HC declares illegal cancellation of Aug 15 as nat’l mourning day

The High Court on Sunday ruled that August 15 should be restored as National Mourning Day and a public holiday.

The High Court bench of Justice MA Rashid and Justice M Ashfaqul Islam declared illegal the cancellation of National Mourning Day, which was also a public holiday, on August 15 by the BNP-Jamaat alliance government.

The court also declared illegal the changes made by the alliance government to the Flag Rules of 1972, cancelling the hoisting of the national flag at half-mast to pay respect to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on the day.

The High Court delivered the judgement on a public interest litigation writ petition filed on August 5, 2007 by Supreme Court lawyer Mozammel Haque, Mollah Abu Kaiser and MA Malek.

Assistant attorney general Syed Zafar Iman told reporters the government would prefer an appeal against the High Court judgement with the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court.

Sheikh Mujib, the first president of Bangladesh, was assassinated by a group of army personnel on August 15, 1975. All but two of his family members were killed in the incident.

After coming to power 21 years after, the Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina on August 8, 1996 declared August 15 as National Mourning Day and public holiday to pay respect to Sheikh Mujib.

August 15 had since then been observed at the state level and the national flag had been hoisted at half-mast both at home and at Bangladesh missions abroad.

The BNP-Jamaat alliance government on August 3, 2002 cancelled the decision of the Awami League government.

The three Supreme Court lawyers, also members of Bangabandhu Ainjibi Parishad, a platform of pro-Awami League lawyers, filed the writ petition in 2007 challenging the legality of the cancellation of National Mourning Day and pubic holiday on August 15.

After a preliminary hearing in the petition, the High Court on August 6, 2007 issued a rule on the government to explain why the cancellation of National Mourning Day and pubic holiday on August 15 would not be declared illegal.

The government was also asked to explain why August 15 would not be observed as National Mourning Day and a public holiday.

In the judgement, the High Court observed the BNP-led alliance government’s decision cancelling mourning day was a denial of a state decision.

The bench also observed the grounds on which the BNP-led government had cancelled National Mourning Day and public holiday on August 15 was not factually correct.

Cancelling the August 15 as National Mourning Day,

the BNP-led government claimed the day had earlier been neither fixed nor observed as national mourning day. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s vice-chairman MK Anwar, who was also in the alliance government’s cabinet which cancelled the day, welcomed the High Court judgement.

The acting Awami League president, Zillur Rahman, taking with media in his house at Gulshan, hailed the judgement and urged its implementation.

Malnutrition and Seniors

When a relative doesn't eat enough

Dr Tareq Salahuddin

Good nutrition is critical to senior health, but many older adults do not eat right. Older people are more likely to have inadequate nutrition than younger adults are — and are more susceptible to numerous health problems related to an inadequate diet. Many older adults in long term care facilities have poor nutrition. While seniors cared for at home or living independently generally fare better, patterns leading to inadequate nutrition — also called malnutrition — often begin at home. Knowing the causes and danger signs of nutrition problems, as well as taking steps to ensure a diet rich in protein and other necessary nutrients, is critical in maintaining senior health and strength.

Partnering palm and soybean oils

AHA recommendations and USFDA legislated health claims achieved by partnering

palm and soybean oils

Kalyana Sundram and Yusof BasironNature has been generous in endowing palm oil with a composition that is uniquely balanced between the saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. Even when programming this higher level of saturates in the oil, nature’s consideration for optimisation was already apparent – the biology of the oil palm dictates that this saturate be in the form of palmitic acid (C16:0), the same saturated fatty acid that is most abundant in our body and throughout most of nature’s creations.

Legendary Egyptian film-maker Chahine dies

Egyptian film-maker Youssef Chahine, Arab cinema's most celebrated director, died on Sunday aged 82 after several weeks in a coma, his friend and fellow director Khaled Yussef said.

Red yeast rice, fish oil fight high cholesterol

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A regimen of supplements and lifestyle coaching is just as effective as statin medication for reducing levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or "bad" cholesterol, and more effective in helping people lose weight, new research shows.

People with high cholesterol who took red yeast rice and fish oil daily and received counseling on diet, exercise and relaxation techniques showed the same 40 percent drop in LDL cholesterol seen among people taking 40 milligrams of simvastatin daily, Dr. David J. Becker of the University of Pennsylvania Health System's Chestnut Hill Hospital and colleagues found. And they pared off an average of 10 pounds over 12 weeks, compared to less than a pound for patients taking the statin.

Becker has run a lifestyle program for people at risk of heart disease for 13 years. "People had a uniform desire to get off statins, and when they did their cholesterol was only going down maybe 5 percent at most," he told Reuters Health. The cardiologist decided to launch the current study after seeing many patients have success in lowering their cholesterol with red yeast rice and fish oil.

With a grant from the state of Pennsylvania, Becker and his team randomly assigned 74 patients to receive 40 milligrams of simvastatin (Zocor) daily along with printed information on lifestyle changes, or to three capsules of fish oil twice daily and 600 milligrams of red yeast rice daily along with the 12-week lifestyle program.

