August 28, 2016

SECOND EDITION

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

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Bhadra 13, 1423, Zilqad 24, 1437

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Regd No DA 6238, Vol 4, No 123

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www.dhakatribune.com | 32 pages | Price: Tk10

Militant mastermind Tamim killed Six tense hours in the Paikpara neighbourhood in Narayanganj city end in the deaths of Tamim Chowdhury, the alleged Gulshan attack mastermind and two other suspected militants

Police carry out a body from House 402, Paikpara, Narayanganj where Tamim and his two accomplices had been staying since July MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

STORIES ON PAGE 2, 3 AND 4

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Terrorist mastermind killed in Narayanganj raid Rahman Rabbi, n Arifur Tanveer Hossain and

Allegations against Tamim as confirmed by the DMP

Mohammad Jamil Khan Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, the alleged mastermind of Gulshan terror attack, was killed along with two other militants in a drive at a militant den in Paikpara area of Naryanganj district yesterday.

The identities of two other militants are not confirmed yet but officials of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit who are investigating the Gulshan case suspect they are Iqbal and Manik, two names that emerged from the Kallyanpur militant den drive case.

Investigators do not have much information on Manik but they believe Iqbal is the one who escaped from Kallyanpur and trained the Gulshan attackers.

An investigating official said they had collected fingerprints to match with the National Identity Server. Their photos will also be shown to Rakibul Hasan, who was arrested from Kallyanpur alive.

Tamim is believed to be the coordinator of New Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the group police says is behind all the terrorist acts claimed by the Islamic State.

The drive, jointly operated by CTTC unit and LIC department of police headquarters, was labe-

Masterminded Gulshan (July 1) and Sholakia (July 7) attacks Financed Kallyanpur militants 9 of them were killed in Operation Storm 26

Murder allegations not confirmed yet ●

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Converted Christian homoeopath Chhamir Uddin Mandal in Jhenaidah on January 7 Hindu priest Joggeshwar Roy in Panchagarh on February 21 Shia preacher and homoeopath Abdur Razzaq in Jhenaidah on March 14 Hindu tailor Nikhil Chandra Joardar in Tangail on April 30 Buddhist monk Maung Shue U in Bandarban on May 14 Hindu shoe trader Debesh Chandra Pramanik in Gaibandha on May 25 Christian grocer Sunil Gomez in Natore on June 5 Hindu priest Gopal Ganguli in Jhenaidah on June 7 Hindu ashram worker Nityanondo Pandey in Pabna on June 10 Buddhist AL leader Mong Shwe Lung Marma in Bandarban on June 30 Hindu priest Shyamanondo Das in Jhenaidah on July 1

led ‘Operation Hit Strong 27’. The 50-minute-long operation started at 8.45am in morning, in a flat of House 402, Paikpara.

Once it ended, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal visited the spot and said the police Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team

had shown maximum patience, asking militants to surrender even as they threw grenades and fired shots.

Tamim and one of his close aides were killed in the operation, he said.

“The Tamim chapter is now closed and the other militants will be arrested soon,” he said.

AKM Shahidul Hoque, inspector general of police (IGP), who was also present at the spot, said the militants were in “attacking mode.”

“I told the officials to talk to them and ask them to come out with their hands over their heads, but they forced the police to go into action by attacking,” he said.

After the Kallyanpur drive these militants took up this flat in Naryanganj identifying themselves as medicine retailers. They take the house on rent just a month ago, he said.

CTTC chief Monirul Islam said they learned about the den after interrogating an arrested JMB member.

It was learned the JMB man was arrested from Trisal, Mymensingh on Friday night.

According to Nuruddin Dewan, landlord of the building, the three rented the flat on July 5. Dewan said two of them identified themselves as Rana and Murad.

“I used to visit their flat sometimes, but there was nothing unusual. I saw them relaxing or cooking food but never found anything

suspicious,” added Dewan.

Moktar Hossain, a truck helper who lives in a tin-shed building right next to the militant den, said they first heard gunshots in the morning. Later they found two grenades on the roof of their house.

Sanowar Hossain, additional deputy commissioner of CTTC, who took part in the operation, said the militants were firing at them continuously and threw six grenades. Two exploded but the other four were found unexploded.

“We found Tamim’s body inside the flat. The other two were just beside the door. Tamim was holding a grenade. The other two had a pistol and an AK-22 rifle.”

“Although the militants tried to destroy much of the evidence, we have collected some things. They are now being analysed and can be disclosed later,” said Sanowar.

In the flat, a binocular, memory cards, laptops, some documents and sacks full of sand were found.

After the drive, police took away landlord Nuruddin and 10 others from the building for interrogation, said Faruk Hossain, additional police superintendent of Naryanganj.

The three bodies were sent to the 100-bed General Hospital and later sent to Dhaka Medical College Hospital after the doctors there said they were not equipped to do the autopsies. l

Tamim is dead. Now what? n Tribune Desk The killing yesterday of Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury by law enforcement agencies has closed one chapter in Bangladesh's struggle with violent extremism. But will the vacuum caused by his death open another?

Tamim had been identified as Islamic State's operational leader in Bangladesh and was also known by the nom de guerre Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif. He was believed to have masterminded the attacks this year on Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka and Sholakia Eidgah in Kishoreganj.

Operation Hit Strong 27, a precision sting operation on a residential building in Narayanganj, left three suspected militants including Tamim dead. He and his associates were killed after they rejected an opportunity to surrender.

The demise of the “shadowy Canadian leader of IS in Bangladesh”, to use the words of Amarnath Amarasingam, a fellow at the George Washington University Program on Extremism, raises questions about the future of terrorism in Bangladesh.

Below Amarasingam (A) and a Bangladeshi security analyst (B) who has asked not to be named answer nine questions about the future of Islamic State's links to Bangladesh and the continued threat posed by terrorism:

Now that Tamim Chowdhury is dead, who is likely to succeed him in Bangladesh?

Amarasingam: That is unclear and it is unclear whether any kind of succession will happen any time soon. The impression I get is that Tamim happened to be useful to them, and came along at the right time. Finding a new leader won't be easy.

Bangladeshi security analyst: It is not possible to say who may succeed him but it will likely be someone who has fought for IS in Iraq/Syria and is known to the leadership. That person will have to pledge an oath of allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before he can become the leader.

How significant is his killing – symbolically and operationally?

A: Symbolically, it won't much matter to his supporters who will

see him as a martyr for the cause, continue to recruit and continue to plot attacks if possible. Operationally, I think it could be quite significant. If as seems likely, the network in Bangladesh is small, the death of key operatives over the last several months will basically kill the movement. We will have to wait and see.

B: Tamim's killing is clearly quite significant at least from a symbolic standpoint and partially from an operational standpoint. There are other dangerous operators in the network like the second tier leader, Nurul Islam Marjan, who has been linked to the Holey attack. But more significantly Major Zia may now play a more active role and may try to assume a bigger leadership in the whole Ansar al-Islam/ JMB nexus.

Will the succession be decided by IS central command or will it be local?

A: Could be both but it will have to be approved by IS central. It is likely that one-off attacks could continue to happen in Bangladesh, with people claiming it in the name of IS. And IS central may continue to claim

these attacks. But operationally it will be quite different I imagine.

that even without their leader they are a potent force.

B: The succession will likely be decided by IS central command since they were they first to announce Tamim Chowdhury as the leader of the IS chapter in Bangladesh. He was named as Shaykh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif.

In the medium-term, will IS in Bangladesh regroup, hide, attack with greater ferocity or relocate?

Will Tamim's death dampen or spur recruitment to IS's ranks?

A: Difficult to say. The network always seemed to be a bit small.

Details about how many there are, whether there is a second in command, whether there are other cells operating – all of this remains to be seen.

B: His death will be a moral blow to JMB/IS members but it will not dampen IS activities here. Rather the recruitment to IS’s ranks will carry on.

Will Tamim's death cause revenge attacks in Bangladesh?

A: This remains to be seen.

B: There may attempts in the shortterm to avenge his death to show

A: I think they wanted to go out with a bang. Tamim likely knew his days were numbered and wanted to die a martyr. That's why, as has been reported, he may have been plotting an attack on the garment district. Even with the manhunt under way, operations were being planned.

B: The medium strategy for IS for Bangladesh is likely to be to remain on course and continue with intermittent attacks. However, due to the strong drive by security agencies the extremists are clearly under pressure and on the run.

But what is worrisome is there appears to be a number of men and women missing and many extremist group members are now being arrested and killed on a regular basis. This means there is a substantial network out there of various extremist groups. In addition, there is probably some sort of ongoing recruitment drive.

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Tamim did not use disguise

‘Allah saved us’ Serajul Islam, n Mohammed Sylhet

“Mashallah, Allah has saved us,” said Fahim Ahmed Chowdhury, cousin of dead militant Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, after hearing of his terrorist kinsman’s death.

Asked if anyone in the family from Canada was in Bangladesh, Fahim replied in the negative.

He said Tamim’s father Nazrul Islam died last Sunday and the family was still in grief.

Tamim’s uncle Nurul Islam Chowdhury said he had not yet heard about Tamim’s death and that they had no contact with Tamim’s family in Canada.

A resident of Tamim’s village in Bianibazar and Awami League Forest and Environment Secretary Zakaria Ahmed said he learned about the death from television.

“The locals were not that worried about the news because they don’t support terrorism. No one is interested in claiming Tamim’s remains,” he said.

This correspondent visited Tamim’s village on August 18. The village, close to the Indian border, is approximately 44 kilometres from Sylhet.

Tamim’s home is just 300 yards from the Sutarkandi border. The family’s house was found under lock and key and the locals were not able any details about Tamim. l

n Tribune Desk Although law enforcers had assumed that Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury might change his appearance to evade arrest, he did not.

Until the time he was killed yesterday morning, he had the same French-cut beard and short hair as seen in the photos published in the media.

Earlier, police had released a set of photos showing possible disguises Tamim might go for. However, after the joint drive of counter terrorism unit and police in Narayanganj, photos of dead Tamim showed that he did not wear any disguise.

He was wearing a pair of denim pants and a black T-shirt when the raid started.

Tamim along with two associates were killed in Operation Hit Strong 27 in the Paikpara area of Narayanganj.

Inspector General of Police Shahidul Haque after visiting the scene told journalists that three militants had been killed in the drive and that one of the dead had resemblance with a photo of Tamim that law enforcers had.

Police had earlier declared a Tk20 lakh reward for information on Tamim’s whereabouts. l

Members of the police SWAT team leave the area after the operation yesterday morning

TAMIM AHMED CHOWDHURY Born on July 25, 1986 (age 30) in Canada HOME DISTRICT Borogram Sadimapur village under Dubag union of Beanibazar upazila, Sylhet

RESIDENCE Windsor, Ontario FAMILY BACKGROUND Grandson of Abdul Majid Chowdhury, a member of the local “Peace Committee” during the Liberation War at Sadimapur in Borogram Union, Sylhet PRIMARY ACTIVITY A recruiter for an offshoot of the banned militant group Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which is allegedly responsible for the spate of targeted killings that started two years ago EDUCATION Ü JL Forster Secondary School, Windsor Ü University of Windsor, majored in Chemistry in 2011 RADICALISATION Travelled to Syria in 2012 Probably arrived Bangladesh on October 5, 2013 Believed to be known as Shaykh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif, the so-called emir of the Islamic State, according to an interview, published in the 14th edition of DABIQ magazine Ü Believed to be the coordinator of Holey Artisan and Sholakia attacks Ü Ü Ü

Infograph: Dhaka Tribune/ Mohammad Razon

MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

A: This is an important question but also one we know least about.

It is unclear whether he was also coordinating attacks in India or other south Asian countries.

There have been reports of at least four Bangladeshi-Canadians from Toronto who disappeared in 2014 and may have travelled to Iraq/Syria and joined IS. There are reports of other missing Bangladeshis – from Turkey, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Japan and some Middle Eastern states – who may have joined IS. They could pose a major threat to Bangladesh if they manage to sneak back into the country.

B: I don’t see his death having any impact beyond the Bangladeshi theatre of operations.

Is IS's core recruitment pool for operations in Bangladesh located in the West?

The bottom line is that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have to continue their strong anti-extremist drive. There cannot be a moment's let up.

Will Tamim's death have an impact beyond Bangladesh?

FATHER Shafiq Ahmed Chowdhury, a merchant ship crew

Sources: Bangladesh Police, Amarnath Amarasingam

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Do Canada-based terrorists pose a special threat to Bangladesh?

Or is the Canadian connection specific to Tamim's personal circumstances?

A: No, this was peculiar to Tamim.

I think there will always be foreigners involved in the conflicts of their home countries. That's only natural, but there is nothing specific about Canada.

B: Canada-based terrorists do not pose a special threat to Bangladesh.

I believe Tamim was the exception.

However, there is always the possibility that some other Bangladeshis from Canada may have come here or tried to make their way here from Iraq/Syria.

A: No. As we've seen, a few had American passports and so on, but I think local Jihadist networks drawn from previous groups are still the most important.

B: I don’t believe the core recruitment pool of IS operatives in Bangladesh is in the West. There are evidently some foreigners of Bangladeshi origin, including a few from Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and other countries, who have joined IS. Some have also been killed in operations undertaken by the USled anti-IS coalition and one Bangladeshi-American, who escaped from Syria after having joined IS, voluntarily gave himself up to the US authorities. l

Kamal: Tamim’s death will not hamper investigation n Arifur Rahman Rabbi Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal has said the death of Gulshan attack mastermind Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury will not hamper the investigation work of the law enforcers.

He made the statement while talking to the journalists after visiting the spot in Paikpara area on Saturday afternoon.

Replying to a query, the minister said: “Our intelligence agency has got a lot of information. Our work will not be hampered just because we could not get any information from Tamim before he was killed in the drive.

“These militants are isolated from the society. None of them will be spared.”

Kamal also said they are suspecting that the two other militants who were killed in Narayanganj joint drive are close accomplices of Gulshan attack mastermind Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury.

The minister said: “We are assuming that they were close accomplices of Tamim but it can only be confirmed after investigation.” l

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Operation Hit Strong 27: As it happened Rahman Rabbi and n Arifur Mohammad Jamil Khan Tamim Chowdhury, the alleged mastermind of the Gulshan and Sholakia attacks, and two other suspected militants were killed in a drive in a militant den in Paikpara area of Narayanganj town yesterday morning.

