflow of foreign loans.

The loans disbursed by the banks and the non-bank financial institutions had registered 0.51% negative growth to Tk42,311 crore in the last fiscal year compared to 20.55% growth to Tk42,528 crore in the previous fiscal 2012-13, according to the central bank data.

The growth of the total industrial loan including working capital and term loans also down to half of the previous fiscal year.

The total industrial loan increased by 15.59% to Tk1,68,414 crore in the last fiscal year compared to 30.14% growth in the previous fiscal year.

The growth of the industrial term loan became negative as business expansion activities got almost stuck for the last one year due to sluggish investment climate, said Masum Patwary, General Manager of SME and Special Programmes Department under central bank.

Term loan has been falling sharply as big industries are now interested to take loan from the foreign sources because of the lower lending rates, Golam Hafiz Ahmed, Managing Director of

GROWTH TREND OF INDUSTRIAL TERM LOAN 29.56%

24.30% 20.55%

9.68%

-0.51% FY10

FY11

FY12

NCC Bank, told the Dhaka Tribune.

The foreign loan inflow increased by 63% to $324m in the fiscal year 2012-13 compared to $198m in the fiscal year 2011-12, according to the Board of Investment Bangladesh.

As the central bank allowed foreign loans to put pressure on the commercial banks to reduce the lending rates, the decision had badly affected the business of local banks, he added.

Bangladesh Bank did not extend its credit growth target in the first half monetary policy of the fiscal year 201415 from immediate past policy taking

FY13

FY14

the consideration of foreign loan inflow.

The central bank did not even expect that the local market won’t be flooded with the inflow of foreign loans in the current fiscal year, said a senior executive of Bangladesh Bank.

Against this backdrop, it kept its credit growth target unchanged at 16.5% fearing further possibility of slower credit demand from the industrial sector, he said.

The disbursement of industrial term loans through state-owned banks decreased by 75.65% to Tk1,393 crore in the last fiscal year compared to Tk5,723

crore in the previous fiscal year.

Private commercial banks disbursed industrial term loan worth Tk32,519 crore during last fiscal year, which was 13.23% higher than Tk28,719 crore in the previous fiscal year.

The industrial loan growth from the foreign banks decreased by 26.64% to Tk1,281 crore in the same period compared to Tk1,746 crore.

The country’s non-bank financial institutions posted 18.78% industrial loan growth to Tk5,800 crore in the last fiscal year from Tk4,882 crore in the previous fiscal year.

Banks put special focus on agriculture and consumer loans, instead of industrial loan, in last one year, to achieve credit target as per monetary policy, said a senior executive of Bangladesh Bank.

Classified loans in the industrial sector decreased by 2.10% to Tk15,225 crore in last fiscal year from 79% growth to Tk15,553 crore in the previous fiscal year due to the increase of payment as compared to the disbursement.

Classified loans decreased in the industrial sector due to huge loan rescheduling through taking advantage of the relaxed policy offered by the central bank, said Masum Patwary.

Of the total classified loans in the industrial sector, 5.47% declined against term loans and 4.53% rose against working capital loans, according to the central bank data. l

ADB gives $111m for irrigation, river erosion n Tribune Report The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has given $111m loan to Bangladesh for sustainable growth and stemming river erosion.

To this effect, Economic Relations Division (ERD) Secretary Mohammad Mejbahuddin and ADB Country Director for Bangladesh Kazuhiko Higuchi signed two agreements separately on behalf of their respective organisations at the ERD in Dhaka, said a press release yesterday.

Of the entire loan, a loan of $46m has been provided in support of Bangladesh’s efforts for sustainable high growth and productivity in agriculture.

The financial assistance will facilitate the government’s Irrigation Management Improvement Project designed to realise the full production potential of large-scale irrigation schemes in Bangladesh.

It will address the need for sustainable management, operation, and maintenance; increase water productivity and introduce innovative modern infrastructure.

The project will establish performance-based irrigation management and agriculture support services, rehabilitate and modernise irrigation system infrastructure and support institutional development of relevant agencies.

It will specifically focus on modernisation of the Muhuri Irrigation Project in Chittagong division, besides financing a feasibility study and detailed design for modernising the Ganges–

Japanese team to visit Dhaka for BIG-B initiative talks n Sheikh Shahariar Zaman

A Japanese delegation will visit Dhaka to discuss the Bay of Bengal Industrial Growth Belt (BIG-B) initiative with Bangladesh.

The meeting is part of a series of meetings that Bangladesh and Japan are having prior to the expected visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on September 6 and 7.

“We asked the Japanese side to provide information about the BIG-B and they would discuss it in the meeting,” said an official of the Foreign Ministry.

The delegation will have the meeting on development issue with ERD Secretary Mohammad Mesbahuddin on August 18,

We had a huge commitment from the Japanese side during the visit of the prime minister and we should capitalise on it In the meeting, it is expected that there would be discussion about projects including Ganges Barrage, multi-modal tunnel under river Jamuna, dedicated railway bridge over river Jamuna, multi-modal Dhaka Eastern Bypass and ecological restoration of four rivers around Dhaka.

The official said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina during her visit to Japan in May sought help from Tokyo to finance the projects.

There will be another meeting on August 21 when a Japanese vice-minister will meet Prime Minister’s Office Secretary Abul Kalam Azad to discuss

BGMEA to hold Apparel Summit in December n Ibrahim Hossain Ovi

trade and investment issues, said another officer of Foreign Ministry.

“We had a huge commitment from the Japanese side during the visit of the prime minister and we should capitalise on it,” he said.

The Japanese prime minister in May announced his commitment to provide up to 600 billion Yen of additional assistance including the 35th yen loan package totaling 120 billion Yen to Bangladesh in about four to five years from 2014.

Visit of Japan PM

The visit of Shinzo Abe is politically very significant as he would be the first head of government from any developed country to visit Dhaka after January 5 election which was widely criticised by the Western countries.

It will be Abe’s two-nation trip as he would fly to Sri Lanka from here, said the official.

Former Japanese prime minister Yoshirō Mori visited Bangladesh in August 2000.

BIG-B initiatives

The proposed BIG-B initiative is a strategic concept of Japan’s cooperation with other countries. The BIG-B has three pillars – trade and industry, energy and transportation.

Bangladesh and Jica jointly identified Matabari, located 60km south of Chittagong, as the tipping point for carrying out the BIG-B initiative. ECNEC has recently approved the Matarbari project.

Jica will provide $406 million to build the 1,200mw Matarbari Ultra Super Critical Coal-Fired Power project with the country’s first deep sea port for coal imports.

During Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to Tokyo in May, the Japanese government pressed for a mention of the initiative in the joint statement which was issued, but Dhaka refused. l

Kobadak Irrigation Project in Khulna division and the Teesta Irrigation Project in Rangpur division.

The project aims to increase the average yield of irrigated winter paddy (boro) to 4 tons/ha in 2019 from 3 tons/ ha in 2013.

It also aims to raise operations and maintenance funding from farmers and government to 100% by 2019 from 84% in 2013.

The project is expected to be completed in June 2019.

A $65m loan has been given for supporting state-of-the-art riverbank protection measures to prevent land erosion, which is destroying livelihoods and causing huge socio-economic losses.

“The ADB assistance reflects the government’s policies and strategies, and includes the development and implementation of holistic planning strategies for the country’s main rivers as well as physical and nonphysical investments in the central part of the country,” said Country Director Kazuhiko Higuchi.

The loan is the first tranche of the ADB’s $255m multi-tranche financing facility for the government’s Flood and Riverbank Erosion Risk Management Investment Programme to reduce flood and riverbank erosion risks, and thereby improve livelihoods in the project areas.

The facility will help put in place riverbank protection structures and flood embankments along vulnerable portions of the Jamuna, Padma and Ganges rivers — the country’s main waterways. l

Speakers at a discussion on Monetary Policy Statement for July-December 2014 held in the city yesterday

BB

Economists divided over BB’s favour to cheap foreign credit n Tribune Report Economists have appeared divided over Bangladesh Bank’s allowing private sector to borrow cheap foreign loans.

They exposed the division while speaking at a discussion on July-December monetary policy yesterday.

Some discussants said such type of foreign loan is alarming for the country’s financial market while others said it is important to be competitive in the global market for the private sector.

Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman participated in the discussion as chief guest at Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).

Director General of BIDS Mustafa K Mujeri was moderator of the programme.

Former BB Governor Salehuddin Ahmed was very critical about the central bank’s decision to encourage local corporate houses to take foreign loans.

He said: “The banks are yet to reduce their interest rate on lending, which encourages entrepreneurs, even defaulters, to go for foreign loans.

Many of them are eligible for loans in the local financial market.”

“The central bank should be more analytical rather than being dependant

on some data provided by the banks,” he said.

Echoing Ahmed’s view, former advisor to caretaker government Mirza Azizul Islam said: “The foreign borrowing is risky mainly due to currency mismatches.”

He was pessimistic over achieving targets set in the latest monetary policy statement.

“In my view, even attaining the target set for private sector credit at 14% will not be possible.”

Centre for Policy Dialogue Executive Director Mustafizur Rahman said fluctuation in the rate of LIBOR (London inter-bank offered rate) might affect the local corporate houses who have been borrowing the foreign loans.

“It is risky in case of medium to long-term borrowers as the rate of LIBOR fluctuates,” he said.

Rahman suggested the central bank to tighten its supervision on non-performing loans that are growing in the banking system, which is bad for the financial sector.

Supporting the BB’s allowing private sector to borrow from the foreign sources, Executive Director of Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh Ahsan H Mansur said customers should

have have their own choice. “Foreign loan makes private sector to be competitive in the global market,” he said.

He said bad borrowers are causing problems both for depositors as the rate of interest on deposits are falling.

They are also causing problems for good borrowers as the lending rate is not falling due to development of the default culture, he said.

BB Governor Atiur Rahman defended allowing foreign loan for the private sector, he said local companies have been competing globally but manufacturers of other countries had access of cheap borrowing like 3-4%.

He said, “How will they compete if they don’t get the same cheap borrowing facility?”

On rising bad loan, he said, “If any bank fails to realise its instalments, the BB instantly send electronic mails and the next day central bank inspectors will visit the branch.”

World Bank’s lead economist Zahid Hussain, BIDS research director Zaid Bakht, Change Management advisor to BB Md Allah Malik Kazemi, BIDS senior research fellow Monzur Hossain, BB chief economist Hassan Zaman and Professor of Economics at Dhaka University MA Taslim also spoke at the function. l

Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) is going to host a three-day Apparel Summit at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in the capital from December 7 to 9 this year to present a “complete picture” of the country’s garment industry.

The summit will replace the annual event BATEXPO, which was being organised every year to attract the foreign RMG buyers from different countries.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is expected to inaugurate the summit, according to a high official in the BGMEA. The BGMEA had earlier held a meeting for making a decision on organising the Apparel Summit, the first of its kind in Bangladesh.

Brands, fashion designers, sourcing executives and experts from home and abroad are expected to join the summit to share their experiences and gather knowledge about Bangladesh’s apparel industry, BGMEA vice president Shahidullah Azim told the Dhaka Tribune.

“There will be safety expo, where participants would show safety equipment and demonstrate several drills on it to raise awareness among the RMG factory owners,” he said.

The participants would get good impressions about new fashion trends, innovative technologies and important industry intelligence through attending various seminars and conferences, Azim said.

Bangladeshi entrepreneurs will also benefit from the summit enriching their knowledge about latest apparel technologies and fashion. The summit will also help domestic apparel makers build a bridge with the global buyers as well as experts.

There will have interactive panel discussions with the expert apparel brands and retail sourcing executives and industry experts on new sourcing paradigms.

Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, two platform of global buyers working on safety and compliance issues, will take part in the summit.

Besides, International Labour Organisation (ILO), Germany’s international development cooperation GIZ will also attend the summit. Award of Excellence will be given to the factory owners who are environment-friendly and compliant. l

B2

n Tribune Report Stocks gained yesterday, lifted by textile, cement and telecommunication issues.

The benchmark DSEX rose 27 points to 4,554 after a fractional rise in the previous session.

The Shariah index rose almost 10 points or 1% to 1,060. The comprising blue chips DS30 closed at 1,705 with a slight rise of 12 points or 0.8%.

Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) Selective Categories Index, CSCX, was up by 32 points to 8,596.

Turnover at DSE has improved over the previous session’s value by 28.2% and stood at Tk632 crore.

Textile got investors’ attention as the sector made up over 21% of the total trade value.

Among the major sectors, cement, engineering, telecommunication and textiles gained 3%, 1.4%, 1.3% and 3.2% respectively.

The financial sectors, non-banking financial institutions and banks, went down by 0.72% and 0.16% respectively. Food and allied sectors lost 0.6% while pharmaceuticals closed flat.