LDL cholesterol levels fell by 42.4 percent in the red yeast rice group and by 39.6 percent in the simvastatin group, not a statistically significant difference. Triglyceride levels didn't change in the statin group, but fell 29 percent in the red yeast rice group, probably because they were taking fish oil, according to Becker and his team.

People in the red yeast rice group lost an average of 4.7 kilograms (just over 10 pounds), compared to 0.3 kilograms (less than a pound) in the statin group.

Red yeast rice comes from fermenting red yeast with rice. Known as hong ku, the substance has been used as a medicine and food garnish in parts of Asia for centuries, Becker said. It contains a substance called monacolin-K that is nearly identical to the cholesterol-lowering drug lovastatin (Mevacor), as well as several other monacolins that may also have cholesterol-lowering properties.

People in the red yeast rice arm of the study were taking the equivalent of 10 to 15 mg of lovastatin, Becker said. "This lovastatin dosage is quite small, yet the effects we saw with the red yeast rice were akin to those one would generally see with a much higher dose of lovastatin."

"However, it is not risk-free, and it must be used carefully and in conjunction with your physician."
If more studies bear out the current findings, he added, the supplement/lifestyle intervention he and his colleagues tested could offer an alternative to people with high cholesterol who don't want to take statins, or who can't tolerate the drugs. However, he added, people who actually have heart disease should stick with statins, because they have been shown to reduce mortality.

Becker noted that a recent analysis by ConsumerLab found red yeast rice products varied sharply in their potency, and some were contaminated with a toxic byproduct called citrinin. "This paper is a call for better regulation of this supplement as well so that we know consistently what's in it," he said.
SOURCE: Mayo Clinic Proceedings, July 2008

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The Most Sugar-Packed Foods in America

Think your sweet tooth is harmless? Well, it just might bite you back. The average American is wolfing down 460 calories from added sugars every day. That’s more than 100 pounds of raw sugar per person per year. (That's enough to make 3,628 Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!)
What’s at risk with all this sugar intake isn’t just another cavity; refined carbohydrates cause spikes in your blood sugar levels, tell your body to store fat, and put people at increased risk for diabetes. And that's another way of saying that it puts people at increased risk of blindness, sexual malfunction, heart attack, and premature death. All that from a simple candy bar or soda? Not exactly, but consider this: A dollar will buy you about 75 calories' worth of fresh broccoli, but food manufacturers can use that same dollar to purchase 1,815 calories of sugar. And thanks to government subsidies, high fructose corn syrup - the synthetic sweetener found in so many of the foods in our grocery stores - is even cheaper. It should come as no surprise, then, that added sugars are sabotaging nearly ever packaged and prepared food we put in our bodies — pasta sauces, smoothies, even whole grain breads. To help you avoid the impact of stealth sugars that run rampant through our food supply, we’ve sifted through all the nutritional data to name the eight biggest sugar bombs in America. Try to keep them from blowing up in your neighborhood.

Regulators lift tomato Salmonella warning

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. regulators on Thursday lifted a warning on tomatoes and repeated a warning on peppers as the possible cause of an outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul in which more than 1,200 people have reported getting sick.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration repeated its warning that young children, the elderly or people with compromised immune systems should avoid fresh jalapeno and Serrano peppers.
Regulators have struggled to pinpoint the source of the outbreak, which has raised questions about U.S. food safety and prompted lawmakers to demand new systems to trace fresh produce from farm to table.
FDA said it removed the tomato warning because there are no longer any tomatoes coming into the market from producers that were being looked at as possible sources of contamination.
"Tomatoes that are currently on the market in the U.S. are safe to consume," David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food protection at the FDA, said in a conference call.
The warning had been in place since June 7 and regulators subsequently traced the outbreak back to April.
"This is not saying that anybody was absolved," Acheson said.
Regulators never found Salmonella Saintpaul at any tomato farms or packing plants, even though early indicators pointed to tomatoes as the source of illness.
In addition to the hot peppers, food safety officials are investigating whether cilantro played a role in the outbreak.
"We still do not know where the original contamination point was," Acheson said.

Eat Fish For a Healthy Brain

A recent study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology examined the relationship between what women ate while they were pregnant and the cognitive test scores of their children three years after birth.
The study results revealed that women who ate fish while pregnant gave birth to babies who by age 3 had significantly better cognitive and fine-motor skills than those whose mothers didn't eat fish during pregnancy.
The 3-year-olds from the women who reported eating more than 2 servings of fish per week performed better than average on tests that assessed receptive vocabulary and visual-spatial, visual-motor, and fine-motor skills.
This result is significant because the most important time of development for our brains is before we are born. Almost all of our neurons have been created by the time of our mothers' second trimesters, when the critical process of establishing the correct interconnections is taking place.
Our thinking, behavior, and cognitive abilities, of course, ultimately result from the functioning of our brains. Therefore, abnormalities in our brains that arise early in its development can result in abnormal thinking and behavior later on.
Why fish? Because fish is a rich source of particular health-promoting OMEGA 3 fatty acids that are known to be important components of the brain's structure.
There is a downside to eating fish while pregnant, however. Fish also can be a source of mercury, which has a devastating effect on brain development. In fact, the 3-year-olds from those women who had higher-than-average mercury levels when pregnant tended to score lower on the above tests.
Large, long-living fish such as tuna and swordfish, which feed on other fish and thus keep accumulating mercury, are the most likely to have elevated levels of the poison. Types of seafood that generally have low mercury levels include shrimp, sardines, and salmon.
Another study, published in a recent issue of the journal Pediatrics, demonstrated the benefits of similar fatty acids on brain development. Researchers gave premature infants milk supplemented with essential fatty acids. At the age of 6 months, the infants given the supplements scored better on development assessments than did similar premature infants given no supplements.
While fatty acids play an important role early on in the developing brain, they may also be important for brain and mental health throughout our lives. Scientists continue to explore their health-promoting effects, including whether they may prevent certain psychiatric disorders.