A 45 minute operation

Sanowar Hossain, additional deputy commissioner of DMP’s Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit, gave the details of the operation to journalists.

The necessary preparations were taken in Dhaka around 2:30am yesterday. The forces then arrived at Narayanganj and took up positions near the building.

Police officials cordoned off the building and evacuated out all the residence including the landlord from the building safely.

During the operation, Internet connection in the area was shut down and a large number of police officials from the district police range were deployed in the area. No vehicles were allowed to enter a one-

and-a-half km area around the den.

The team sat with the landlord around 6:30am and proceeded to take information about the residents of the second floor.

Inspector General AKM Shahidul Hoque said they started the operation after getting confirmation that only militants remained inside the building. Our snipers took position on nearby buildings and fired from there, he said.

According to the landlord, the militants started living in the house about two months ago, but police predicts they were living there since July 5.

Upon confirmation, police decided to catch the militants alive and asked them to surrender.

“We predicted that they would be on the offensive and would not surrender. On the other hand, if we cannot obtain any evidence, there will be no receipt for us,” Sanowar said, describing why police enters inside like the way the operation was done.

The police approached the building around 8:45am.

“We had information that the militants had AK22 rifles, arms,

grenades etc. So we entered into the building with a joint team of SWAT, Bomb Disposal Unit and local police,” he said.

“When police was trying to enter the house by breaking the door, the militants charged a grenade,” said the CTTC official.

The militants also fired heavily at them and the police fired back.

Police had a confrontation with militants for around 45 minutes. The operation ended around 9:30am.

Ratan Munsi, a local who lives on the third floor of the building in front of the den, said some police officials came to their flat around 8am and asked them to vacate the front room from where a window provides a clear view of that building.

“Later, we heard the chanting of Allahu Akbar and gunshots. About one hour later, we heard someone saying over a wireless: ‘all clear’.

Then the officials went away,” Ratan said.

Three killed, including Tamim Chowdhury

After the drive ended, police found bodies of three armed men inside.

“We scrutinised our prior infor-

mation and found similarities between photos of JMB chief and one of the killed men,” ADC Sanowar said explaining how they identified Tamim.

The other two were - a 35-38 years old man and a 25-28 years old youth. They were later identified as Manik and Iqbal, respectively.

Police found the Manik with a rifle while a pistol was found just beside Iqbal.

Responding to queries, Sanowar said: “I will say he is the chief and mastermind of the Gulshan attack and many other past attacks. We have information on this.”

Police not fully satisfied

The law enforcement agencies had a target to catch the militants alive so that some important information can be obtained from them.

“We are not fully satisfied because our expectations were not fully met,” said Sanowar while responding to a query.

“He was one of the masterminds. We needed information from him. We know about their hierarchy and he was one of the top leaders. He had specific responsi-

Mir Quasem hearing on cause list n Tribune Desk The Appellate Division today may resume hearing on the review petition filed by death-row convict alBadr commander Mir Quasem Ali against his death sentence.

The appeal hearing, adjourned on August 24, was at number 10 of the cause list published on the apex court’s website yesterday.

On that day, the five-member Appellate Division panel headed

by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha partly heard the review petition and said it would be on the top of the cause list today.

A top Jamaat-e-Islami leader and financier, Quasem filed the review petition after the apex court published its full verdict and the International Crimes Tribunal issued the death warrant against him on June 6.

The court first set June 21 for the hearing. The date was deferred until July 25 and again by a month following defence petitions seeking time for preparation.

On August 24, the court was irked with the chief defence counsel, Khandaker Mahbub Hossain, as he sought more time – this time mentioning about the alleged disappearance of the son of the convict. But as the court did not accept the fresh time petition, Mahbub began placing arguments.

The war crimes tribunal sentenced Quasem, now 64, to death

bilities,” added Sanowar.

He however said killing of the top JMB leader was an impressive achievement in this operation.

The ADC said they had used more special techniques to conduct the Naraynaganj operation, taking lessons from the Kallyanpur raid.

“None of our officials were injured from the attack as we were ready to face any kind of situation,” he said.

Militants destroyed evidence

The militants destroyed all documents, computers and phones so that police would not get their hands on them.

“They have a tendency to destroy evidence, as seen in previous cases,” Sanowar said.

“The militants damaged evidence when they became aware of the police presence. The computer hard-drive was 40% damaged, laptop was broken into 30-40 pieces while each of the mobile phones was broken into 3-4 pieces,” said the top DMP official.

“We will hand over what we have recovered to experts to see if they can recover any data,” he said. l

Debate on combating militancy with student politics n Shadma Malik

Gonojagoron Moncho activists form a human chain in Dhaka’s Shahbagh yesterday protesting the delay in the hearing of Mir Quasem’s review petition and demanding death sentence for the war crime convict MEHEDI HASAN on November 3, 2014 on two charges including killing seven people after abduction in Chittagong. He was also awarded a total of 72-year imprisonment on eight other proven charges of abduction, conspiracy and planning.

Later, the Appellate Division upheld the death sentence on March

9. Quasem’s family and his party terms the judgement a “judicial killing.”

A key player behind the formation of notorious al-Badr force in Chittagong during the Liberation War, Quasem had set up makeshift torture camps at different places in the port city including Daleem

Hotel in Andorkilla area. He was known as “Bangali Khan” (Khan referred to as Pakistani occupation forces) for his atrocities.

According to the government, Quasem has also spent a large amount of money to appoint USbased lobbyists to make the war crimes trials controversial. l

In the wake of the Gulshan terror attack on July 1 some members of society has proposed that student politics might help divert the youth away from fundamental extremism.

A debate organised by Debate for Democracy in this regard yesterday called “Combating Militancy and Student Politics at private universities” at BFDC, Tejgaon.

The debate discussed the merits of having students participate in politics and the awareness that builds as opposed to specific strategic measures that can be taken in curbing terrorism.

The debate was won by IBAIS University playing the opposition while Bangladesh University of Textiles played the role of the government.

Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of police for media and planning AKM Shahidur Rahman said at the debate: “The truth is that many young folks are becoming radicalised. This is a serious concern. Every individual should stand up against terrorism in the country and support the law enforcement.” l

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Experts doubt Rajuk’s eviction drives n Tribune Desk Experts from law, academia, urban development, business, media and other sectors have raised questions over the effectiveness of Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha’s (Rajuk) drives to evict unauthorised business establishments in Dhaka’s upscale residential areas.

Addressing a round-table discussion titled “Urban planning: After eviction drive, what is next?” yesterday, the speakers said the authorities should state clearly which establishments are considered “unauthorised” or “commercial.”

“Furthermore, in Dhanmondi, all establishments are supposed to be residential. Any schools set up in Dhanmondi are supposed to be illegal. Yet, there is no explanation

large number of students are now facing an uncertain future because their schools were shut down. The government should take this matter into serious consideration,” said Zeenat.

She further said South Breeze School, one of the schools that were shut down in Dhanmondi, was established in 1987 after acquiring the government’s approval.

BBQ owner Ashraf said this eviction will cause huge financial loss to the government along with the business owners.

“The government billed us for electricity and gas use in a commercial establishment for 10 years. And now they term us illegal?” he asked.

“I have 100 employees working in my restaurant. All of them will lose their jobs if my restaurant is

from the authorities as to why they are still around,” said urban planner and architect Qazi M Arif at the discussion.

Organised by the Bangla Tribune, the discussion was conducted by Mithila Farzana of Ekattor Television and attended by South Breeze School Principal Zeenat Chowdhury, Barrister Omar Sadat, former Rajuk chief engineer Emdadul Islam, Korean Chain Restaurant BBQ owner Ashraf-ud-Doula, the Daily Sangbad Managing Director Kashem Humayun, former Bangladesh Women Chamber of Commerce and Industries president Sangita Ahmed and Bangla Tribune acting editor Zulfiqer Russell, among others.

“The schools that were shut down were not business outlets. A

shut down. I have taken a large loan from the bank which I won’t be able to pay back.

“We want what the government wants. We wholeheartedly agree with the government’s plan to resolve traffic problems and develop the city. The attack on Holey Artisan Bakery was unexpected. The government should work on the security at the restaurants, and we are here to follow their instructions.”

Lack of coordination among different government agencies during the eviction drives was clearly evident, said Kashem Humayun.

“When the city corporation gives licence to an organisation to operate, it is their authorisation.

There are problems regarding registration and location. There is a lack of coordination among city

corporation, Rajuk and education ministry,” he said.

“What the students of the evicted schools is a matter of concern.

On the other hand, schools cannot be operated in residential areas.

There are problems on both the sides. That is why the government should consider all sides of an issue and plan accordingly.”

Zulfiqer Russell asked: “There are other establishments to be focused on before schools, colleges and universities in the residential area. Could you evict the political party offices located in Gulshan, Dhanmondi and Baridhara areas?”

He further said it is not possible to relocate universities and cantonment. “Amid this situation, there is no alternative way except for resolving traffic congestion with a plan.” l

Bangladeshi nurse stabbed to death in Libya n Adil Sakhawat A Bangladeshi nurse was stabbed to death on Wednesday in Libya.

Milon Parvin, 50 was living in Libya since 2008.

First Secretary (Diplomatic) & Head of Chancery of Bangladeshi Embassy in Libya Muhammad Muzammal Haque, confirmed the death to the Dhaka Tribune.

However, The Libya Observer reported that the Bangladeshi nurse was reportedly gang raped and then murdered.

The Libyan law enforcement agency has already detained seven suspected Bangladeshis in connection, a source at the Bangladeshi embassy confirmed.

Sources also confirmed that the Benghazi authority has already identified a Libyan who was allegedly the leader behind the killing.

Parvin worked for Al- Hawari Hospital in Benghazi as a full time nurse and at Ibn Sina Polyclinic, one of the Libyan Red Crescent’s health institutions as a part time nurse.

She failed to report to work for last couple of days and her mobile phone was switched off when her colleagues went to her house they discovered her dead body, informed Muzammal.

Muzammel also informed that law enforement suspects the motive behind her muder is money. She had disposited 30,000 Libyan Dinar ($21,810) to send to Bangladesh. l

Members of the Old Central Jail Space Protection Committee form human chain in front of the old location of Dhaka Central Jail yesterday demanding a children’s park and a museum for Bangabandhu and the four leaders in the abandoned location MEHEDI HASAN

Anti-Rampal activists: PM’s speech unfortunate n Nure Alam Durjoy Leaders of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports has termed the prime minister’s speech defending the Rampal coal power plant unfortunate and said it was influenced by the contractor’s advertising campaign.

“There are many exaggerations and wrong information in her speech,” committee Convener Engineer Sheikh Muhammad

TEMPERATURE FORECAST FOR TODAY

THUNDERSHOWER WITH RAIN SUNDAY, AUGUST 28

Shahidullah and Member Secretary Prof Anu Mohammad said in a statement issued just after Sheikh Hasina’s press conference yesterday.

Hasina in her speech blasted the protesters for spreading “negative, baseless, fictitious and misleading information” and also questioned the motive of the BNP chief for supporting the movement.

The National Committee is set to hold a press conference at 11am tomorrow to give reactions to the

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speeches of the premier and also BNP chief Khaleda Zia, who on August 24 expressed solidarity with the anti-Rampal movement.

The statement said: “People hoped that the primer’s conference will emphasise on issues raised by independent experts and she will consider public opinion to save the Sundarbans by scrapping Rampal power plant.

“But it is unfortunate what she said … influenced by the company’s advertising campaign.”

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The National Committee also alleges that the BNP leader has spread confusions over the movement through her speech, and on the other hand, the premier tried to foil the movement taking into account Khaleda’s speech.

In reaction to Hasina’s questioning the sources of funds for the movement, the statement said that they were opposing the project based on scientific data and evidence, and that the people joined them spontaneously. l Sylhet

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Fajr: 5:05am | Zohr: 1:15pm Asr: 5:00pm | Magrib: 6:36pm Esha: 8:30pm Source: Islamic Foundation

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Flood worsens as Farakka sluice gates opened Flood triggered by the rise in water level of Padma and Mahanada Rivers after India opened the sluice gates of the Farakka Barrage to ease Bihar flood situation left 75,000 people in the district marooned.

Syed Shahidul Islam, officer of Chapainawabganj Water Development Board, said the water level of the Padma River is about to reach its danger mark with 12cm and Mahanada 16cm rise in every three hours.

The water flow of the Padma was increasing as India had opened the floodgates of Farakka Barrage, said Shahidul.

The swelling of the Padma has already flooded Alatuli, Narayanpur, Charanupnagar, Sundurpur of Sadar upazila and Paka, Uzirpur, Durlovpur, Monakosha , Ghorapakia of Shibganj upazila.

Maximum educational institutions in the areas remained closed and crops on 500 bighas land were washed away, said Md Sajdar Rahman, deputy director of Department of Agricultural Extension.

More than 65,000 people of 40 villages had been marooned over few days, he said.

Durlovpur UP chairman Abdur Rajib Raju said the people of 25 flood-affected villages in his union are also facing difficulties with their cattle.

A total of 2,000 people of Haripur Dhapapara, Charmohonpur, Namonimgachi and Boripara had been marooned, said Mayor Sydur Rahman.

Alatuli UP chairman Kamrul Hasan Kamal said 13,000 people

DHAKA TRIBUNE

Anwar Hossain n Md Choudhury, Chapainawabganj

Farmers are collecting damaged paddy in a field in Chapainawbganj. Flood waters have already washed away many of the croplands. The photo was taken in yesterday had been marooned in his union.

Charanupnagar UP chairman Sadkul Islam Bacchu said 5,000 people of Natunpara, Baganpara, Charkashipur and Kalabagn areas had been marooned. Educational institutions in the areas remained closed.

Department of Disaster management officer Mansurur Rahman said meanwhile 12 tonne rice have been sent to the areas.

On Tuesday, the Central Water

Resour-ces Ministry of India directed to open 106 gates of the Farakka Barrage in West Bengal to relieve Bihar of monsoon flood. The decision came after news reports published in Indian media on Sunday that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar reiterated the demand to open the gates.

