August 12, 2016

SECOND EDITION

FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 2016 | shraban 28, 1423, Zilqad 8, 1437 | regd no dA 6238, vol 4, no 107 | www.dhakatribune.com | 32 pages plus 24-page Weekend supplement | Price: tk10

A survivor’s statement indian national sat Prakash’s statement to the court on July 26, here reproduced unedited, captures the raw intensity of surviving the Gulshan terror attack It was Friday. I decided to go to Holey Artisan Bakery. I went there by my car, parked the car there.

I went inside at 8:30 pm. I sat on table, which is at the front facing corner table.

Meantime, I called a friend named Tanmoy. He said he do not have food but will join me later. I ordered pasta and orange juice. They served me bread and sausage as complimentary. I was waiting for my friend.

Suddenly I found two/ three guys locking or pushing the main restaurant gate. At the time, I heard sound which

appeared to me as sound of crackers. Suddenly, six/seven people were rushing towards the restaurant. I got up from my chair and was in a fix.

Immediately I heard gun shot and saw a guy fall down.

At the same time, I heard the slogan Allah – hu – Akbar. I tried to hide myself behind a tomb. Within seconds, I saw a guy running with hands on his face. There was blood on his face.

He looked like a person from far east countries like Japan, China, Korea. I was thinking about leaving the  PAGE 4 COLUMN 1

COMMENTARY

The case for the defence: Hasnat and Tahmid n Shayan S Khan The arrests of July 1 terrorist attack survivors Hasnat Reza Karim and Tahmid Hasib Khan under Section 54 of the CrPC tells you something.

MORE STORIES ON PAGE 2 It tells you that more than a month after the incident, despite having both men in their custody, the police still have not found anything to substantiate a criminal link between the two and the Gulshan terror attack.

Under Section 54, police can arrest anyone without necessarily linking them to a specific case or crime.

The arrests allow us the scope, finally, to now argue that the entire premise upon which Karim and Tahmid have drawn suspicion, from both the public and the police, right from the start, has been seriously flawed.

The principal basis for this suspicion that has fired up far more imaginations than is advisable for a nation’s collective sanity, is some of the video footage shot by the Korean gentleman next door, in which Hasnat in particular, seems to be getting along quite nicely with some of the attackers.

His demeanour in the passage during which he goes up to the balcony in  PAGE 6 COLUMN 1

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ANALYSIS

Body of evidence n India Ford A picture tells a thousand words and the body never lies.

After reviewing photographs and video taken on July 1 and 2, 2016 at Holey Artisan Bakery, I think it is abundantly clear that Tahmid’s body language is not

Photos 1 and 2 Let’s first look at the body language of the terrorist.

He is standing in a very open, upright and confident posture. The head is held high and the hands are held gently at the back. This posture exposes his most vulnerable area at the front – his torso.

This is the classic body language of someone who is feeling confident, assured, relaxed and at ease.

In the second picture, you will see him standing in a classic alpha male, macho posture. Again, he looks fearless, dominant and in control: he is standing tall, shoulders back, head held high, open chest, confidently exposing his most vulnerable area, the torso.

The arms are at the side and are not being used to create a

what one would associate with a terrorist.

Tahmid’s body language in the images and videos display clusters of the most common signs any human would unconsciously display when feeling vulnerable, submissive and extremely fearful for their life.

When we look at a photograph

we cannot capture people’s voices, so unfortunately it’s impossible to hear what is actually being said.

For the trained eye, the physical appearance – the position of the head, arms, legs, the facial expression and walk – all reveal clues as to what is going on in any given situation. And this is precisely why the

FBI now includes body language analysis in its training programme for new agents. It is the first major change in its training programme in 50 years.

Because, what we can discover from body language is often far more important than what we can hear.

barrier – this alone is a sign of very high confidence – legs and feet are almost hip width apart, which would suggest he is ready for action. This is the body language of someone who feeling fearless, dominating, in control and clearly in command. His body language is sending a very loud and clear non-verbal message as to who is in charge in this group.

As the two hostages walk away, they appear to be observing an order to go. Both are walking behind each other, projecting signs of discomfort and submission – bowed or tilted heads, downward gaze, heads pointing towards the ground, shoulders hunched – a general “caving in” of gestures and posture. These are gestures that can be summarised as passive, fearful and vulnerable.

Tahmid

and in times of stress this indicates submission and feelings of vulnerability.

You may be wondering why there appears to be a smile on Tahmid’s face? Well the reality is that we don’t only smile when we are happy; we also smile when we are feeling out of depth around someone. In these situations we will offer an unnatural smile, as a badge of appeasement. This is very common when people meet those who are of higher status, they will offer this type of appeasement smile in order to try and placate the other person.

And in this instance it’s abundantly clear who is of the highest status – and in this type of life threatening situation, any human being’s natural response would be to try and appease the person in charge to try and ensure their own survival.

Now let’s compare Tahmid’s body language to that of the terrorist.

You will immediately notice a vast difference in the body language between the two men.

Where the terrorist is displaying a macho, confident and dominant body language, Tahmid’s is the opposite – Tahmid’s body language is clearly sending non-verbal signs of fear, vulnerability and submissiveness. His hands are crossed in front of the body to form a barrier and the wrist is held as an attempt to self-pacify.

Let’s first take a look at the picture on the right. We can see Tahmid’s head is slightly tilted. When we’re feeling fearful, the head tilt is common – it exposes the carotid artery on the side of the neck,

Photo 3

(Opposite page) Let’s now focus on the photograph of Tahmid on the roof.

Tahmid is seen displaying a cluster of classic gestures, which again are associated with feelings of fear and vulnerability.

Again, the most important and telling gesture is the way in which Tahmid is holding onto his wrist – it’s a common self pacifying gesture, and its one of the first gestures people display when feeling threatened.

Tahmid is not only self –pacifying by gripping his wrist, his limbic brain (the part of the brain which controls our body language) has also unconsciously created a protective barrier to partially shield his torso and the vulnerable area below the stomach, creating what is called the fig leaf stance.

When an individual is feeling vulnerable – men especially – they will unconsciously position their hands and arms, to cover the area just below the stomach. As you can see from the photograph, this is the gesture that Tahmid is clearly displaying whilst standing next to the terrorist. It’s an extremely telling gesture, which projects high vulnerability and low confidence.

A gesture which projects vulnerability is not one you would expect to see on the body language of a terrorist who is holding a gun.

Notice the way Tahmid is seen tightly gripping the wrist of his opposite hand whilst holding the gun.

This is a very odd way for someone to stand with a gun – anyone who is used to holding a gun would not normally hold it in this position – and certainly not close to a very vulnerable part of the body. It’s the type of hold one would normally expect to see from someone who is not used to holding a gun.

The gesture is also serving another important purpose – the arms are partially protecting the front of the body. When we feel threatened we will unconsciously seek to protect and shield the area of our body where all our most vital organs live – the torso.

The video (Available at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=r2OVQZ_hMwY) Observe the way in which Tahmid is walking away in this video; he appears to be in deep shock.

Notice Tahmid’s gait (the way in which he is walking). It’s a walk which is similar to what one would

expect to see when an individual is in shock. You often see people walking towards an ambulance in this way, after being involved in a car accident – confused and disorientated. Tahmid’s walk is almost identical to this, he appears to be completely dazed and in shock.

This would be normal for anyone who has just witnessed killings take place – we can only imagine what he may have been subjected to prior to walking out.

He is struggling to walk in a straight line, taking very tentative steps and seems unsure of which direction he should be heading.

Conclusion

The group dynamic is very clear – this is not a team. The evidence shows that within the group, there is one very confident and dominant perpetrator and two submis-

sive innocent victims.

From the photographs it is abundantly clear that Tahmid’s body language is not what you would associate with a terrorist. His body language is too far removed from a confident and at ease posture – it is, in fact, exactly the opposite.

In my opinion Tahmid is, without any doubt, an innocent victim caught up in a terrible atrocity.

Tahmid is a victim of circumstance whose only crime was to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time … something that could happen to any of us. india Ford, an internationally renowned body language expert based in central London, is considered by many to be one of the best in the industry. Her clientele include Fortune 500 company chairmen, CeOs, mds, barristers, highprofile vviPs, surgeons, investment bankers and entrepreneurs.

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Activists of Bangladesh Communist Party and Bangladesh Samajtantrik Dal form a human chain in front of BERC office in Dhaka's Karwan Bazar protesting the proposed price hike of gas and electricity

BERC body rejects price hike proposal from Bakhrabad Gas n Aminur Rahman Rasel The technical evaluation committee of Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) yesterday rejected a proposal of gas price increase from Bakhrabad Gas Distribution Company Ltd (BGDCL), saying the company does not need to increase its distribution charge.

On the fourth day of hearing at the BERC conference room in Karwan Bazar, the committee, headed

by AKM Monowar Hossain Akanda, observed that the recommended revenue requirement for BGDCL is Tk174.1 crore for 2016-17 fiscal, considering Tk0.2956 per cubic metre as transmission charge for Gas Transmission Company Limited (GTCL) in cost-plus basis.

During the same time, the total current operating revenue of BGDCL will be Tk223.4 crore; which means BGDCL will have a surplus revenue of Tk49.24 crore and would not need to increase its dis-

tribution charge.

The evaluation committee also observed that the BGDCL’s revenue requirement was Tk0.4097 per cubic meter in cost-plus basis whereas the income of the company will be Tk0.5255 per cubic meter.

Earlier, BGDCL submitted a proposal to increase gas price by 94.92% on weighted average. It asked the energy regulator to increase domestic gas prices from the existing Tk600 and Tk650 for single and double burner to Tk1,100 and Tk1,200 respectively.

It also asked for price increase for power sector from Tk2.82 to Tk4.60 per cubic meter, from Tk6.74 to Tk10.95 for industries, Tk11.36 to Tk19.50 for commercial connection, Tk27 to Tk49.50 for CNG, Tk8.36 to Tk19.26 for captive power, and Tk2.58 to Tk4.60 for fertiliser.

Speaking at the hearing, Consumer Association of Bangladesh (CAB) Adviser Prof Shamsul Alam

said: “BGDCL cannot propose hiking prices unless it incurs losses in its business. But the company is making huge profit. In such a situation, the BERC should not allow BGDCL to raise the price.”

Meanwhile, Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) and Bangladesher Samajtrantik Dal (BSD) jointly organised a protest rally in front of the TCB building where the hearing was being held.

Speaking at the rally, CPB President Mujahidul Islam Selim said political programmes including hartals will be called if the government does not stop its anti-people initiative of increasing gas prices.

BSD General Secretary Khalequzzaman said there was no justification behind raising gas prices this year. He also blamed the government for relying on foreign companies to extract gas from Bangladesh instead of improving the nation’s own extraction capabilities. l

2 Dhaka 'Peace' colleges shut down n Tribune Desk The Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Dhaka has suspended the academic activities of two colleges bearing the name “Peace” in Dhaka.

The board authorities issued two separate orders yesterday cancelling the academic activities of Dhaka Peace College in Natunbazar, Gulshan and Peaceful College in South Banasree, Khilgaon.

The action was taken following written directives from the Ministry of Education, board officials told the Dhaka Tribune.

The government decided to shut down all unapproved Peace schools operating across the country, apparently in the face of controversy regarding their burdensome curriculum and radical views.

Intelligence sources say these schools preach radical views and engage students in different activities of Peace TV, run by controversial India-based televangelist Zakir Naik.

The government has been monitoring the activities of these schools since December last year after allegations were raised about teaching unauthorised subjects

and books in these schools.

The government is also concerned about the schools’ involvement with Jamaat-e-Islami as the intelligence sources confirm that a part of their income goes to the party fund.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has been asked to close the schools immediately as the institutions allegedly motivate students to become militants, said Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid.

The government investigated all Peace schools when Peace TV was banned in Bangladesh on July 10 this year. l

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SP Babul’s job status still a mystery Hasan and n Kamrul Mohammad Jamil Khan It still remains unclear whether Superintendent of Police Babul Akter has rejoined work, even though the Home Ministry has denied rumours about his resignation.

The ace officer who rose quickly through the ranks for his successful anti-terrorism drives, has been at the police headquarters in Dhaka only sporadically starting from August 3. Police sources said on Thursday that he was yet to join duty.

He was originally scheduled to join the HQ on June 5, the same day his wife Mahmuda Akhter Mitu was stabbed and shot to death near their house in Chittagong’s GEC area.

Several media outlets have claimed that a resignation letter was extracted from him during a questioning session on June 26. It was reportedly sent to Home Ministry for further action.

The resignation of a police officer, if the Home Ministry approves it, goes from there to the Prime Minister’s Office and the president’s office through the Ministry of Public Administration before it is finalised.

However, yesterday, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said he was unaware of any resignation letter from Babul. He also said that he saw no problems with Babul Akter joining in the police.

SP Babul could not be reached over the phone for comments. l

Stray elephant tranquilised n Abu Bakar Siddique The Forest Department has finally succeeded in tranquilising the stray Indian elephant in Kamrabad union at Sharisabari upazilla in Jamalpur district and plans to move it to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Safari Park in Gazipur.

However, it may require another 5 to 7 days for the rescue team to take the elephant to a safe place, the remoteness of the area and the health of the animal being the main challenges.

“There are no roads nearby.

Therefore no truck or cranes can come here to help us take it away.

We may have to keep it here for another 5-7 days. It can only be moved away when it regains sound health,” said Bangladesh Forest Department’s former conservator of forest (wildlife) Tapan Kumer Dey. The rescue team tranquilised the elephant with a metal dart in the afternoon and was providing it with necessary medicines to bring back its sense.

“The team cannot move the elephant right now because this is a remote area. It has been tied up with chains so that it cannot harm anyone when it wakes up,” Tapan Kumer said adding that the health condition of the elephant was well.

The male elephant entered Bangladesh with flood water over a month ago. On his journey from Rowmari to Kazipur, the elephant has been spotted on the shoals of

DHAKA TRIBUNE

five different districts, Kurigram, Gaibandha, Jamalpur, Bogra and Sirajganj in the last month and a half.

Deputy Conservator of Forest Shahab Uddin told the Dhaka Tribune at 4:30pm that they were making necessary arrangements to transport the elephant to a safe place.

Once the elephant is ready for transfer, it will be moved to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Safari Park in Gazipur and necessary arrangements will be taken there to cure the elephant and keep it in the park temporarily, he added.

IUCN Bangladesh country representative Ishtiaq Uddin Ahmad however told the Dhaka Tribune that it

would not be a wise decision if the wild animal is kept at the Safari Park.

“The elephant will have to be released to its herd. There are many Indian elephant herds in the borderside of Nalitabari in Sherpur district.

The elephant needs to be released to one of those herds,” he said.

Citing an example, he said the forest team earlier had tried to rescue the elephant using tame elephants, but that did not work.

“The wild elephant drove away the tame elephants. It is a sign that the elephant will not feel comfortable with the atmosphere of the safari park, because it is not comfortable with the domesticated at-

mosphere,” he added, suggesting that the authorities send back the elephant to the elephant herds in Sherpur district.

A three-member Indian team arrived in Bangladesh on August 3 to take back the stray wild elephant but left the country on Monday leaving the animal behind.

Since then the Forest Department rescue team had been trying to rescue the elephant but failed until now due to lack of favourable conditions.

A 17-member technical team, including veterinary surgeon Syed Hossain, had been stationed at the spot from the very beginning of the operation. l

on loud speaker. She said “Ammu taratari Benjir uncle ke bolo ami ekhane (Gulshane) atke achi [Mother tell Benjir uncle that I am stuck here in Gulshan].” Her mother was unaware about the incident at that time.

Then another phone rang, a guy sitting across me talked in loudspeaker (later I found him as Hasnat).

I can not recall the conversation.

After that they allowed us to drink water and eat muffin. They also allowed us to use the bathroom.

While I was going to bathroom I saw a women lying in the beginning of the stairs. I just turned my face off.

After sometime I heard that the attackers are asking staff of the restaurant to pursue the person who is in the kitchen to open the kitchen. The staff was assuring the inside guy that the attackers do not harm Bangalis.

Thereafter, the attacker after an initial failure managed to open the refrigerator and found two persons inside. One of them was a staff of the restaurant and another was Japanese (was speaking in Japanese language).

They let the Bangali to sit with

others and shot the Japanese. They were asking the Japanese whether he is alive. The Japanese replied with yes. The guy shot him again. They, before shooting, asked us to cover our ears and to cover children’s faces.

At some point. I could hear... a female voice moaning in pain and the guy chopping and saying “mohila mortese na” [The woman is not dying].

I saw them putting two big gas cylinders on the two sides of the glass doors. They were using mobile phone, tablets, laptops. They were reading news from mobile and laughing with saying that “Earlier they used to call us terrorist, now they call us militants, don’t know what they are going to call us tomorrow.”

At one point, they (attackers) read out a massage loudly in Bangla language. The message was about congratulating them for their actions. It was a big message.