Warrant to arrest ex-Jamaat MP Khaleque, four others

A court in Satkhira yesterday issued an arrest warrant against all the five charge-sheeted accused including former Jamaat lawmaker Maulana Abdul Khaleque Mondal as they remained absent before the court yesterday fixed for hearing in the sensational China Khatun murder case.

How the Butcher of Bosnia feigned a new life for himself

Radovan Karadzic, the genocide suspect who avoided arrest for more than 10 years, created a personal website as part of his alter ego as an alternative health guru.

Obama all praise for "miracle" of Israel

White House hopeful Barack Obama vowed yesterday to tighten US bonds with Israel as he began an intense day of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, a key moment in his international campaign swing.

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A-Data Sport Series USB flash drives

Even though you are stuck in traffic, you still cannot stop your desire for speed. By integrating an avant-garde design and special material, A-DATA Sport Series S701 Flash Drive is able to fully demonstrate the kinetic energy and explosive force of a sports car. The motive power continuously generated by the flash drive is an evidence of its endless energy.

HP unvails Mini Note PC in Bangladesh

Targets education market

HP Mini-Note PC 2133 might be small in size but it is big on usability, durability and attractiveness. Packed with an impressive combination of features, the HP 2133 offers a full-function PC with the extreme mobility.

Gadget lovers flip for iPhone 3G but glitches mar release

Gadget lovers around the world on last Friday crammed into stores to buy the latest super-fast iPhone G3 only to find activating the coveted devices was hit-or-miss due to Apple computer troubles.

British PM pledges more support for Palestinians

Afp, Bethlehem

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday pledged further economic aid to the Palestinians aimed at bolstering the US-backed Middle East peace process.

Former Nepali king leads lonely life as commoner

Afp, Kathmandu

With few friends coming to visit and his son and one-time heir now living in Singapore, the new life of Nepal's ousted king as a commoner is by all accounts a lonely, meditative one.

Infertility: The pain and the hope

Dr Fatima Momtaz

At least 15 percent of couples usually experience some degree of infertility with all of its feelings and frustrations at some point in their life. This issue is not less important than our problem regarding over crowded population.

Have A Nice Day

All health information to keep you up to date

Back pain and your position

Dr Rubaiul Murshed

The complaint of low back pain is a common medical problem. Pain is an important indicator of sickness. Although it can be a frustrating problem, but most episodes of back pain resolve.

A richly ornate temple at risk of ruination

400 Years of Dhaka

Walking by the narrow lanes of Tantibazar one will see a small wooden door almost hidden in the midst of congested buildings.

On entering the premises the visitor will be greeted by an exquisitely ornate temple standing at the centre of a small plot.

This Radha Ballabh Mandir is another richly ornate temple at Tantibazar that faces the risk of losing its surface decoration, said experts.

The decorative staircase of the temple leads to its veranda and then to a simple chamber for worship on the first floor. It has a store at the ground floor level now used for residential purposes.

The unique features of the 300-year old temple have turned it into an exquisite gem ensconced in the traditional architectural fabric of Tantibazar.

"We are celebrating 400 years of Dhaka with much enthusiasm and colour when our heritage sites are getting tattered just in front of our eyes," remarked an elderly local.

According to conservation architects, the temple bears the architectural characteristics of the 19th century period of aestheticism movement.

"In the decorations we can see a blend of ceramics and chini-tikri. Regular geometrical patterns and lightweight ceramics were used in the designs," said Taimur Islam, a conservation architect of Urban Study Group.
Surface relief, raised platform, projected floral motifs, ornamental grills, cluster columns, concentric arches, decorative pediment, and cartouches are some of the important features of the temple, he said.
"But the most distinctive feature is the decorative iron works in the risers between the stairs," he added.
Taimur said the temple has no structural problem but all its deterioration is in the surface level. The delicate works of the temple are at risk of ruination because of lack of proper care.

"Restoration works will be possible if we have the detailed documentation of the temple and technological know-how of the chini-tikri and the ceramic works and if we can collect enough funds for the job," said Taimur.
The family, known as the traditional caretaker and owner of the temple, now lives in two rooms inside the compound without any basic urban facilities. The family is looking after the temple for seven generations.
According to the caretakers, their forefathers Bala Hari Roy and Madan Mohan Roy built the temple around 300 years ago.