Lanka Bangla Securities said the

4554.51040

(+) 0.60%

▲

DSE - 30 Index :

1705.92766

(+) 0.76%

▲

CSE All Share Index:

14047.94850

(+) 0.57%

▲

CSE - 30 Index :

11425.54590

(-) 0.05%

8596.27670

(+) 0.37%

6th ICB M F-A 8th ICB M F-A 2nd ICB M F -A 4th ICB M F-A AIBL 1st Is. M. F.-A Libra Infusions-A Apex Tannery -A Prime Insur -A Active Fine Chem.-A Jute SpinnersA

Closing (% Change) -9.85 -9.24 -7.07 -6.82 -3.85 -3.65 -3.21 -3.09 -2.96 -2.83

CSE LOSER Company Continental Insur. -A Apex SpinningA ICB Sonali Bank 1 MF-A Rupali Life Insur.-A MBL 1st M. F.-A AIBL 1st Is. M. F.-A Rahima Food -Z Apex Tannery -A PHP 1st M. F.-A National Life I -A

Closing (% Change) -5.41 -4.83 -4.44 -4.42 -4.26 -3.77 -3.70 -3.68 -3.64 -3.63

Average (% Change) -9.51 -8.66 -6.90 -6.82 -2.30 -3.87 -3.28 -1.86 -1.94 -2.83 Average (% Change) -5.32 -4.83 -4.36 -2.79 -2.34 -2.08 -1.94 -3.19 -1.47 -3.15

ANALYST

Bank NBFI Investment Engineering Food & Allied Fuel & Power Jute Textile Pharma & Chemical Paper & Packaging Service Leather Ceramic Cement Information Technology General Insurance Life Insurance Telecom Travel & Leisure Miscellaneous Debenture

DSE Million Taka 334.87 116.71 198.87 739.49 203.66 947.79 0.89 1335.03 814.51 0.65 63.72 45.07 17.40 390.41 33.38 77.84 55.14 512.28 86.60 348.88 0.10

124,981

Traded Issues

300

Issue Gain (Avg. Price Basis)

160

Issue Loss (Avg. Price Basis)

132

Unchanged Issue (Avg. Price Basis)

8

Market Capital Equity (Billion. Tk.)

2,420.69

Market Capital Equity (Billion US$)

29.34

CSE key features August 14-2014 Turnover (Million Taka)

426.41

Turnover (Volume)

12,233,212

Number of Contract

16,467

Traded Issues

219

Issue Gain (Avg. Price Basis)

123

Issue Loss (Avg. Price Basis)

92

Unchanged Issue (Avg. Price Basis)

3

Market Capital Equity (Billion. Tk.)

2,316.46

▼ ▲

Market Capital Equity (Billion US$)

28.08

Closing

DHIGH

DLOW

Turnover in Million

Latest EPS

Latest PE

55.11 59.28 270.00 187.30 5.10 408.57 157.79 19.04 69.62 58.30

54.90 58.90 269.50 187.30 5.00 408.60 156.70 18.80 68.90 58.30

56.20 61.20 279.50 187.30 5.30 420.00 163.70 19.60 72.00 58.30

54.90 58.60 266.10 187.30 5.00 404.00 155.00 18.60 64.50 58.30

3.615 1.067 0.054 0.019 1.579 0.572 27.455 3.027 115.982 0.032

6.47 7.96 33.24 23.11 -0.56 4.20 5.51 1.28 3.30 -43.81

8.5 7.4 8.1 8.1 -ve 97.3 28.6 14.9 21.1 -ve

ClosingAvg.

Closing

DHIGH

DLOW

Turnover in Million

Latest EPS

Latest PE

0.011 0.028 0.021 0.108 0.051 0.047 0.210 1.947 0.094 0.039

3.10 2.24 1.60 5.33 -0.36 -0.56 -1.01 5.51 0.40 12.46

6.8 30.8 5.4 10.1 -ve -ve -ve 28.7 13.4 18.2

21.00 69.00 8.56 53.95 4.59 5.18 41.93 158.28 5.35 226.62

21.00 69.00 8.60 54.00 4.50 5.10 41.70 157.00 5.30 225.50

21.00 69.00 8.60 55.50 4.70 5.30 42.90 160.20 5.50 235.00

21.00 69.00 8.40 53.30 4.50 5.10 41.60 156.00 5.30 225.50

Savar Refractories-Z Tallu Spinning -A Zahintex Ind.-N Paramount Textile Ltd.-A Maksons Spinning-A Matin Spinning-N Familytex (BD) Ltd.-A Samata LeatheR -Z Summit Power -A Bengal Windsor-A

Closing (% Change) 9.34 8.70 8.70 8.65 8.22 7.82 6.58 6.53 6.25 5.93

CSE GAINER

ClosingAvg.

Company Paramount Textile Ltd.-A Tallu Spinning -A Zahintex Ind.-N Matin Spinning-N Samata LeatheR -Z Maksons Spinning-A Asia Pasific Insu. -A Mercantile Insur -A H.R. Textile -A 1st Janata Bank MF-A

Closing (% Change) 8.67 8.66 8.17 7.82 7.78 7.48 7.18 6.95 6.80 6.45

Average (% Change) 12.51 6.47 6.34 8.78 7.38 6.49 4.37 6.12 3.67 3.50 Average (% Change) 8.97 6.40 5.58 6.38 7.78 6.77 7.22 6.95 6.25 3.71

ClosingAvg. 60.00 29.63 22.13 42.26 15.57 50.52 23.90 26.00 36.74 51.22

Closing 59.70 30.00 22.50 42.70 15.80 51.00 24.30 26.10 37.40 51.80

DHIGH

DLOW

60.00 30.30 22.70 42.90 16.00 51.90 24.50 26.80 38.00 52.30

59.20 26.00 18.70 36.00 13.40 47.80 23.00 26.00 32.00 44.20

Turnover in Million

Latest EPS

Latest PE

0.102 72.839 17.285 136.587 146.254 199.781 141.303 0.104 131.932 64.859

0.52 2.60 0.95 3.13 0.21 2.99 4.34 0.09 3.54 2.60

115.4 11.4 23.3 13.5 74.1 16.9 5.5 288.9 10.4 19.7

ClosingAvg.

Closing

DHIGH

DLOW

Turnover in Million

Latest EPS

Latest PE

42.14 29.61 22.12 50.49 29.10 15.46 20.94 20.00 32.97 6.43

42.60 30.10 22.50 51.00 29.10 15.80 20.90 20.00 33.00 6.60

42.90 30.30 22.60 51.80 29.70 15.90 21.20 20.00 33.70 6.60

40.00 28.40 21.40 48.60 28.50 14.80 20.30 20.00 32.20 6.20

13.495 9.379 3.248 10.491 0.029 13.667 0.052 0.040 0.544 0.277

3.13 2.60 0.95 2.99 0.09 0.21 2.26 2.00 1.75 0.55

13.5 11.4 23.3 16.9 323.3 73.6 9.3 10.0 18.8 11.7

News from trade servers AIMS1STMF: Taking into consideration available fund from reserves, the Trustee Committee of the Fund has approved 50% 'Re-Investment' Units as dividend for the year ended on June 30, 2014 to be issued at a valuation of the last published NAV per unit before the Record date. Record date: 01.09.2014. The Fund has reported net profit of Tk. 195.08 million and earnings per unit of Tk. 4.71 for the year ended on June 30, 2014.

