Archive for October 13th, 2009
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009The government is going to inflict yet another taint on Louis I Kahn's Sher-e-Bangla Nagar capital complex by leasing out land for a training academy and a UN office.The Ministry of Public Works and Housing has leased out permanently a piece of open green land splitting it into two plots for construction of Civil Service College (CSC) and a UN office building.The land allotment committee headed by the public works secretary leased out a 1.55-acre plot to CSC and a two-acre plot to the UN office, sources say.The CSC has erected a signboard at the site located west of the ...
(read more) Tuesday, October 13th, 2009Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday directed the Ministry of Science and ICT to expedite the ongoing negotiation with Russia for setting up nuclear power plants in Bangladesh, in a bid to alleviate the country's power generation crisis."The prime minister directed the ministry to take all necessary measures regarding implementation of the country's lone nuclear power project at Rooppur," a cabinet minister told The Daily Star.The directive came from Hasina at a weekly cabinet meeting in Bangladesh Secretariat, while she was talking about a report prepared and submitted by a Bangladeshi delegation that had attended the 53rd general assembly of International ...
(read more) Tuesday, October 13th, 2009Rab recovered 10 Arges grenades during a drive in a bordering village of Sherpur Sunday night and arrested three people including two tribal youths in this connection.The grenades were similar to those used at the Awami League rally at Bangabandhu Avenue in 2004, and might have been intended for use in subversive activities.The arrestees are Mohammad Rafiqul Islam, 36, of Panbar village, tribal Pang Vang Sangma, 37, and Nipin Sangma, 25, of Chhota Gajni village under Jhenaigati in Sherpur.Commander Abul Kalam Azad, director of the Legal and Media Wing of Rapid Action Battalion, said yesterday at a press briefing in ...
(read more) Tuesday, October 13th, 2009Police yesterday arrested Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami (Huji) operative Abu Obaida alias Harun at the district's Sonagazi upazila.Obaida, 28, stands accused of plotting to kill Sheikh Hasina in Sylhet around eight years back.Nizamuddin, officer-in-charge of Sonagazi Police Station, said they made the arrest at a house in Bhuiyan Bazar of Char Chandia around 3:00pm.He said they contacted the Sylhet police to enquire about Obaida after reading a newspaper report Sunday. As soon as they got confirmation he is indeed wanted in at least two cases, they launched a hunt for him.Along with some other militants including now detained top Huji leader ...
(read more) Tuesday, October 13th, 2009Rid Pharmaceuticals Limited Managing Director Mizanur Rahman yesterday surrendered before a Dhaka court and sought bail in a case filed for manufacturing toxic paracetamol syrup that claimed lives of at least 28 children across the country.The children died of renal failures, caused by intake of Rid's paracetamol syrup and suspension, from June to August.Judge ANM Bashir Ullah of the Metropolitan Sessions Judge's court fixed October 19 for hearing on the bail petition submitted by Mizanur in his presence.In the petition, Mizanur's lawyers mentioned that their client earlier on August 18 had surrendered before the High Court (HC) and sought anticipatory ...
(read more) Tuesday, October 13th, 2009Unlike the 11 victims of Rasu, 19-year-old Ruma of Panchkuri, Nandail in Mymensingh got a second lease of life and was able to narrate the horror before police.Calm and poised 40-year-old serial killer Rasu Khan lured Ruma, daughter of Giasuddin, to Chandpur on January 6, 2005. He tortured her unconscious near a bridge at Balia and left her there convinced she was dead.She took treatment at different hospitals and narrated her story to police and on April 29 the same year police filed a case in this connection.Rasu Khan of Chandpur has killed at least 11 women since a girl ...
(read more) Tuesday, October 13th, 2009A massive suicide bomb hit northwest Pakistan killing 41 people yesterday, as the military geared up assaults on Taliban rebels blamed for increasingly bloody and brazen attacks killing 31 militants in airstrikes.The bomber flung himself at a paramilitary convoy passing through a busy market in Shangla, a northwest district near Swat valley where the army claimed to have flushed out Taliban rebels after an offensive launched in April.But Islamist extremist groups appear far from quashed, with an audacious raid on army headquarters over the weekend leaving 22 people dead and underscoring the vulnerability of the nuclear-armed nation.The al-Qaeda-linked Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan ...
(read more) Tuesday, October 13th, 2009Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday said she is "embarrassed" at poor attendance of her cabinet colleagues and senior lawmakers in parliament and asked them to regularly attend at the sessions, sources say.The textile and jute minister meanwhile in parliament yesterday came down on the Speaker for his Sunday's comments on absence of some ministers and senior lawmakers and noise in the House made by some MPs."I am embarrassed as you [ministers and state ministers] did not attend the parliament session yesterday [Sunday]. Please attend parliament sessions regularly," Hasina is quoted as saying by a cabinet colleague.Hasina expressed her disappointment at ...
(read more) Tuesday, October 13th, 2009The governments between 1975 and 1996 had helped rehabilitate the killers of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family.The High Court judgment in Bangabandhu murder case quotes this from the statements of prosecution witnesses and accused.During the sixth day's hearing on five convicts' appeals against death sentences, Abdullah-al Mamun, counsel for Bazlul Huda and AKM Mohiuddin, yesterday continued reading the verdict to the five-member Appellate Division bench.In particular, he recited the statement of prosecution witness Col (retd) Shafayat Jamil.In his testimony attached to the verdict, Shafayat Jamil said Pakistan recognised Bangladesh under Khondker Moshtaq Ahmed within an hour ...
(read more) Tuesday, October 13th, 2009Complications arose in sending Bangladeshi workers to Iraq, as its labour minister declared to resist entries of foreign workers, citing unemployment problem in the war-ravaged country just after Bangladesh approved sending workers there.After a gap of six years since the Iraq war in 2003, the Bangladesh government decided to reopen Iraq mission and recently approved applications of a few recruiting agencies to send 1200 workers there. But Iraqi Labour Minister Mahmoud al-Sheikh Radhi on last Wednesday spoke about preventing any such bid.He said many foreign workers including Bangladeshis and Indonesians already arrived in Iraq as security situation improved there despite ...
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