Today they are living without any electricity connection, any supply of gas and water and without any sewage system inside the temple compound.

“Our electricity line was cut because we did not have the money to pay the bills and we have to use the water of this well,” said Bina Roy, a member of the family, showing a small old well half-filled with unclean water.
"Our two tenants left without paying the rent. Now our only source of income is one tenant and a shop inside our compound from which we get only Tk 1,000," said Bina's daughter Basanti Roy.

"A group of local influential people are creating pressure on us to leave the temple because it is a nice place for commercial purposes," she alleged.

Buddha's Caves

Sand is implacable in far western China. It blows and shifts and eats away at everything, erasing boundaries, scouring graves, leaving farmers in despair.

Another 21 killed in fresh Lanka fighting

Sri Lankan troops have killed another 19 Tamil Tiger rebels and lost two of their own soldiers in fresh fighting in the island's north, the defence ministry said yesterday.

Fossil of most primitive 4-legged creature found

WASHINGTON - Scientists unearthed a skull of the most primitive four-legged creature in Earth's history, which should help them better understand the evolution of fish to advanced animals that walk on land.

The 365 million-year-old fossil skull, shoulders and part of the pelvis of the water-dweller, Ventastega curonica, were found in Latvia, researchers report in a study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Even though Ventastega is likely an evolutionary dead-end, the finding sheds new details on the evolutionary transition from fish to tetrapods. Tetrapods are animals with four limbs and include such descendants as amphibians, birds and mammals.
While an earlier discovery found a slightly older animal that was more fish than tetrapod, Ventastega is more tetrapod than fish. The fierce-looking creature probably swam through shallow brackish waters, measured about three or four feet long and ate other fish. It likely had stubby limbs with an unknown number of digits, scientists said.
"If you saw it from a distance, it would look like a small alligator, but if you look closer you would find a fin in the back," said lead author Per Ahlberg, a professor of evolutionary biology at Uppsala University in Sweden. "I imagine this is an animal that could haul itself over sand banks without any difficulty. Maybe it's poking around in semi-tidal creeks picking up fish that got stranded."
This all happened more than 100 million years before the first dinosaurs roamed Earth.
Scientists don't think four-legged creatures are directly evolved from Ventastega. It's more likely that in the family tree of tetrapods, Ventastega is an offshoot branch that eventually died off, not leading to the animals we now know, Ahlberg said.
"At the time there were a lot of creatures around of varying degrees of advancement," Ahlberg said. They all seem to have similar characteristics, so Ventastega's find is helpful for evolutionary biologists.
Ventastega is the most primitive of these transition animals, but there are older ones that are oddly more advanced, said Neil Shubin, professor of biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, who was not part of the discovery team but helped find Tiktaalik, the fish that was one step earlier in evolution.
"It's sort of out of sequence in timing," Shubin said of Ventastega.
Ahlberg didn't find the legs or toes of Ventastega, but was able to deduce that it was four-limbed because key parts of its pelvis and its shoulders were found. From the shape of those structures, scientists were able to conclude that limbs, not fins were attached to Ventastega.
One question that scientists are trying to figure out is why fish started to develop what would later become legs.
Edward Daeschler, associate curator of vertebrate zoology at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, theorizes that the water was so shallow that critters like Ventastega had an evolutionary advantage by walking instead of swimming.

By BETSY BLANEY, Associated Press Writer

LUBBOCK, Texas - A slice of cool, fresh watermelon is a juicy way to top off a Fourth of July cookout and one that researchers say has effects similar to Viagra — but don't necessarily expect it to keep the fireworks going all night long.

Watermelons contain an ingredient called citrulline that can trigger production of a compound that helps relax the body's blood vessels, similar to what happens when a man takes Viagra, said scientists in Texas, one of the nation's top producers of the seedless variety.
Found in the flesh and rind of watermelons, citrulline reacts with the body's enzymes when consumed in large quantities and is changed into arginine, an amino acid that benefits the heart and the circulatory and immune systems.
"Arginine boosts nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessels, the same basic effect that Viagra has, to treat erectile dysfunction and maybe even prevent it," said Bhimu Patil, a researcher and director of Texas A&M's Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Center. "Watermelon may not be as organ-specific as Viagra, but it's a great way to relax blood vessels without any drug side effects."
Todd Wehner, who studies watermelon breeding at North Carolina State University, said anyone taking Viagra shouldn't expect the same result from watermelon.
"It sounds like it would be an effect that would be interesting but not a substitute for any medical treatment," Wehner said.
The nitric oxide can also help with angina, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems, according to the study, which was paid for by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
More citrulline — about 60 percent — is found in watermelon rind than in the flesh, Patil said, but that can vary. But scientists may be able to find ways to boost the concentrations in the flesh, he said.
Citrulline is found in all colors of watermelon and is highest in the yellow-fleshed types, said Penelope Perkins-Veazie, a USDA researcher in Lane, Okla.
She said Patil's research is valid, but with a caveat: One would need to eat about six cups of watermelon to get enough citrulline to boost the body's arginine level.
"The problem you have when you eat a lot of watermelon is you tend to run to the bathroom more," Perkins-Veazie said.
Watermelon is a diuretic and was a homeopathic treatment for kidney patients before dialysis became widespread.
Another issue is the amount of sugar that much watermelon would spill into the bloodstream — a jolt that could cause cramping, Perkins-Veazie said.
Patil said he would like to do future studies on how to reduce the sugar content in watermelon.
The relationship between citrulline and arginine might also prove helpful to those who are obese or suffer from type-2 diabetes. The beneficial effects — among them the ability to relax blood vessels, much like Viagra does — are beginning to be revealed in research.
Citrulline is present in other curcubits, like cucumbers and cantaloupe, at very low levels, and in the milk protein casein. The highest concentrations of citrulline are found in walnut seedlings, Perkins-Veazie said.
"But they're bitter and most people don't want to eat them," she said.