Meanwhile, the water level of the Gorai River, a branch of the Padma, has also increased accordingly, said BWDB sources.

Padma, the main distributary of the Ganges, enters Bangladesh from India near Chapainawabganj and meets the Jamuna River in Goalonda, Rajbarhi.

The city of Rajshahi, a major metropolitan in the country’s north, sits on the banks of the mighty river. Flowing 120 kilometres ahead, the consolidated stream then meets the Meghna River at Chandpur before flowing into the Bay of Bengal.

The Farakka Barrage, which stands across the Ganges River in the Indian state of West Bengal, roughly 16.5 kilometres from the border with Bangladesh near Chapainawabganj, has been the cause of a long-standing dispute between Bangladesh and India.

Bangladeshi experts and environmental activists have criticised the barrage, saying it affects biodiversity in Bangladesh by cutting off the water supply. l

Deportation of Rashed Chy can boost BD-US anti-terrorist tie n Sheikh Shahariar Zaman Bilateral and anti-terrorist partnership between Dhaka and Washington will get a boost if the US deports self-confessed Bangabandhu killer Rashed Chowdhury.

It is also believed that Rashed is a terrorist according to the US laws and he is a threat to the US national interest.

“It is a long-standing demand of Bangladesh and it will definitely have a positive impact on our relationship,” former Bangladesh ambassador to US Humayun Kabir told the Dhaka Tribune.

Former law minister Shafiq Ahmed told the Dhaka Tribune that a US immigration judge determined Bangabandhu killer AKM Mohiuddin a ‘terrorist’ and a ‘danger to the national security of the United States due to his participation in 1975 coup, in which the first president of Bang-

ladesh along with his family members were brutally killed.

“Rashed Chowdhury and Mohiuddin committed the same crime of actively taking part in the coup and that’s why, the verdict applicable to Mohiuddin is also applicable to Rashed Chowdhury,” he added.

The United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, on September 1, 2005, in a verdict on a petition filed by Mohiuddin said: “The record overwhelmingly establishes reasonable grounds to believe that Mohiuddin participated in the assassination of Bangladesh’s first president and the merciless slaughter of his family and other innocent people.”

In another para, the verdict said: “The Board and immigration judge have found Mohiuddin’s actions are fully embraced within the definitions of terrorist activities in the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act].”

It also said: “The immigration judge determined that Mohiuddin’s participation in the coup constituted reasonable grounds to believe that he poses a danger to the national security of the United States.”

Shafiq said everybody knows what Mohiuddin and others did on August 15, 1975 and Rashed should not get separate treatment in any country.

Rashed has reportedly got political asylum in the US and has been living in Sacramento of California.

The former law minister said Rashed must have lied in his asylum application, otherwise no civilized country would have given him political asylum.

“In his written application for asylum, filed prior to the initiation of removal proceedings, Mohiuddin admitted that his task was to block the roads leading to Sheikh

Mujib’s house from the north and the west to stop any outside interference,” the verdict said.

The verdict also said: “At his asylum interview, he stated that the majors anticipated possible interference from the president’s special security forces (the Rakkhi Bahini) that were based one and a half miles from presidential palace.”

In his application, Mohiuddin admitted his participation in the coup and was refused asylum, Shafiq said.

“Rashed Chwodhury would have received the same treatment had he admitted in his asylum application his participation in the coup,” he said.

“I am sure Rashed Chwodhury lied in his application and it can be proved if there is a review,” he added.

A court can give any decision, but there is a provision for review

and it can be done for Rashed’s case to make things straight, Shafiq said.

Mohiuddin was deported to Bangladesh from the US on June 27, 2007.

Rashed joined the government service in 1969 and got his first diplomatic assignment in 1976 as second secretary in Jeddah.

He also worked in Nairobi, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo and Brasilia as first secretary and counselor. He was dismissed from the service in July 1996.

According to his personal file at the foreign ministry, he was asked to report to Dhaka in July 1996, but he did not comply with order.

Iftikharul Karim, the then charge’d affairs of Brasilia, where Rashed was last posted, sent a letter to the foreign ministry saying Rashed flew to San Francisco from Sau Paulo. l

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News

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

Two listed robbers held Mizanur Rahaman, n FM Chittagong Police arrested two listed robbers along with two firearms, ammunitions and sharp weapons from Chandgaon in the port city on early Saturday.

The arrestees were Sattar Shah alias Dipjol alias Sowkat, 32, of Raozan upazila, and Khorshed, 35, of Boalkhali upazila, according to Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP).

Being tipped off, a team of the law enforcers raided Mahbub Colony in Moulovi Bazaar’s Brahmanpara area under Chandgaon police station around 2:30pm and detained the duo along with a barrel gun, a shooter gun, two cartridges and two sharp weapons, said Shahjahan Kabir, officer-in-charge (OC) of the police station.

They were fugitive in a case filed with Double Mooring police station for mugging Tk30 lakh in Abul Biri Factory area.

They were also accused in at least 14 cases filed with different police stations in the city on charge of robbery, mugging or possessing arms, the OC added. l

Garments Sromik Kormochari Oikko Parishad activists held a human chain in front of National Press Club yesterday demanding the payment of the workers before Eidul-Azha MEHEDI HASAN

Ctg rawhide traders fear tough times ahead

Thai Guava farming gets momentum

n Anwar Hussain, Chittagong

A silent revolution has happened in Thai Guava farming by dint of its gradually rising demands and lucrative market price everywhere in the region including its vast Barind tract at present.

Many farmers and unemployed people of the region are now cultivating the variety because of its prospects and suitable land condition.

Already, after meeting up the local demands the growers are supplying such variety of guava to throughout the country including capital Dhaka and they are making profit. As a result, the numbers of growers towards guava farming are increasing day by day.

“Guava is supposed to be the main cash crop in near future in the region as its topography and climatic condition is very much suitable for the crop,” said Dev Dulal Dhali, Deputy Director of Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), here Thursday.

He says the crop is being cultivated on more than 4,500 hectares of land in the region comprising Rajshahi, Nawgaon, Natore and Chapainawabgon districts. At present, there are over 1500 orchards of Thai payara in the region.

Rawhide traders of the port city are fearing a massive blow to their business after the only two surviving tanneries in Chittagong have now been shut down for not complying with environmental rules.

The rawhide traders apprehend that the tannery closures will shrink their bargaining capacity and pave way for a monopoly of Dhaka-based tanners.

The tanners said a huge stock of 8 million square feet of wet-blue – or chrome-tanned leather – was getting damaged in the two Chittagong tanneries after production was halted.

Meanwhile, a sizeable stock of 10,000-15,000 salted rawhides kept in different rawhide warehouses were also yet to be sold out.

“We are gravely concerned as the tanneries have been shut down. The two tanneries of Chittagong used to purchase 50% rawhide from us in cash. We have to sell rest of the amount of rawhide to the tanners of Dhaka on credit. Moreover, the tanners of Dhaka always delay in paying off the money,” said Muslim Uddin, former president of Chittagong Rawhide Traders Association.

The rawhide traders said they

collected around 550,000 rawhides during last Eid-ul-Azha. They added that 800-10,000 buffalo and cowhides and 2,500-3,000 goat hides were also collected from Chittagong every day.

At present, each square foot of unsalted cowhide sells at Tk40-45.

The price of buffalo hide ranges from Tk35-40 per square foot while goat hide is sold for Tk14-24.

“A 74kg sack of salt used to cost Tk400-450 last year. However, the price has now shot up to Tk1,2001,300. We have to count an additional Tk10 for salting a square foot of rawhide due to the salt price hike,” said Sekander Mia, president of Chittagong Rawhide Traders Association, “We are already hit hard as the demand for leather, leather goods and footwear has gone down in the global market. We will be ruined if the government does not take step to immediately open up the two tanneries of Chittagong,” said the leader of the rawhide traders.

“There was a time when the tanneries of Chittagong were much ahead of others in the country.

Regrettably the two surviving tanneries of Chittagong are now victims of discrimination. We urge the government to take our crisis

into consideration,” Madina Tannery proprietor Abu Mohammad said, adding that around 3 million square feet of wet-blue stock was perishing in his enterprise.

Mokhlesur Rahman, director (operations and sale) of another shut-down tannery Riff Leather Ltd, said they were now constructing an effluent treatment plant (ETP).

“The construction of the treatment plant is going to be complete within three months. Around 3 million square feet of wet-blue stock is getting damaged in the tannery.”

According to the tanners, there was once a total 21 tanneries in Chittagong, but only Madina Tannery and Riff Leather Ltd managed to survive.

But the Department of Environment (DoE) sealed them off and ordered the tanneries to stop production until installing ETPs. Production in Madina Tannery and Riff Leather Ltd has remained suspended from June 17 last year and August 1 of this year respectively.

Azadur Rahman Mollick, DoE director for Chittagong metropolitan area, told the Dhaka Tribune that there was no bar to reopening the two tanneries of Chittagong provided they set up ETPs. l

n Tribune Desk

Every year, the farming is expanding to new areas. The farmers are being imparted need-based training taking the issue of interests into consideration actively, reports BSS. DAE has given knowledge to the farmers on the cultivation process of the variety of Thai payara and motivating them to cultivate more of the variety collecting sapling from DAE horticulture centres.

Farmers are happy on the prospect the production of the Thai variety.

Dr Alim Uddin, Principal Scientific Officer of Regional Fruit Research Station, said Thai peyara is more nutritious than Kazi peyara.

It is comparatively big in size and market value is higher than Kazi payara. Per kilogram of Thai peyara is now selling at Tk 60 to 80 which contain only three to four payara.

“Seven months before harvest there are some specific farming management. They have to ensure fertilizer and irrigation for the guava trees. Moreover, they need to bend their trees. When the stems are bent, you get more guavas.”

Nazrul Islam, guava cultivator of village Palpur under Godagari upazila said, “I have been gaining good profit cultivating Guava on Commercial basis for the last several years”. l

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8 World

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

SOUTH ASIA

Myanmar actor jailed for cursing army with graffiti A Myanmar actor was sentenced to nearly three years in prison for scribbling curse-laden insults about the powerful army on his car, a police officer said Saturday.

Tun Lin Thein, a 35-year-old who appears in Myanmar music videos, slammed the military as an army of dogs and spray-painted a number of other expletives.

-AFP

INDIA

Women get entry in Haji Ali Dargah in Mumbai Women in India have the right to fully access a famous mosque in the city of Mumbai, a top court ruled on Friday. Ruling on a petition filed by Muslim women’s rights activists who demanded entry to the men-only inner sanctum of the Haji Ali Dargah, a Mumbai High Court bench said the restriction violated women’s fundamental right to equality.

-REUTERS

CHINA

Top Chinese general held in anti-graft campaign Top Chinese general has been arrested for violating party discipline, becoming one of the most senior incumbent military officials to be targeted in President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft campaign.

General Wang Jianping, 62, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department under the powerful Central Military Commission headed by Xi has been arrested for violating party discipline.

XINHUA

ASIA PACIFIC

Japan pledges to invest $30bn in Africa by 2018 Japan will pour $30bn of investments into Africa by 2018, including $10bn in infrastructure development, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Saturday at a summit in Nairobi. Abe is using the conference to meet dozens of leaders from across Africa, among them Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and South Africa’s Jacob Zuma.

-AFP

MIDDLE EAST

Bombs kills 15 civilians in Syria’s Aleppo At least 15 civilians were killed in a barrel bomb attack on a rebel-held district of Syria’s Aleppo city on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said. The Britain-based group said regime aircraft had dropped two explosive-packed barrel bombs several minutes apart on the Maadi district of eastern Aleppo.

-AFP

INSIGHT

Mosul fight redrawing map of Iraq n Tribune International Desk

In the buildup to a long-awaited offensive on the city of Mosul, Kurdish forces are seizing new territory in northern Iraq that they say will become part of their autonomous region. The moves are further straining relations between the Kurds and the Baghdad government and Shia militias, all ostensibly allies in the fight against the Islamic State group, reports The Associated Press.

Just east of Mosul, Kurdish engineering teams on a recent day were laying down a 3-meter wide, 20km long trench and 2-meter high berms, marking the new front line after recapturing the village of Qarqashah and neighbouring hamlets from IS earlier this month.

The new de facto borders established by the Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, raise the potential for conflict between Iraq’s Kurds and Arabs after any eventual defeat of IS - just as in neighbouring Syria, where Kurds have also dramatically expanded their zone of control.

“All the areas that have been liberated by the peshmerga forces, our (Kurdish) forces will stay there,” said Falah Mustafa, the head of the Iraqi Kurdish region’s foreign relations department, echoing statements by numerous officials.

Largely with the help of US-led coalition airstrikes, Kurdish forces have taken territory equivalent to around 50% of the size of their recognised autonomous zone.

Their first gain came just days after IS militants took Mosul in the summer of 2014 and stormed down into central Iraq as the military collapsed. Kurdish forces seized the city of Kirkuk, which they have long claimed as their own.

Ostensibly, the move was to protect the city from IS, but Kurdish President Massoud Barzani quickly said the Kurds would keep it. From there, they continued pushing IS out, capturing much of the surrounding province.

Since then, they have taken further territory in the nearby Ninevah province, where Mosul is located, with “shaping operations” ahead of an expected assault on the city. Much of it is territory with a large Kurdish community that the regional government has claimed for years - but not all, meaning the grabs are bringing in populations where some are wary of Kurdish domination.

Similarly, in neighbouring Syria, long-oppressed Kurds have used

PUSH TO RECAPTURE IS-HELD MOSUL

“The Kurds have forces to defend their areas. If we need forces to protect our areas, we will use the Popular Mobilisation Forces,” he said, referring to the statebacked organisation under which the militias are grouped.

A spokesman for the Popular Mobilisation Forces, Hashim al-Musawi, said “we have real concerns about the Kurdish forces.”

He cited reports that Kurds have deported Arab civilians from recaptured territory. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have published reports documenting such allegations.

Yazidi religious minority

the chaos of the civil war and fight against IS to carve out a zone of control across the country’s north.

The new clout of the main Syrian Kurdish fighting force, known as the YPG, has led to tensions with almost every player on the ground there, including Sunni Arab rebels and government forces. Turkey this week launched a major cross-border offensive, aimed mainly at limiting Kurdish expansion.