I could not recollect all of that but it was about that they have done a very good job, their brothers are very proud of them.

After that they served sehri. I

had a bite to avoid any doubt.

After sehri, they asked us again to put our heads down on the table. I can hardly recollect at some point. I heard someone giving instructions that two guys (attackers) will be up stairs, two will be downstairs and one will be doing something. I could not recollect.

Later, they asked two guys (pointing at them) to come with them (attackers). I saw them taking stairs. After some time they returned and sat beside me with their heads down. At that time I saw only attackers were moving around. I found the bald headed guy (Hasnat) was opening the front door.

I, with all others, got up and they asked us to stretch. Suddenly, I saw one guy (attacker) was giving Holy Quran to Tahmid but he refused to take. I decided to take it. They allowed us to have our phones back (lying on table) and we started walking out of the restaurant. l

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A survivor’s statement place by any possible means. There was a Sri Lankan couple, whom I knew before, who came behind the tomb to hide themselves. I saw through a window that one of the attackers was hitting a lying person with a sharp object. I turned my eyes immediately.

Soon after the couple came, one of the attackers appeared and said “don’t hide, we are not going to harm you. You are not safe here, come out immediately”. We came out following the instruction. The same guy asked us not to use mobile phone.

I gave my mobile phone to him and the Sri Lankan couple (female) threw the bag. It took place near the [illegible] … The attacker said, rather asked me, “Are you Bangali”. I said “Yes, Ami Bangali [the witness can speak Bangla a bit and can understand most of the Bangla conversations].

The attacker asked to lie down in Bangla. I lied down but the Sri Lankan couple was still standing. Then the attacker (with a gun) asked me to go inside and sit with other Bangladeshi people. He made me sit on a chair

with my head down on the table.

There were two girls hiding themselves under the table. The attacker asked them to come out and sit beside me. Since I was not able to bend my head fully on the table, someone hit on my head.

These girls and a young guy were pleading to the attackers to spare them. The attacker replied “We will not harm you if you are not Kafer to us.” They were saying that they will do no harm to the people who are not Kafers.

One of the attackers said in English that “Do you guys know that how our Muslim brothers and sisters are getting tortured and killed in Syria.” They were talking in both the language, English and Bangla. I could hear that one of the attackers was talking with a young guy about Islam (Later I knew that the young guy’s name is Tahmid).

They asked us to receive phone calls. I turned my phone off. One attacker asked me if I knew anyone from media or police. I replied with no. One of girls responded hearing that and made a call to her mother

sat Prakash gave this statement to a court under section 164 of Code of Criminal Procedure, on July 26.

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HC verdict on 16th amendment published n Ashif Islam Shaon The sixteenth amendment is hanging like a Sword of Damocles over the heads of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh threatening their independence in the discharge of their judicial functions, the High Court observed yesterday.

It said that the rule of law will certainly get a serious jolt by the Sixteenth Amendment. “So the Sword of Damocles must be removed by this Court.”

By the dint of the amendment, the members of parliament, a vast majority of whom have criminal records and civil litigations too, have become the virtual bosses of the Judges of the higher Judiciary posing a threat to their independence in the discharge of judicial functions.

To all its intents and purposes, the sixteenth amendment has made the members of parliament the Judges of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh.

This situation also drives home the point that there may be a conflict of interest of those members

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silent spectator to the dismantling of the constitutional fabric, it said.

The sixteenth amendment has affected the security of tenure of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, a core characteristic of judicial independence.

The 165-page verdict written by Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury and agreed by Justice Quazi RezaUl Hoque was uploaded on the Supreme Court website in the evening.

A three-member special bench led by Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury and comprising Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Justice Md Shraful Kamal delivered the verdict by majority view on May 5 this year upon a writ petition filed challenging the legality of the 16th amendment passed by the parliament on September 17, 2014.

The judgment by the descending judge Justice Md Shraful Kamal is yet to be published.

The state has already filed an appeal with the Appellate Division on May 8, which will be placed for hearing after two of the full texts are released.

In the full text, the author judge

of parliament by reason of the sixteenth amendment, it said.

This observation came in the full text of judgment released by the High Court that scrapped the much-talked-about 16th amendment to the constitution which empowered the parliament to impeach Supreme Court judges for incapacity or misconduct.

It also said that without a judicial mind, free from apprehension and anxiety of being ridiculed, harassed or victimized, it will be difficult for a Judge to discharge his judicial function according to his oath of office.

“In view of the peculiar socio-political scenario of Bangladesh and sharp polarization of the society, the Judges of the Apex Court of Bangladesh will not feel safe and secure in discharging their judicial functions by keeping the sixteenth amendment in place,” it added.

The amendment clearly establishes the dominance of the executive over the judiciary through parliament and thereby makes the judiciary subservient to the executive and a toothless and tearful dhaka

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said: “I have no hesitation in holding that the sixteenth amendment is a colourable legislation and is violative of separation of powers among the three organs of the State, namely, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary….”

The court declared the amendment illegal and unconstitutional, and against the principle of separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary.

It said that the three-member Supreme Judicial Council led by the Chief Justice is the best way of removing a judge for incapacity or misbehaviour. However, the Supreme Judicial Council was abolished through the amendment.

The parliamentary mechanism of removal of judges is an accident of history, though it is in vogue in some countries of the world, it said.

It said that there is a peculiar political culture prevalent in this country and there is no consensus about pressing national issues between the major political parties of the country. The major political parties are poles apart in this respect.

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TOMORROW SUN RISES 5:33AM

34.8ºC Sylhet

24.1ºC Chandpur

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Besides, as the society is sharply polarized and there may not be always two-thirds majority of the party-in-power in Parliament, the Parliamentary removal mechanism may fizzle out in many instances.

As a result, the allegedly corrupt or incapacitated Judges of the Supreme Court will continue to be in office to the great detriment of public interest, the court said.

“In my opinion, the poking of the nose of the parliament into the removal process of the judges of the Supreme Court by virtue of the sixteenth amendment is violative of the doctrine of separation of powers among the three organs of the state.”

“So we find that the political role of the parliament in the matter of removal of any Judge of the higher Judiciary is inevitable…. this political role of the legislature on the question of removal of any judge of the higher Judiciary will necessarily give rise to suspicions and misgivings in the minds of the people undermining their confidence in the judicial system of Bangladesh.” l sylhet

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Fajr: 4:55am | Jumma: 1:15pm Asr: 5:15pm | magrib: 6:50pm esha: 8:45pm source: islamic Foundation

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The case for the defence: Hasnat and Tahmid the company of the attackers has been variously interpreted to signify anything from irrefutable bonds of kinship to outright leadership of the group.

And for an alarmingly large cross-section of people, that is enough.

Admittedly, for us Bangladeshis, what happened on July 1 was in many ways unprecedented. Yet in trying to make sense of what happened that night at Holey, we will do well not to elevate it to some unique event in the annals of mankind.

By now, history is replete with such horrific incidents. And our best accomplice in deconstructing the events at Holey that night, next to eyewitness accounts, would be what all its diabolical forerunners have taught us about how such incidents unfold. For the purpose of this article though, we shall restrict ourselves to matters pertinent to Hasnat and Tahmid’s predicament.

First and foremost, taking visual evidence of a sense of comfort between hostage-taker and victim to implicate the latter in a crime that is manifestly perpetrated by the former, requires extremely shallow reasoning. The most misleading aspect of this line of thinking is how it feeds off our preconceived notions of how hostages behave. Indeed, it deigns to even impose some of these notions on us, all the better to push its own chosen narrative.

In a nation still on the mend from the trauma of that night, the perpetrators of the most heinous act witnessed in independent Bangladesh are rightly vilified in the public imagination. They have taken the place of the ultimate ‘other’. And that is understandable.

Where we start getting in over our heads though, is when we allow this prejudice to weigh on our judgement of anything and anyone associated with Nibras, Rohan and company. Heaven forbid appear agreeable to them! We’d be well advised to guard against this tendency. Sitting in the comfort of home, clicking through Youtube videos with extremely suggestive titles like Feshe jacche Hasnat Karim and Hasnat Karim e khalnayak, we should really know better than to hold the hostages’ actions during those 11 hours to that standard.

The thing to understand is this: the history of hostage crises tells us it is not at all uncommon, once any killings are out of the way, for hostage-takers and their victims to develop some sort of bond. The intensity will vary and it may all be predicated on feelings that are less than genuine or entirely specific to the situation. But this crops up in a wide range of hostage situations perpetrated across the world by all sorts of outlaws, from the infamous FARC rebels of Colombia to small-time robbers in the US to the so-called Ji-

hadists of the Muslim world.

Stockholm Syndrome is a concept in psychology that seeks to explain just one form this bond may take. Also known as Survival Identification Syndrome, the Gale Encyclopaedia of Medicine defines it as “a form of bonding between a captive and captor in which the captive begins to identify with, and may even sympathize with, the captor.” David Alexander and Susan Klein, in a 2009 paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, regard it as “a means of coping and surviving since it certainly enables, on many occasions, hostages to deal with extreme and life-threatening circumstances.”

That isn’t to suggest that either Hasnat or Tahmid were afflicted

Now for the apparently incriminating photos that came out on Sunday in which Tahmid does appear with a gun: the boy was foolish to take up the gun, even if he was coerced into it, as was reported in at least two American outlets before the latest photos came out.

One could argue that that kind of naivety itself shows he wasn’t part of the attack crew, which is what is being proposed here of course. The accounts in the New York Times and Guernica that came out before these latest photos surfaced sound plausible enough.

At one point, Hasnat does walk in front of the attackers, getting back inside from the balcony, but stop for a second to consider the flimsiness of the entire argument: walk-

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his two friends. (I’m not even going to get into who takes family and friends into staging terrorist attacks, because it doesn’t seem to cut much ice with people hell-bent on giving in to groupthink.)

Undoubtedly, they were helped by the fact that the killing spree was over. But still, any wrong move could have disturbed the equilibrium. It so happens that the US government provides tips to its citizens on how to survive hostage situations. The following is excerpted from DEPARTMENT OF STATE PUBLICATION 10217: Security Awareness Overseas, An Overview: “If taken hostage, your best defence is passive cooperation. You may be terrified but … behaving rationally increases your chances

Let’s be clear, even in the video footage that has given rise to this whole disingenuous angle, there is actually nothing that either Hasnat or tahmid are seen doing that can be said to be incriminating with Stockholm Syndrome that night. We aren’t here to play armchair psychiatrist. But it should serve to reinforce the full range of reactions that could possibly be in play, so to speak. Above all, there is no good reason for us to expect the behaviour, or worse, the demeanour of people taken hostage to conform to our simplistic notions of what is normal. And even less for us to view it as suspicious when they don’t.

Let’s be clear, even in the video footage that has given rise to this whole disingenuous angle, there is actually nothing that either Hasnat or Tahmid are seen doing that can be said to be incriminating.

Being friendly, or cordial with people, even terrorists, is well within the rules. Contrary to the appalling lies printed in some respected vernacular newspapers, at no point is Hasnat Karim seen carrying a gun. At least not in any of the footage shot by DK Hwang, the Korean neighbour. It’s just one of the Endless Little Lies that have been peddled to serve the cause of the One Big Lie. Apart from being an affront to the truth, it shames the industry that spawned it.

ing in front of the terrorists is a sign that he is leading them? Appearing too friendly with the terrorists? The bald evil mastermind confers on the roof as he consider his next move?

Close your eyes to the fact that he is out in the open, like he has no idea what’s coming for him, and he appears a cross between Bin Laden and Moriarty. Kind of half-plausible. Then he turns around and tells his men, the ones with the guns: “You boys stay back to face the music, I’m walking out with the loot.”

That simply doesn’t happen.

There is no comparable precedent in the history of so-called Jihadist violence. I asked former IGP Nurul Huda. You could also do a smart Google search.

That would also show you that some people keeping their wits about them even in extreme situations does happen.

It’s unnecessary to make a hero out of Hasnat Karim. But the man had a wife and kids, not to mention himself, to save and he managed it. He cannot be judged on the basis of whatever methods he may have employed to this end. Same with Tahmid, who was there with

for survival.”

Then under ‘Behaviour Suggestions’, the very first point: “Try to establish some kind of rapport with your captors.”

Then further down: “Build relations with fellow captives and with the terrorists.” (The emphasis is always mine.)

Again, this isn’t to suggest that Hasnat or Tahmid read this manual. More to the point is that a government manual would only offer advice it considered doable for normal, average human beings. Not superheroes. Then they would advise you to try and overpower your captors, as some are suggesting Hasnat and Tahmid should have done on the balcony.

By the time the sun rose on July 2, the situation inside the restaurant had sufficiently calmed down for some of the staff who were suffocating in a bathroom to simply make a run for their lives, not caring about putting themselves in the line of gunfire.

By the way not one of them, nor indeed the Indian doctor, nor two Sri Lankan nationals, nor anyone else out of the 32 hostages who made it

out alive, have said anything to implicate anyone inside the restaurant to be in cahoots with the terrorists.

Nor, presumably, have they said this to the police, who then would have no need to make their arrests under Section 54. Nor has such a suggestion been made to the media – local or foreign.

There remains the alleged history, in relation to Hasnat, of links with Hizb-ut Tahrir, the banned extremists, from his NSU days. It is now well-known that the university fired four teachers in 2012 on account of links to Hizb-ut Tahrir.

This was around the same period that Hasnat stopped working there, having joined in 2008. But was he actually one of the four teachers NSU fired? There seem to be conflicting reports on this.

The only way to settle it was to get it from them, which we did on Monday by speaking to Belal Ahmed, head of NSU’s PR office. A former newspaper man himself, he started off by expressing his frustration over the rampant distortion of statements made by him and his vice-chancellor in various sections of the press, before stating: “I’m not here to serve anyone’s interest.

Whatever links he may have had, I’m not aware of them. But on the issue of his leaving NSU, I can only go by the paperwork relating to it in front of me, and that tells us he left of his own accord in early 2013, to look after his father’s business.”

On being pushed further, he said: “While he was here, some concerns were aired over his irregular teaching style, but he was never specifically asked to leave his job for membership of any banned organisation, as others were.” This finally was categorical.

Which all begs the final question: why are the police holding on to them, even after all these days?

What can they possibly gain from it? Well, quite a lot, it turns out. For one thing, there is the veneer of progress it allows them with regard to the investigation.

The Section 54 arrests actually negate that, but then they can rely on most people not catching on.

The more concrete gains might be in the form of what they can tell the police about these terrorists, who used their phones, chatted with them at length and most likely came to know quite a bit about them.

Clearly Hasnat and Tahmid got closest to them, closer than any of the other hostages, or anyone else the police have managed to get their hands on. They probably want to eke out every possible bit of information they can from them and figure they would lose some of the leverage they currently enjoy in doing so by releasing them.

That itself would be flawed thinking. But not nearly as flawed as grouping two innocents with the terrorists. l

CPA plans to set up new port in Chittagong n Tushar Hayat, Chittagong The Chittagong Port Authority (CPA) announced on Wednesday its plan to set up a medium level port between Sitakund and Mirshari at the Sandwip Channel.

Sources said the port would be set up between the two upazilas for carrying goods of Feni and Mirsharai economical zones.

“The decision will be finalised after conducting technical and economical survey,” said Rear Admiral M Khaled Iqbal, chairman of the CPA, at a views exchange meeting with the journalists at Shaheed Mo-

hammed Fazlur Rahman Munshi auditorium.

The CPA chairman also said the government, which decided to set up 10 economic zones across the country, had directed them to set up a port centering the economic zones after conducting a primary study.

“We have selected the sites between Sitakund and Mirsharai. We will have to arrange a new naval route of 26 to 40 kilometers for the prospective port,” he said adding that the new port would reduce pressure on Chittagong Port.

Regarding the proposed Bay

Terminal at Patenga, the port chairman said they had the plan to accomplish the project by 2021.

“We are expecting to get no objection certificate from the department of environment by this month and will finalise the process to acquire 907 acres of land,” he said.

The CPA chairman also said they could not procure equipments, including Gantry Cranes, in the past 10 years due to different causes.

“Tender will be floated in the current month to procure a number of equipments to ease the container handling activities,” he added. l

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Housewife killed for dowry n Monir Hossain, Shariatpur A housewife was allegedly killed by her husband at Goshairhat in Shariatpur district yesterday.

The deceased was Aina Begum, 20, daugter of Altaf Fakir of Charsidhurkula village under Damuddya upazila. She was a student of Goshairhat Shamsur Rahman University College.

According to local sources, Aina had been married off two years back with Jasim Madbar, son of Alimuddin at Charsamantapur village in Goshairhat. Jasim had been given Tk4,0000 as dowry at the time of marrige. After a few days, he was given Tk1,000 more. But he demanded more money.

The sources said the couple used to quarrel over the issue always.

Aina went to her parents’ house one month ago as she could not bear the torture of Jasim. After an arbitrary decision, she was sent to her husband’s house few days before. But Jasim continued the torture.