comics

Malaysia offers huge potential for Bangladeshi workers : Iftekhar

United News of Bangladesh . Kuala Lumpur
Foreign adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury Saturday said there is a huge potential for Bangladeshi workers’ jobs in Malaysia which the government would take every step to tap. ‘Malaysia is planning at least four major development projects in the future. If we can plan carefully and our workers are able to satisfy employers, there is no reason why we should not be able to send hundreds of thousands in the coming years,’ he told members of the Bangladesh community in Kuala Lumpur. The adviser is currently in the Malaysian capital to attend a summit meeting of the Developing-8 (D-8) countries of the Islamic world. The ministerial component of the conference commences today in preparation for the July 8 summit. Iftekhar, who is also in charge of the Ministry of Overseas Employment and Expatriate Welfare, said contrary to some earlier reports, the Bangladeshi labour market in Malaysia is continuing to expand. ‘Already there are over 445,000 Bangladeshis employed here from the reports I have received. If the current trend continues, by year-end the number should exceed half a million,’ he said. Later in the evening, he visited the Bangladeshi workers’ shelter house ‘Semenyin Hostel’ at Kajang, 60 kilometers away from the city, where about 200 Bangladeshi job-seekers are currently being looked after by the high commission, providing them food and accommodation. ‘I have listened to some of the issues of the workers that require to be addressed as we intend to accord top priority to welfare. I intend to discuss some of these problems with Malaysian home minister Syed Hamid Albar, whom I shall be meeting day after tomorrow,’ Iftekhar said.

Obama, McCain wax patriotic as US marks Independence Day

Agence France-Presse . Washington
White House hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain marked the US Independence Day holiday Friday with parades, picnics and odes to patriotism. ‘Patriotism is deeper than its symbolic expressions, than sentiments about place and kinship that move us to hold our hands over our hearts during the national anthem,’ Republican presumptive White House nominee McCain wrote in Parade magazine. ‘It is putting the country first, before party or personal ambition, before anything,’ he said. Democrat Obama, who watched a traditional parade with his wife and daughters in the western state of Montana, wrote in the same magazine that for him, patriotism was a ‘gut instinct.’ ‘It’s not just the recitations of the pledge of allegiance, the Thanksgiving pageants at school, or the fireworks on the Fourth of July, but how the American ideal wove its way throughout the lessons my family taught me,’ he said. That ideal includes a ‘country where we have the unparalleled right to pursue our dreams.’ ‘With a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya, I know that stories like mine can only happen in the United States of America,’ he said. Obama, who would be the first African-American US president, recalled childhood memories of Indonesia and the expatriate American life. ‘I lived overseas for a time as a child, and I remember listening to my mother reading me the first lines of the Declaration of Independence and explaining how its ideas applied to every American, black and white and brown alike,’ he said. McCain, who just returned from a Latin American tour designed to woo critical swing Hispanic voters, appealed to newer Americans, saying that ‘to love one’s country is to love one’s countrymen.’ ‘It is the willing acceptance of Americans, both those whose roots here extend back over generations and those who arrived only yesterday, to try to make a nation in which all people share in the promise and responsibilities of freedom,’ he said. On Thursday, visited the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, home to Mexico’s most revered icon, a stop likely aimed at Roman Catholics and Mexican-Americans voters in the United States. The basilica houses a 16th-century icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a picture depicting an apparition of a brown-skinned Virgin Mary. The icon, Mexico’s most beloved religious and cultural image, and the basilica is the second most-visited Catholic shrine in the world.

Rice 'proud' of Iraq invasion

Afp, Washington
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday that she was "proud" of the US decision to invade Iraq and said the Middle East had improved since President George W Bush took office.

Hidden camera footage exposes Mugabe 'vote-rigging'

Afp, London
Secret footage filmed by a Zimbabwean prison guard shows how a supporter of President Robert Mugabe rigged votes in his favour, British newspaper The Guardian said.

Baghdad saved from 'terrorist siege'

Says Iraqi PM
Afp, Ap, Baghdad
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Saturday that the country's security forces have managed to save Baghdad from a "siege by terrorists" backed by foreign nations.

Oil soars past $146

Afp, Singapore
Oil surged past $146 per barrel for the first time yesterday as the weak US dollar and Middle East tension stoked black gold's record-breaking run, analysts said.