Battle for Kurdistan?

In Iraq, after the capture of the Qarqashah area, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi pointedly demanded a halt to the peshmerga advances.

But the Kurds refused. The Kurdish regional government’s spokesman, Safeen Dizayee, said the peshmerga “will not stop their advances until all Kurdistan’s territories in the Ninevah region are liberated.” He added that they will not withdraw “from areas they are going to liberate in the future.”

Al-Abadi seemed to soften his stance, saying all forces have the right to participate in the Mosul offensive. Still, he underlined that “Ninevah will stay unified.”

But Barzani in recent weeks has said a “new formula” is needed to

administer the province, without elaborating.

Mustafa said the Kurds were acting because minority groups in Ninevah no longer trust the central government to ensure their safety after the rise of Shia militias that have been accused of abuses in past anti-IS operations.

Both the peshmerga and the Shia Arab militias have steadily grown more powerful as the United States and Iran have funneled weapons, training and money into Iraq to back the fight against IS. Some 230km southeast of Mosul, deadly clashes broke out in April between Kurdish fighters and Shia militias in the town of Tuz Khormato, home to Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shia Turkmens.

Shia fighters accuse the Kurdish forces of destroying homes belonging to the town’s Turkmen residents. Kurdish forces in turn accuse the Shia fighters of arbitrarily detaining Sunni Arab residents.

Checkpoints and sandbag barriers carve up the town, separating the two sides.

Jassim Mohammed Jaafar, a Shia Turkmen member of parliament from the Mosul area, said he worries a similar scenario will play out in parts of Ninevah after Mosul is retaken.

Almost a year ago, Kurdish forces retook the northwestern region of Sinjar, dominated by the Yazidi religious minority, who were subjected to massacres and enslavement under IS rule. Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled into the Kurdish region for protection.

Many Yazidis do not consider themselves Kurdish, but rather a distinct ethnic minority, yet Kurdish politicians laid claim to Sinjar during the same press conference in which they declared it “liberated.”

Shia militiamen have also altered Iraq’s demography after pushing IS out of hundreds of villages in central Diyala and Salahuddin provinces and largely administering security in the areas they retook. While not backed by coalition airstrikes, Iranian advisers, weapons and funding have helped the militias outstrip Iraq’s conventional armed forces.

Many of the mostly Sunni Iraqis who were displaced from those provinces by the violence say they don’t feel safe returning with militias in control. Others have been prevented from returning due to strict so-called security checks.

Lukman Sharawani, commander of a small unit of Kurdish fighters stationed north of Mosul, explained that Ninevah - his home province -was once one of the most diverse parts of Iraq.

“Mosul has always been a multi-ethnic city,” he said. The plain that lies to the north and east of Mosul is home to some of the region’s oldest Christian communities as well as villages that were once home to Shabaks, Yazidis and Kurds.

He pointed to allegations of looting, destruction and arbitrary detentions by Shia militias after IS was driven out of the western city of Fallujah this year.

“We don’t want the same to happen here,” he said. l

9

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

EXPLAINER

USA

The trial to remove Brazil’s Rousseff n Tribune International Desk Brazil’s Senate on Friday began the second day of deliberations in a trial to decide whether to permanently remove President Dilma Rousseff from office. While the formal accusations against Rousseff are related to her management of the federal budget, the leadership fight involves much more. The AP explains how we got to this point and how the trial is likely to play out.

How Rousseff’s support collapsed

Rousseff was re-elected to a second four-year term in October 2014. As the economy worsened, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in early 2015, with many demanding the ouster of Rousseff and her left-leaning Workers’ Party. Her foes in Congress introduced a measure last year to impeach and remove her.

In April, the Chamber of Deputies approved it 367-137 and in May, the Senate voted 55-22 in favour.

Rousseff was suspended and Vice President Michel Temer became interim president.

The charges: Illegally moving money between budgets

Rousseff is accused of illegally shifting funds between government budgets. Opposition parties say that was to boost public spending and shore up support while masking the depths of defi-

cits. Rousseff says other former presidents used similar accounting techniques.

MOMENT OF TRUTH FOR DILMA ROUSSEFF 1947 Born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

The trial begins

Supreme Court chief justice Ricardo Lewandowski will preside as witnesses from both sides testify and senators cross-examine them.

Rousseff is expected to testify on Monday. A vote is expected by the middle of next week. A supermajority - 54 of the 81 senators - is needed to convict her, which would result in her permanent removal from office.

1970 - 1972 Imprisoned and tortured during the military dictatorship 1979 Helps found the Democratic Labour Party

The defence: It’s a coup!

2014 Re-elected with 51.6% of the vote

2000 Joins the Workers’ Party 2003 - 2005 Energy minister in the government Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva 2011 First woman president of Brazil

Rousseff and her backers say impeachment is a “coup” by corrupt opposition lawmakers meant to derail investigations into into billions of dollars in kickbacks at the state oil company. They also argue that Brazil’s ruling class wants to end 13 years of leftist government.

Opponents say Rousseff ’s budget manoeuvres aggravated the crisis in Latin America’s largest economy.

The stakes: Being banished from office

A conviction would permanently remove Rousseff from the presidency and bar her from holding any office for eight years. Temer would serve out her term, which ends Dec. 21, 2018. If convicted, Rousseff will likely appeal to the country’s highest court. But previous appeals during the pro-

December 2015 First moves to impeach Rousseff for the alleged misuse of public funds March 2016 Rousseff calls the impeachment process a “coup” May 2016 Rousseff is suspended, pending the outcome of a trial August 25: Trial before the Senate begins cess have failed.

Another possibility: Return to office

If fewer than 54 senators vote to remove her, Rousseff would return to office. She’s promised that if that happens, she would let voters decide in a plebiscite whether they want early presidential elections.

Brazil’s poisoned politics cloud the future

Brazilians are soured on politicians in general; both Rousseff and Temer are very unpopular. A poll last month found that 62% want new elections. But before new elections could occur, both Rousseff and Temer would have to resign or be removed from office. l

As Trump courts Latinos, Clinton links him to radical fringe n Tribune International Desk Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump met with about two dozen Latino supporters in Nevada to discuss strategies for boosting Hispanic turnout in the swing state, part of his effort to make the case that his economic policies would be better for small minority-owned businesses than those of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, reports The Associated Press.

“People don’t know how well we’re doing with the Hispanics, the Latinos,” Trump said Friday at his hotel just off the Vegas Strip.

“We’re doing really well.”

Trump has suggested that minorities have been left behind by Democratic economic policies and hammered the nation’s sluggish GDP growth as “a catastrophe,” saying that the United States has “some very, very serious problems and it’s going to get worse with this group of people” in charge.

DT

World

Donald Trump

REUTERS

But Trump continued to send mixed signals about a key issue for many Latinos: immigration. While he has not wavered on his desire to build an impenetrable wall along the border with Mexico, he exhibited indecisiveness in recent days about his plan to deport 11 million immigrants living in the US illegally.

The New York businessman has vacillated by saying there would be “a softening” of existing immigration laws and later suggesting for the first time that if he did authorize deportations, many of those immigrants would be allowed to return quickly to the United States. Then, in an in-

terview Friday on Fox News, he seemed to resume a more hardline position.

“My stance is very strong. It’s gonna remain very strong,” he said. “There will be no amnesty.

There’s no legalisation.”

Aides have said he would announce his immigration policy in a speech in the coming days, but his campaign has yet to set a date. And after saying they would be allowed to attend a fundraiser Friday night in Lake Tahoe, aides barred reporters at the last minute.

Clinton, meanwhile, kept up her verbal assault on Trump’s campaign, asserting in an MSNBC interview Friday that it is built on “prejudice and paranoia” and caters to a radical fringe of the Republican Party.

Clinton is looking to counter Trump’s attempts to win over moderate voters who have been unsettled by some of his remarks and policy proposals. She is also targeting moderate voters — especially Republicans — by depicting Trump and his supporters as ex-

tremists, and casting the race as “not a normal choice between a Republican and a Democrat.”

In turn, Trump is trying to paint Clinton as the racist. He released an online video that includes footage of the former first lady referring to some young criminals as “super predators” in the 1990s. The video also shows Clinton’s former Democratic rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, denouncing the phrase as “a racist term.” Clinton has since apologised.

But Trump was saddled with another inflammatory revelation Friday when court papers surfaced showing that an ex-wife of Trump’s new campaign CEO, Stephen Bannon, said Bannon made anti-Semitic remarks when the two battled over sending their daughters to private school nearly a decade ago. That revelation came a day after reports emerged that domestic violence charges were filed 20 years ago against Bannon following an altercation with his then-wife, Mary Louise Piccard. l

Obama presses Congress for Zika funding US President Barack Obama called on Congress Saturday to step up funding to combat the Zika virus, warning that delay is putting more Americans at risk. Obama’s latest appeal came the day after the US authorities expressed deepening worry about the spread of the mosquito-borne virus, urging that all donated blood be tested for Zika.

-AFP

THE AMERICAS

Venezuela expels visiting Ecuadoran lawmakers A delegation of Ecuadoran lawmakers has been expelled from Venezuela after meeting with opposition leaders, the foreign ministry confirmed Saturday, accusing them of engaging in destabilising activity. The incident comes amid rising political tensions as leftist President Nicolas Maduro fends off pressure to hold a recall vote this year that could force him from office. -AFP

UK

May to trigger EU pull-out without parliament vote Prime Minister Theresa May wants to trigger Britain’s withdrawal from the EU without a vote in parliament beforehand. A source in her Downing Street office said the Daily Telegraph report was speculation but added that May was committed to delivering on the verdict the public gave in the June referendum, when 52% voted for Britain to leave the EU. -AFP

EUROPE

Fire kills 16 migrants in Moscow warehouse A fire in a Moscow printing plant killed 17 people on Saturday, officials said, and a representative of the Kyrgyz diaspora in Russia said all the dead were members of its community. The Investigative Committee, which reports directly to President Vladimir Putin, said a criminal inquiry had been launched into the deaths of 16 of the victims of the blaze. -REUTERS

AFRICA

Tunisia’s youngest premier since independence sworn in Tunisia’s new Prime Minister Youssef Chahed and members of his cabinet were sworn in on Saturday, the presidency said, after approval from parliament. The prime minister and his 26 ministers swore to work devotedly for the good of Tunisia and to respect its constitution and laws. Chahed, at 40, is the country’s youngest prime minister since independence from France in 1956.

AFP

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World

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

ANALYSIS

Why the Syria war only seems to get worse n Tribune International Desk There is a basic fact about Syria’s civil war that never seems to change: It frustrates any attempt at resolution.

Despite many offensives, peace conferences and foreign interventions, including this week’s Turkish incursion into a border town, the only needle that ever seems to move is the one measuring the suffering of Syrians — which only worsens.

The fact that the underlying battle is multiparty rather than two-sided also works against resolution.

A conflict immune to exhaustion

Most civil wars end when one side loses. Either it is defeated militarily, or it exhausts its weapons or loses popular support and has to give up.

About a quarter of civil wars end in a peace deal, often because both sides are exhausted.

That might have happened in Syria: The core combatants — the government and the insurgents who began fighting it in 2011 — are quite weak and, on their own, cannot sustain the fight for long.

But they are not on their own.

Each side is backed by foreign powers — including the United States, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and now Turkey — whose interventions have suspended the usual laws of nature.

Forces that would normally slow the conflict’s inertia are absent, allowing it to continue far longer than it otherwise would.

Government and rebel forces are supplied from abroad, which means their arms never run out. They also both draw political support from foreign governments who do not feel the war’s costs firsthand, rather than from locals who might otherwise push for peace to end their pain.

The ground battles also include Kurdish militias, who have some foreign backing, and the Islamic State, which does not. But pro-government and opposition forces are focused on one another, making them and their sponsors the war’s central dynamic.

No one can lose, and no one can win

Foreign sponsors do not just remove mechanisms for peace. They introduce self-reinforcing mechanisms for an ever-intensifying stalemate.

Whenever one side loses ground, its foreign backers increase their involvement, sending supplies or air support to prevent their favoured player’s defeat. Then that side begins winning, which tends to prompt the other’s foreign backers to up their ante as well. Each escalation is a bit stronger than what came before, accelerating the killing without ever changing the war’s

CONFLICT IN SYRIA HAS CREATED A COMPLEX WEB OF ALLIANCES Combat

Support TURKEY

Rapprochement

“Moderate”

Rebels

RUSSIA

Saudi Arabia

Kurds

Qatar

Jihadists

France

Pro-Damascus alliance

IRAN Hezbollah

Syrian regime

Islamic State group

USA

Britain

Iraqi and Afghan fighters

International coalition. More

than 60 countries against IS fundamental balance.

Over the last year, for example, the United States has supported Syrian Kurds against the Islamic State. As the Kurds grew strong, this alarmed Turkey, which is fighting its own Kurdish insurgency.

This week, Turkey intervened to seize the Syrian town of Jarabulus, backed by the United States, in part to prevent Kurds from taking it first.

War’s structure encourages atrocities

Syria has seen repeated indiscriminate mass killings of civilians, on all sides. This is not driven just by malice, but by something more powerful: structural incentives.

In most civil wars, the fighting forces depend on popular support to succeed. This “human terrain,” as counterinsurgency experts call it, provides all sides with an incentive to protect civilians and minimise atrocities, and has often proved decisive.

Pro-government forces have conducted by far the most attacks against civilians, but opposition fighters have led some as well.

Among the insurgents, individual groups that refuse to attack civilians end up at a disadvantage compared with the groups that will.

Fear of defeat entrenches the status quo

Stalemate is also driven by uncertainty. No one is sure what a postwar Syria would look like or how to get there, but everyone can imagine a worse situation. This creates a status quo bias, in which combatants are more worried about preserving what they have than risking it to pursue their broader goals.

Each foreign power understands

it cannot win, but earnestly fears that a victory by the other side would be unbearable. Saudi Arabia and Iran, for example, see Syria as a battleground in their regional power struggle, the loss of which they believe could endanger their own regimes.