RELIANCE1: The Trustee Committee of the Fund has declared 11% cash dividend for the year ended on June 30, 2014. Record date: 01.09.2014. The Fund has reported net profit of Tk. 83.52 million and earnings per unit of Tk. 1.38 for the year ended on June 30, 2014.

ICB: The Corporation has further informed that the subscription period for rights issue will be from 07.12.2014 to 30.12.2014.

Record date for entitlement of rights share: 09.09.2014. The purpose of issuance of Rights Share is to foster sustainable growth in business and to give best efforts for maintaining stability and developing Capital market, Investment Corporation of Bangladesh envisages issuing the Rights shares to raise its paid-up capital base for investment in primary & secondary market and to pay off the borrowings of the Corporation.

EXIMBANK: The Company has further informed that the Board of Directors has decided to hold its 9th EGM in connection with issuance of Mudaraba Subordinated Bond

for Tk. 250.00 crore through private placement. Date of EGM: 21.09.2014, Time of EGM: 11:00 AM, Venue: EXIM Bank Training and Research Academy (EBTRA), BGMEA Complex (2nd Floor), 23/1 Panthapath Link Road, Karwan Bazar, Dhaka. Record Date for EGM: 26.08.2014.

ACTIVEFINE: National Credit Ratings Limited (NCR) has announced the rating of the Company as "A+" in the long term and "ST-2" in the short term based on audited financial statements of the Company of December 31, 2013.

SQURPHARMA: (Q1): As per un-audited quarterly accounts for the 1st quarter ended on 30th June 2014 (Apr'14 to June'14), the Company has reported consolidated profit after tax (excluding non-controlling interest) of Tk. 1,388.89 million with consolidated basic EPS of Tk. 2.88 as against Tk. 1,331.84 million and Tk. 2.76 respectively for the same period of the previous year. However, considering proposed bonus share @ 15% for the year 2014, consolidated restated basic EPS will be Tk. 2.51 as on 30.06.2014 and Tk. 2.40 as on 30.06.2013.

SINOBANGLA: The Company has informed that the Share Office of the Company will be shifted to Navana DH Tower (9th Floor), 6 Panthapath, Dhaka-1215 with effect from 19th August, 2014.

IPO Subscription: Khan Brothers PP Woven Bag Industries Ltd. subscription date 24-28 August 2014, NRB upto 06 Septem-

ber 2014. @ taka 10, face value taka 10 and market lot 500. Western Marine Shipyard Limited subscription date 10-14 August 2014, NRB upto 23 August 2014. @ taka 35, face value taka 10 and market lot 100.

Right Share: MIDASFIN: Subscription period for rights issue will be from 01.09.2014 to 30.09.2014. Record date for entitlement of rights share: 03.08.2014.

Dividend of ICB AMCL Managed MFs: ICBSONALI1 10% cash, IFILISLMF1 10% cash, ICB3RDNRB 5% cash, PF1STMF 5% cash, PRIME1ICBA 5% cash, ICBEPMF1S1 5% cash, ICBAMCL2ND 5% cash, ICB2NDNRB 10% cash, ICB1STNRB 30% cash, ICBISLAMIC 20% cash. Record Date: 20.08.2014.

DELTASPINN: 10% cash, AGM: 30.08.2014, Record date: 14.08.2014.

ICB MF Dividend: 8THICB: 120% cash, 7THICB: 130% cash, 12.08.2014, 6THICB: 110% cash, 5THICB: 225% cash , 4THICB: 250% cash, 3RDICB: 250% cash, 2NDICB: 400% cash, 1STICB: 800% cash. Record date: 12.08.2014.

NAVANACNG: 15% cash, AGM: 25.09.2014, Record Date: 10.08.2014.

SUNLIFEINS: 5% stock, AGM: 15.09.2014, Record Date: 07.08.2014.

SQURPHARMA: 30% cash and 15% stock, AGM: 25.09.2014, Record Date: 26.08.2014.

NAV of Tk. 22,277.52 million, EPS of Tk. 8.36.

APEXSPINN: 20% cash, AGM: 28.09.2014, Record date: 07.08.2014. EPS Tk. 2.24, NAV per share of Tk. 49.75.

Growing businesses amid calm political scenario continued strengthening investors’ buoyancy as well as their participation in market

SECTORAL TURNOVER SUMMARY Sector

151,531,460

Number of Contract

DSE Broad Index :

DSE LOSER

6,323.27

Turnover (Volume)

Daily capital market highlights

CSE Selected Index :

Company

Turnover (Million Taka)

market reaffirmed a vibrant trading session and reverted with a strong market position.

It said the buying interest, which flickered in the last hour of previous trading session, continued to induce positive momentum towards manufacturing and power sectors.

IDLC Investments said holding its momentum, DSEX stayed above psychological level of 4,500-mark and amplified investors’ confidence.

“Growing businesses amid calm political scenario continued strengthening investors’ buoyancy as well as their participation in market.”

Zenith Investments said the market reversed its course of direction and would recover quickly with a huge turnover volume shortly before three days of holiday.

It said much of the credit goes to the Textile and Engineering sectors that fueled the growth of all the three indexes and made the market more attractable for the investors.