On the day, he tortured her to death as she could bring the money according to his demand.

After the death, he hanged the body from the beam of the house to prove that she committed suicide, alleged the parents of Aina.

On information, police recoverd the body and sent it to Shariatpur Sadar Hospital.

Goshairhat police station OC Mofazzel Hossain said the police were trying to arrest Jasim.

“We can say everything after getting the autopsy report,” said the OC. l

2 Buet students drown Serajul Islam, n Mohammed Sylhet

Two students of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) drowned in the Piain River, Bichhanakandi, Sylhet on Thursday afternoon.

Officer-in-Charge of Goainghat police station Delwar Hossain told the Dhaka Tribune that Mosiur Rahman Siam, 25, and his friend Said Latif (24) were having bath in the river with their other friends. Both of them were the students of Mechanical Engineering Department of Buet.

“When they were swimming in the river, they were washed away by strong tide,” said the OC. l

After harvesting, jute is kept submerged in water for some days. During this period, the stem of plants rot and the fibres remain. The picture taken from Naohata in Paba upazila of Rajshahi shows yesterday farmers busy to process the fibres AZAHAR UDDIN

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SOUTH ASIA

Bomb blast injures 13 in Pakistan A roadside bomb apparently targeting a judge injured at least 13 people in Pakistan’s southwestern city of Quetta on Thursday, days after a major attack killed most of the city’s senior lawyers. The bomb was planted on a bridge in the city, which went off immediately after the vehicle of an Islamic court judge passed by it.

-AFP

INDIA

Chinese FM to visit India today Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi will arrive in India on Friday on a three-day visit starting from Goa, the venue for the BRICS Summit, and hold talks with his counterpart Sushma Swaraj here on August 13 on key regional and bilateral issues, including China thwarting New Delhi’s bid for NSG membership.

-TOI

CHINA

Explosion at Chinese power station kills 21 A high-pressure steam pipe exploded at a power station in central China on Thursday, killing 21 people and injuring 5 others.

The blast occurred at a power plant in the city of Danyang. China continues to suffer from frequent industrial accidents despite a central government-ordered drive to upgrade safety in factories, power plants and mines.

-AP

ASIA PACIFIC

Indonesia: No room for LGBT rights movement Indonesia said on Thursday there was no room for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement in the country, after Human Rights Watch criticised the government for failing to protect the group that has come under unprecedented attack. Homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia, and the barrage of criticism against LGBT has been seen as a test of the country’s largely tolerant attitude towards the group.

-REUTERS

MIDDLE EAST

Iran top diplomat to visit Turkey today Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will hold talks in Turkey on Friday, the Turkish foreign ministry announced, in the most significant visit by a foreign official to the country since last month’s failed coup.

Zarif will meet his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara and will be received by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his palace.

-AFP

INSIGHT

Intensifying fight for Syrian Aleppo chokes civilian population n Reuters, Beirut An upsurge of intense fighting around Aleppo has killed dozens of Syrians in the past weeks, displaced thousands and cut water and power to up to two million people on both sides of the front line, worsening the already dire conditions faced by hundreds of thousands in the city.

In a war already marked by humanitarian crisis, the United Nations says the fighting threatens to replicate deprivation recently suffered by those in rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo among civilians living in the government-held west.

Advances by warring sides in the last month, which resulted in a siege of rebel-held neighbourhoods and the severing of a major route into government areas of control, have choked off supplies and raised fears of the encirclement of the entire civilian population.

Syria’s largest city pre-war has been divided into government and rebel areas of control for much of the conflict, and has been the focus of escalating violence since a ceasefire brokered by Washington and Moscow in February crumbled.

Its capture would a major prize for President Bashar al-Assad.

Russia’s intervention last year helped turn the war in Assad’s favour. His forces with the help of Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian fighters surrounded the eastern, opposition-held neighbourhoods in Aleppo in July.

The latest major gains were made by rebels, however, who broke the month-long government siege in an attack last week on a Syrian military complex and also cut the main supply route to the western, government-held areas of the city.

“When the attack began ... rockets and shells were fired towards Hamdaniya,” said Abu George, a resident who fled that neighbourhood, close to the military complex in the southwest of the city.

“There were people who had already been displaced sheltering in nearby areas, they had to leave,” the 61-year-old agricultural engineer said via telephone.

Rebel bombardments of Hamdaniya on Wednesday killed more than a dozen people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said. Syrian and Russian warplanes have launched

THE BATTLE FOR ALEPPO Rebels and regime forces are amassing fighters around the Syrian city ahead of a likely protracted battle

On July 17 regime forces besieged completely eastern Aleppo after cutting Castello road

Kurdish forces

Islamic State group Syrian regime

Opposition forces Doctors in eastern Aleppo warned the situation would be desperate for civilians if regime forces re-impose a siege

Aleppo

5 km Approximate areas of control

current population about 1.5 million

Rebels and jihadists pushed through this corridor on August 6 to break the pro-government siege of eastern Aleppo

Aleppo International Airport

Russia’s defence ministry said Wednesday it would hold fire on air strikes for three hours each day to allow humanitarian aid to get through

Source : ISW/CarnegieMiddleEast/ConflictNews

heavily raided the areas taken by insurgents.

The British-based group said bombardments by both sides have killed more than 120 people in the city since the beginning of August.

Abu George is among thousands who fled areas in southwest Aleppo in recent days, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“Thousands of families have been displaced from southwestern Aleppo, including already displaced families who’ve had to move for a second time,” spokeswoman Ingy Sedky said.

Residents of western Aleppo said cutting the main supply route to the government side had slowed the entry of goods and fuel and driven up food prices, but a delivery by government forces via an alternative route this week provided some relief.

“There were some problems with petrol and fuel, but supplies came in and the petrol stations are open and working,” Tony Ishaq, 26, said via internet messenger.

The alternative route used was until last month the only road into Aleppo’s opposition held sector.

After intense bombardment, government forces captured the Castello Road in an advance that put eastern Aleppo under siege.

Hospitals hit, water and power cut

The siege worsened an already dire humanitarian situation in eastern Aleppo, residents and doctors said.

The rebel advance which broke through the siege on Saturday has not yet secured a safe enough passage to make more than one food delivery to the east, or for civilians to move through, with government bombardments hitting that rebel corridor on the city’s southwestern outskirts.

“Fuel, vegetables and other essentials are not entering because the regime is bombing areas it lost like crazy,” said Hossam Abu Ghayth, a 29-year-old east Aleppo resident.

“There are warplanes and helicopters hovering in the skies, they’re bombing both civilian areas and the major front lines,” he said via internet messenger.

International medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which supports a number of medical facilities in the opposition held sector, said the casualty toll had risen sharply.

“Because of the bombings and the fighting in Aleppo city there are more and more people coming to the hospitals,” Middle East Operations Manager Pablo Marco told Reuters.

Hospitals were having to cope

with dozens of wounded arriving at the same time, he said, with only 35 doctors for the whole of east Aleppo’s population at least 250,000 people.

All eight hospitals supported by MSF have been affected by bombardments in recent months, Marco said. A U.S.-based rights group says several hospitals were hit in July.

The bombardments have compounded water and power cuts on both sides of the city.

East Aleppo residents have long experienced a lack of both.

Entire families often survive on 50 litres of water per day, transported from tanks or drawn from wells, he added. The World Health Organization says 20 litres are needed per person for basic hygiene.

The United Nations said on Tuesday the main power facility that allowed water to be pumped to both sides of the city had been hit, leaving the entire population of nearly 2 million without running water and putting children at risk of disease.

The UN has called for an urgent humanitarian ceasefire in Aleppo, and is pushing for a resumption of peace talks that have failed to end the five-year conflict in which more than 250,000 people have been killed and some 11 million displaced. l

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Trump calls Obama, Clinton cofounders of Islamic State n Reuters, Washington, DC Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called US President Barack Obama and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton “co-founders” of Islamic State on Thursday, igniting fresh criticism of his inflammatory campaign style.

The New York real estate developer has previously attacked Obama and Clinton, secretary of state from 2009-13, for how the United States pulled out of Iraq after the war, saying it helped create the militant Islamist group that has seized swaths of Iraq and Syria.

The idea that a sitting US president created a militant group determined to kill Americans and other Westerners took that line of attack to a new level. Trump first made the assertion in a speech Wednesday night in Florida. He repeated it in an interview Thurs-

day morning with CNBC. His remarks followed a troubled week for the Republican candidate.

Party leaders urged Trump to focus on the campaign to beat Clinton after he drew strong criticism for a persistent confrontation with the family of Muslim American soldier who died in Iraq and for his initial refusal to support prominent Republican congressional candidates in their primary races.

Recent opinion polls have shown Trump losing ground to Clinton, a former US senator and first lady, in the race for the November 8 election.

An average of polls by RealClearPolitics has Clinton 7.7 percentage points ahead, at 48% to his 40.3%.

“He (Obama) was the founder of ISIS. And so was she. I mean I call them co-founders,” said Trump, who says he opposed the Iraq war.

“He shouldn’t have gotten out way he got out. It was a disaster, what he did,” he told CNBC. Obama had opposed the Iraq war and campaigned for the White

Donald Trump

REUTERS

House in 2008 on a promise to end it. The United States pulled out combat troops in 2011.

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS or ISIL, had its roots in the al-Qaeda insurgency that arose after the United States led an invasion of Iraq in 2003. Known for its brutality, the group in 2014 declared an Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq, where fighting continues to rage.

Clinton spokesman Jesse Lehrich, in response to Trump’s comments, pointed to US advances against the militant group in Libya this week. “FYI – US-backed militias retook IS’s stronghold in

Libya today thanks to Obama-authorised air strikes,” he said in a tweet late on Wednesday.

Trump did not back down, asking on CNBC: “Is there something wrong with saying that? Why - are people complaining that I said he was the founder of IS? All I do is tell the truth, I’m a truth teller.”

Supporters of Trump, who has never held elected office, like his combative and often insulting style but it has drawn wide criticism, not just from the Clinton campaign. Many Republicans have urged him to change tactics and focus on the economy.

US Representative Sean Duffy, a Republican from Wisconsin who backs Trump, said Obama and Clinton did not found Islamic State and urged Trump to stay on message.

Trump bristles at the notion he should change. “I don’t think I’ve made too many errors,” he told CNBC. If his style costs him the election in 90 days, he goes back to a good life, he said. l

FACTBOX

Why are Ukraine and Russia fighting over Crimea n Tribune International Desk vladimir Putin summoned his security council and the russian navy announced war games in the Black sea, a day after the russian president accused Ukraine of trying to provoke a conflict over Crimea, which moscow seized and annexed in 2014.

Using some of his most aggressive rhetoric against Kiev since the height of the war two years ago, Putin has pledged to take counter-measures against Ukraine, which he accused of sending saboteurs into Crimea to carry out terrorist acts. the Crimean peninsula, the main flashpoint in Ukraine’s crisis, is a pro-russia part of Ukraine, separated from the rest of the country geographically, historically and politically. it also hosts russia’s Black sea Fleet. Ukraine has accused russia of invading it.

Here’s some key information about the region:

Located on the Black Sea the Crimean Peninsula extends into the Black sea, all but an island except for a narrow strip of land in the north connecting it to the mainland. On its eastern shore, a finger of land reaches out almost to russia. russia plans to build a bridge across the strait.

With an area of 27,000sqkm, it is slightly smaller than Belgium. it is Ukraine’s only formally autonomous region, with simferopol as its capital.

sevastopol has a separate status within Ukraine. it’s best known in the West as the site of the 1945 Yalta Conference, where soviet dictator Josef stalin, President Franklin d roosevelt and British Prime minister Winston Churchill sealed the postwar division of europe.

History Crimea was absorbed into the russian empire along with most of ethnic Ukrainian territory by Catherine the Great in the 18th century. russia’s Black sea naval base at sevastopol was founded soon afterwards. more than half a million people were killed in the Crimean War of 1853-56 between russia and the Ottoman empire, which was backed by Britain and France. the conflict reshaped europe and paved the way for World War One. in 1921, the peninsula, then populated mainly by muslim tatars, became part of the soviet Union. the tatars were deported en masse by soviet leader Joseph stalin at the end of World War two for alleged collaboration with the nazis.

Why Crimea is part of Ukraine Crimea only became part of Ukraine when soviet leader nikita Khrushchev gave the peninsula to his native land in 1954. this hardly mattered until the soviet Union broke up in 1991 and Crimea ended up in an independent

Ukraine. despite that, nearly 60 percent of its population of 2 million identify themselves as russians. since the collapse of the soviet Union in 1991, there have been periodic political tussles between over its status between moscow and Kiev.

Population Around 2 million. Ukraine’s 2001 census showed around 58% were ethnic russian, 24% ethnic Ukrainian and 12% tatars, who support the new pro-Western government in Kiev.

Economy Crimea’s temperate climate makes it a popular tourist destination for Ukrainians and russians, especially Yalta, where the soviet, Us and British victors of World War two met in 1945 to discuss the future shape of europe. it accounts for three percent of Ukraine’s gross domestic product, with 60% of its own output made up by services. the land is intensely farmed, with wheat, corn and sunflowers the main crops. extra water supplies are brought by canal from Ukraine’s dnieper river. there are chemical processing plants and iron ore is mined in Kerch.

Ukraine has two grain terminals in Crimea - in Kerch and in sevastopol.

According to UkrAgroConsult, these have exported 1.6 million tons of grain so far this season or 6.6% of Ukraine’s total exports.

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The black sea fleet On Crimea’s southern shore sits the port city of sevastopol, home to the russian Black sea Fleet and its thousands of naval personnel. russia kept its half of the soviet fleet, but was rattled in 2009 when the pro-Western Ukrainian President viktor Yuschenko warned that it would have to leave the key port by 2017. shortly after pro-russian viktor Yanukovych was elected president in 2010, he agreed to extend the russian lease until 2042 in exchange for discounts on russian gas supplies. russia fears that Ukraine’s new pro-Western government could evict it. russia’s Black sea base in sevastopol gives moscow access to the mediterranean. Ukraine’s fleet, carved out of the same soviet fleet as russia’s, is also based there.

The Tatars the 1991 fall of the soviet Union also brought the return of the Crimean tatars, the native hosts of the land that fell to russia under Catherine the Great in the 18th century. they were brutally deported in 1944 under stalin. the Crimean tatars, who now make up about 12% of its population, have sided with the anti-Yanukovych protesters in Kiev who drove his government from power. l

sources: AP, WSJ, REUTERS

USA

‘Russians clearly behind cyber attack on Democrats’ US House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said the recent cyber attack on Democratic politicians was broad and that Russians were clearly behind the breach. It is the Russians, Pelosi told reporters at a news conference, referring to the recent breach affecting the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

-REUTERS

THE AMERICAS

Maduro and Santos to meet on border row Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos will meet Thursday in Venezuela to discuss ending a row that has kept their border closed for nearly a year. Two leaders would seek to normalise the situation along the border, which Maduro closed last year after an attack on a Venezuelan army patrol.

-AFP

UK

UK’s Labour Party at war over leader race Britain’s Labour Party has gone to court in a bid to prevent tens of thousands of new members from voting in the party’s leadership contest. The country’s main opposition party has descended into turmoil, with lawmakers trying to unseat leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The party’s more centrist members consider, Corbyn, a 67-year-old left-winger, unelectable.

-AP

EUROPE

Nato watching Crimea tensions with concern Nato said Thursday it was watching with concern growing tensions between Ukraine and Russia over Crimea, and urged Moscow to defuse the situation.

Ukraine earlier put its forces on high alert after Russia accused it of terrorist attacks into Crimea.

A Nato official said the US-led military alliance was monitoring closely and with concern the heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

-REUTERS

AFRICA

Zambia votes as campaign unrest tests stability Zambians went to the polls Thursday to choose a new president after a campaign marred by unprecedented violence that has threatened the country’s relative stability and raised fears of further clashes. Radio stations appealed for voters to remain peaceful as they cast their ballots for the national assembly. In this election, President Edgar Lungu and his main rival Hakainde Hichilema face off again in a field of 9 candidates.

-AFP

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INSIGHT

New battles over scarce fertile land in Nigeria n Reuters, Nimbo, Nigeria Muslim herdsmen fleeing Boko Haram jihadists and fast-spreading desertification in the north of Nigeria are clashing with Christian farmers in the south, adding a dangerous new dimension to the sectarian tensions and militancy plaguing the country.

Thousands of people from Muslim Fulani tribes have moved southwards this year, leading to a series of clashes over land that have killed more than 350 people, most of them Christian crop farmers, according to residents and rights activists.

The fighting threatens to fracture the country further by bolstering support for a Christian secessionist movement in the southeast, which has been lingering for decades but gained fresh momentum late last year when resentment over poverty and the arrest of one of its leaders spilled over into street protests.

The conflict is also exposing a growing problem that has attracted less international attention than Boko Haram and the militants threatening oil production in the Niger Delta region.