Even if Syria’s war hurts everyone in the long term, guaranteeing more extremism and instability, short-term fears of defeat pull everyone toward maintaining a perpetual, unwinnable draw.

This is exacerbated by the decision-making dynamics of loose coalitions. Each side consists of several actors with wildly different agendas and priorities. Often, all they can agree on is that they wish to avoid defeat. It is strategy by least common denominator.

There is reason to believe that Russia, for example, would like President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to step down, or at least make some concessions for peace. But Russia can’t force him to act, nor can it simply quit Syria without abandoning its interests there. Assad, meanwhile, might want a fuller Russian intervention that brings him victory, something Moscow is unwilling to provide.

The result: Assad stays in place, and Russia intervenes only enough to keep him there for now.

Syrian parties are built to fight, not win

The Syrian government and the insurgents fighting it are internally weak in ways that lead them to prefer a stalemate, no matter how terrible, over almost any viable outcome.

Syria’s top leaders belong mostly to the Alawite religious minority, which makes up a small share

of the country’s population but a disproportionate share of security forces. Syria’s opposition is weak in a different way. It is fractured among many groups, another factor that tends to prolong civil wars and make them less likely to end peacefully.

A study of every United Nations peacemaking effort since 1945 found that it succeeded in resolving two-thirds of two-sided civil wars, but only one-quarter of multisided ones. Syria’s battlefield is a complex polygon, with an array of Syrian rebel groups that include moderates and Islamists; affiliates of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State; Syrian forces and outsiders like the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah; and foreign fighters who join in the name of jihad.

Each of these factions has its own aims, which narrow the terms of any possible peace deal. Each also has an incentive to compete with other groups for resources during the war, and for concessions afterward.

The dangers of victory

The only certain way to break the logjam is for one side to surge beyond what the other can match.

Because Syria has sucked in two of the world’s leading military powers, Russia and the United States, that bar could most likely be cleared only by a full-scale invasion.

In the best case, this would require something akin to the yearslong American occupations of Iraq or Afghanistan. In the worst, invading a war zone where so many foreign adversaries are active could ignite a major regional war.

Another way that such wars can end is that one foreign backer changes its foreign policy and de-

cides to withdraw. This allows the other side to win quickly.

But in Syria, because each side is backed by multiple foreign powers, every sponsor on one side would have to drop its support at the same time.

An obstacle to peace: No peacekeepers

Peace deals often succeed or fail on the question of who will control military and security forces. In Syria, this may be a question without an answer.

It’s an issue not of greed, but of trust. After a war as brutal as Syria’s, in which more than 400,000 people have been killed so far, the combatants reasonably fear they will be massacred if the other secures too much power. But a deal that would give the parties equal military power creates a high risk of relapse into war. So does allowing rebels to keep their arms and independence — a lesson the world learned in Libya.

At the same time, there has to be some sort of armed force to restore security and clean up any remaining warlords or militias.

Often, the solution has been for an outside country or organisation, such as the United Nations, to send peacekeepers. These forces keep everyone in check during the country’s transition to peace and provide basic security in a way that won’t spur either side to rearm.

But what country would volunteer its citizens to indefinitely occupy Syria, particularly with the cautionary tale of America’s experience in Iraq?

Any foreign force would make itself a target for jihadist terrorists, and most likely face a years-long insurgency that could cost it hundreds or thousands of lives.

A drift into disaster

According to a 2015 paper by Professor Walter and Kenneth M Pollack, a Middle East expert, “Outright military victory in a civil war often comes at the price of horrific (even genocidal) levels of violence against the defeated, including their civilian populations.”

This could bring entirely new conflicts to the Middle East, they found: “Victorious groups in a civil war sometimes also try to employ their new found strength against neighbouring states, resulting in interstate wars.”

This is not a drift that anyone wants, but it is the direction that Syria’s many domestic and foreign participants are pulling the country, whose darkest days may still be ahead. l

[This is an excerpt from a The New York Times article, which can be found at http://nyti.ms/2bWr13C]

11

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World

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

Malaysian student protesters demand 1MDB arrest n Reuters, Kuala Lumpur Nearly a thousand protesters marched in the heart of the Malaysian capital on Saturday calling for the arrest of an unnamed high-ranking government official who US investigators say received $700m skimmed from a sovereign fund.

The student-led mass rally comes more than a month after US prosecutors filed civil lawsuits alleging that over $3.5bn was defrauded from state fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).

The lawsuits repeatedly referred to a high-ranking official, only identified as “Malaysian Official 1,” who received some of the misappropriated funds. A source familiar with the US investigations has told Reuters that the unnamed official is Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Led by student representative Anis Syafiqah Md Yusof, the protesters marched towards Dataran Merdeka, or Independence Square, shouting “the people live” and “catch MO1,” referring to Malaysian Official

Senior separatist leader of the hardliner faction of All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) Syed Ali Shah Geelani waves to his supporters outside his house as he arrives to participate in a march towards an army base in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir on August 27 AP

Indian police arrest key Kashmiri separatist leader n Tribune International Desk

Police in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir said Saturday that they have arrested one of the key separatist leaders spearheading protests against Indian rule in the disputed region.

Police arrested Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who was already under house arrest, late Friday and locked him up in a government facility in Srinagar, the region’s main city, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with department policy.

Farooq is among the leaders who have been jointly issuing schedules of protests to challenge India’s sovereignty over Kashmir.

A strict curfew and a tightening crackdown by authorities have failed to stop some of Kashmir’s largest protests against Indian rule in recent years, triggered by the killing of a popular rebel commander on July 8. Since then, tens of thousands of people have defied the curfew, staged protests and clashed with government forces.

At least 67 civilians have been killed and thousands injured, mostly by government forces firing bullets and shotguns at rock-throwing protesters. Two policemen have also been killed and hundreds of government forces have been injured in the clashes.

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, the re-

gion’s top elected official, met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Saturday, seeking a comprehensive dialogue with Kashmiri separatist leaders and neighbouring Pakistan to try to resolve the dispute over Kashmir.

The weeks of unrest in the region have intensified already strained relations between archrivals India and Pakistan, who both control parts of the Himalayan territory and claim it in its entirety.

Kashmiri separatist leaders, most of them either under house arrest or in police detention, have vowed to continue their struggle and refused to participate in any dialogue before New Delhi accepts Kashmir as a disputed region, releases political prisoners, revokes harsh emergency laws and announces a plan for demilitarisation.

Mufti defended the 50-day-old curfew in the region, where residents have struggled to cope with shortages of food, medicine and other necessities.

“The main objective of the curfew is to save the lives of young people. What else can we do?” she told reporters after the meeting.

Most Kashmiris want an end to Indian rule and favour independence or a merger with Pakistan. More than 68,000 people have been killed since rebel groups began fighting Indian forces in 1989 and in the subsequent Indian military crackdown. l

1 in the lawsuits.

The organisers had expected a turnout of 5,000.

“If we don’t speak out, who else will push them, the authorities, to arrest a criminal who has given us so much grief?,” Anis said in her address to the protesters.

“Can we send MO1 to jail and bring that person to face justice?” she asked the crowd, which responded with chants of “tangkap MO1,” meaning “arrest” in Malay.

Police set up barricades around the square and blocked the crowd from entering.

“We need to fight for our rights. The country is broken, it’s gone to the dogs,” said Tony Wong, a 77-year-old protester.

“All Malaysians should stand and fight for our rights and freedom, for our future generations,” said Wong, as he handed out posters showing a silhouette of Najib with the words “Siapa MO1?” meaning “Who is MO1?”.

About 800 policemen and officials from the Kuala Lumpur city hall were on patrol near the square, The Sun newspaper reported.

A police helicopter was also seen hovering low over the crowd ahead of the march. l

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12 Business

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

TOP STORIES

BSEC, DSE open seperate probes into merger process of Summit Power n Tribune Business Desk

MFS needs businessfriendly guideline Mahindra Comviva is the global leader of mobility solutions catering to the business of tomorrows. The company is a subsidiary of Tech Mahindra and a part of the $16.9 billion Mahindra Group.

PAGE 13

Zero-coupon bonds are not a joke A little more than 10 years ago, I wrote a piece recommending that the US Treasury extend the maturity profile of its debt. The column teasingly suggested that Washington should issue zero-coupon perpetual bonds, as this would reduce debt service costs. When it appeared in the Breakingviews column of the Wall Street Journal on April 1, 2006, a couple of irate readers wrote in complaining that a zero-coupon perpetual would have no value. I politely pointed out to them the date of publication and all was forgiven.

PAGE 14

EU offers vitamin pill to dying media patient Brussels is offering a vitamin pill to a dying media patient. According to a draft proposal, the European Commission wants to give news publishers the right to seek compensation from search engines like Google that use their online content.

The intention is laudable, but the idea has similarities with schemes that haven’t worked.

PAGE 15

Capital market snapshot: Past Week DSE Broad Index

4,554.3

-0.7% ▼

Index

1,107.4

-1.3% ▼

30 Index

1,748.2

-1.0% ▼

Turnover in Mn Tk

20,034.7

12.7% ▲

Turnover in Mn Vol

462.4

-1.7% ▼

All Share Index 13,998.7

-0.7% ▼

30 Index

12,763.1

-0.9% ▼

Selected Index

8,521.3

-0.7% ▼

Turnover in Mn Tk

1,002.6

5.1% ▲

Turnover in Mn Vol

32.4

0.4% ▲

CSE

The securities regulator and Dhaka Stock Exchange have launched seperate inquiries into the amalgamation process of three units of Summit Power.

The move came after the country’s two stock exchanges suspended share trading of Summit Power for an indefinite period on Wednesday evening due to alleged non-compliance with the High Court’s merger directive.

DSE formed a three-member committee yesterday to investigate whether the High Court’s order was followed properly in completing merger of Summit Power’s three power generation units.

The DSE body has been asked to submit probe report within next three working days and to assist Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission’s (BSEC) committee in the investigation.

On Friday night, the regulator had formed a four-member committee in the same issue.

The BSEC body was asked to submit the probe report within the next 15 working days.

“BSEC is looking into whether the shareholders’ interest was protected in completing the amalgamation process of Summit Power,” said an official in BSEC. A Summit Power spokesperson

DSE and CSE last week suspended share trading of Summit Power for an indefinite period said the company will cooperate fully with the inquiry, but declined to provide details of what is being investigated.

According to the merger scheme, Summit Power, a subsidiary of the Group and the country’s first private power generation firm, acquired shares of its three power generation units—Summit Purbanchol Power Company Limited (SPPCL), Summit Uttranchol Power Company Limited (SUPCL) and Summit Narayanganj Power

Company Limited (SNPCL).

On Wednesday, share prices of Summit Power fell marginally 0.6% to over Tk32 a share.

Earlier on last March 16, Summit Power announced merger with three of its subsidiaries as part of a new business strategy of its parent company, Summit Group.

The High Court approved the amalgamation on July 14.

To acquire the units, Summit Power exchanged its 1.309 shares for one share of SPPCL, 1.668

MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

shares for one share of SUPCL and 1.475 shares for one share of SNPCL. Share value worked out for non-listed subsidiaries, SUPCL and SNPCL, at their weighted average of net asset value as of 2015 and average market price for six months to December 31, 2015.

For listed subsidiary, SPPCL, the share value was fixed on the basis of share value at its weighted average of net asset value as of 2015. l

Eight banks fix Tk706cr rawhide loans target n Asif Showkat Kallol Eight private and state-owned banks have decided to disburse a total of Tk706 crore loans among local rawhide traders on the occasion of the upcoming Eid-ul-Azha when a large number of animals are sacrificed by Muslims, said official sources.

The rawhide collected during the Eid-ul-Azha cater to much of Bangladesh’s demand of leather.

Bank and Financial Institutions Division officials said the rawhide loan target of the state-run banks were approved by the respective boards of directors.

The banks, however, said the rawhide traders would have to repay the loans taken in previous years before being eligible to get loans this year.

Many of the rawhide traders became default of loans as prices of rawhide dropped in the global market.

Data showed that leather prices declined 30-35% year-on-year

in 2016 as non-leather footwear items gained popularity in international market.

According to the Bank Division sources, eight banks disbursed Tk664 crore loans among rawhide traders last year.

But most of the loans have not been repaid yet and the defaulters will not be eligible for loans this year, officials said.

However, the state-run banks will disburse loans to defaulters if they have already repaid 35% of the previous loans, a Sonali Bank official said.

The state-run four banks usually lend big amounts of money to rawhide traders. Sonali Bank sources said the three firms requested to Sonali Bank’s Bangabandhu Avenue branch for Tk170 crore loans to buy rawhide during the upcoming Eid-ul-Azha.

The Sonali Bank authorities already decided to provide the loans if the firms complied with the bank’s condition of repaying the said portion of previous loans.

The three firms last year borrowed Tk150 crore from the same branch. Janata Bank, another state-run commercial bank, disbursed Tk200 crore last year to rawhide trading firms. Two of the firms have not yet repaid the loans.

The bank’s board of directors has decided to disburse Tk250 crore rawhide loans this year while Agrani Bank will lend Tk150 crore. Last year Agrani Bank disbursed Tk130 crore as loans to rawhide traders.

Rupali Bank will disburse Tk60 crore loans among rawhide traders this year. It lent the same amount last year for the rawhide business.

Bangladesh Krishi Bank, a stateowned specialised bank, will disburse Tk4 crore for rawhide business this year, a decreased amount from the last year’s Tk6 crore.

Privately-run City Bank and United Commercial Bank have decided to give Tk20 crore and Tk18 crore loans respectively to rawhide traders. l

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13

Business

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

INTERVIEW

MFS needs business-friendly guideline years. Unfortunately, we are still at the foundation stage.

Mahindra Comviva is the global leader of mobility solutions catering to the business of tomorrows.

The company is a subsidiary of Tech Mahindra and a part of the $16.9 billion Mahindra Group.

Its extensive portfolio of solutions spans digital financial services, customer value management, messaging and broadband solution, digital lifestyle services and managed Value Added Services.

Mahindra Comviva’s solutions are deployed by over 130 mobile service providers and financial institutions in over 90 countries.

Recently, Reyad Hasnain, country manager at Mahindra Comviva, gave his insight into Mobile Financial Service (MFS) and related issues in an interview with Dhaka Tribune taken by Ishtiaq Husain.