Grameenphone topped the liquidity chart, followed by MJL Bangladesh, Lafarge Surma Cement, Square Pharmaceuticals, Appollo Ispat and Matin Spinning. l

Friday, August 15, 2014

DSE GAINER

DSE key features August 14-2014

Stocks bounce back with increased participation

Company

Stock

DHAKA TRIBUNE

% change 5.30 1.85 3.15 11.69 3.22 14.99 0.01 21.11 12.88 1.01 0.71 0.28 6.17 0.53 1.23 0.87 8.10 1.37 5.52 0.00

Million Taka 18.46 11.17 11.31 45.83 13.87 58.07 115.74 40.75 16.49 3.55 19.19 2.01 22.94 3.45 1.96 3.98 35.59 17.26 34.00 0.01

CSE

% change 3.88 2.35 2.38 9.63 2.92 12.21 0.00 24.33 8.57 3.47 0.75 4.03 0.42 4.82 0.72 0.41 0.84 7.48 3.63 7.15 0.00

Million Taka 353.33 127.88 210.18 785.31 217.53 1005.86 0.89 1450.77 855.26 17.14 67.27 64.26 19.42 413.35 36.82 79.81 59.12 547.87 103.86 382.88 0.11

Total

% change 5.20 1.88 3.09 11.55 3.20 14.79 0.01 21.34 12.58 0.25 0.99 0.95 0.29 6.08 0.54 1.17 0.87 8.06 1.53 5.63 0.00

Prepared exclusively for Dhaka Tribune by Business Information Automation Service Line (BIASL), on the basis of information collected from daily stock quotations and audited reports of the listed companies. High level of caution has been taken to collect and present the above information and data. The publisher will not take any responsibility if any body uses this information and data for his/her investment decision. For any query please email to biasl@bol-online.com or call 01552153562 or go to www.biasl.net

DSE TURNOVER LEADERS Company Grameenphone-A MJL BD Ltd.-A LafargeS Cement-Z Square Pharma -A Appollo Ispat CL -N Matin Spinning-N BEXIMCO Ltd. -A Maksons Spinning-A Familytex (BD) Ltd.-A BSC-A CSE TURNOVER LEADERS Company Appollo Ispat CL -N BEXIMCO Ltd. -A Grameenphone-A Familytex (BD) Ltd.-A LafargeS Cement-Z BD Submarine Cable-A Maksons Spinning-A Paramount Textile Ltd.-A G Next Fashions-A S Purbanchol Power-N

VolumeShares 1,163,343 2,702,954 2,664,500 982,355 7,477,200 3,954,400 5,570,003 9,396,011 5,913,000 243,430

VolumeShares

731,000 646,276 60,400 730,000 163,500 79,815 883,794 320,260 701,285 213,638

344.20 104.40 104.20 274.60 31.40 51.00 34.50 15.80 24.30 581.75

Change % 1.47 -0.29 4.62 -0.62 3.63 7.82 1.47 8.22 6.58 2.65

% of TotalTurnover

ClosingP

5.46 5.32 5.00 4.19 4.03 3.51 3.27 3.23 2.99 2.78

31.50 34.50 345.00 24.30 104.00 183.60 15.80 42.60 17.90 53.80

Value in Million 402.72 285.74 273.05 269.36 233.70 199.78 192.04 146.25 141.30 139.17

% of TotalTurnover 6.37 4.52 4.32 4.26 3.70 3.16 3.04 2.31 2.23 2.20

Value in Million

22.82 22.26 20.90 17.51 16.84 14.69 13.67 13.50 12.51 11.64

ClosingP

ClosingY

DHIGH

DLOW

AvgPrice

339.20 104.70 99.60 276.30 30.30 47.30 34.00 14.60 22.80 566.75

350.40 110.00 104.70 281.00 31.60 51.90 36.00 16.00 24.50 585.00

338.00 94.90 100.00 254.00 30.50 47.80 30.60 13.40 23.00 558.75

346.17 105.71 102.48 274.20 31.26 50.52 34.48 15.57 23.90 571.70

Change %

ClosingY

DHIGH

DLOW

AvgPrice

3.96 0.88 1.80 6.11 4.31 -1.29 7.48 8.67 2.87 1.89

30.30 34.20 338.90 22.90 99.70 186.00 14.70 39.20 17.40 52.80

31.60 35.20 350.00 24.40 105.00 186.80 15.90 42.90 18.10 55.70

30.70 33.80 340.10 23.10 100.00 183.00 14.80 40.00 17.60 53.00

31.22 34.44 346.00 23.99 103.02 184.09 15.46 42.14 17.84 54.47

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Business

B3

Friday, August 15, 2014

Global stocks rise, led by Wall Street rebound n Reuters, New York A global stock gauge rose on Wednesday, boosted by a technology-led rebound on Wall Street, while Brazilian markets were shaken by the death of presidential candidate Eduardo Campos in a plane crash.

Investors were optimistic about a possible de-escalation of the conflict on the Russia-Ukraine border, giving stocks support, while copper, a barometer for global economic growth, fell more than 1% to a seven-week low.

Investor anxiety over the standoff between Russia and Ukraine ebbed slightly after Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said late on Tuesday that the possibility of Russia’s military invading eastern Ukraine had receded after Moscow agreed to send in humanitarian aid under Red Cross auspices.

Still, Ukraine denounced the convoy as an act of Russian cynicism and said it would not be allowed to cross the border.

“The market seems comfortable with what’s going on abroad, and while there’s always a risk of escalation, which would give the market pause, trying to anticipate that is pure speculation,” said David Lebovitz, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds in New York.

“Focusing on fundamentals has us viewing any weakness as a buying opportunity,” he added.

Technology and biotech shares were the top gainers on Wall Street, more than offsetting data that showed US retail sales unexpectedly stalled in July, pointing to some loss of momentum in the economy.

“Investors seem to be looking past the retail numbers and seeing the silver lining, which is that the Fed could be less hawkish and keep interest rates

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange down for longer,” said Lawrence Glazer, managing partner at Mayflower Advisors in Boston.

Brazil’s Bovespa index fell as much as 2.1% before closing down 1.5% after news that presidential candidate Eduardo Campos was killed in a plane crash

in the southeastern city of Santos.

Campos, a former ally of President Dilma Rousseff, was running on a business-friendly platform and was in third place in recent polls with the support of about 10% of voters.

US Treasury debt yields fell after the

REUTERS

soft retail sales data, as traders bet on more support from the US central bank.

“The knee-jerk reaction to the retail sales data was a disappointment” said Craig Dismuke, chief economic strategist at Vining Sparks in Memphis, Tennessee.

Selling pressure from this week’s $67bn in supply has been offset by a steady bid for safe-haven Treasuries on worries about conflicts in Iraq, eastern Ukraine and Gaza. Ten-year yields have not strayed far above last week’s 14-month low of 2.349%. l

Global gold demand weaker, WGC says n AFP, London Gold consumption fell by an annualised 16% in the second quarter of 2014 as Chinese and Indian buyers cut back on record purchases a year earlier, sector data showed Thursday.

A director of the World Gold Council (WGC) forecast the full-year result would also be lower than in 2013, but probably not represent as big a drop as during the three months from April through June.

A total of 964 tonnes of the precious metal was bought in the quarter, according to figures compiled by the WGC, a federation of the biggest producers.

The decline was largely the result of weaker jewelry purchases, which typically account for half of global demand, and which were 30 percent lower at 510 tonnes, the data showed.

In the two biggest consumer countries, China and India, demand for gold jewelry was down by 45% and 18%, respectively, with specialists pointing to market saturation following records set in 2013.