Fertile land is becoming scarcer across Africa’s most populous nation, and conflict over this dwindling resource is likely to intensify.

The population of poverty-stricken Nigeria is expected to more than double to almost 400 million by 2050, according to the United Nations.

WHO ARE THE FULANIS? Ü they are believed to be the largest semi-nomadic group in the world and are found across West and Central Africa - from senegal to the Central African republic Ü in nigeria, some continue to live as semi-nomadic herders, while other have moved to cities Ü Unlike the more integrated city dwellers, the nomadic groups spend most of their lives in the bush and are the ones largely involved in these clashes they herd their animals across vast areas, frequently clashing with farming communities they are often linked with another group, the Hausas, having lived together for a very long time. some refer to the Hausa-Fulanis but they are different groups source: BBC

There are no signs that the secessionists will take up arms against the government like in the 196770 civil war that killed one million people. But the clashes and growing resentment at the arrival of Muslim herdsmen come at a time when many people in the southeast are complaining about widespread poverty.

In one of the deadliest clashes, about 50 people were killed in April when Fulanis attacked the village of Nimbo in the southeastern state of Biafra, according to residents, rights groups and lawmakers who visited Nimbo after the violence.

They said the attackers opened fire on villagers and torched a house where a priest and his family were sleeping, with the family only surviving by jumping out of a window.

“The Fulanis ... came in the town and shot at any man they saw and killed him,” said Joseph Obeta, another priest in Nimbo, which is now almost deserted after hundreds of villagers fled during or after the attack.

Obeta said if there was an independent state in the southeast of Nigeria, it would be easier to prevent such violence.

“It would make a difference if the southeast were on its own.”

He was echoing the sentiment of campaigners lobbying for an independent Biafra. They say they want to stop the Muslim north from dominating the Christian south of the West African country, which is split fairly evenly between Muslims and Christians.

They say the influx of herdsmen from the north is part of a plan by the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani Muslim, to turn Nigeria into an Islamic nation - an allegation vehemently denied by the government and Buhari.

Crises

Fulani leaders say their communities have no choice but to migrate southwards.

The precise numbers involved are unclear, but thousands first moved to central Nigeria to seek new pastures and escape the violence and insecurity of the Boko Haram insurgency.

Growing desertification - where fertile land turns into desert for reasons including over-exploitation and drought - has forced many further south this year, to more than 1,000 km from their homeland.

The Fulani leaders say they are clamping down on members who commit crimes but added that they often were themselves victims of kidnapping, attacks or cattle rustling at the hands of residents of southern farming communities.

“When they suffer maltreatment

(in southern areas they migrate to), they do not usually speak up or report to police until when it becomes unbearable, then they will react,” said Alhaji Gidado, head of the Fulani cattle breeder association in the southeast.

Buhari said last week that he had ordered security forces to “deal decisively” with violence between herdsmen and farmers.

But he faces a host of other crises.

His security forces are battling the Boko Haram in the northeast the president’s priority since taking office last year after making an election promise to defeat the jihadists.

Seven years into Boko Haram’s insurgency that spread from Nigeria into Chad, Niger and Cameroon, regional armies have retaken most of the territory that had been seized by the group, though it still stages suicide bombings.

The countries are in a final push to defeat the hardline Sunni Muslim group, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, but lingering divisions in their joint task force are complicating that mission.

Buhari has also promised to crush militants that have carried out pipeline bombings in the southern Delta region and are threatening to trigger a wider conflict that could cripple oil production in a country facing a growing economic crisis.

On the problems created by Fulanis migrating south, residents and rights activists said Buhari’s previous pledges to tackle the clashes between the herdsmen and crop farmers had not been backed up by any significant security action.

Human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe, invited by the US House of Representatives to give testimony in May about Boko Haram and other crises facing Nigeria, said the Fulanis had been operating in “plain sight” to stage attacks that were more brutal than the jihadist group.

Vigilantes

Police have said they had increased patrols in farming areas that have been affected by violence but local youth have nevertheless taken up arms against Fulanis since the Nimbo attack.

“The Fulani people have been robbing, raping women,” said 28year old Anthony Okafor, searching cars at a vigilante checkpoint outside Nimbo. “That’s why we are here.”

Some residents said the youth, with their outdated rifles borrowed from farmers, would be no match for the Fulanis, who they said had assault weapons.

Officials worry poverty levels are rising in rural areas, where there are few job opportunities outside agriculture, as many scared farmers

MOST RECENT FULANI HERDSMEN ATTACKS 2 0 14

32 Arikye, Eggon 17 Alingani, Eggon 46 Ikpele and Ikpopolo, Agatu 11 Berom in Barkin Ladi 92

Egba settlement, Agatu

7 Donga 100

Ukura, Gafa, Per and Tse-Gusa in Logo LG

12 Mbadwem district 50 Barkin Ladi LGA

2 0 15

40 Riyom LGA 4 Dan-Anacha, Gassol LGA 20 Zakupwang, Fan district 1 Imande Bebeshi, Moon district, Kwande 9 Ibi in Ibi LGA 1 Darka LGA 3 Onitsha Ukwuani in Ndokwa West LGA 7 Kamberi village in Wukari LGA 1 Egede community, Udi LGA 1 Ofagbe community, Isoko North LGA 6 Oju LGA 14 Kwata in Jos South LGA 1 Girel LGA Ko, Gereng and Ndikajam, Jire LGA 10 Tom-Anyiin, Tom-Ataan, Mbaya and Tombu in Buruku

2 0 16

5 Majehuku and Zandukwu in Wukari LGA 5 Okokolo village in Agatu 13 Okokolo, Ologba Utukolugwu and Oweto 2 Abbi, Uzo-Uwani LGA 9 Ibi and Wukari 50 Agatu 300 Agatu 16 Ogba, Egbema, Ndo LGA 10 Udeni Ruwa and Okpaya 15 Dori and Mesuma

Infograph:Mohammad Razon have abandoned their fields.

Stanley Okeke, head of the government council in Agwu, said production of cassava, a staple crop, had fallen significantly in parts of Enugu state, to which Nimbo and Agwu belong.

No exact data People killed Source:www.orodataviz.com

James Onyimba, leader of a community comprising six villages in Enugu, said many farmers were now sitting idle at home. “Farming is our main job. We don’t have any factories,” he added. “The problem of unemployment is getting worse.” l

11

DT

World

FridAY, AUGUst 12, 2016

Yemeni fighting points to society broken beyond repair n Reuters, Dubai The whitewashed dome of a Sufi shrine in the Yemeni city of Taiz gleamed for centuries until a band of hardline Sunni Islamist gunmen blew it up last month, victim to a civil war that may have disfigured a once-tolerant society beyond repair.

After a year and a half of fighting, rivalries based on tribe, region and sect have deepened and Yemen appears no longer able to resist the hatreds that have fuelled wars without end in other Middle Eastern countries.

“Before the war, there was no interest in denominations and family. Now, people scrutinise your name to see where you come from,” said Ahmed Saleh Al-Matari, 40, a civil servant in the capital Sanaa.

Unusually in a Muslim country, Yemen’s Sunni and Shia Muslim schools of thought had few doctrinal differences and worshippers often shared the same mosques. That has also changed.

“Even mosques were not as they are now, with the (Sunni) Islah party and Salafis running some mosques and the (Shia) Houthis running others,” Matari added. “We’ve arrived at such a dangerous situation.”

War has reduced much of Yemen to battle zones, laced with landmines and roamed by militias whose quarrels seem to defy any resolution. Around half the 27 million population have no access to healthcare and are unable to put enough food on the table, while around 80 percent need some form of humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations.

As three months of UN-mediated peace talks collapsed over the weekend, nationwide fighting and coalition air strikes accelerated once more.

The armed Houthi group, once an obscure revivalist movement of Zaydi Shias, predominant in the north, controls the capital Sanaa along with many other cities and pushed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s internationally recognised government, backed by Saudi Arabia and its fellow Sunni-ruled Gulf states, into exile last year.

Pro-government forces largely from the Shafi’i Sunni majority in the south and east made gains last year, but appear far from victory despite

arms and air cover from the Saudi-led military alliance.

Saudi Arabia fears the Houthis represent a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula for political Shiaism inspired by Iran, and has quashed Shia political stirrings both inside Saudi Arabia and in neighbouring Sunni-ruled Bahrain, a key ally.

Hashemites

Frustrated by generations of coups, corruption and cronyism that have left the country one of the poorest in the world, some Yemenis welcomed the Houthis’ takeover of Sanaa in 2014, billed by the Houthis as a popular revolution.

The group has built alliances with poor but heavily armed northern tribes, and made the capital into a bulwark that has weathered thousands of air strikes by a Saudi-led alliance wielding some of the most advanced Western weapons.

The Houthis formalised their rule on Saturday by setting up a governing council in league with allies of the powerful ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, in a move decried by both the United Nations and the government in exile.

But more subtle than their overt takeover of the state is the Houthis’ installation, in military and administrative positions throughout Yemen, of members of Hashemite families, who trace their lineage to the Prophet Mohammad.

The families, making up about 10 percent of Yemen, were important administrators in the Zaydi theocracy that ruled the north for a millennium before being largely marginalised in the wake of a 1962 republican revolution.

The sudden power shifts have unleashed demons, however, especially in Taiz, the southern city that was once a bastion of commerce and secularism.

Artillery duels between Houthi forces and a loose alliance of mostly Sunni Islamist pro-government militias have reduced much of the city to rubble without giving either side proper control, and street clashes beset much of the city.

Hardline Islamist gunmen are thought to be behind the attack on the tomb of Abdul Hadi al-Soudi, a 15th-century scholar from the more mystical and tolerant Sufi school of Sunni Islam. l

DT

12 Business

FridAY, AUGUst 12, 2016

Tofail: India to remove barriers on jute import from Bangladesh

n BSS Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed said India has agreed to ease complexities on way to importing jute from Bangladesh.

“There is a huge demand for Bangladeshi jute in Indian market and both the countries have agreed to remove some complexities that stood on way to jute import from Bangladesh,” he told journalists after a views exchange with Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka Harsh Vardhan Shringla yesterday.

Referring to 31% growth in last nine months, he said: “Export of Bangladeshi products to India has increased than before though still there is trade deficit.”

Terming the deficit as “not risky”, Tofail said India is exporting different products to various countries, but importing raw materials of these products from Bangladesh.

“But, Bangladesh has positive trade with those countries,” he said.

He, however, said both the countries are working together sincerely so high duties are not imposed on these raw materials.

The Indian High Commissioner said economic relations between the two countries are moving ahead quickly and India would welcome any Bangladeshi investment in his country. Mentioning the growing popularity of border hat, Shringla said if the number of border hat (bazaar) is increased, people of both the countries would be benefited.

He said India is committed to providing all out cooperation to Bangladesh to eliminate terrorism.

Senior Commerce Secretary Hedayetullah Al Mamoon, Additional Secretary Manoj Kumar Roy and Joint Secretary Munir Chowdhury were present. l

Capital market snapshot: Thursday DSE Broad Index

4,574.4

Index

1,123.5

0.0% ▲

30 Index

1,781.0

-0.2% ▼

Turnover in Mn Tk

5,009.5

4.0% ▲

Turnover in Mn Vol

117.8

-5.6% ▼

0.1% ▲

CSE All Share Index 14,066.8 30 Index Selected Index

12,875.3

0.1% ▲ -0.2% ▼

8,562.1

0.0% ▲

Turnover in Mn Tk

269.4

18.0% ▲

Turnover in Mn Vol

8.6

29.6% ▲

Bernicat: US wants greater trade relation with Bangladesh n Ibrahim Hossain Ovi The United States, the second largest destination of Bangladesh’s garment products after the European Union, will source more apparel products from Bangladesh, said Marcia Bernicat, the US ambassador in Bangladesh.

She said her country wants to build greater business ties with Bangladesh.

Her comments come as Bangladesh still reel from its worst terrorist attack in Gulshan, Dhaka last month which left 22 people dead, mostly foreigners.

“We have not asked our citizens to stop travelling Bangladesh, but we called for maintaining cautiousness during travel and continuing doing business here,” Marcia Bernicat told journalists after a meeting with Bangladesh garment industry leaders yesterday at the BGMEA office.

The meeting discussed several issues including financing for remediation in garment factories, progress in remediation work, trade unionism in factories and workers’ safety at the workplace.

“The US remains the single largest export destination for Bangladeshi garment products and also hopes to remain the best customer,” said the ambassador.

“We buy more Bangladeshi garment products than any other country in the world and the

Marcia Bernicat, the US ambassador, says the embassy encourages the US businessmen to do business in Bangladesh MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU level increased by 7.55% to about $6.2bn annually in 2015.”

She said: “As we are committed, we have encouraged all business people to come here and to continue their business here.”

Bernicat said: “The US embassy in Dhaka is also strongly committed to maintaining all our func-

tions and the programmes, apart from business.”

BGMEA President Siddiqur Rahman said the US is the single largest destination for Bangladeshi RMG products and it also wants to buy more to expand business ties with the country.

He said the US expressed its

satisfaction over the safety and security improvement as “we have already completed almost half of the remediation work.”

The US team also expressed its satisfaction over the government initiatives after the terror attack in Gulshan. BGMEA’s Senior Vice President Faruque Hassan, Vice Presidents Mohammed Nasir and Mahmud Hasan Khan Babu were also present.

In 2015, Bangladesh, the third largest exporter of clothing products to US, earned $5.40 billion with an 11.74% rise, which was $4.83 billion in the previous year.

The US imported clothing products worth $85.16 billion from across the globe, of which Bangladesh’s share is 6.34% while China’s 35.86% and Vietnam’s 12.40% in terms of value.

After the suspension of GSP or Generalized System of Preferences, it was feared that export to the US market, the single largest export destination of Bangladeshi products, especially apparel items, will see a sharp decline.

According to Bloomberg report, as the world’s large emerging markets falter, frontier economies like Bangladesh and Vietnam are holding steady.

It says Bangladesh’s increasing market share in the EU and recovering US demand shield it from China’s slowdown, while better demographics offer it an edge over other Asian nations. l

Tarana: New action plan for quality Teletalk services n Ishtiaq Husain State Minister for Posts and Telecommunication Tarana Halim yesterday said the government has taken an action plan to ensure quality services of Teletalk.

A major part of the action plan would be implemented by this current fiscal year, she added.

Under the action plan all the highways of the country and 64 districts headquarters will come under 3G service while the number of retailer points stand at 77,000, which is now only 39,000.

A total of 20 customer care points will newly be opened by this time. In 2018, all upazillas would come under 3G service.

The state minister was speaking at a Teletalk programme held at Gulshan in the capital yesterday.

She opened Teletalk account refiling facility, using bkash wallet.

Now Teletalk customers could refill their cellphone accounts, using bkash apart from scratch card and going to refilling points.

“We need one year to make the state-run mobile operator, Teletalk, a profitable and a popular organisation,” said the junior minister.

“I know the people of the country want to use Teletalk, but due to poor network and services they cannot use it.”

She said the government has already approved a 3G network expansion project of Tk675.81 crore which would be completed by December, 2017.

Under the project Teletalk will set up cyber centres and 1,200 base transceiver stations (BTS).

Besides, a total of over 500 BTS of 2.5G will be built.

Of the total amount, the government will finance Tk608 crore while the rest will be provided by

Teletalk.

The money will be spent on the operator’s 3G network expansion in the country’s rural areas.

Tarana said: “Our main goal is to make Teletalk a competent organisation, and to do that, no favour will be provided for the next two years. It is a challenge for me.”

Gias Uddin Ahmed, managing

director of Teletalk, said: “To survive the competitive market, we have designed different affordable packages that would be available in the market very soon.

The government rebranded Teletalk with its new logo on March 8 this year. Since Its inception in 2005, Teletalk failed to make any profit as yet. l

DT

13

Business

FridAY, AUGUst 12, 2016

Stocks continue to edge up amid higher turnover n Tribune Business Desk Stocks continued to move up marginally yesterday with increased participation.

The benchmark index of Dhaka Stock Exchange DSEX rose over 5 points to finish at 4,574.

The DS30 index, comprising

blue chips, lost only about 3 points to 1,781. The DSE Shariah Index witnessed a fractional rise of 0.5 points to 1,123.

The Chittagong Stock Exchange Selective Category Index CSCX gained over 3 points to 8,562.

Investors were active on both sides of trading fence as trading activ-

JS watchdog unhappy as BB fails to identify money launderers Al-Masum n Mohammad Molla The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Finance has expressed grievances over Bangladesh Bank’s failure to identify people involved with money laundering in the country.

“In 2013, Tk996 crore was siphoned off from the country.

Over the past 10 years, an average amount of Tk500 crore annually was smuggled out of Bangladesh. What is the Financial Intelligence Unit (of the central bank) doing?” said Abdur Razzak, chairman of the standing committee, yesterday.