China pointing new missiles at Taiwan

Agence France-Presse . Taipei
A Taiwanese newspaper on Wednesday said China was pointing new ballistic missiles at the island despite improving ties that will see direct charter flights begin this week. The People’s Liberation Army have built a new ballistic missile base on China’s southeastern coast opposite Taiwan and replaced missiles already deployed with improved versions, the China Times said. Taiwan’s defence ministry declined to comment on the report. Defence authorities had previously said that China had targeted the island with more than 1,000 short-range ballistic and cruise missiles. China sees Taiwan as part of its territory, despite their split in 1949 at the end of a civil war, and has threatened to use force if the island ever moves to declare formal independence. The paper said the PLA had once ‘pulled out’ their Russia-made S-300 air-defence missiles from several bases along its southeast coast. However, it said, the PLA lately has rearmed the bases with the improved version of missiles, which place Taiwanese fighter jets within striking range. Ties between Taiwan and China have begun warming since China-friendly president Ma Ying-jeou took office in May, pledging to improve relations with the island’s giant and booming neighbour.

China pointing new missiles at Taiwan

Agence France-Presse . Taipei
A Taiwanese newspaper on Wednesday said China was pointing new ballistic missiles at the island despite improving ties that will see direct charter flights begin this week. The People’s Liberation Army have built a new ballistic missile base on China’s southeastern coast opposite Taiwan and replaced missiles already deployed with improved versions, the China Times said. Taiwan’s defence ministry declined to comment on the report. Defence authorities had previously said that China had targeted the island with more than 1,000 short-range ballistic and cruise missiles. China sees Taiwan as part of its territory, despite their split in 1949 at the end of a civil war, and has threatened to use force if the island ever moves to declare formal independence. The paper said the PLA had once ‘pulled out’ their Russia-made S-300 air-defence missiles from several bases along its southeast coast. However, it said, the PLA lately has rearmed the bases with the improved version of missiles, which place Taiwanese fighter jets within striking range. Ties between Taiwan and China have begun warming since China-friendly president Ma Ying-jeou took office in May, pledging to improve relations with the island’s giant and booming neighbour.

Hong Kong chicken industry faces cull in bird flu clampdown

Avian Flu
Afp, Hong Kong
The familiar clucking of chickens returned to Hong Kong's markets on Wednesday after a three-week ban, but bird flu fears may soon consign the local preference for freshly-killed meat to history.

Bangladesh to keep enjoying GSP facilities in US

Foreign adviser says
Unb,Dhaka
Foreign Affairs Adviser Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury yesterday said Bangladesh would "continue to enjoy the GSP facilities as before” in the United States.

Lloyd replaces Sunny in ICC

CricInfo, undated
Clive Lloyd, the former West Indies captain, will take over from Sunil Gavaskar as the chairman of the ICC's Cricket Committee, after Pakistan withdrew the nomination of Majid Khan.

Photo exhibition on tourism sponsored by Banglalink

Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation (BPC) in association with Bangladesh Shilpakala Acdemy (BSA) is holding a two-day long photographic exhibition on tourism at Jatiya Chitrashala, BSA starting from today. Titled "1st Tourism Photography Exhibition 2008," the exhibition is sponsored by Banglalink. This is the first photographic exhibition on tourism by BPC.

The bright singing sensation

Shreya Ghoshal

The 24-year-old Indian playback singer Shreya Ghoshal goes from strength to strength. Lately she bagged the prestigious Star Screen Award for Best Female Singer for Barso Re (from the film Guru). The same song won her the Filmfare Award, the Apsara Award, the Zee Cine Award and the IIFA award. She also took the German Public Bollywood Award for Best Singer (Female) for Yeh Ishq Haaye (Jab We Met)..

Nepal to ask UN to extend peace mission

Afp, Kathmandu
Nepal will ask the United Nations to continue to monitor thousands of former Maoist guerrillas confined to camps as part of a peace deal, a minister said yesterday.

Bush to send more troops to Afghanistan

Ap, Washington
Grappling with a record death toll in an overshadowed war, President Bush promised yesterday to send more US troops into Afghanistan by year's end.

Diabetes and skin care

Diabetes can affect every part of the body, including the skin. As many as, one third of people living with diabetes will have a skin disorder caused or affected by diabetes at some time in their lives.

DOCTOR JONES SONG

Death and Dream

On the eve of my death I dreamt
Oh the dream
That I sought for longtime
But it escaped from me
Living in the waste land
My dry soul, my wretched soul
But my soul dreamt for its own sake
Oh the evolution, I failed
Love is not for me but for all those around me.