“It’s important to remember that last year was an exceptional year in the gold market ... with a big fall in the gold price, very large ETF redemption, and massive increase in consumer demand,” WGC managing director of Investment Strategy Marcus Grubb told AFP. He referred to a 28% drop in the price last year, and also to financial exchange-traded funds (ETF) that are based on gold stocks.

Grubb said the market appeared to be stabilising and that the outlook was “likely to look better later in the year than it is now, although it will be down on last year but not as much as these figures suggest.” l

Euro mixed in Asia ahead Standard Chartered to scour records for of eurozone growth data money laundering, with penalty at stake

Oil prices down in Asian trade n AFP, Singapore

n AFP, Tokyo

Oil prices fell in Asia yesterday following a surprise increase in US commercial crude-oil stockpiles and a slew of soft economic data from leading energy consumers.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for September delivery eased 28 cents to $97.31 while Brent crude for September shed 50 cents to $103.78 in mid-morning trade.

A build in US inventories for the first time in seven weeks weighed on prices, analysts said.

US crude-oil inventories rose by 1.4 million barrels, to 367.0 million, in the week ending August 8, the Department of Energy said. Crude-oil supplies had contracted by roughly 22 million barrels over the prior six weeks.

The inventories increase surprised analysts, who expected a decline of 1.7 million barrels, according to a survey

by Dow Jones Newswires.

Benchmark prices also weakened due to “soft economic data from Europe and China”, said Sanjeev Gupta, head of the Asia-Pacific oil and gas practice at consultancy firm EY. A string of disappointing Chinese data released Wednesday raised concerns about growth in the world’s second largest economy and top energy consumer. l

The euro was mixed in Asia yesterday as investors awaited second-quarter eurozone growth figures.

In afternoon Tokyo trading, the European single currency fetched $1.3361 against $1.3363 in New York, while it rose to 137.07 yen from 136.89 yen.

The dollar - which has initially weakened in New York on stagnant US retail sales for July - strengthened to 102.57 yen from 102.43 yen.

Trading volume was muted with many market players away for Japan’s traditional mid-summer holiday.

Investors were focusing on a likely poor report for eurozone economic growth due later Thursday.

Growth in the 18-member bloc was expected to stabilise around 0.2% quarter-on-quarter, Credit Agricole said, but concerns about Germany, Europe’s top economy, could boost speculation about further easing measures from the European Central Bank (ECB).

The ECB is expected to move again on its monetary policy, after taking unprecedented easing measures in the face of deflation fears. On the other hand, the US Federal Reserve, which has been pulling back on its own stimulus, was seen as likely to hike inter-

est rates sooner than expected as the world’s number one economy recovers.

Despite its falls in recent weeks, the euro was still a sell, Credit Agricole said.

Dollar-yen rates hardly reacted to Japanese data that showed core machinery orders - a leading index of corporate capital spending - rose a weaker-than-expected 8.8% in June, after plunging 19.5% in May. But the yen’s level yesterday was well below rates the previous day when Tokyo said Japan’s economy contracted in the April-June quarter as a sales tax hike dented activity.

The dollar was lower against other Asia-Pacific currencies.

It fell to Sg$1.2480 from Sg$1.2502 the previous day, to Tw$29.99 from Tw$30.01, and to 31.86 Thai baht from 31.96 baht.

The greenback also dropped to 11,677.50 Indonesian rupiah from 11,695.00 rupiah, to 61.05 Indian rupees from 61.24 rupees, to 1,023.09 South Korean won from 1,028.81 won, and to 43.74 Philippine pesos from 43.97 pesos.

The Australian dollar inched up to 92.56 US cents from 92.93 cents, while the Chinese yuan was up to 16.64 yen from 16.60 yen. l

Standard Bank Limited recently held its half yearly business conference at a hotel in Dhaka. The bank’s managing director and CEO, Md Nazmus Salehin presided over the ceremony

Symphony has recently opened its 42th customer care centre named Symphony Smile in Satkhira. The head of service at Edison Group, SM Morshed-Uz-Zaman inaugurated the centre

n Reuters Standard Chartered Plc will soon begin sifting through a mountain of data for signs of possible money laundering or other criminal activity, as a result of faults in the software critical to its anti-money laundering compliance program, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.

The outcome of this review could affect any penalties regulators impose on the bank for anti-money laundering lapses.

Because Standard Chartered clears about two million U.S. dollar transactions each month, the process of poring through the data will be “a huge piece of work” that could take months, said one of the sources. Both sources spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

As previously reported by Reuters, holes in the British bank’s anti-money laundering net were uncovered by a monitor imposed by the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) in 2012. At that time, DFS and federal authorities took separate actions against Standard Chartered, fining the bank a total of $667m for violating US sanctions by hiding transactions linked to Iran.

As a result of the latest problem, Standard Chartered is once again under scrutiny from the DFS, the bank disclosed when announcing its earnings last week. A penalty of more than $100m and an extension of the monitorship is possible beyond its anticipated end in early 2015, another source said.

A spokeswoman for Standard Chartered declined to comment. A spokesman for the DFS also declined to comment.

Jamuna Bank Limited recently held 30th meeting of its Shariah Supervisiory Committee.

The meeting was presided over by the committee’s chairperson, Professor Mawlana Md Salahuddin

Rupali Bank’s managing director, M Farid Uddin has recently inaugurated two units of Himalaya Paper and Board Mills as chief guest at Tarabo

The findings of Standard Chartered’s pending transaction review, known as a “look back,” could affect the severity of any penalties imposed by DFS, one of the sources with knowledge of the issue said. The more crime proceeds that flowed through the bank, the more it likely will have to pay, the source said.

The bank has done extensive planning for the review with help from an external consultant and is coordinating with the DFS to ensure it approves of the plan, one of the sources said. l

NRB Global Bank Limited has recently held the half yearly conference for its managers yesterday at the bank’s corporate head office in Dhaka. The bank’s chairperson, Nizam Chowdhury inaugurated the conference as chief guest while Md Abdul Quddus, the bank’s managing director presided over the conference

Shun Shing Group, Hong Kong and Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) have recently signed an agreement for implementing the Oracle E-Business Suite and Business Intelligence (BI) at a hotel in Dhaka. The two important softwares will modernise the business process and technologically advanced

B4

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Back Page

Robo-cook: android restaurant boots up in China n AFP, Kunshan

It’s more teatime than Terminator – a restaurant in China is electrifying customers by using more than a dozen robots to cook and deliver food.

Mechanical staff greet customers, deliver dishes to tables and even stirfry meat and vegetables at the eatery in Kunshan, which opened last week.