Speaking to the Dhaka Tribune after a meeting at the Parliament premises, the former food minister said: “We have expressed our dissatisfaction over the issue. Money has been siphoned off to Canada.

We are third in the world in buying second home in Malaysia. Yet we have failed to identify even a single launderer.”

Razzak further said last year, although the price of rice in the international market was around $400-500 per tonne, Bangladesh imported rice at nearly doubled price.

“This must be investigated.”

According to Global Financial Integrity report, 80% of the money laundered out of Bangladesh is done through under invoicing and over invoicing.

Razzak said: “In 2014-15, what sort of capital items were imported? What industries were built using those capital items? Did we look into this?

There is no investment in the country. We are trying to bring FDI (foreign direct investment) while money is being siphoned off from the country.”

BB heist report must be released to public Razzak criticised the Ministry of Finance’s decision not to release the probe report on Bangladesh Bank heist to public and called for the report to be published immediately.

He told the Dhaka Tribune that Bangladesh’s global image was more important than the stolen $81 million.

“The probe report should be published. People should know the names of the masterminds behind this heist and they should be brought to book,” he said.

He also urged to expedite the process to bring back the stolen money. l

BPGMEA reelects Jashim Uddin as president n Tribune Business Desk Md Jashim Uddin has been reelected as the President of Bangladesh Plastic Goods Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BPGMEA) for the term 2016-17.

In the election, Giasuddin Ahmed became senior vice-president while Quazi Anwarul Haque and Md Go-

lam Kibrea were also reelected as vice-presidents.

They were reelected unopposed as there were no other candidates for the posts.

Abdur Razzak, chairman of BPGMEA Election Board, declared the results of office bearers’ election at a special meeting at the BPGMEA office in Dhaka yesterday.

The board of directors comprised of 21 members including the newly elected seven who will run the association for one year. l

ities increased as DSE turnover stood at Tk500 crore, a slight increase of about 4% over the previous session.

Lanka Bangla Securities said earning declaration remained the major trigger in the market. Thus the market saw a significant shift in stock positioning. Of a total of 326 companies that traded, 170 ended up, 131 closed

down while 56 remained unchanged.

Among the major sectors, bank, cement, food & allied and mutual fund decreased by 0.3%, 0.6%, 0.3% and 0.7% respectively.

On the other hand, telecommunication, engineering, power and textile sectors increased by 0.8%, 1%, 0.2% and 1.3% respectively.

BSRM was the most-traded share with a turnover worth about Tk21.6 crore, accounting for over 3% of the total turnover.

It was followed by Singer Bangladesh, MJL Bangladesh Limited, Beximco Pharmaceuticals, BSRM Steel and Shahjibazar Power Company Limited. l

Business

DT

14

FridAY, AUGUst 12, 2016

MasterCard: Consumers IEA cuts oil demand in Bangladesh optimistic forecast on Brexit n Tribune Business Desk Describing Bangladesh’s economy as stable, global real-time payment processing firm MasterCard yesterday said the local consumers are “optimistic” about outlook for the next six months.

The latest index on consumer confidence covering 17 Asian markets said Bangladesh stayed stable, with consumers maintaining their optimistic outlook.

The country, which was also in the optimistic territory previously, posted slight increases of 4.3 points to 71.6 points compared to the second half of last year, according to the Mastercard Index of Consumer Confidence of first six months of 2016.

Of the 17 markets, one showed biggest improvement, nine stable and seven deterioration.

The index is based on a survey conducted between November and December 2015.

The index asked 8,746 consumers in Asia Pacific what their confidence levels are on the economy, stock market, employment, quality of life and income for the next six months.

It is calculated with zero as the most pessimistic,100 as most optimistic and 50 as neutral.

Taiwan recorded the largest gain of 16.3 points to 45.3 points – a leap from ranking the lowest amongst the 17 markets in the previous survey in last six months of 2015 where it saw an extreme deterioration of greater than 20 points.

Emerging markets such as China, India, Myanmar, Vietnam and the Philippines remained positive, but markets such as Japan, Korea,

MASTERCARD INDEX OF CONSUMER CONFIDENCE DATA H1 2016 H1 2016 Current Status

Change from last half

Asia Pasific

59.72

neutral +

0.05

stable +

Australia

42.2

neutral -

-0.1

stable -

China

76.0

very Optimistic

1.4

stable +

Hong Kong

32.1

Pessimistic

-12.4

singnificant detarioration

india

97.6

extremly Optimistic

7.5

some improvement

indinesia

61.8

Optimistic

-14.7

singnificant detarioration

Japan

38.0

Pessimistic

-8.8

singnificant detarioration

Korea

34.2

Pessimistic

0.4

stable +

malaysia

41.4

neutral -

9.5

some improvement

new Zealand

55.4

neutral +

3.4

stable +

Philippines

95.2

extremly Optimistic

12.9

singnificant detarioration

singapore

33.6

Pessimistic

-10.7

singnificant detarioration

taiwan

45.3

neutral -

16.3

singnificant detarioration

thailand

58.2

neutral +

-8.5

some improvement

vietnam

94.9

extremly Optimistic

0.7

stable +

myanmar

99.8

extremly Optimistic

4.0

stable +

Bangladesh

71.6

Optimistic

4.3

stable +

sri Lanka

38.0

Pessimistic

-4.2

stabla -

Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia more pessimistic.

Compared to this time last year, the consumer mood in Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia has deteriorated, but has improved in Taiwan, India and even Malaysia, which has halted a two-year slide in confidence.

Indonesia saw the biggest fall in consumer confidence of the 17 markets in the survey, with people in Southeast Asia’s most populous country particularly worried about employment and the economy.

Hong Kong is the next most gloomy, with employment being the biggest worry, followed by Singapore, where quality of life and regular income are the main concerns.

“The decline of consumer confidence in Asia Pacific reflects the continued uncertainty in the global economic environment. In particular, recent stock market turbulence has significantly impacted consumer outlook,” Eric Schneider, regional head of the Asia Pacific MasterCard Advisors, said.

“However, a number of emerging markets are bucking this trend, namely, Myanmar, Vietnam and India, which are all continuing to see strong economic growth,” he added.

Asia Pacific’s overall confidence has dampened and growth has slowed, its markets will still play a key role in driving global growth in 2016. l

impact n AFP, Paris

The IEA said yesterday it had cut its oil demand growth forecast for 2017 because of a weaker outlook for the world economy following Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

Global oil demand growth is now expected to slow to 1.2 million barrels per day in 2017 from 1.4 mb/d this year “due to a dimmer macroeconomic outlook”, the International Energy Agency said in its monthly oil market report.

The IEA had previously forecast growth of 1.3 mb/d for 2017.

Global demand will therefore reach 97.5 mb/d next year after 96.3 mb/d this year, it said.

The IEA said it was basing its projections on the International Monetary Fund’s decision in July to cut its world economic growth forecast following Britain’s vote to leave the EU the previous month.

“As a result the global outlook for 2016-17 has worsened,” the IEA said, saying Britain itself would suffer the most, but the rest of the EU was also likely to be hit as trade prospects and confidence weakened.

‘No oversupply’

At the same time oil oversupply, which has again been weighing on the oil price since June, will disappear in the latter part of 2016, the IEA said.

“Our balances show essentially no oversupply during the second half of the year,” the IEA said.

Although the drop in the oil price by about $7 (6.30 euros) per barrel since its mid-June peak of

over $52 “has put the ‘glut’ back into the headlines”, excess supply would likely be soaked up in the months ahead.

The IEA predicted “a hefty draw” on oil reserves in the current quarter after a stretch of uninterrupted builds.

This would “help pave the way to a sustained tightening of the crude oil balance”.

Meanwhile global oil supply rose by around 0.8 mb/d in July as production both by OPEC and producers outside the cartel rose.

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia pushed output to its highest level ever and Iraq also pumped more, helping to hold total OPEC production at an eight-year high, the IEA said.

But while OPEC is providing the world with the fastest sources of supply growth it “is also notching up some of the biggest output losses”, the IEA said.

Cash-strapped Venezuela and Nigeria, where oil installations have been the target of militant attacks, have each seen declines of around 150,000 barrels per day compared to 2015, partly offsetting production gains in Iraq and post-sanctions Iran, it said.

Non-OPEC production has gained from Canada recovering from wildfire outages, but the US, China and Mexico have all produced less. Russia and Brazil, however, have managed to ramp up output.

The oil price fell in Asia yesterday for a third day after figures showing high US crude stockpiles and increased Saudi production. l

CORPORATE NEWS

Prime Bank has recently donated Tk 75 lakh to prime minister’s relief fund for supporting flood affected people of the country, said a press release. The bank’s vice chairperson, Nasim Anwar Hossain handed over a cheque to Prime Minister Sheikh in this regard

AB Bank Limited has recently made a donation of Tk 75 lakh to prime minister’s relief and welfare fund for rehabilitating people affected by the recent flood, said a press release. The bank’s director, MA Awal handed over a cheque to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in this regard

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DT

19

Feature

FridAY, AUGUst 12, 2016

Why startups should join a co-working space

C

o-working spaces might give you the picture of something “cool” with their coffee, couches, ping pong or football tables. There are benefits you can indeed enjoy, but the real values are beyond that. Here are few reasons why you should consider a co-working space for your startup.

Affordable As a startup, you need to cut down on your budget, and a coworking place is something that may be the right fit. On a persquare-foot basis, this isn’t the cheapest, but you will get many more options to make it worth your while. A co-working space would more affordable than a long-term office lease.

Flexibility and growth opportunity The thing about startups is that everything is dynamic and changing. What stands out here is flexibility. It can accommodate your growth easily. You can easily switch to a bigger office room or space if your employee number increases over the month.

Instant help Co-working companies are quite aware of what a startup might require and a good number of them offer various services that will help your business to develop. These could be regular things like helping with benefits and accounting or even pitch nights in front of investors.

Besides, if the co-working company can’t solve your problems, your neighbours are always there.

Networking It’s true that young people are leading in number at co-working spaces. But truth be told, there’s a vast diversity of people, companies, and industries there.

There’s always a lawyer or a video production company affiliated with most startups, and chances are that you will meet someone you need and might be able to team up.

Positive energy Startup life can be really stressful.

You might doubt yourself, your idea or the future of your business.

You will have to work on weekends and till late nights while your friends are out having fun. At a coworking space, you will see other people facing the same problems and also those who overcame your situation. This would surely motivate you to go forward. You will eventually gain much positive energy from the dedicated and hard-working people around you. l

3 biggest challenges of solo founders

F

inding your company on your own is very challenging. You would need perseverance, guts, discipline, and determination.

Any business is difficult, and doing it alone tends to make it harder. Here are a few challenges you would face as a sole founder of your business.

Fundraising as a party of one For a solo founder of a company, the major challenge is fundraising.

Investors often have certain doubts on businesses with a solo founder. It is very difficult to prove yourself as an expert in everything - from engineering to marketing to sales. Even after your years of experience, you will have to prove your ability as a founding party of one.

Doing things all alone would require a lot of determination and persistence. You should stick to it with patience and things will ultimately pay off.

Giving up your life while initially gearing up It’s genuinely challenging to do all the works all by yourself as a solo founder. You need to do and manage everything on your own.

It’s obviously very difficult and discipline here is a must. You need

to follow certain routines and make sure nothing is missing out.

In simple words, you might have to give your life to your company. You will have to work throughout the whole week and lose a lot of sleep. It would take a chunk off your personal calender, but eventually, you will build a

great team and be able to move forward.

Building the best team The next big challenge for you is to build a great team. You need to find the right balance of experience and the culture you want to create at your company.

Patience is key. Hire the right people and also learn to fire if you have mistakenly hired the wrong ones.

Learn from your mistakes.

Making a mistake and admitting it won’t make you weak, rather it will help you to gain more trust and respect from the team. l

Article reprinted under special arrangement with SD Asia.com

DT

20 Editorial

FridAY, AUGUst 12, 2016

TODAY

Love, not hate Love is the underlying reality of the soul. The Qur’an speaks of love in a number of key verses that clarify its essential role. The Qur’anic surah 3:31 speaks of love of God as a precondition for receiving God’s love in return. God created people out of love for them PAGE 21

thank you, mr trump If your candidacy served a purpose, it was to demonstrate that the foundations of this country -- despite some cracks you helped reveal along the way -- are still strong PAGE 22

BIGSTOCK

Crack down on corruption

is it wrong to buy sex?

If we have acceded to the contract, why are we lagging behind to put it in practice? Why would we let some middle-aged married guy (which is usually the case) to engage in carnal proclivities so that a few women can have a degrading job?

PAGE 23

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

The views expressed in Opinion articles are those of the authors alone. They do not purport to be the official view of Dhaka Tribune or its publisher.

I

t is concerning that a recent Transparency International, Bangladesh survey found that the people lacked faith in the country’s AntiCorruption Commission.

Corruption is a persistent plague in the nation’s quotidian functions, and a key factor when it comes doing things as simple as getting a new passport to much more complicated procedures such as establishing a business.

The finance minister himself has stated that 2-3% of our GDP is lost due to corruption, while TIB thinks the value to be much higher. The nation is losing out on thousands of crores of taka that belongs rightfully to the citizens of this country. We just can’t afford that.

This is why it is important that the Anti-Corruption Commission does what it is meant to do: Crack down on corruption.

The persistent and ubiquitous nature of corruption in this country needs to be lessened and eradicated before we find ourselves at a point of no return.

TIB has found that the Commission itself has not been impartial in its treatment of cases and that people were not available at their respective offices. Who will the people turn to?

We urge the government and ACC to take TIB’s suggestions into account.

There needs to be further transparency in its dealing with cases and it needs to equip itself with a long-term plan to ensure that the disease of corruption is treated and cured.

The responsibility, however, doesn’t lie on ACC alone. The government and its various law enforcement agencies also need to come forward and be transparent in its dealings with criminals, both from within and outside of the governmental and judicial systems.

All the agencies must work together to sever each and every head that springs up from the hydra that corruption has been allowed to become.

tiB has found that the Commission itself has not been impartial in its treatment of cases and that people were not available at their respective offices. Who will the people turn to?

DT

21

Opinion

FridAY, AUGUst 12, 2016

Love, not hate islam teaches us the love of all creatures Because if he/she is not really, so the allegation will fall on the person who said so” (Bukhari).

The Prophet also said: “Everyone is divinely furthered in accordance with his character.”

The greatest spiritual poet the world has known, Hazrat Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi wrote in his epic book of poetry: “I (God) look not at the tongue and the speech, I look at the inward spirit and the state of feeling Because the heart is the substance Speech is only the accident, so the accident is subservient, The substance is the real object.

The religion of Love is apart from all religion: For lovers, the only religion and creed is God.” (Vol. 2: Mathnawi)

The message of love runs throughout the Qur’an

n Syed Rezaul Karim

B

angladesh has witnessed the most despicable act of hate in the brutal killing of foreigners and Bangladeshi citizens on a Ramadan night on July 1 in the Spanish Holey Artisan Bakery of Gulshan.

The soul of Bangladesh wept witnessing such a massacre.

Those who participated and perpetrated in such a heinous crime in the name of “religion” represent the religion of hate.

These people never understood what constitutes the true essence of Islam. Rather, they were far removed from its core values.

Their perverted understanding of religion and their vicious indoctrination produced the deadly poison of hate in their psyche and transformed them into monstrous mass murderers.

By contrast, the sublime sacrifice by young Faraaz A Hossain for the sake of his friends and acquaintances, even though he had the option to save himself, represents the compassionate face of humanity, the religion of love.

He stood by the sides of his terrified friends and did not waver even at the cost of his life.

I would like to dedicate the following lines from the great 12th century Sufi saint and poet, Hazrat

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Love is the underlying reality of the soul. The Qur’an speaks of love in a number of key verses that clarify its essential role.

The Qur’anic surah 3:31 speaks of love of God as a precondition for receiving God’s love in return.

love: “My heart has become capable of every form, it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks And a temple for idols, and the pilgrim’s Kaa’ba and the tables of the Tora and the book of the Qur’an.

I follow the religions of love, whichever way his camels take, My religion and my faith is true religion.”

This great Sufi saint lies buried today in Damascus, in hate-torn Syria.

It may be mentioned here that Ibn Al-Arabi remains the most outstanding scholar of Islam and Sufi theoretician whose works are being studied with renewed zeal and interest in the Western universities.

The advent of Islam in Bengal or Bangladesh took place from the tenth century onwards through the teachings of Sufis and Darvishes.

The country came under the spell of Sufis and saints.

Their message of equality in the

Fariduddin Attar to the memory of Faraaz: “Let love lead your soul Make it a place to retire to A kind of cave, a retreat For the deep core of being.”

To those foreigners who have been mercilessly shot or hacked to death, our hearts bleed with deep sorrow and sadness.

We would like to pray for their noble souls and beg them to forgive us as a nation for we do not represent the religion of hate.