He has over 15 years of experience in telecom and IT sector with multinational companies spanning diverse job-roles.

MFS has enough space to expand in Bangladesh. Though mobile service has been expanded in the country, subscribers are not getting all kinds of services. A total of 29 banks are providing MFS, but only 18 banks are so far offering the service.

How can we achieve a minimum level of MFS target?

A lot of work needs to be done for taking MFS to level of adoption. Bangladesh Bank plans to integrate a total of seven business entities, including four commercial banks, into MFS platform, which poses challenges.

According to the proposed MFS revised guidelines, the commercial banks will hold a majority of beneficial ownership, with non-banks not

Bulk payment (B2B), open loop merchant payments, biometrics, remittance transaction, contextual promotion and loyalty are available in this stage.

How can MFS play a vital role in building digital marketing?

SYED ZAKIR HOSSAIN

How do you evaluate Bangladesh MFS?

What types of services are available in maturity stage?

Reyad Hasnain, country manager of Mahindra Comviva in Bangladesh, gestures while speaking to Dhaka Tribune recently exceeding 15% and Mobile Network Operators 30% in their total equities.

The central bank revised the guidelines to provide the poor and unbanked segments of the population in rural areas with greater access to formal financial services at an affordable cost. But with current proposal this might not see the light.

Investors will not be encouraged to invest in current model and mobile operators should get more opportunities.

How can the government make it more popular?

At the initial stage in mobile services (during the launch of 2G),

Mild profit booking takes place on stocks n Tribune Business Desk Stock markets posted a marginal fall in the past week that ended Thursday after two weeks of modest rise.

Investors went for quick profit booking mainly on large issues while some took position on law cap issues, pushing the share trade higher.

The benchmark index of Dhaka Stock Exchange DSEX lost over 30 points or 0.7% to end the week at 4,554.

The DS30 index, comprising blue chips, was down 17 points or 1% to 1,748.

The DSE Shariah Index lost 14

points or 1.3% to 1,107.

The Chittagong Stock Exchange Selective Category Index CSCX declined 62 points or 0.8% to 8,521.28.

The stock market had to shorten trading session in the past week to four from five due to public holiday on Thursday.

Amid shortened trading week, the week’s daily average turnover stood at Tk500 crore, an increase of nearly 13% higher over the previous week.

Block trade, led by Olympic Industries, IDLC Finance, Brac Bank, Renata, Berger Paints, IFIC Bank, Heidelberg Cement and Bata Shoe, contributed over 3% to the week’s total turnover. l

the government didn’t impose any licence fee. As a result, mobile operators invested a huge amount of money in developing the infrastructure that played an important role for flourishing mobile networks across the country. Mobile operators introduced inter-operability in two to three years since inception. Inter-operability is a must for quick flourishing of any telecom-related services. In order to make MFS popular, there is an urgent need to introduce inter-operability services for quickly expanding services among the masses. Also more services around MFS should be encouraged by the

government. Currently, MFS is confined mostly to P2P transfer, some bill payment, air time top up etc.

But there is an ocean of opportunities and services around MFS which can be launched.

How can we come out of this limitation?

MFS needs a business friendly guideline to flourish. It has three stages: foundation stage, evaluation stage and maturity stage.

Foundation stage is the initial stage where only limited services are available and it generally lasts between two to three years. Since its inception, we have passed five

Before Eid, mobile subscribers became irritated due to bulk SMS with various offers. If any subscriber is around a coffee shop, detecting the customer location and offering a special discount are a kind of digital marketing in simple form.

Customers look for transactions that promise personalised content and services delivered in context.

Digital money will replace physical money in the long run. To avail these types of services, we will have to create awareness through media and campaign.

How can we protect digital transaction from fraudulence?

We have to overcome the fear of fraudulence. With some recent measures, i.e biometric SIM registration, the frauds in and around mobile banking are reduced. However, there are still issues and the stakeholders are taking measures around it. But if we sit idle due to fraudulence, the country’s economic growth would be hindered. The main objective of MFS is to get the financial services to the grass roots. In Bangladesh, 70% population remain unbanked, which is very high in any measure. The government needs to adopt a friendly regulation so that MFS providers can send financial services to the grass-root level. l

Hearing on Citycell closure today n Ishtiaq Husain The hearing on Citycell closure is scheduled to be held today (Sunday) following the appeal by Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission’s (BTRC).

The telecom regulator filed an appeal against a High Court order delivered on August 24 which barred it from shutting down Citycell’s operation.

If the High Court grants regulator’s appeal, the commission could then take further steps to shut down the operation of Citycell. According Telecommunication Division decision, Citycell’s time to switch over subscriber’s RIM was supposed to come to an end on 23 August.

Just before executing BTRC’s decision, Moribund mobile oper-

ator Citycell got some breathing space after a High Court bench on August 22 asked the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission not to shut down its operations until September 16.

A High Court bench of Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed made the order following regulator’s show cause notice that was served on August 17.

According to the notice, the regulator asked Citycell to provide a reply within September 16, 2016 why the BTRC will not shut down its operation.

On August 21, the lawyer for Citycell filed an application for injunction under Section 248 of the Companies Act 1994, to restrain Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) from taking steps to cancel its license.

The High Court dealt with the application on August 22. Upon hearing on the lawyers for China Development Bank, Citycell and BTRC, the HC gave the order in this connection.

On July 31, BTRC asked Citycell to pay its all dues, including regulatory fee and fine worth Tk477 crore

by August 16. The telecom regulator also ordered the company to create an alternative arrangement for providing the service to its subscribers even after shutdown.

Citycell parent company Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Limited got licence for telecom services in 1989.

It is the only CDMA network operator in the country. It is currently owned by Singtel with 45% stake and the remaining 55% is owned by the Pacific Group and Far East Telecom. l

Business

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14

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

Zero-coupon bonds are not a joke n Edward Chancellor A little more than 10 years ago, I wrote a piece recommending that the US Treasury extend the maturity profile of its debt. The column teasingly suggested that Washington should issue zero-coupon perpetual bonds, as this would reduce debt service costs. When it appeared in the Breakingviews column of the Wall Street Journal on April 1, 2006, a couple of irate readers wrote in complaining that a zero-coupon perpetual would have no value. I politely pointed out to them the date of publication and all was forgiven.

Much has transpired in the global bond markets since then.

Government debt issuance has ballooned everywhere. A sovereign debt crisis erupted, and still lingers, in the periphery of the euro zone. Japan’s public debt has soared past 200 percent of gross domestic product. Policy rates, stuck at or near zero in many countries, have turned negative across much of Europe and in Japan.

Some $12tn worth of government bonds now sport negative yields.

To cap it all, monetary-policy wonks have seriously revived the zero-coupon perpetual idea. There are currently two conflicting proposals on the table. Ben Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, on a recent visit to Japan reportedly suggested that Tokyo implement his helicopter-money plans by issuing zero-coupon perpetual bonds. Meanwhile, Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist at the IMF and currently a professor at Harvard University, has written a book proposing the abolition of cash in order to facilitate the latest monetary policy fad – negative interest rates. The dollar bill, being an irredeemable non-interest bearing liability of the US Treasury, is basically a zero-coupon perpetual.

In his blog earlier this year Bernanke suggested that the Fed could finance the government by printing

The former Federal Reserve chairman Ben S Bernanke money, receiving in exchange irredeemable Treasury scrip. Bernanke’s latest bright idea is that the Bank of Japan, which has bought up close to half the country’s outstanding government debt, should convert its bond holdings into zero-coupon perpetual securities – that is, financial instruments with no intrinsic value.

The difference between a central bank owning zero-coupon perpetual notes and conventional bonds is that the former cannot be sold to withdraw excess liquidity from the banking system. That means the Bank of Japan would lose a key tool in controlling inflation. So as expectations about rising prices blossomed, Japan’s decades-long battle against deflation would finally end. There are further benefits to this proposal. In one fell swoop, Japan’s public-debt overhang would disappear. As the government’s debt-service costs dried up, Tokyo would be able to

fund massive public works. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe inclines towards more high-speed train lines and defense spending.

Meantime, in his forthcoming book, “The Curse of Cash,” – and for slightly different reasons than Bernanke – Rogoff inveighs against the only zero-coupon perpetual instrument known to all of us: cash.

At first sight, it seems strange to propose abolishing the mighty greenback. The $100 note costs a little over 10 cents to manufacture. Roughly half of the $1.4tn of US dollar bills outstanding are held abroad. That represents hundreds of billions of dollars of pure profit for the federal government.

Yet Rogoff argues that cash facilitates all sorts of illicit activity, including terrorism, drug dealing, illegal immigration and tax evasion.

More to the point, getting rid of cash would prevent people from hoarding the stuff, and thus allow central

REUTERS

bankers to push interest rates even deeper into negative territory. “The whole premise,” writes Rogoff, “of (significant) negative rates is to turbocharge the economy out of a deflationary recession.” This begs the question. After all, the decline of interest rates in developed market economies to zero and beyond has been associated with weakening economic growth. It’s not clear why rates deeper into negative territory would improve the situation.

A world without cash would look very different. Beggars would have to be provided with debit card readers (as is already the case in progressive Sweden). With interest rates set at negative levels “without limit” (in Rogoff ’s words), cheques would lie around uncashed. People would rush to file their taxes early and even overpay them. There would be no restraints on investment. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson once

observed, with a perpetual negative rate it would make sense to level the Rocky Mountains to save the cost of extra gasoline expended by motor cars on steep inclines.

There would be some drawbacks, of course. The poor and disadvantaged, many of whom lack bank accounts, would have to be coerced into entering the world of electronic payments. Many of them would lose their livelihoods as much of the semi-licit underground economy disappeared. In a cashless world, the government would have a record of every transaction in a person’s life, from a child’s first purchase of tooth-destroying candies onwards. While Rogoff recommends initially abolishing only large-denomination dollar bills, he envisages a day when every citizen would have their own bank account with the Fed. A brave new world indeed.

Even in this era of radical monetary-policy experimentation and unprecedented state snooping, Rogoff ’s proposal to abolish cash is probably a step too far. Bernanke’s plans, on the other hand, have a depressing inevitability. What’s more they’ll probably succeed in their primary aim of dispelling deflation. Revolutionary France was able to create inflation and wipe out its national debt by issuing vast amounts of assignats, an earlier type of the zero-coupon bond.

Still this is no free lunch. Households holding cash and other forms of paper wealth would see their capital evaporate. The long-suffering middle classes would become even more stretched – and almost certainly a great deal angrier. Ten years ago, the notion that zero-coupon perpetual securities should make a comeback seemed like a good April Fools’ joke. Now, it’s no laughing matter. l Edward Chancellor is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The article was initially published at Reuters.

Facebook makes trending news feature more automated n AFP, San Francisco

Facebook said Friday it is further automating its “trending” stories feature, a move that will scale back human input to prevent personal bias from influencing which stories get highlighted.

The social media giant will rely more heavily on an algorithm to operate the feature - which lists what news or events are hot topics - no longer requiring people to write descriptions, according to a Facebook blog post.

The feature prompted controversy earlier this year, with critics alleg-

ing that Facebook’s news curators were deliberately omitting stories from politically conservative outlets, allegations the company denied.

Facebook said relying more heavily on software will allow the feature to cover a wider scale, while lessening the risk that personal bias could manipulate the list of trending topics.

“We looked into these claims and found no evidence of systematic bias,” Facebook reiterated in its blog post Friday, but added that “making these changes to the product allows our team to make fewer individual decisions about topics.”

With the change, instead of seeing story summaries in the trending list, users will simply see topics and the number of people talking about them.

Letting a cursor hover over a topic will show “an automatically selected original news story with an excerpt pulled directly from the top article itself.”

Humans will still be involved in the process to ensure that topics are real-world news and not based on an internet trend like #lunch.

Facebook in May made changes aimed at keeping political bias out of its “trending” stories list even though

an internal investigation revealed no evidence that it was an issue.

“Our investigation has revealed no evidence of systematic political bias in the selection or prominence of stories included in the Trending Topics feature,” Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch said in a letter responding to a query from Republican US Senator John Thune, who chairs the commerce committee.

“In fact, our analysis indicated that the rates of approval of conservative and liberal topics are virtually identical in Trending Topics.”

Facebook updated terminology in its guidelines to be clearer and

gave reviewers refresher training that emphasized content decisions may not be based on politics or ideology, the letter said.

The review team became subject to more oversight and controls, and Facebook stop relying on lists of external websites and news outlets to assess the importance of topics in stories.

“We’ve built Facebook to be a platform for all ideas,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said on his social network page after a meeting at the company’s California headquarters to discuss the allegations about anti-conservative bias. l

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

EU offers vitamin pill to dying media patient n Fiona Maharg-Bravo

Brussels is offering a vitamin pill to a dying media patient. According to a draft proposal, the European Commission wants to give news publishers the right to seek compensation from search engines like Google that use their online content. The intention is laudable, but the idea has similarities with schemes that haven’t worked.

When a link and snippet on Google drives traffic to a news site, both the search engine and the media company ought to benefit. The Commission says that’s not necessarily so. Some 47 percent of users browse and read extracts without clicking on the link, which deprives news organisations of scarce advertising revenue. Smaller media outfits that are more reliant on search engines are hit hardest. The proposed remedy is to give news publishers rights over online extracts, a variant of those which film and record producers and broadcasters already enjoy. That would allow them to seek payment from

A woman hovers a mouse over the Google and European Union logos in Sarajevo REUTERS the likes of Google.

What would that achieve?

Bargaining power, initially. The Commission believes that giving news publishers a clear related right would increase legal certainty, making it easier to hammer out agreements with the likes of

Google covering the online use of newspaper content. It could lead to a 10% increase in revenue, news publishers estimate. Media groups might also be able to claim compensation where their snippets are used, if the host country says so.

The snag is that similar propos-

als in Germany and Spain haven’t worked too well. A Spanish copyright law passed in 2014 required every domestic publication to charge services like Google News for snippets from their publications. Google simply shut its news aggregator down. In Germany, publishers like Axel Springer decided against charging Google for a content license after removal from its news sites left them with almost 40% less traffic.