“My daughter asked me to invent a robot because she doesn’t like doing housework,” the restaurant’s founder Song Yugang told AFP. Two robots are stationed by the door to cheerfully greet customers, while four short but humanoid machines carry trays of food to the tables.

In the kitchen, two large blue robots with glowing red eyes specialise in frying, while another is dedicated to making dumplings.

Song told the local Modern Times newspaper that each robot costs around 40,000 yuan ($6,500) - roughly equal to the annual salary of a human employee.

“The robots can understand 40 everyday sentences. They can’t get sick or ask for vacation. After charging up for two hours they can work for five hours,” he added.

The restaurant, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, follows in the tracks of another robotic eatery which opened in the northeastern city of Harbin in 2012.

Rising labour costs in China have encouraged manufacturers to turn to automation, and the country last year

Jailed Indian tycoon seeks more time to seal hotel deals

n Reuters, Mumbai

Jailed Indian business tycoon Subrata Roy, working from a high-tech office in prison, has requested more time to negotiate the sale of some of his luxury hotels to help to secure bail.

Roy, chairman of the Sahara conglomerate, was initially given 10 days by the Supreme Court to talk to potential bidders for three hotels, including Grosvenor House in London and the New York Plaza, to raise $1.6bn for bail.

Roy has been given an office with 600 sq ft (56 sq metres) of space inside New Delhi’s Tihar jail complex, where he can hold video conferences, use computers and receive visitors to try to sell or mortgage the hotels.

The initial deadline for using these facilities is set to end on Aug 19. Keshav Mohan, a lawyer for Sahara, told Reuters on Wednesday that a 15-day extension had been sought for continued use of the facilities in prison. “The court is likely to hear the matter tomorrow,” Mohan said. l

This photo taken on August 13, shows a robot cooking vegetables in a kitchen of a restaurant in Kunshan. It's more teatime than Terminator – a restaurant in China is electrifying customers by using more than a dozen robots to cook and deliver food AFP surpassed Japan to become the world’s biggest consumer of industrial robots.

The cooking robots -- which have a fixed repertoire - exhibit limited artificial intelligence, and are loaded with ingredients by human staff, who also help to make some dishes.

But customers at the restaurant who tucked into fried tomatoes with egg, soup, and rice were thrilled with the experience.

“My children are really excited by the robots,” said Yang Limei, a mother of three.

The round-headed waiter robots can only move along fixed paths, and politely ask customers to move out of their way whenever their routes are blocked.

“I’ve never seen a robot serving food before,” said Yuan Yuan, nine. “I’m really surprised.” l

Amazon unveils card payment reader, challenging Square n AFP, New York US online giant Amazon unveiled a new payment card reader for mobile devices Wednesday in challenging a system pioneered by Square.

The e-commerce giant unveiled its “Amazon Local Register,” described as “a secure card reader and mobile app that provides local businesses with the tools they need to quickly and easily accept credit and debit cards from a smartphone or tablet and keep track of their growing business.”

The move expands Amazon’s efforts to gain a foothold in the payments business in addition to its traditional role as a retailer.

Amazon launched its payment service last year, allowing people to make one-time payments to third parties and later unveiled a system for recurring payments.

With the card reader, Amazon will

get a 2.5% commission on sales, but is offering a promotional rate of 1.75% for customers who sign up by October 31, a rate that will remain in place until 2016.

PayPal, a unit of the online giant eBay, also has a card reader and gets a 2.7% commission per swipe “From clothing stores to contractors, food trucks to accountants, businesses and organizations using Amazon Local Register will enjoy industry-leading low rates, trusted and secure payment processing, and access to award-winning customer support,” said Amazon’s Matt Swann.

“We understand that every penny

and every minute counts, so we want to make accepting payments so easy and inexpensive that it no longer gets in the way of a business owner doing what they love - serving their customers and growing their business.”

Merchants can buy a mobile reader for $10 and attach the device to many tablets and smartphones. Amazon will credit back the first $10 in transaction fees, making the device free.

Amazon will also allow transactions to be processed through a mobile app without the use of the reader.

The fees from Amazon undercut the system used by Square, a payments processor set up in 2010 by Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter.

Square takes a 2.75% cut on sales from its card reader and 3.5% plus 15 cents from its mobile app.

PayPal, a unit of the online giant eBay, also has a card reader and gets a 2.7% commission per swipe. l

Friday, August 15, 2014

Europe’s economic motor Germany sputters in Q2 n AFP, Frankfurt The German economy, Europe’s biggest, stalled in the second quarter, hit by weak exports and investment and fallout from the Ukraine crisis, data showed on yesterday.

According to a flash estimate by the federal statistics office Destatis, Germany’s gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 0.2% in the period from April to June, following growth of 0.7% in the preceding three months.

Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel blamed the development on “geopolitical risks in eastern Europe and in the Middle East.”

“After a strong first quarter, GDP growth was weaker than most experts had expected,” Gabriel said.

In addition to the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East, the economic contraction in Germany could also be attributed to a statistical effect, the minister pointed out.

Given the unusually mild winter, a lot of investment, particularly in the construction sector, had been “frontloaded” or brought forward to the first quarter, with the result that the upturn traditionally seen in the spring did not occur, Gabriel said.

“But in the first six months as a whole, economic output improved,” he insisted. “Growth rates should be positive again in the remainder of the year.”

Analysts had been forecasting zero growth or even a minimal contraction in the second quarter after the unusually mild winter boosted activity in the first three months of the year.

On the positive side of the GDP data, both private household and public sector spending increased, Destatis noted.

And as a result, most analysts insisted that the recovery trend was not in jeopardy.

Temporary blip

“The second-quarter setback reflects a combination of technical factors and external weakness, but not fundamental problems in the economy,” said Berenberg Bank economist Christian Schulz.

“A relatively mild winter triggered a shallower than usual spring rebound in construction activity, while the timing of Easter holidays may have also shifted some production from the second quarter to the first quarter,” he said.

“Put simply, the first-quarter figure probably overstated underlying growth a bit, while the second-quarter decline understates it.”

In Berlin, economic think-tank DIW said that with weak industrial orders expected in the third quarter, “it is possible that the German economy could slip into a shallow recession.”

“But as long as the crisis remains under control and the eurozone economy gradually recovers, the German economy should find its way back to a mod-

erate recovery,” said DIW economist Ferdinand Fichtner.

UniCredit economist Martina von Terzi agreed.

“The German economy remains in good shape fundamentally and stagnation will not become a lasting pattern for the German economy,” she said.