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Our farmer Picture

OUR BANGLADESH

DR.MUHAMMAD YUNUS

The triumph

If Dr Muhammad Yunus had ever thought to charge Bangladesh’s rich and powerful —bureaucrats, ministers, bankers and economists — one taka for each time they had dismissed, off hand, his ventures as ‘impossible’ or ‘naïve’, by now he would have them applying for Grameen Bank micro-loans to get by. It was on a fateful afternoon in 1976, that Muhammad Yunus, a young professor of economics at Chittagong University at the time, drove his Volkswagen Beetle to the local branch of the government-owned Janata Bank, consumed with an idea whose time, he believed, had come. He was going to try and convince the bank manager to make small entrepreneurial loans to the poor inhabitants of the nearby village of Jobra. The loans were to be the start-up capital for the residents of Jobra ‘to buy raw materials and supplies with which to make bamboo stools, weave mats and other produce which they would sell in the open market and make a decent profit that would allow them to live’. Yunus had been deeply scarred by the misery and the desperation he witnessed during the famine of 1974, and had since made Jobra his second home, spending day after day in the field, trying to understand the structural problems that kept its inhabitants in the clutches of poverty. He had experimented with three-share farming, loaning money to farmers to buy the inputs and irrigation for a dry-season crop, and even though he had been cheated of Tk 13,000 in the process, he was overjoyed that the experiment had worked. Jobra farmers now organised themselves to plant a winter crop. Although Yunus would go on to get a Rashtrapati Purashkar for his three-share farm project two years later, he realised in the first year that its dividends were failing to reach the most destitute of Jobra’s residents. It was this realisation that planted the seeds of the micro-loans idea in his head. At the bank, the manager’s jaw dropped open at what Yunus was suggesting he should do. ‘For one, the little money you say they need to borrow does not even cover the cost of the loan documents...they don’t have any collateral...they cant fill out our forms,’ the manager had sputtered, as Yunus recounted in his wonderfully written 1998 autobiography, Banker to the poor. ‘From what I know about banking, I can tell you for sure that this plan will never take off. You are an idealist, professor. You live with books and theories,’ the manager had told Yunus before he sent him on his way. It was only the status that his teaching job afforded him that prevented them from chasing him out. Whereas this experience might have bred despondence in lesser men, in Yunus it unleashed what has gone on to become his most abiding characteristic: a self-professed obstinacy to see things through to the end. It took him six months, endless heated arguments and letter writing to get his loan sanctioned, in his name, but destined for the poor of Jobra. In the decades that have followed, when he told policymakers that lending to the poorest of the poor could be a commercially viable business as opposed to charity, Dr Yunus was mocked for being naive. When he proposed that it was poor women and not their husbands who should be the targets of his micro-loans, everyone from the Bangladesh Bank to local imams disapproved. When he asked the government to help expand his Jobra operations to other districts, ministry officials whispered ‘impossible’ behind his back. And when he claimed that the poor would pay back their loans more meticulously and conscientiously than the rich, and that they should have a bank of their own, the banking establishment had finally had enough. It is a testimony to the power of the imagination that Dr Muhammad Yunus is today at the helm of a banking behemoth that has lent out over $6 billion to more than 7 million poor people, 97 per cent of whom are women, scattered across 73,000 villages in Bangladesh. That he was awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is only a small vindication of his ‘radical’ vision. Others include Grameen Bank’s oft-cited and remarkable 99 per cent loan recovery rate, the fact that 58 per cent of Grameen loanees have crossed the poverty line, and that Grameen’s model is now being replicated in over sixty countries of the world, targeting poverty even in the United States. The real achievement though, lies beyond the numbers. Dr Yunus and those who followed him in his micro-credit mission have gone a long way in turning the twin tyrannies of patriarchy and conventional banking on their heads. The proof of this bold claim lies in two facts. At the end of 2006, Grameen Bank loans have financed over 640,000 houses for poor Bangladeshi village families, despite the bank’s precondition that the land the house would occupy must be in the name of the woman who applies for the loan rather than her father or her husband. That, and the decision by Citigroup, one of the largest banking mega-corps in the world, to launch a micro-credit-for-profit business that essentially looks to bank with the poor, with ATMs in forgotten corners of India’s Andhra Pradesh state. A paradigm shift from the days of consumer banking when the untouchable poor were left to the predations of the village mahajan. ***
Muhammad Yunus was born in 1940, into the home of a family of prosperous jewellers on Boxirhat Road in Chittagong. Among the eldest of nine children born to Dula Mia and Sofia Khatun, Yunus acquired the remarkable affability he is known for, his empathy and faith in his fellow man from his family interactions. ‘Growing up in such a large family taught me early on the central importance of babies (sometimes I took care of two at a time), the importance of family loyalty, peer pressure and peer support, but also the value of compromise when living in a large group,’ he later wrote. Some three decades later, his way with children would become an invaluable asset in earning the trust of his first women borrowers, who strictly observed purdah and initially refused to answer his queries or accept his offers of a loan to buy their raw materials. ‘I never dared knock on their doors. Instead I would stand in a clearing between several houses, so that everyone could see me and observe my behaviour. Above all I wanted to be seen respecting their privacy. I would stand outside their door and chat as informally as I could, explaining what we were trying to do. I also told my co-workers to show genuine affection for the children for, not only does it come naturally to me, it is an immediate way into the mother’s heart,’ he wrote in Banker to the poor. Although Yunus did exceptionally well at school, it was