Those who believe in the religion of love and compassion bear in their hearts the following undying words of the great mystic and saint Hazrat Sheikh Sadi (pbuh).

Sadi said: “The children of Adam are members of a single body For from the moment of creation they were made of one substance.

When fate causes pain in any member, The other members cannot remain still.

O thou who hath no sorrow in seeing the sorrow of others, Thou art not worthy of being called a human being.”

The murderers at Holey Artisan

Love is the underlying reality of the soul. the Qur’an speaks of love in a number of key verses that clarify its essential role. the Qur’anic surah 3:31 speaks of love of God as a precondition for receiving God’s love in return. God created people out of love for them

Bakery were not “worthy of being called a human being.” Their heart and head hardened to the gel of inhumanity.

The Qur’an declares clearly and in no uncertain terms that there is no compulsion in religion. It states also that from a single humanity God has created different nations and tribes and people.

The Qur’an reveals in unequivocal terms: “Say, ye: we believe in Allah and the revelation given to us and to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob and the Tribes and that given to Moses and Jesus and that given to (all) prophets from their Lord. We make no difference between one and another of them and we submit to Allah.” (Sura Baqarah/136) Narrated by Hazrat Abu Jarr (pbuh), he heard the prophet of Islam saying: “No man shall call another man fasik or kafir.

God created people out of love for them.

The most often cited Qur’anic verse as proof for this hierarchy of love is the verse: “He loves them and they love Him” (5:54).

The Sufis from the eighth century onwards have forcefully focused on the theme of love as a catalyst to cleanse one’s soul and purify the body.

Of the most celebrated Sufi masters, Hazrat Mohiuddin Ibn Al-Arabi, the Shaikh ul Akbar, and Hazrat Jalaluddin Rumi stand out as the prominent proponents of the religion of love.

Ibn Al-Arabi and Mowlana Rumi consistently reminded their readers that love for any creature can only be love for God. Only ignorance veils people from perceiving what they love.

Ibn Al-Arabi wrote the famous poem on the universal religion of

eye of God and their acceptance of people without regard to caste and creed won the hearts of the people of this delta.

The existence of countless Sufi mazaars and shrines in the length and breadth of Bangladesh bear eloquent testimony to the fact that Islam came to this land through the tolerant touch of humanity and not by swords or sabres.

In concluding this piece, I would like to go back to a few lines from “Divan” of that supreme Sufi poet Mowlana Rumi: “A soul not clothed in Love brings shame on its existence.

Be drunk on Love, for Love is all that exists.” l syed rezaul Karim is the former managing director of Hoechst Bangladesh Limited and an adviser to the Allama rumi society, dhaka.

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Long Form

FridAY, AUGUst 12, 2016

thank you, mr trump the republican nominee is no unifier. this is the concluding part of yesterday’s long form

Mr Trump, you’re fired

REUTERS

if your candidacy served a purpose, it was to demonstrate that the foundations of this country -- despite some cracks you helped reveal along the way -- are still strong. the concrete is being reinforced as we speak in the form the majority electorate’s rejection of you as a viable candidate

n Samier Mansur

M

r Trump, you may think your politically incorrect ways were an asset, but in reality, it has slowly eroded away at your legitimacy for presidency with every controversial comment you’ve made.

For the Clinton campaign, your gift of gab has been the gift that keeps on giving.

When you went after Muslims in general (December 2015), and the Khan family in particular (July 2016)

One of the most powerful moments of this year’s Democratic National Convention was when the grieving parents of fallen US Army Capt Humayun Khan held up a copy of the US Constitution and questioned whether you had ever read the document. Because, how could you have called for the “total and complete shutdown

of Muslims entering the US” otherwise?

In the days following, you responded by questioning Gold Star mother, Ghazala Khan, as she grieved in silence between a portrait of her late son, and a national viewing audience.

Rather than view her silence as a reflection of her composed dignity and grief, you insinuated that her faith or culture forbade her from speaking. How wrong you were.

What was the nation’s response?

“Without saying a thing, all the world, all America, felt my pain. I am a Gold Star mother.

Whoever saw me felt me in their heart,” wrote Ghazala Khan. And it was true -- within days, Captain Humayun Khan’s gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery became the most colourful memorial on the cemetery’s 624-acre expanse as it overflowed with flowers, cards, and tokens of

gratitude for his heroic service and sacrifice.

How ironic it is that a humble tombstone bearing the Islamic symbol of the star and crescent did what you, with your vast resources, and “Make America great again” slogans, could not do in the course of your campaign: Unite people of all faiths and backgrounds over common ground.

As for your political standing at this point -- media outlets both on the left and right called your feudweek with the Khans your worst week yet.

How hard was the hit? In the lead-up to the DNC your poll numbers were slightly behind Clinton (41-45%); post-convention finds you trailing a staggering 10 points behind. That’s a lot of ground lost.

So, where does the road lead?

To your credit, your off-thecuff, populist style initially played in your favour. You generated controversy and knew how to leverage the media to fuel your ascension. You dominated the 24hour news cycles, and stirred the headlines as a non-establishment, non-conformist leader of the masses.

You activated new voting groups, and successfully tapped into the fearful strains of the American political sub-culture that helped you surge ahead in the rankings and clinch the Republican Party nomination. It seemed that

your initial momentum just might get you close to the White House.

But this would all change very fast. The very tactics that once propelled you forward, are now the very same reasons for your downfall.

Today, we find a Republican Party that is divided and struggling to find its once mighty soul. You have forced the party into a painfully awkward dance reminiscent of a Faustian tango: While there is a reluctant embrace of you as the renegade standard bearer of the party, there is a leaning away when it comes to the words you use, and the ideas you espouse.

Many have refused, on principle, to take part in this disharmonious footwork, and have broken with party-lines to vote their conscience this election.

And with just three months left before the election, 50 GOP national security officials released a jointly signed document that expressed their inability to vote for you, adding brutal criticism that you would be “the most reckless president in American history.”

To secure the nomination of a major national party is no small feat. It takes courage, political savvy, and monumental drive to achieve, no doubt.

But to ascend to the most powerful office in the world requires something much more: Unifying values that give meaning to the words on the seal of our great nation: E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One).

And, Mr Trump, as these five episodes of your campaign have demonstrated, you are no unifier. The very character of your campaign is one that can be represented by the most iconic of your campaign promises: A stark dividing wall separating two peoples; one that you wish to build at cost of the other.

If your candidacy served a purpose, it was to demonstrate that the foundations of this country -- despite some cracks you helped reveal along the way -- are still strong. The concrete is being reinforced as we speak in the form the majority electorate’s rejection of you as a viable candidate. Soon, your job here will be done. You will be fired. And American will remain great because of it. l samier mansur is a writer, thinker, and entrepreneur driven by ideas and technologies that make this world a happier, and more peaceful place. this article was previously published in the Huffington Post.

FridAY, AUGUst 12, 2016

is it wrong to buy sex? making prostitution legal may be incompatible with the idea of protecting human dignity

n Rasheek Irtisam

“W

e need to keep prostitution legal in Bangladesh to regulate the industry,” said one of my friends the other day.

She has spent many an hour providing sustenance to sex workers in various red-light areas around the nation through her work at UNDP Bangladesh.

I agreed then, considering how they would be denied a source of income and stripped of their legal rights if we were to ban this industry.

But are these the right reasons to keep prostitution legal in our country?

Having given this matter a fair amount of thought, researched the topic, compared our stance to the rest of the world, and read what some noteworthy philosophers had to say regarding the topic, I no longer consider those reasons to be good enough.

By legalising prostitution, we Bangladeshis are collectively saying that it is okay to work as a prostitute.

Bangladesh is one of the very few countries in the world where prostitution is both legal and regulated. Are we as a nation

Sex workers are often victims of poverty and human trafficking

if we have acceded to the contract, why are we lagging behind to put it in practice? Why would we let some middle-aged married guy (which is usually the case) to engage in carnal proclivities so that a few women can have a degrading job?

trying to promote prostitution for tourism, pleasure, or for any other reason for that matter?

For argument’s sake, let us, for a moment, say that the only way to regulate this industry is by legalising it, because, no matter what, we cannot stop this so-called “oldest profession in the world” from existing.

But, if we are to believe in that logic, shouldn’t we also legalise the deadliest drugs? Where does our moral boundary lie? Or have we lost those morals and see everything as grey? Do the proponents of prostitution share similar moral reasoning when it comes to addicts who would want all drugs to be legalised?

Prostitution as an industry is highly exploitative and coercive.

Most sex workers, if not all,

are forcefully dragged into this profession by poverty, and humantrafficking.

Often, they are trapped into this humiliating industry by the circumstances of their lives, and a lack of proper job opportunities.

Such a coerced profession is no different from slavery, and has no moral base for justification.

But what happens when adults willingly engage in such behaviour? What about the libertarian argument that people should be allowed to freely choose their labour and pleasure? Can we then justify the moral case for prostitution?

If the consent of adults is all we care about, then our society is destined for doom. We wouldn’t bother to ban any drug or stop anyone from committing suicide.

Is the basis of such labours

or pleasures corrupt? Yes, for example, in the case of prostitution, sex workers are merely used as objects to satisfy the need of some other person.

Objectifying human beings as a sexual commodity fails to respect human dignity and does not do justice to the sanctity of human life. In the words Immanuel Kant, “to let one’s person out on hire and to surrender it to another for the satisfaction of his sexual desire in return for money is the depth of infamy.”

In 1949, UN General Assembly adopted the following convention: “Prostitution and the accompanying evil of the traffic in persons for the purpose of prostitution are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person, and endanger

DT

23

Opinion

BIGSTOCK

the welfare of the individual, the family, and the community.”

The convention requires all the contracting countries to punish whoever exploits the prostitution of another person, even with the consent of that person. Bangladesh acceded to the “Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others” on January 11, 1985.

If we have acceded to the contract, why are we lagging behind to put it in practice? Why would we let some middle-aged married guy (which is usually the case) to engage in carnal proclivities so that a few women can have a degrading job?

Can’t we, as a society, do any better to provide those women with regular jobs, or an honourable source of earning, and perhaps a normal life -- a dignified one?

Would we want such freedom in our society, as some free market libertarian might suggest? Or does allowing such a degrading form of freedom inadvertently violate our general understanding of a good life? l rasheek irtisam is a Phd candidate in finance at the University of memphis.

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24 Sport

FridAY, AUGUst 12, 2016

Fizz undergoes op, gets call from PM

TOP STORIES

Cricket legend Hanif Mohammad dies

n Mazhar Uddin

Former Pakistan batsman Hanif Mohammad, player of the world’s longest Test innings, died yesterday in a Karachi hospital after a prolonged illness, doctors said. The 81-year old was famous for his dogged batting. PAGE 25

Athletics seeks redemption The history-chasing exploits of Jamaican Usain Bolt will take centre-stage as the Olympic track and field competition begins today with the drug-tarnished sport seeking rebirth after a year of shame. PAGE 26 Ace Bangladesh golfer Siddikur Rahman practises just before the start of the first round of the 2016 Rio Olympics’ men’s golf event. Following the halfway stage, Siddikur found himself at joint 16th position with a -1 score. The 31-year old carded birdies on the fifth and eighth holes, sandwiched between a bogey on the seventh hole

Hingis, Mirza call time on partnership The leading women’s doubles team of Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza have opted to end their partnership after suffering a slump in form following a trophy-laden 16 months together, the players confirmed yesterday. PAGE 27

Brazil advance as Argentina out Hosts Brazil finally found their form to progress to the quarterfinals of the Olympic soccer tournament with a comprehensive 4-0 win over Denmark on Wednesday, after holders Mexico and twice winners Argentina were sent packing. PAGE 28

Bangladesh pacer Mustafizur Rahman has undergone a surgery on his shoulder performed by surgeon Andrew Wallace at Fortius Clinic in London yesterday.

Dr Wallace had performed a shoulder operation on Sachin Tendulkar at Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth on March 27, 2006.

Earlier, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina phoned Mustafizur, before his surgery in London yesterday, and wished a successful operation and quick recovery.

“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina made a phone call to Mustafizur at about 5pm before the operation and enquired about his treatment and operation,” PM’s press secretary Ihsanul Karim told BSS. The Premier also encouraged the pace bowling sensation and told him that she asked Bangladesh Cricket Board President Nazmul Hasan Papon, who is currently in London, to look after his treatment.

Karim said the PM also requested the countrymen to pray for Mustafizur.

The press secretary also informed that Mustafizur was delighted after receiving the phone call of the Prime Minister. He also expressed his gratitude to Sheikh Hasina, a great sports lover.

The 20-year old went to Sussex on July 20 to take part in the NatWest Twenty20 Blast and Royal London One-Day Cup, and following a brilliant debut in the T20 Blast, the Bangladesh paceman complained of pain in his shoulder. l

Ashraful ban ends tomorrow n Mazhar Uddin Former Bangladesh captain Mohammad Ashraful will return to competitive cricket from tomorrow after he served a three-year ban for his involvement in corruption during the 2013 Bangladesh Premier League Twenty20.

Initially, Ashraful was slapped with an eight-year ban by the BPL anti-corruption tribunal in July 2014. But in September of that year, it was reduced to five years after he appealed to the disciplinary committee chairman. He confessed his guilt before being banned and the five-year ban was dated from August 13, 2013. It includes the last two-year suspended sentence subject to his participation in the Bangladesh Cricket Board’s anti-corruption education and training programme.

He also has to pay a Tk 10 lakh penalty for his misdemeanour.

Ashraful can play domestic crick-

et but the 32-year old will not be eligible for the national team and franchise-based T20 tournaments, including the BPL, for the next two years. But there was still some confusion whether Ashraful is eligible to take part in the upcoming Bangladesh Cricket League, which is also a franchise-based tournament. BCB CEO Nizamuddin Chowdhury said the board has asked the International Cricket Council regarding the matter and will get to know by Sunday.

“We have sent a letter to the

ICC regarding Ashraful’s issue and we will get to know about the details by Sunday. There are a few aspects which need to be cleared and we will get to know about those by this time,” said Nizamuddin yesterday.

Currently Ashraful is participating in an unofficial Sunday League in Kent, England and expected to return to Bangladesh tomorrow as he gears up to make a comeback to competitive cricket with the BCL scheduled to start from September 20. l

TIMELINE MAY 31, 2013: BCB investigates

match fixing allegations

JUNE 4, 2013: BCB indefinitely suspends Ashraful Later the same day, Ashraful admits involvement in match-fixing during 2013 BPL JANUARY 18, 2014: BPL anticorruption tribunal begins hearing JUNE 2, 2014: Ashraful plays in Us

tournament

JUNE 18, 2014: BPL tribunal bans Ashraful for eight years (three years suspended) JULY 22, 2014: Ashraful appeals

against ban

SEPTEMBER 29, 2014: BCB disciplinary panel reduce Ashraful’s ban to five years (two years suspended) OCTOBER 21, 2014: iCC, BCB appeal against Ashraful’s ban reduction AUGUST 13, 2016: Ashraful’s ban ends

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Cricket legend Hanif Mohammad dies n AFP, Karachi Former Pakistan batsman Hanif Mohammad, player of the world’s longest Test innings, died yesterday in a Karachi hospital after a prolonged illness, doctors said.

The 81-year-old was famous for his dogged batting in Pakistan’s nascent years in international cricket, having opened as a schoolboy for the country’s first Test against India in Delhi in 1952.

Short in stature Mohammad one of four brothers who played for Pakistan and a former national team captain - hit a still unbeaten record of 337 in a marathon 970-minute stay at the crease against the West Indies in Barbados in 1958.

That record earned him the epithet of “Little Master”, which stayed with him for an illustrious career that lasted until 1970 during which he played 55 Tests.

Mohammad surpassed Donald Bradman’s record for the highest first class innings, scoring 499 for Karachi against Bahawalpur in January 1959 - a record which West

HANIF MOHAMMAD Born

Indian Brian Lara broke by scoring 501 not out for Warwickshire county against Durham in 1994.

Mohammad died while under treatment at the private Aga Khan hospital after suffering multiple breathing and liver problems, having undergone an operation for liver cancer three years ago.

“Hanif has been declared as dead just now,” a hospital spokesman confirmed to AFP. Earlier in the day, local media reported that Mohammad had died before he had officially been declared dead by the hospital.

Hospital sources said that Mohammad’s heart had stopped for some minutes in the afternoon, but that a team of doctors revived him before he died hours later in the evening. Mohammad’s three brothers - Wazir, Mushtaq and Sadiq, as well as his son Shoaib - also played for Pakistan.

The Pakistan Cricket Board and former Pakistan players expressed their condolences.