In sum, this new approach is logical, potentially helpful and probably impracticable. Publishers and Google are in an increasingly unequal fight. Being allowed to charge fees might work if every media outlet exercises its right to do so. But with 57% of their EU news traffic driven by social media, news aggregators and search engines, and competition among media groups fierce, taking a stand is easier said than done. l Fiona Maharg-Bravo is Breakingviews Madrid correspondent. The article was initially published at Reuters.

Global markets drift after Yellen speech n AFP, New York

European and US equities markets were split on Friday after US Fed chief Janet Yellen suggested interest rates could rise in the near-term.

In words carefully parsed by market watchers, Yellen said recent months had seen conditions in the US economy increasingly favor an increase in interest rates but she did not give a clear signal of timing.

The US Federal Reserve has suffered stinging criticism in recent months for a perceived lack of coherence in its public positions on

monetary policy, and markets had eagerly awaited her speech for some policy clarity.

But the reaction of traders on both sides of the Atlantic suggested that there remained many questions about the Yellen-led Federal Open Market Committee’s path of US monetary policy.

Major US indices were mixed, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing down 0.3%, the broader S&P 500 losing 0.2 but the tech-heavy Nasdaq rising 0.1%.

European stocks advanced marginally with London and Frankfurt

rising 0.3% and Paris gaining 0.8% by the close. Noting strong US job growth, Yellen said gradual increases in the Fed’s benchmark rate in the coming years should be expected.

“In light of the continued solid performance of the labor market and our outlook for economic activity and inflation, I believe the case for an increase in the federal funds rate has strengthened in recent months,” Yellen said.

Show us the money

Traders appeared to see her remarks as a mix of both hawkish and

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15

Business

dovish views.

Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors said US policymakers could easily be dissuaded from increasing rates if skies darkened.

“If we get a softer than expected jobs report or weaker consumption numbers or whatever... the committee could or will likely do nothing,” he said in a client note.

Speculation has grown that the bank could lift interest rates as early as next month, although most experts say that is unlikely and that December or February would be safer bets. l

No Brexit blues for German consumers n AFP, Frankfurt

There was little sign of Brexit uncertainty in a monthly survey of German consumers on Friday, with the public’s mood almost unchanged in August compared with July.

Market research company GfK’s headline consumer sentiment index fell slightly to 10 points in August, after a 10.1-point reading in July.

The score was slightly higher than expected by analysts surveyed by Factset, who had forecast a larger fall to 9.9 points.

Sentiment “developed positively overall, and apparently digested the Brexit shock well,” the pollsters wrote in a statement.

Consumers’ expectations for the whole economy were lower than in July.

GfK said the fall in that sub-index could partially be due to three violent attacks in Bavaria - two of them claimed by jihadist group Islamic State - that “could have caused slightly increased uncertainty.”

But the respondents’ expectations about their own income leapt upwards, rising to 58.3 points in August compared with July’s 49.7.

There was a smaller rise in consumers’ readiness to spend money.

Germans “are almost euphoric regarding their own financial situation,” the researchers wrote, with an appetite to buy “unbroken in the face of the Brexit decision and the danger of terrorism.

“Signals are all on green for consumption,” they went on, pointing to recent positive data on incomes, employment and inflation.

GfK expects a slight increase in the headline index for September, to 10.2%. l

CORPORATE NEWS

Standard Chartered Bank, Bangladesh has recently disbursed its first home loan to a non-resident Bangladeshi (NRB) customer, said a press release. The bank’s head of retail banking, Aditya Mandloi handed over a dummy cheque to Md Emran Hossain, a UK based non-resident Bangladeshi

Mutual Trust Bank Limited has recently opened its fifth agent banking centre at Kodimpara, Ishwardi in Pabna, said a press release. The bank’s MD and CEO, Anis A Khan inaugurated the centre as chief guest

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16

Career

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

| dress for success |

Paint by numbers Is there a “right” amount of make up for work? (Part II of III)

n Sabrina Fatma Ahmad “One challenge most young women face is choosing the right make-up for a corporate environment. Office makeup is all about looking polished and pulled-together," says American professional makeup artist Bobbi Brown.

Indeed, as we explored in last week’s column, it’s all too easy to go overboard, and the results can have a negative impact on your career. So is it worth the trouble of spending so much time and money to get done up for the workday?

Studies have shown that yes, if done right, makeup can help you get ahead "When it comes to work, stick to the 'less is more' approach.

A lot of women go to work sans make-up but glamour in the right proportion works great as it makes you look polished and confident," says celebrity make-up artist Uday Shirali.

So this week, we provide guidelines to nailing that boardroom look.

Eye on the money

If your work environment involves face-to-face interaction with

people, you really want to pay attention to your eyes, as you can bet there will be a lot of eyecontact.

Wearing concealer is important because it conceals blemishes and discoloration around the eye area so you look more awake.

For shadows and highlights, choose neutral colours that complement your skin tone and make your eyes pop. Stick to a single coat and avoid piling it on till it looks obvious.

Go easy on the mascara, and please don’t even consider wearing false eyelashes at work - unless your job is that of a television presenter.

Face the music

Again, unless you work in television, there really isn’t much need for a full face of foundation at work. Unless you have major discoloration and a bad breakout, usually a tinted moisturiser and sheer blush should carry you through the day.

Leave the extreme contouring for your hi-wattage dawats; contrary to what Kim Kardashian will have you believe, it is not a workday look. And unless your name is Snooki, do not fake bake

Ladies, if it shimmers, sparkles, or is bright enough to stop traffic, save it for the after-office hangouts

for work. Just don’t.

If you do want to get a little more definition on your face, opt for strobing and bust out the bronzer. Use matte formulations (sans sparkles of any kind) and blend like your life depends on it.

Lip service

The most professional pout is an understated one, so leave those frosty, sparkly shades at home. Invest in a subtle pink or nude, go easy on the gloss, and resist the temptation to overdraw your lips. This is a look that will serve you well on most days.

On days that you need a little extra, feel free to bust out that fierce red and let em have it, but save this in your arsenal for real emergencies. l

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Career

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

term improvement of your search rankings

Fill out your profiles

First of all, you need to fill up your profiles. Any information can be beneficial from time to time. So it is very important to fill all the fields every day.

Promote your content via social media

If you want greater search engine visibility, you must promote your contents. This is the best shortcut you can get, so utilise and organise the content you develop in the best way.

Social media can be a powerful tool for an industry that sells aspiration as well as products and services

Encourage shares

Use Social Media Marketing As Part Of Your SEO Strategy n Features Desk Social media is a channel where you can make so many new connections. You can connect with influencers who have a huge number of followers and also with

external publication who might publish your content as a guest post. If you are able to attract users within these two groupsyou can easily get a huge number of audiences and increase your influence. Social media campaign

can play a great role in improving your search rankings and let you earn more diversified SEO opportunities.

Here are few points to keep in mind while using your social media campaigns for the long

The content you publish need to have a higher potential for sharing.

You should encourage your users to share and they will only do so if they find your contents interesting enough. This will help you to get more social signals, inbound links and eventually more audience which will strengthen our future.

Engage with influencers

Last but not the least, you need to be creative and interact with celebrities and influencers. This will definitely increase your chance of increasing audience and brand visibility. Since they already got lots of followers, engaging with them will also bring you under their limelight.l

Protect Data And Ensure Business Stability While Storing Information In The Cloud n Features Desk Most organisations are in the process of embracing the cloud as a part of their data storage and protection strategy. Very soon a ‘no-cloud’ policy would be so unusual in the corporate culture.

Companies can benefit from lower storage costs, and save lots of time to manage underutilised infrastructure. Besides it will help professional to keep up with the changing needs of the business by quickening the IT system. Though there are infinite advantages, yet risks lie while moving data into the data. There could be failure and accidents in the cloud too.

There are quite some issues with the cloud. After the recent Amazon Web Services outage in Australia paralysing companies for hours, it is clear that cloud could be faulty. The consequences could

be very severe as companies are not allowed to access business critical data and applications.

Besides, the data stored in the cloud could become corrupted or compromised in a location because of certain human error.

This error could also be replicated in other locations. Furthermore, data could be accidentally deleted from the cloud.

Here are some tips for companies to protect data and ensure business stability building while storing information in the cloud.

• Regularly backup what technology stored in the cloud to minimise the risk of losing it forever.

• You can use snapshot technologies for application and data recoverability as they minimise the impact on uptime and performance.

• Encrypt the highly sensitive data before storing it in the cloud.

• Make sure there are tight control and visibility across the network infrastructure to secure the speed, promptness, and convenience necessary for data recovery.

• Your company can adopt a

single platform approach that offers a complete view across piles of on-and-off premise infrastructure. This will allow you to access and leverage data steadily across the organisation.

• Develop a roadmap of cloud adoption or update a corporate storage strategy and confidently leverage the cloud. l

Articles reprinted under special arrangement with SDAsia.com

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18

Biz Info

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

3 habits for a positive outlook Train your brain to be happier

n Sabrina Fatma Ahmad While it’s true that great achievements are brought forth by a combination of hard work and a little luck, what often gets ignored is that a positive attitude also plays a major role in how fulfilled or successful you feel about your accomplishments.

Your attitude towards life can shape all your decisions and actions and thus impact your life in a major way. This is why you’ll hear a lot of mentors and gurus telling you to develop the “right” (positive attitude).

Now, it might be hard to turn your feelings on and off like taps, but there are habits you can develop that can help you stay positive even when your circumstances aren’t. Here are three habits to develop.

Life will disappoint you. Be grateful anyway

There will be days when you wake

up feeling like the F.R.I.E.N.D.S theme song. Bills to pay, traffic to contend with, parents on your case, significant other being difficult, and social media right at hand to jack up your FOMO. It’s so easy to feel like a failure on such days. This is when practising gratitude can come handy. Make a habit of listing five things that you are grateful for every day.

When making this list, take a moment to appreciate little things other people do that make life easier; be it the office peon who always fills your water bottle before you come in, or the random good Samaritan who let you cut ahead in the queue at the supermarket. Noticing and appreciating the little moments of goodness can give you energy to cope with the big, bad things.

Sometimes you’ll feel hopeless. Keep the faith

Whatever your religion may be, or even if you don’t have one,

there’s something to be said for surrendering yourself to the inevitable. Accept the fact that what’s meant to happen will happen. Have a faith in yourself and continue to do the best you can. When the future looks bleak, focus on the present, and practise awareness of the present moment, which will help you stay calm and keep perspective.

Be kind, even when others aren’t

Dhaka is a rude, rude city. From the traffic policeman who beats down your rickshaw because he can, to the short-tempered vegetable vendor who snaps at you for trying to bargain, more often than not, people are ready to unleash their venom on you.

Instead of letting them get you down, kill them with kindness.

Greet the surly neighbour in your lift even if he won’t make eye contact with you. Thank your waiter with a smile even if he slams down the coffee in front of you.

This doesn’t mean you let people take you for a ride; simply, keep your cool and try not to let the behaviour of others force you to be rude. You’ll find them bending to your will soon enough. l

| event |

| appointment |

World Diamond Bridal Fair

NUBTK gets new VC

Hotel Westin and Narayanganj Club have started World Diamond Bridal Fair on August 26, 2016. Ribbon cutting of the World Diamond Bridal Fair was inaugurated by the FBCCI director and Diamond World Ltd managing director Dilip Kumar Agarwal. The fair will run until September 8. It is opened to all visitors, every day from 11am to 9pm. l

Honourable President of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and Chancellor Mr Md Abdul Hamid has recently appointed Dr Abu Yousuf Md Abdullah, renowned Professor of IBA in the University of Dhaka, as Vice Chancellor of Northern University Business and Technology Khulna for a consecutive four years.

Prof Abdullah is a well

known researcher and academician of International Business. He has published more than 25 articles in well recognised and peer reviewed national and international journals, and four books on international business.

He was a student of Jhenidah Cadet College. He completed his graduation from IBA in the University of Dhaka. He later attended Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland and University of Texas at Austin, US for his higher education. Very recently, he has earned his Post Doctoral Fellowship from the University of Malaysia Perlis.

Prof Abdullah is outstandingly contributing to the development of higher education in Bangladesh. He is also a benevolent founder and chief patron of various educational institutions like schools, colleges, universities and a medical college. l

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Biz Info

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

| event |

Bollywood stars take the runway A star-studded show kicked off Lakmé Fashion Week in Mumbai last night (August 24) with Etihad Airways presenting the celebrated Indian designer Manish Malhotra at the unveiling of his winter festive collection.

Famed for his lavish Bollywood costume designs, Malhotra’s stunning show featuring 75 models was attended by more than 400 guests who experienced an innovative adaptation of a traditional opening, Etihad Airways Presents Manish Malhotra, a showcase shot completely in virtual reality (VR), which is a first for an Indian designer. Etihad Airways’ signature boarding music featured in the finale of the show held in the courtyard of the ITC Grand Central hotel.

Bollywood movie stars Shraddha Kapoor and Sushant Singh Rajput walked the ramp at last night’s show wearing stunning outfits designed by Malhotra.

Guests included actresses Shilpa Shetty, Dia Mirza and

Sushmita Sen from India’s film capital, together with corporate executives and fashion media.

The influence of fashion spans a huge audience, from mass fashion consumers to the global fashion elite of designers, models, photographers and editors – all of whom Etihad Airways aims to convert into loyal customers.

Manish Malhotra said: “Lakmé Fashion Week is very special to me, as both my label and my association with the event turn 11 years old this year. Such an incredible milestone deserves to be celebrated in a truly unique manner, both with a fantastic partnership with Etihad Airways – and a first for the industry with a fashion show shot in virtual reality – two things I am very proud of.” l

| dining |

Ice cream and bread promotion at Le Meridien Dhaka To captivate the summer strike out with mouthwatering ice cream confections and to introduce a new selection of signature breads, Le Méridien Dhaka is offering Sweet Elevation, from September 1 to 7.

Over 18 flavours will be showcased at the hotel’s 24-hour lobby lounge Latitude 23, alongside seven new signature breads and an array of individual portioned cakes and pastries. Some of the ice cream flavours that will be available are: Chocolate, Rocha, Pistachio, Strawberry, Coconut, Peanut Butter, Blue Berry Yogurt,

Oreo, Butter Scotch, which are being offered at Tk300++ per scoop. Breads will be available at Tk500++ per 250 grams, while cakes and pastries will be offered starting from Tk400++ including waffles. Loftier pledge would be to allow guest to enjoy Buy One Get One Free (BOGO) offer.