detective thrillers that were his real passion. When money ran short to feed his and his brother-and-co-conspirator Salam’s insatiable appetite for thrillers and magazines, they resorted to subscription scams. ‘To meet our [reading] needs, we had to improvise, buy, borrow and steal,’ he remembers. The two brothers would write to Shuktara, the children’s magazine published out of Calcutta, claiming to be winners of a contest run by the magazine. Writing in the name of one of the contest winners announced in an earlier issue, the two brothers would inform them that the family was moving house, citing their neighbour’s address as the new one the magazines should be mailed to. ‘And it worked like a dream,’ recalls Yunus. By the time Yunus turned nine, however, a tragedy had started unfolding in the house that would eventually dominate family life, deeply affecting the children. Mother Sofia Khatun, who was probably the greatest influence on Yunus’s early years, became afflicted with mental illness, spending long periods in a trance-like state suffering erratic bouts of violence. ‘Usually father bore the brunt of it [but] at night when we slept, we were never sure whether it would be an undisturbed and peaceful night or whether she would erupt in shouts and physical attacks. When she became violent, I had to help father restrain her, and I also had to protect my younger siblings from the blows and missiles she would throw,’ remembers Yunus. ‘We eventually came to accept [the] difficulties with a certain humour that made the pain easier to bear,’ Yunus later wrote. ‘After watching a renowned psychologist apply post-hypnotic suggestions to Mother, we performed our own hypnotic experiments on one another. “What is the weather forecast?” we asked one another, meaning what did we expect Mother’s mood to be in the next few hours. Whenever she grew quiet we knew a storm was coming, sometimes a tidal wave.’ Nonetheless, it was from his mother Sofia Khatun that Yunus inherited her marked characteristics of being empathetic, decisive, and refusing to cede her ground once she had bitten her lower lip and decided on something. ‘I loved her deeply. I was certainly the one who most often pulled at her sari and demanded the most attention,’ he recalls. In the years that followed, Yunus first won the Competitive Scholarship Examination of all the high schools in the Chittagong district, and went on to study at the reputed Chittagong Collegiate School, experimenting with everything from photography, painting and boy-scouting, discovering his leadership abilities, and displaying his first flashes of brilliance. Having spent what he describes as four ‘uneventful and dull’ years earning his degree from Dhaka University, Yunus launched himself into a teaching career at Chittagong College, also setting up what became an enormously lucrative packaging factory, on the side. Then, on the summer of 1965 Yunus was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for post-doctoral studies in the US, and he headed to the University of Colorado and later Vanderbilt College for an eventful seven-year stint that left a deep impression on him. For one, it was during his years at Vanderbilt that Yunus met and later married Vera Forostenko, the daughter of Russian immigrants to New Jersey, studying Russian literature at the university. ‘When I left [Bangladesh], I had no intention of finding an American wife. I assumed I would marry the way everybody else around me had married. I never questioned the propriety of arranged marriages,’ he wrote in his autobiography. The marriage was to eventually end in divorce with Vera’s return to the US in 1977, within months of the birth of their baby girl, with Yunus struggling to help the Grameen Bank project find its feet. ‘From the moment of Monica’s birth, Vera insisted on having every American amenity for the baby…determined to leave the country…saying Bangladesh was not a good place to bring up a child. [But] ever since her departure, I miss my child, Monica, terribly,’ Yunus later wrote. When the war of independence broke out in Bangladesh, Yunus, along with other academics and Bangladeshi diplomats campaigned actively at Washington DC to press the US into cutting off military aid to Pakistan. When Bangladesh was born nine months later, ‘I felt I had to go back and participate in nation-building. I thought I owed it to myself,’ Yunus remembers thinking. For the next eight years, after his return, Yunus first experimented with his three-share farming and later with the now-famous $27 micro-loan to the rattan weavers of Jobra village, enlisting the help of his students to constantly reassess and monitor what they were doing wrong, as he scaled up his operations. In 1980 Muhammad Yunus was married to his present wife Afrozi, a young academic at the time. These were years of incredible hardship. Replicating his micro-loans project in Tangail to convince Bangladesh Bank officials that Jobra was not a unique experience, Yunus and his colleagues encountered everything from violent radical leftists to the conservative clergy who told women that they would be denied a Muslim burial if they borrowed money from the Grameen Bank. ‘I had no toilet in my office. When I wanted to relieve myself I had to go and disturb the neighbours or hold it in,’ he wrote of those times. But by November 1982 the Grameen Bank’s membership soared to 28,000 with more and more women risking disapproval at home, and sometimes even beatings, to borrow small amounts and finance livestock, cattle, and a range of other income-generating activities. A year later, defying his cynics and having literally moved mountains to see his dream fulfilled, what had hitherto been the Grameen Bank project, finally became a bank. ***
‘We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part of human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people around us,’ Muhammad Yunus told the world in his Nobel acceptance speech at the Oslo City Hall three weeks ago. ‘If we firmly believe that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilised society, we would have built appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world. We wanted to go to the moon, so we went there. We achieve what we want to achieve. If we are not achieving something, it is because we have not put our minds to it,’ he said. The day before, in an interview to the BBC, he was asked to justify his decision to give 85,000 beggars interest-free loans with which they were to buy wares to sell house to house. This new venture smacked of impracticability, he was told. How did he think it could work? ‘I was asked these very same questions when I proposed to lend money to poor women,’ Yunus replied. ‘And look where we are today