Former Pakistan paceman Wasim Akram said he was saddened by Mohammad’s death. l

21 december 1934 Junagadh, Junagadh state, india

died

11 August 2016 (81)

nickname

Little master

Height

5 ft 6 in (1.68 m)

Batting style right-handed Bowling style right-arm off break role

Batsman

INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION NATIONAL SIDE Pakistan Test debut (cap 4) 16 October 1952 v india Last Test 24 October 1969 v new Zealand CAREER STATISTICS Competition

tests

FC

55

238

runs scored

3,915

17,059

Batting average

43.98

52.32

100s/50s

12/15

55/66

matches

top score

337

499

Balls bowled

206

2766

1

53

Wickets Bowling average

95.00 28.49

5 wickets in innings

0

0

10 wickets in match

0

0

Best bowling

1/1

Catches/stumpings 40/–

3/4 178/12

Dhaka Football League and the days gone by n Shishir Hoque Despite boasting one of the most popular football leagues – the Dhaka League - in Bengal, it took Bangladesh decades to shift its popularity from the regional league to the national league as the B-League was only formed nine years ago in 2007.

It was not only the first ever professional football league in Bangladesh, but in South Asia as well as India also followed its neighbours eight months later by introducing the I-League. Before that, India’s National Football Championship was largely semi-professional and mostly overshadowed by the Dhaka League.

Before the B-League was founded, the Dhaka League was the top-tier football competition of the country. And during the first couple of decades in the Dhaka League, Mohammedan and Wanderers ruled the roost.

Wanderers were then run by a man hailing from the Nawab family named Abdul Gaffar, who was the club’s president. During his presiden-

cy, the club won seven titles. However, their domination soon came to an end following the liberation war with the introduction of Abahani.

Although the two most wellknown clubs at that time were Abahani and Mohammedan, it was surprisingly BJMC who clinched the maiden Dhaka League title in 1973.

The Dhaka League changed its title to Dhaka Premier Division League in 1993 but continued to be popularly known by its former name.

From 1979 to 1996, all the titles were shared by Mohammedan and Abahani before Muktijoddha brought an end to the domination by clinching their first ever title in the 1997-98 season.

Several years later, on March 2, 2007, the much-awaited, first ever professional football league got underway with the opening match between Abahani and Muktijoddha at Bangabandhu National Stadium. In total, 11 clubs participated, includ-

ing eight from the capital and three from Chittagong and Khulna. Before the kick-off, players, coaches, organisers and referees from the 1960s-90s joined a parade to mark the grand opening ceremony.

The tournament opener, although a stalemate, was enjoyed by fully-packed galleries and saw two red cards within just four minutes into the game. Referee Tayeb Hassan showed straight red cards to midfielders Abul Hossain (Abahani)

In the halycon days of the country’s football arena, fully-packed galleries were a common phenomena. This file photo of the Bangabandhu National Stadium is dated 1984 MOHAMMAD LUTFAR RAHMAN BINU

and Arman Aziz (Muktijoddha).

Throughout the season, eternal archrivals Abahani and Mohammedan fought closely for the title but the Sky Blues eventually emerged as the champions with a game in hand. That season, journalists voted to choose the best player of the season and 52 of them selected Abahani striker Jahid Hasan Ameli with Mohammedan winger Zahid Hossain coming second.

Starting this season, the professional league entered a new era as most of the matches will be played outside the capital for the first time in history. Bangladesh Football Federation’s senior vice president Abdus Salam Murshedy has been the chairman of the professional league committee since 2008 and having witnessed the rise and fall of the B-League, he informed that the game is in much better shape now than it was at that time.

“The situation of the country’s football was very poor at that time.

The players were protesting, arranging rallies and strikes to regularise football. We made sure that the domestic league would take place every year and now, in 2016, a new era has begun. The league is spreading across the country and for the first time ever, 75 percent matches will be held outside Dhaka. It will bring more professionalism,” said Salam Murshedy. l

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26

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FridAY, AUGUst 12, 2016

MEDAL TALLY COUNTRY United stAtes

11

11

10

32

CHinA

10

JAPAn

6

5

8

23

1

11

AUstrALiA

18

5

3

5

13

HUnGArY

5

1

1

7

rUssiA

4

7

4

15

reP OF KOreA

4

2

3

9

itALY

3

6

3

12

GreAt BritAin

3

4

6

13

GermAnY

3

2

1

6

FrAnCe

2

3

1

6

KAZAKHstAn

2

2

3

7

tHA tHAiLAnd

2

1

1

4

CrOAtiA

2

0

0

2

netHerLAnds

1

2

2

5

Updated yesterday (9pm)

DAY SEVEN EVENTS TO WATCH BANGLADESHI ATHLETES Kim Jung-Hwan of South Korea (L) competes with Mojtaba Abedini of Iran during their men’s sabre individual bronze medal bout in 2016 Rio Olympics

Siddikur Rahman (Golf) men

individual

4:30pm

Shirin Akter (Athletics) Women

100m Prelim.

8:55pm

Sonia Akter Tumpa (Swimming) Women

50m Freestyle

10:08pm

GOLD MEDAL EVENTS SHOOTING Women

skeet

12:25am

JUDO Women

Over 78kg

1:40am

men

Over 100kg

2:01am

ARCHERY men

individual

1:43am

TENNIS men

doubles

2:20am

CYCLING (TRACK) Women

team sprint

3:04am

men

team Pursuit

3:42am

FENCING men

team Foil

3:30am

REUTERS

Bolt the saviour as athletics seeks redemption n AFP, Rio de Janeiro The history-chasing exploits of Usain Bolt will take centre-stage as the Olympic track and field competition begins today with the drug-tarnished sport seeking rebirth after a year of shame.

Ten days of competition in Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic Stadium get under way with officials keen to draw a line under a miserable 12 months which has left the athletics’ image languishing at an alltime low.

As ever, it will be left to track and field’s greatest showman, Bolt, to restore the feel-good factor as the sport attempts to turn the page on the Russian doping scandal and corruption allegations.

In his last Olympics, Jamaican star Bolt is gunning for 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay gold after sweeping the titles in 2008 and 2012. The first leg of Bolt’s “Treble Treble” quest gets under way tomorrow, with the opening heats of the 100m before the final on Sunday.

“As a young kid you grow up looking forward to the big games,” said Bolt. “Championships are what matters. This is what I do.”

Just as he was at the World Championships in Beijing, Bolt is likely to find himself cast as the good guy in a hero vs. villain duel with long-time rival Justin Gatlin.

Bolt has the 9.58sec 100m world record, but Gatlin is the fastest man in the world this season over 100m

and he continues to polarise opinion over his two doping bans.

At an Olympics which has seen ugly spats in the swimming pool involving athletes with drug-tainted records, it is a safe bet that Gatlin will once again find his past under scrutiny.

Sebastian Coe, the president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, says he hopes Gatlin will be treated politely by fellow competitors.

“I can’t change my view on (Gatlin) but he’s eligible to compete and he should be accorded the same courtesy as any athlete who is within these rules is accorded,” said Coe, who last year said the thought of Gatlin winning the 100m in Beijing made him “queasy”.

Coe said he hoped fans watching track and field would cast aside cynicism, even if the “the last year has sorely tested all of us.” “I genuinely hope that those people that are watching our sport are watching with hope and they’re watching with excitement and they’re watching with belief,” Coe said.

The first of 47 gold medals - and 141 overall - will be decided on Friday with the women’s 10,000m, where Ethiopia’s defending champion Tirunesh Dibaba will attempt to make Olympic history by becoming the first woman to win three consecutive times in an individual athletics event. Dibaba’s tilt at history is just one of several compelling storylines unfolding over the second week of the Games.l

Armenian weightlifter Suffers horror Injury

Ahmed earns Egypt landmark n Reuters, Rio De Janeiro

n Agencies

Jubilant teenager Sara Ahmed became the first Egyptian woman to stand on an Olympic podium when she finished third in the women’s 69kg at Riocentro on Wednesday.

The 18-year-old from Ismailia also became the first Arab woman to be presented with a medal in weightlifting.

Xiang Yanmei won gold, China’s fourth in weightlifting at the Rio Games, while Kazakhstan’s Zhazira Zhapparkul took silver.l

Armenian weightlifter Andranik Karapetyan crashed out of the Olympics in agony as his left elbow gave way during a second attempt to lift 195kg (429lbs).

The 20-year-old was one of the favourites for the 77kg (169lbs) and strode onto the stage with the confidence befitting a European champion and lifted the vast weight onto his broad shoulders.

But when he attempted the clean and jerk, his left arm gave way and he had to take evasive action. As the vast weight crashed to the mat, medical officials rushed to attend to the young Olympian.

Seconds earlier, he had appeared a certainty for a medal - which would have been Armenia’s first of this Olympic Games - but his dreams were cruelly shattered Early suggestions were that the Armenia had suffered a dislocated elbow. l

TOUGH BREAK!

Andranik Karapetyan of Armenia reacts after getting injured in the men’s 77kg weightlifting final in 2016 Rio Olympics REUTERS

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QUICK BYTES Mustafi and Arsenal agree terms valencia and Germany defender shkodran mustafi and Premier League side Arsenal have agreed transfer terms, his agent is reported to have said yesterday. “skhodran and Arsenal are in agreement. now the clubs just have to agree a transfer fee,” mustafi’s agent Ali Bulut told German website spox.com with the Gunners in discussions with his current club.

–AFP

Stubborn Windies fighting back West indies were making a solid reply at 107 for one at stumps after centuries by ravichandran Ashwin and Wriddhiman saha lifted india to a total of 353 on the second day of the third test at the darren sammy national stadium in st Lucia on Wednesday.

–AFP

Sunderland sign young Man Utd pair sunderland have signed youngsters Paddy mcnair and donald Love from manchester United for a combined fee of 5.5 million pounds ($7.1 million, 6.4 million euros), the club announced yesterday. the versatile 21-year-old players have both signed four-year contracts and join former United manager david moyes at the stadium of Light.

England’s Moeen Ali in action during the first day of their fourth and final Test against Pakistan at Kia Oval yesterday

Moeen lead England fightback n Reuters, London Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali made battling fifties to lift England to 200 for five at tea on the first day of the final Test against Pakistan at The Oval yesterday.

The pair came together with the hosts in deep trouble at 110 for five after winning the toss, Bairstow moving on to 55 not out at the interval with Moeen unbeaten on 52.

Pakistan claimed four wickets in the morning session, removing Alex Hales, Alastair Cook, Joe Root and James Vince in quick succession before England limped to 92 for four at lunch.

Gary Ballance became Wahab Riaz’s third victim shortly after the interval when he was caught by Azhar Ali for eight and Bairstow, on 13, was caught off a no ball.

Pakistan also spilled Moeen twice

–AFP

Williams swaps Swansea for Everton Wales captain Ashley Williams, who guided his country to the euro 2016 semi-finals, has joined everton from swansea City on a three-year contract, the Premier League clubs said on Wednesday.

–REUTERS

DAY’S WATCH OLYMPICS STAR SPORTS 1, 2, 3, 4 4:00PM, 12:30AM Rio Olympic Games Daily live coverage

FOOTBALL TEN 1 12:00AM French Ligue 1 2016/17 Bastiais v PSG

CRICKET TEN 2 7:30PM India Tour of West Indies 3rd Test, Day 4

Hingis and Mirza call time on doubles partnership n Reuters The leading women’s doubles team of Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza have opted to end their partnership after suffering a slump in form following a trophy-laden 16 months together, the players confirmed yesterday.

“After three grand slam victories and 11 WTA doubles titles together, we have mutually agreed that we would each be open to playing with other players for the remainder of the season,” the pair said in a statement.

A former singles number one, Swiss Hingis partnered Indian Mirza for the first time at the Indian Wells Open last year and the self-styled “Santina” team went on to claim 14 titles, including wins at Wimbledon, and the U.S. and Australian Opens. Since their 41-match winning streak was snapped at the Qatar Open in February, the pair claimed the Rome title but failed to advance beyond the quarter-finals in their last four events. l

and the pair grew in confidence, Bairstow hitting seven fours and Moeen a six and seven fours to drag their side back into the match as they bid to clinch the series they lead 2-1.

The touring side took advantage of overcast conditions in the morning, inspired by a fired-up Wahab.

Hales, on six, was caught by Yasir Shah at mid-wicket off Mohammad Amir and Cook, on 35, dragged a short ball from Sohail Khan on to

REUTERS

his stumps.

Root moved fluently on to 26 before he nicked Wahab to wicketkeeper Sarfraz Ahmed and the left-armer produced a venomous delivery to account for Vince (one) in similar fashion.l

DAY 1, AT TEA ENGLAND 200/5 (Bairstow 55*, moeen 52*, riaz 3/59) v PAKISTAN

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German coach wants seven nations banned n AFP, Berlin Germany’s weightlifting coach has called for seven countries currently competing at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games to be banned from international competition - and named an eighth - for doping abuse.

“Besides Russia and Bulgaria (who are already banned from weightlifting at the Rio Games), many other countries also have systematic doping,” Germany’s coach Oliver Caruso told daily newspaper Bild.

“Kazakhstan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Moldova, Romania and Ukraine should also be banned.

“These countries are robbing us of starting places (for other athletes), perhaps even medals.”

In an explosive interview, given to Bild in the Olympic village in Rio, Caruso also pointed the finger at Azerbaijan, who have no weightlifters competing in Rio after being stripped of two spots by the sport’s governing body last month.

“In Kazakhstan, there have been 27 positive doping cases since 2012, in Azerbaijan there have been 24 and so it goes on,” said Caruso.

“Kazakhstan and Belarus should have been banned for a year before the Olympics, but that will only come after the Games. Some get banned, some come back from a ban and can start again. That doesn’t help much, because they’ll probably be back again in time for the next world championships.”

Caruso’s words come after a Kazakh weightlifter Nijat Rahimov, who only completed a two-year doping ban last year, smashed a world record to claim Olympic gold on Wednesday. l

RESULTS GROUP A Denmark

0-4

Brazil

Gabriel Barbosa 26, 80, Gabriel Jesus 40, Luan 50

South Africa

1-1

motupa 6

GROUP B Colombia

Iraq saad Luaibi 14

2-0

Nigeria

Gutierrez 4, Pabon 63-P

Japan

1-0

Sweden

Yajima 65

GROUP C Germany

10-0

Fiji

Gnabry 8, 45, Petersen 14, 33, 40, 63-P, 70, meyer 30, 49, 52

South Korea

1-0

Mexico

Kwon 77

GROUP D Algeria

1-1

Benkablia 30

Argentina Gabriel Barbosa (L) of Brazil kicks the ball to score their fourth goal against Denmark on Wednesday

REUTERS

Portugal Paciencia 25-P

1-1

martinez 90+3

Honduras Lozano 75-P

Brazil advance; Argentina, Mexico out n Reuters, Rio De Janeiro Hosts Brazil finally found their form to progress to the quarter-finals of the Olympic soccer tournament with a comprehensive 4-0 win over Denmark on Wednesday, after holders Mexico and twice winners Argentina were sent packing.

After drab goalless draws in their first two matches, Brazil needed a win to calm the nerves of a soccer-mad nation and guarantee a place in the last eight, and firsthalf goals by Gabriel Barbosa and Gabriel Jesus provided a perfect platform.

Luan and Barbosa added two more goals in the second period to

carry Brazil to the top of Group A and a showdown against fellow South Americans Colombia tomorrow.

Despite the heavy defeat, Denmark advanced to face Nigeria after finishing in second place on four points, while Iraq and South Africa drew 1-1 in the other group game to both be eliminated.

Argentina, who were Olympic champions in 2004 and 2008, crashed out after they were held to a 1-1 draw by Honduras in Group D action, as Portugal topped the standings on seven points after a 1-1 draw with Algeria in the other match.

Honduras claimed the second qualifying spot by virtue of a superior goal difference over Argen-

tina, who missed a penalty in their match, with both sides finishing on four points. Algeria were last after claiming a solitary point.

Germany were the big winners of the day, hammering 10 goals past Fiji, with Nils Petersen scoring five and Maximilian Meyer adding three as the European side ran riot against a team who conceded 23 goals in their first appearance at the Olympics.

The 10-0 win lifted Germany up to second spot in Group C above Mexico, who crashed out after Kwon Chang-hoon’s 77th minute goal gave South Korea a 1-0 win.

The Koreans finished top of the group seven points, ahead of Germany on five. Mexico, who beat

Brazil to win the gold in London four years ago, were eliminated along with Fiji.

South Korea will play Honduras in the quarter-finals tomorrow, while Germany face Group D winners Portugal.

Nigeria topped Group B, even though they lost 2-0 to Colombia, who finished second.

Two of Colombia’s over-age players scored the goals - Teofilo Gutierrez getting the first after four minutes and Dorlan Pabon doubling their advantage from the penalty spot after 63 minutes.

Japan, who beat Sweden 1-0 in the other match, finished third in the group as both sides were eliminated. l

Olympic turmoil deepens Argentine football’s decay n AFP, Rio de Janeiro A painful Olympic Games exit to Honduras plunged Argentine football deeper into crisis Wednesday as administrative chaos off the field ended chances of offering some relief to the heartache of three final losses by the senior team in as many years.