Nevertheless, “looking ahead, recent leading indicators are not delivering a very promising message. Risks from Russia cannot be underestimated. Less dynamic growth for the third quarter and 2014 is likely.”

Deutsche Bank economist Eric Heymann also believed that “despite the current geopolitical risks, we see no general change in the trend but rather a temporary dip.”

A relatively mild winter triggered a shallower than usual spring rebound in construction activity, while the timing of Easter holidays may have also shifted some production from the second quarter to the first quarter The geopolitical risks such as the Ukraine crisis and the recently decided EU sanctions against Russia “are very obviously dampening business sentiment.”

Germany set for return to growth

But “in the further course of 2014, industry in Germany is likely to return to a growth path, albeit with low momentum, Heymann said.

“The economic engine in German industry is sputtering, but it has not drowned yet,” he said.

BayernLB economist Stefan Kipar was also confident that the German economy would see “moderate growth rates” in the rest of the year.

Commerzbank economist Joerg Kraemer said he has cut his forecast for 2014 from 2% to 1.7%.

“Although there is still some downside risk, growth will probably turn out higher in second-half, with Germany continuing its above-average performance,” Kraemer concluded.

Analysts are concerned about underlying divergence between the performance of the German economy and of the French economy, the secondbiggest in the eurozone.

Although France did slightly better in the second quarter, turning in zero growth, this was a flat performance for the second quarter running, reflecting deep and enduring structural problems in France, they say, in contrast to what looks like a blip in fundamentally robust Germany. l

Are too-big-to-fail banks being cut down to size? n Reuters The massive $16bn mortgage fraud settlement agreement reached by Bank of America and federal authorities - only the latest in a string of such settlements - makes it easy to lose sight of what good shape banks are in.

Banks are now far better capitalized, with tighter credit processes and better risk accounting. The bigger Wall Street houses have also jettisoned many of their most volatile trading operations.

Yet most have still managed to turn in decent earnings. That is a tribute to the steady and generally thoughtful imposition of the new Dodd-Frank and Basel III regulations, the rules on “stress-testing” balance sheets and the controversial Volcker Rule that limits speculative proprietary trading operations.

And the feds are keeping on the pressure, as demonstrated by their rejection of almost all the “living will” plans submitted by the major banks, which are supposed to prevent the kind of disorderly collapse that Lehman Brothers went through in 2008. These living will impositions are designed either to reduce the riskiness of bank holdings or to make the financial institutions post more capital and reserves to cushion against reverses.

DILBERT

While these reforms were badly needed after the virtual wholesale deregulation of the 1990s, they almost all raise costs and limit flexibility. But that is far from the worst problem facing the banks. The regulatory impact on revenues and profits is likely to be dwarfed by the pain banks will experience after the inevitable removal of their current federal life-support systems.

The Federal Reserve has taken extraordinary measures to entice banks to lend money. It has used two main tools.

The first, called quantitative easing or “QE,” has entailed the Fed buying massive quantities of securities normally held by private financial institutions.

The second has been to keep the fed funds rate, or the rate at which major banks lend their short-term funds to each other, at unusually low levels.

The Fed’s use of these tools has been extremely aggressive. Take quantitative easing. The Fed is a bank and has a balance sheet. At the end of 2007, or just before the financial crash, the value of its securities portfolio totaled about $925bn; because of QE, the Fed’s balance sheet has ballooned to $4.4tn.

It’s safe stuff, mostly Treasuries and mortgage securities, but in normal markets, those volumes would be on the books of private institutions, not the Fed. In effect since 2008, the Fed

JPMorgan, the largest bank in the United States, is seeking to minimize the damage caused by a $2 billion trading loss, disclosed earlier this month has freed up about $3.5tn of new cash, nearly a fifth of annual US gross domestic product, that the financial sector can recycle into the economy.

The Fed funds policy has been just as aggressive. For context, during the high-growth years of the 1990s, the fed funds rate hovered at about 5.5%. After the 9/11 disaster and the 2001-2002 recession, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan reduced the fed funds rate to 1% - the lowest since the 1950s. He kept it there well after the economy had begun to recover. Then, together with his successor Ben Bernanke, Greenspan gradually moved it back to 5.25% by mid-2006. When the crash hit, Bernanke quickly pushed it

back to 1%. In recent months, it’s been hovering at only a fraction of 1%.

How do such measures help the banks? Consider JPMorgan Chase. Last year, it had interest income of $53bn against interest expense of only $9.7bn, for a gross margin of 81% on its lending activities. In 2006, when fed funds were creeping back to 1990s levels, its gross interest margin was only 36%. If that same margin had applied in 2013, it would have cost JPMorgan $24bn.

To put that number into perspective, that’s about a quarter of its annual gross revenues, and not much lower than the bank’s total compensation in 2013. So it’s fair to assume that without the Fed’s extraordinary measures,

JPMorgan would be a far smaller bank.

Banks with more traditional business models, however, won’t be as exposed as a JPMorgan when the Fed’s abnormal assistance dries up. Wells Fargo, for example, is a big bank but without the investment banking and trading pretensions of a JPMorgan. A greater share of Wells Fargo’s lending is funded from customer deposits, whereas JPMorgan is more reliant on the global money markets. That’s a big advantage for Wells Fargo, because when rates start rising, retail depositors react more slowly than the money markets do.

Wells Fargo’s 2013 gross interest margin was 91%, even better than JPM-

organ’s. In the tighter environment of 2006, its gross interest margin was substantially better – 62% to JPMorgan’s 36%.

The Fed began to ratchet down its quantitative easing program earlier this year, and its new chairman, Janet Yellen, recently announced that it will accelerate the phase-down. The stated intention, however, is to keep the fed funds rate at its current level for an unspecified period.

The extreme easy-money policy has been successful. It prevented a wholesale banking collapse in the wake of the crash and, to a somewhat lesser extent, managed to deliver measurable stimulus to the economy. Bernanke’s brave innovations deserve to be celebrated.

But as with any subsidy regime, the distortions being created may soon outweigh the good that’s been done.

Since the Fed has been the major driver of the stimulus program, it has naturally used the financial sector as its primary tool, so much of the largesse has been diverted into financial-sector pockets. Disgracefully, in 2009, when the real economy was staggering, earnings and bonuses at most of the biggest banks broke records.

Cheap money also feeds asset bubbles - stock markets soar when margin rates are historically low. Keeping rates artificially low also punishes the diligent small savers with conservative retirement portfolios.

There will undoubtedly be hiccups as the stimuli are wound down. Indeed, some further stimulus may be needed.

But the right course will be to put it directly into the real economy - including badly needed infrastructure repairs where it will do more good rather than continuing to subsidize the financialsector shareholders and executives. l