The two gold medals won at the 2004 and 2008 Games make football Argentina’s second most successful Olympic sport, yet there was even doubt they could field a team for the Games in Rio due to the explosive fallout from their Copa America final defeat to Chile in June.

Five-time World Player of the Year Lionel Messi’s international retirement overshadowed the turmoil caused by a football federation described by the country’s

president as “corrupt” and branded a “mafia” by Argentina’s favourite son Diego Maradona.

The Argentine Football Association is currently in the hands of a

temporary normalising committee appointed by FIFA after being decimated by corruption allegations and rows over TV rights.

Olympic coach Julio Olarticoe-

Goalkeeper Geronimo Rulli of Argentina is consoled as he cries after their elimination from the tournament REUTERS

chea, who had been coaching the Argentine women’s team, was put in charge just weeks before the tournament began after Gerardo Martino resigned citing the power squabbles at AFA and the club’s resistance to releasing players for the Games. After Martino’s coaching staff also resigned, Olarticoechea was the only coach still contracted to AFA. Organisational chaos also eventually wore down Messi’s patience.

“Once again waiting on the plane to try to take off. What a disaster AFA are!” Messi uncharacteristically raged to his 50 million Instagram followers two days before announcing his retirement after blasting a penalty over the bar in the shootout loss to Chile.

Messi retired without winning a major international title having also missed out in the 2014 World

Cup and 2015 Copa America finals.

Argentina’s new senior coach Edgardo Bauza flew to Barcelona on Tuesday to try to convince him to reverse his decision ahead of the resumption of World Cup qualifying in September.

Former AFA head Luis Segura quit in June after he and six other AFA directors were indicted on suspicion of embezzlement over the distribution of broadcasting revenues.

Major clubs like Boca Juniors and River Plate want to break away and form a “superleague” to generate greater TV money, whilst smaller clubs fear they will get squeezed out by their bigger competitors.

“We cannot carry on with a system full of bad habits and corruption,” said Argentine president Mauricio Macri, himself a former football executive.l

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Country (6) 6 Pale (3) 9 Like a weak old woman (5) 10 Grotto (4) 11 metal (5) 12 Fresh (3) 13 Hid (6) 15 slender support (4) 18 excuse (4) 21 Gallery of shops (6) 24 vehicle (3) 25 Adult insect (5) 28 Worshipped image (4) 29 italian dilect (5) 30 Condensed moisture (3) 31 Adulterate (6)

DOWN 1 throws (5) 2 insect (3) 3 Family members (5) 4 drink (3) 5 small valley (4) 6 decline (4) 7 Handsome thoroughfare (6) 8 salamander (4) 14 Faucet (3) 16 Long angry speech (6) 17 extinct bird (3) 19 Peruvian animal (5) 20 solo (5) 21 sour (4) 22 Bird (4) 23 irish republic (4) 26 Unruly crowd (3) 27 Fuel (3)

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CODE-CRACKER How to solve: each number in our COdeCrACKer grid represents a different letter of the alphabet. For example, today 8 represents s so fill s every time the figure 8 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

CALVIN AND HOBBES

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.

PEANUTS

YESTERDAY’S SOLUTIONS CODE-CRACKER

CROSSWORD

DILBERT

SUDOKU

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Hush! ‘Bad Moms’ is here

n Showtime Desk Star Cineplex is going to release the new Hollywood comedy Bad Moms on Friday, August 12, 2016.

However, this story is not about moms who are bad, per say.

This story is about moms who are great as moms but miss some parts of their life while juggling between responsibility and time management. Amy Mitchell (Mila Kunis) is a married woman with two children (Jane and Dylan) who feels over-worked and overcommitted. She works as a sales rep for a “hip” coffee company, makes her kids healthy, handpacked lunches, does much of their homework, goes to all of their extracurricular activities, and is active in her school’s PTA, run by the domineering Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate) and her cronies, Stacy (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Vicky (Annie

Mumolo). When she catches her husband Mike cheating on her with a dairy farmer via the internet, Amy throws him out and attempts to keep everything together.

Keeping everything involves

a lot of adventures for Amy, including making new friends at a nearby bar after a particularly stressful day. Carla (Kathryn Hahn), a laid back, oversexed single mom, and Kiki (Kristen Bell) a stay-at-home mother of four who admires Amy’s dissent from Gwendolyn. Amy’s competition with Gwendolyn and bringing the other moms over to her ‘fun mom’ side is also a major focus of the movie.

The story culminates at the PTA elections, where Amy gives an inspiring speech about how all the moms are overworked, and that they need to take time off, do fewer and less stressful events, and most importantly, allow themselves to make mistakes.

The credits are an added bonus, and play over the cast interviewing their real-life moms. l Source: IMBD

Winners of Splitsvilla are fixed already!

n Showtime Desk Rumours and MTV Splitsvilla go hand in hand. This time, as Splitsvilla picks up pace, rumours play catch up.

The popular reality telly show Splitvilla hosted by Ranvijay Singh and Sunny Leone has the world busy discussing who will win the ongoing ninth season. In the midst of it all

there is one disheartening and shocking news: according the popular website tellychakkar. com Splitvilla 9 is scripted and who will win the show is also fixed.

Another source revealed that even the contestants felt that the makers gave undue importance to Gurmeet and Varun. Some contestants have claimed that it’s unethical on the makers’ part as

others put equal effort to win the show. Apparently, Ranvijay is on Varun Sood’s side whereas Sunny favours Gurmeet Singh!

What is even more shocking is that after the duo’s victory at their respective reality shows, Roadies X2 and Squad Run, the two contestants are getting special treatment on Splitsvilla. In fact, certain tasks are choreographed in such a manner that these two would make it to the final. “All these are mere fragments of somebody’s imagination. We play by the rule and that is why we are here running the ninth season.

People will talk about it and I would chose not to pay heed to such speculations. And I am happy that people are actually talking about my show,” said Lalit Sharma, Splitsvilla’s producer, refuting charges levelled against his popular show. l Source: MTV

Sonakhsi’s wedding story n Showtime Desk Sonakshi Sinha has reconciled with her boyfriend Bunty Sachdev. Rumour mills are working round the clock and are suggesting that the Dabangg beauty may tie the nuptial knot soon.

Sonakshi and Bunty have taken a step further and are planning to get married! The latest report in a magazine reveals that Bunty Sachdev proposed to Sonakshi a few days back and the actor accepted. In fact, the actress is also cutting down on work for her impending marriage.

Sona is not only rushing to complete her films, but also rejecting other films offered to her, so that she can remain free.

Post Noor, she has one film with Sunhil Sippy, for which she has already started shooting. Post that she won’t be signing a film because her beau wants to get married soon. But that’s not it! He has even asked her not to shoot for Mubaraka as she was going to be paired opposite former boyfriend Arjun Kapoor!

Sonakshi Sinha is one of the most talented actresses of the current lot and she has proved herself time and again.

The actress is all set to make an appearance on the silver screen after one and a half years with Akira.

However, the news about Sonakshi and Bunty getting married is still surprising to Bollywood. l Source: Bollywood Gossip

WHAT TO WATCH

Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls Movies Now, 7:35pm Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, returns from a spiritual quest to investigate the disappearance of a rare white bat, the sacred animal of a tribe in Africa.

Cast: Jim Carrey, Ian McNeice, Simon Callow, Maynard Eziashi, Bob Gunton

Final Destination 5 WB, 3:53pm Survivors of a suspensionbridge collapse learn there’s no way you can cheat death.

Cast: Nicholas D’Agosto, Emma Bell, Arlen Escarpeta, Miles Fisher, Ellen Wroe

Transformers HBO, 8:30pm An ancient struggle between two Cybertronian races, the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons, comes to Earth, with a clue to the ultimate power held by a teenager.

Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Rachael Taylor, Jon Voight

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs Star Movies, 7:30pm When Sid’s attempt to adopt three dinosaur eggs gets him abducted by their real mother to an underground lost world, his friends attempt to rescue him.

Voices: Eunice Cho (Madison), Karen Disher (Scratte), Harrison Fahn (Glypto Boy), Maile Flanagan (Aardvark Mom), Bill Hader (Gazelle) l

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Bangladeshi Opshora Ali to take part in Miss Asia 2016 n Showtime Desk Bangladeshi model-actress Opshora Ali will take part in Miss Asia 2016, a beauty pageant from the house of Pegasus to find the most beautiful and talented women from the Asian and Eurasian region. Its grand finale will be held in Kochi, a city in southwest India’s coastal Kerala state on August 18. Ali left Dhaka on Thursday to join the competition.

Hailed from Rajshahi, Opshora Ali participated in Miss Cosmopolitan 2015 last year held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and she ended up placing in the pageant’s top ten contenders.

This time, she has been selected as the Miss Bangladesh 2016 and she is to take part in Miss Asia 2016 as Miss Bangladesh.

Ali said, “This is a remarkable event in my life. I consider myself blessed to take part in such an event.”

She also asked everyone to wish her luck and hoped she would be able to represent Bangladesh with pride. Ali also

requested her fans to like Miss Asia’s Facebook page, since liking her photos and videos, which will be shared on the page, can help her to win.

Advertising agency i-Positive has sponsored the model to go to the pageant, while fashion house Anokhee partnered with her.

Opshora Ali first got attention when she reached the top five of Veet-Channel i Top Model in 2011, where she won the Miss Beauty Smile title. Later, she appeared in several TVCs of well-known brands including Airtel, Banglalink and Citycell.

She has also played roles in some TV dramas including Bhuter Bari, Ei Shohorey and Keya. Her debut film Porobasini is yet to be released.

Miss Asia 2016 is an event that brings together every corner of Asia and Eurasia to showcase to the world not only the beauty of the contestants but also their talents, as well as the confidence of young women in Asian and Eurasian countries. l

Super Maa with Light of Hope

n Showtime Desk Super Maa, a popular radio show on ColoursFm 101.6, conducted a workshop designed for parents on learning through fun and games, recently organised by Light of Hope. Light of Hope is an organisation which aims to improve the quality of primary education through technology, innovation, and creative products or services.

The Super Maa duo, Tasnuva Ahmed, the host of the show on ColoursFm 101.6, and Early

Childhood Development(ECD) specialist, Zinia Jesmin Karim were the speakers at the workshop. In order to maintain a more positive approach towards raising children, the team of Super Maa contributed knowledge and shared their experiences at the day long workshop program.

They presented the different stages of a child’s learning curve, as well as find innovative and joyful methods of engaging children into studying and more importantly, finding methods

to make studying a wonderful learning experience. It was a day long workshop, and the parents’ participation was remarkable.

The parents discussed about the problems they are facing and ECD specialist helped them by giving advice. In this program, they demonstrated how to teach children through fun.

Tasnuva Ahmed, the host of Super Maa and Senior Manager of ColoursFm 101.6, said, “It is very important for both parents to spend a lot of time with their

children at their early age (3-8 years old). This is the time when they learn at the highest rate so its important to teach them empathy, good behavior, and social attributes when they are younger rather just focusing on book based education. Children can also learn from nature and their surroundings and parents are their best teachers.”

Among the other speakers were Rakiba Abedin, Waliullah Bhuiyan and Mukul Alam from Light of Hope. l

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FiZZ UnderGOes OP PAGE 24

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PM: Gear up anti-militancy awareness n UNB Reiterating her firm resolve to free the country from terrorism and militancy, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday urged all, including Alem-Ulema, to strengthen the spirit against terrorism and militancy among the common people.

“I think a strong public opinion has been created across the country against terrorism and militancy which is very good news. A good spirit has also been created among the countrymen and it’s very much essential to strengthen this spirit against terrorism and militancy,” she said.

Country’s Alem-Ulema could play a very important role to this end through preaching Islam and its true lessons among common people, said the prime minister.

Sheikh Hasina was delivering her speech at a conference titled “Terrorism and Militancy in Islam’s Outlook and Our Steps” organised

by Bangladesh Jamiutul Ulama at Krishibid Institution in the city.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, Religious Affairs Minister Motiur Rahman, Bangladesh Jamiutul Ulama president and Khatib of historic Sholakia Eidgagh of Kishoreganj Moulana Farid Uddin

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina becomes emotional during a special prayer for the victims of Gulshan terror attack at a conference on terrorism and militancy at Krishibid Institution Bangladesh in Dhaka yesterday BSS Masud spoke on the occasion.

Earlier, Moulana Farid Uddin Masud handed over a copy of the “Fatwa” against terrorism and militancy bearing the signatures of some one lakh Alem, including 10,000 female Alem.

Quoting various verses from the

Holy Quran, Sheikh Hasina said it could not be the lesson of Islam that anyone would go to heaven and get “Hur Pori” through killing innocent people here.

She also mentioned that those who unleash terrorism and bring disasters are defying the message

of Islam.

“I cannot understand how they could go to heaven as they’re (terrorists and militants ) are killing people, creating unrest, defying the Holy Quran and the directives of our Prophet Hazrat (PBUH).

They’ve been spreading lessons

against Islam and seals are clamped in their hearts,” she said.

The prime minister called upon the Alem-Ulema to find out ways to bring back the wrong doers to the right path. “You’ll have to think and take right measures so that everyone gets right lessons of our religion.”

Urging the Alem-Ulema to extensively take part in the countrywide committees being formed against terrorism and militancy, she said: “Please, create awareness among common people that the path of terrorism, militancy and killings is a wrong and unjust path and surely not the path of Islam.”

The prime minister said although she had earlier formed a commission to work out the curricula for Qawmi Madrasas but unfortunately there has been any consensus over it.

She said since attacks are being unleashed against the holy religion, there is an urgent need to get united and fix the curricula for the Qawmi Madrasas with the united efforts of all.

Hasina also suggested the religious affairs minister to expedite the process adding that the number of commission members could be increased to accomplish the task. l

36 Bangladeshi children ‘illegally detained’ in India

Saudi govt lifts ban on Bangladeshi workers

n Tribune Desk

n Tribune Desk

At least 36 Bangladeshi children were being illegally detained in India, a west Bengal-based human rights organisation has said.

Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (MASUM) issued a statement yesterday, where its Secretary Kirity Roy said the Bangladeshi children were illegally detained in Subhayan: Balurghat Observation Home in South Dinajpur, West Bengal.

“These children are Bangladeshi nationals and they are not repatriated to their home country though the criminal cases launched against them under the Indian law are already disposed of.”

He said thirteen children were suffering indefinite period of detention in the Subhayan observation home without any justifica-

tion.

They are: Swapan Roy, Md Rubel, Nurul Islam, Md Elias, Goutam Roy, Amrita Roy, Ajijul Islam, Md Sohel Rana, Mijanur Rahman, Sujan Ali, Ariful Islam, Md Alamin and Badsa Haque.

Besides, four other Bangladeshi children – Md Atikul, Md Sarif, Mokidul Islam and Md Sujan – have been detained in Balurghat Observation Home under the category “under trial”.

According to the information obtained by MASUM, these children were victims of human trafficking but they were not repatriated to their home country.

In addition, they were tagged into criminal case for coming to India without any valid papers.

Kirity also mentioned other Bangladeshi children who had been living in the Subhayan home

for the last few years, who had the status of “children in need of care and protection (CNCP).”

Among those children were Ramjan Haque who has been living at Subhayan since November 9, 2009. Another long-term resident was Enamul Haque, aged about 10 years, who has been staying there since July 21, 2014.

Other “CNCP” status children who had been living at Subhayan for several months are: Md Momen, Md Ashim, Md Janarul Islam, Md Sohel Rana, Golam Mustafa, Md Jubayar, Md Sohan Sekh, Md Dulal Ali, Md Raju Islam, Srikrishna Nath Toppo, Krishna Toppo, Sadin Hossain, Rabi Alam, Md Juned Pathan, Elias Ali Badsa, Rafi Seikh and Najmul Haque.

MASUM suggested that the matter be investigated by a neutral investigating agency. l

The Labour and Social Development Ministry of Saudi Arabia lifted the ban on the recruitment of Bangladeshi workers on Wednesday.

The ban was in force for the past six years except for the Bangladeshi domestic helps.

The new decision would pave the way for all categories of Bangladeshi workers which include skilled, unskilled, professionals such as doctors, nurses, teachers, farm and construction workers, Bangladesh Ambassador Golam Moshi told Arab News.

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia agreed to import one male domestic worker against each female housemaid. The process of lifting the ban began last year.

Moshi said that this is good news for all prospective workers

from the country.

The envoy recalled that opening recruitment channels from Bangladesh is subsequent to the meeting between Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in June.

“We are thankful to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman for allowing us to resume recruitment,” Moshi said, adding that the Kingdom has always stood with Bangladesh in good times and bad.

Currently, there are some 60,000 female domestic helps among the 1.3 million Bangladeshi workers in the Kingdom.

“Visas for male domestics were issued only from June, and there is a sizable number coming into the Kingdom regularly,” he said, adding that 6,000 female workers on average are arriving in the Kingdom per month. l

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