Guests may learn more about the offer by contacting +8801990900900l

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20 Editorial

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

TODAY

Who was Tamim, really?

Religious leaders in Windsor say they asked Tamim not to engage with youth at the mosques, clearly worried that he was potentially radicalising them PAGE 21

A law for history In a recent media poll, almost 70% voted in favour of a proposed law to protect the genuine history of Bangladesh with punishment for belittling Bangabandhu or the 1971 Independence War PAGE 22

MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

Burkini ban is the culture war desired by extremists on both sides What Islamists want more than anything is to have a proper culture war between Islam and the West. And, as the events of the past few years have demonstrated, that is what the ultranationalist fringes of Europe want too 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.

Got him

H

ats off to our law enforcement agencies on another successful raid.

The killing of Gulshan attack mastermind Tamim Chowdhury as well as two other militants in a coordinated and precise operation is a major step towards rooting out militancy in the country.

The success of Operation Hit Strong 27, along with the July 26 raid on a Kallyanpur building, has shown that Bangladesh is taking the threat of terror very seriously, and our law enforcement agencies -- the counter-terrorism and transnational crime unit, RAB, and police -- are more than up to the challenging task of hitting back at terrorists.

This is tremendously reassuring for the public, and goes a long way toward restoring faith in our institutions.

Now, let us build on this success and truly put an end to terror and militancy in Bangladesh. As shown by Operation Hit Strong 27, we have the capability as well as the capacity to do so. All that is needed is the political will to take the battle to the terrorists.

It is a pity that Tamim, a Bangladeshi-Canadian, could not be captured alive, as it is possible that useful information could have been obtained from him.

However, there is good reason to believe there was no other recourse, and the shootout that ensued after law enforcement officials tried to enter the threestorey house necessitated the killing of Tamim and his two accomplices.

Outcomes of such raids are hardly ever perfect, but we have no reason to think more force was used than was needed in yesterday’s operation.

The entire nation was shaken after the horrific attack on Holey Artisan Bakery on July 1. Clinical and professional operations of this nature, then, are the need of the hour to root our terrorists from our society, and to ensure the safety of the public.Â

Let us build on this success and truly put an end to terror and militancy in Bangladesh

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21

Opinion

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

Who was Tamim, really?

There may have been early warning signs about Tamim’s militant inclinations

n Amarnath Amarasingam

“Y

ou must be kidding, bro,” a friend of mine from Windsor, Ontario, tells me when I ask him about Tamim Chowdhury, the purported leader of IS in Bangladesh. “He was a quiet guy.

Definitely religious. But a leader?

I don’t think so.” He was not the first to express surprise when I asked around about Tamim. He did not seem to have made an impression on the people he met.

Or so I thought.

The name Tamim Chowdhury first came on my radar in early 2015 when I was doing interviews with friends of another Windsor jihadi who had gone off to fight in Syria: Ahmad Waseem, known as Abu Turab, who was killed in March 2015 in Tal Hamis. Tamim’s name was floating around as someone who may have also left for Syria. I jotted down his name.

Some months later, I spoke to another friend of Waseem’s, and remembered to also ask about Tamim. He seemed a little surprised, and remarked that Tamim, facing harassment from law enforcement in Canada, had decided to simply move back to his home country of Bangladesh.

Nothing to worry about, he said. I was sceptical.

The next time I saw his name appear, it became clear that Tamim was indeed important. A colleague of mine, who asked to be anonymous, pointed me to the IS Study Group website (which as of this writing has gone offline) where Tamim was mentioned as one of the leaders of IS in Bangladesh.

A few months later, Zayadul Ahsan published an article in The Daily Star further cementing this theory. I started asking questions again, trying to find more people who may have known him in Windsor, and asking several jihadi fighters that I was in contact with in Syria. One of these fighters would provide a clue.

Connecting the dots

One of the most famous blogs amongst journalists and analysts of Canadian foreign fighters is called “Beneath which rivers flow.”

It was an important blog, because it contained biographical details of two jihadis who had left from Calgary to fight, and eventually die, in Syria: Damian Clairmont and Salman Ashrafi.

All the posts about Damian are signed by an individual calling

What drove Tamim to become a murderer?

COURTESY OF DMP

Another source claims he saw Tamim hanging around the University of Calgary in 2013. This is further complicated by the fact that religious leaders in Windsor say they asked Tamim not to engage with youth at the mosques, clearly worried that he was potentially radicalising them

himself “Abu Dujana al-Muhajir.”

According to some individuals I interviewed, this blog was “owned” by Ahmad Waseem.

In a casual conversation about who this “Abu Dujana” might be with a Canadian fighter in Syria, he remarked: “I don’t know his real name, but he is of Bangladesh background and was from the 519 [area code for Windsor] area.” It seemed pretty clear that he was talking about Tamim Chowdhury. I realised that I was perhaps looking for Chowdhury in all the wrong places.

I had seen no evidence at the time that Tamim ever went to Calgary. But, if Tamim was Abu Dujana, the individual who wrote glowing eulogies of Calgary jihadi fighters, then he had to have spent time there. If this was true, our notion of the “Calgary cluster” of fighters just got more interesting.

As I wrote on Jihadology. net last year, one of the first clusters that the Canadian public became aware of was in Calgary.

The Calgary cluster consisted of Damian Clairmont, Salman Ashrafi, Gregory and Collin Gordon, Farah Shirdon, and a few others. While they were friends, their biographical details are quite varied.

In interviews with their friends in Calgary, it initially seemed

evident that Clairmont was the dominant personality, and influenced many of the other young men. Clairmont would leave Calgary in late 2012 as well. He fought with the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat Al-Nusra, and was captured and killed by the Free Syrian Army in January 2014.

However, this image of the Calgary cluster is starting to change.

What we know so far

As I searched for more information on Tamim, on the night of July 1, 2016, five militants stormed Holey Artisan Bakery, took hostages, and eventually hacked 24 people to death. If Tamim was the head of IS in Bangladesh, he was clearly behind this attack.

Indeed, Bangladeshi police admitted in late July that Tamim was the mastermind. The fact that a Canadian was orchestrating attacks in Bangladesh has likely also led to some intelligence sharing between the two countries.

Once the trail led to Calgary, I started reaching out to friends there for more information about Tamim. The Bangladeshi media had produced two photos of Tamim, which I promptly sent to them. They confirmed that it was the same Tamim they remembered

seeing in Calgary. Then things got interesting, and several details started falling into place: He was born on July 25, 1986.

It is not clear yet if he was born in Canada or Bangladesh (probably the latter), but he is indeed a Canadian citizen.

He likely attended JL Forster Secondary School in Windsor.

He competed for the school in a variety of track and field activities in 2004.

He graduated from the University of Windsor in Spring 2011, with an honours in chemistry, but probably majored/ minored in other fields as well.

Some time after graduating from Windsor, he traveled to Calgary. It is unclear whether he moved to Calgary, or simply traveled back and forth several times.

The latter seems more likely, since those I spoke with in Calgary only remember him intermittently.

He seems to have stayed lowkey perhaps, and did not mix too closely with the Muslim community there.

One source says he remembers Tamim hanging out with Damian Clairmont at the 8th and 8th musallah, where Damian, Salman Ashrafi, Collin and Gregory Gordon, another individual named Waseem, and a few others held

a private study circle. According to friends of theirs, Damian was likely the one who took a leadership role over the group, but it could be that Tamim was equally influential.

The same source says that Tamim almost certainly went to Syria, either directly from Calgary or from Windsor, “probably” in late 2012. Another source claims he saw Tamim hanging around the University of Calgary in 2013.

This is further complicated by the fact that religious leaders in Windsor say they asked Tamim not to engage with youth at the mosques, clearly worried that he was potentially radicalising them.

This was possibly some time in 2013 as well. As such, details on when exactly he traveled to Syria are still murky.

From Syria, Tamim likely found his way to Bangladesh, perhaps even on direct orders from IS leadership. However, it is not clear when he landed in Bangladesh.

One could venture an educated guess that the speed at which he took over IS in Bangladesh necessitated that he had some kind of “evidence” from IS central to “show” potential recruits.

Dabiq 14 features an interview with the “Amir of the Khilafah’s Soldiers in Bengal,” named as Shaykh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif.

Nowhere in the interview is there mention of Canada, Calgary, Windsor, or Tamim, but, again, one could venture an educated guess that it is the same person. l Amarnath Amarasingam is a Fellow at The George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, and co-directs a study of western foreign fighters at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. A version of this article previously appeared on jihadology.net.

22

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Opinion

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

A law for history The distortion of history is a crime

The genocide carried out by the Pakistan army was real

n Nadeem Qadir

W

ars are always fought, regardless of what they are waged over. There are victors and there are losers. And those who fight in wars want to, at times, to record history in their favour.

Bangladesh has been a victim of a distorted history ever since the brutal assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975.

In a recent media poll, almost 70% voted in favour of a proposed law to protect the genuine history of Bangladesh with punishment for belittling Bangabandhu or the 1971 Independence War. The BNP-Jamaat political alliance resorted to widespread distortion of history and adding flase stories in favour of its leader General Ziaur Rahman, including his supposed proclamation of our nation’s independence.

In a recent visit to Spain, my hosts told me that Spain has been rid of political turmoil and that some kind of calm now prevails, mainly becuase of pressure from the Europeon Union. The other issue has been a debate on history between the past dictator and present.

The Law of Historic Memory condemns Franco’s actions during the civil war between 1936 and 1939 and his 40-year dictatorship.

Francisco Franco came to power in 1939 following the Spanish Civil War and ruled as a dictator until his death in 1975.

The Spanish transition to democracy refers to the restoration of democracy in Spain after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975.

The transition began shortly after Franco’s death. For the first time in 70 years, after the end of the civil war, Spain has finally made an effort to recognise its authoritarian past, in a bill that condemns Francisco Franco’s dictatorship

MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

In a recent media poll, almost 70% voted in favour of a proposed law to protect the genuine history of Bangladesh with punishment for belittling Bangabandhu or the 1971 Independence War and honours his victims.

I will just venture into two major distortions in Bangladesh’s history: Ziaur Rahman stopped referring to Bangabandhu as the Father of the Nation either because he was the direct beneficiery of the 1975 coup, or he was, as many people allege, involved in that coup.

They wanted to wipe out Bangabandhu in all possible manner, even resorting to lies.

My father, an army officer in active service, met Bangabadhu in 1969 to pledge his allegiance to the great leader fighting for an independent Bangladesh.

Ziaur Rahman was nowhere in sight, serving as a captain in the Pakistan Army.

If my martyred father could have recahed Kalurghat radio station as planned, Ziaur Rahman would not have read that as my father was seven years senior to him in the military rank. Ruling Awami League MP, retired major Rafiqul Islam, Bir Uttam, can vouch for me.

Major Rafique was my father’s closest associate ahead of the war, and knows many things about him.

There are many other attemps to distort history, including

the number of people killed in the genocide carried out by the Pakistani army.

Those who try to distort this history are Pakistani puppets, or they have not seen Bangladesh painted red during 1971 with the blood of Bengalis.

I have seen, and I will never forget. Let this law take effect quickly with harsh punishments for those resorting to distortion. l Nadeem Qadir, a senior journalist, is a UNCA Dag Hammarskjold Scholar in journalism. He is the Press Minister of Bangladesh High Commission in London.

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23

Opinion

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

Burkini ban is the culture war desired by extremists on both sides Thankfully, good sense has prevailed in the French courts

The burkini ban feeds Islamist propaganda

n Azeem Ibrahim

T

he latest Islam-related hysteria in Europe is the ban on burkinis in several cities in France.

Extremists, both of the European white-supremacist kind and of the Islamist kind, are rubbing their hands together in glee.

Ordinary Muslims in European societies are made to feel that much less welcome because of their religion.

Meanwhile, most of the rest of are thinking: “Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t we have bigger problems on our plate?”

The justification given by the French mayors who have instituted these bans in their cities is that overtly religious clothing can be seen as provocative in the wake of the many Islamist attacks in the country. And perhaps there is something to that.

Given that the Front National and other French nationalist extremist groups are riding high in the country’s political sphere these days, these people may feel “provoked” into assaulting those who are visibly Muslim. There is a public order concern here.

But it is baffling that the conclusion that these French

REUTERS

politicians, of the left as well as of the right, have arrived at is that therefore the police should be involved in the public

A disappointment

This is rather disappointing coming from a country like France, in particular. This kind of reactionary

ever appealed to those Muslims who already found themselves on the margins of society for other reasons in the West or to those

What the Islamists want more than anything is to have a proper culture war between Islam and the West. And, as the events of the past few years have demonstrated, that is what the racist, ultra-nationalist fringes of Europe want too

humiliation of Muslim women.

This is the perverted logic of blaming the victim. Somehow it is obvious to us that a woman who dresses in a certain way on a night out was not “asking for it” from any rapist who happens to be walking along.

But at the same time, we have no problem with the notion that Muslims being visibly Muslim in public “are asking for it.”

Surely the public order threat comes from the extremists who would feel “provoked” by people just being Muslim, rather than the people who just happen to practice a certain religion.

nonsense would perhaps not be all that surprising in the less than liberal Eastern Europe or southern United States. But France, on top of its tradition for secular republicanism, holds itself up as a shining light of liberalism. Yet this is profoundly illiberal.

And more than illiberal, it is incredibly dangerous. For decades, the fundamental argument put forward by Islamist radicals has been that Islam is incompatible with Western culture, and that the West is waging a culture war against good Islamic values.

For most of that period, that was patent nonsense that only

who found themselves at the receiving end of poorly executed Western foreign policy in the Middle East.

Yet what the Islamists want more than anything is to have a proper culture war between Islam and the West. And, as the events of the past few years have demonstrated, that is what the racist, ultra-nationalist fringes of Europe want too. In both cases, such a culture war would legitimise their respective world views and prejudices.

What we have with the burkini ban is a move into the mainstream of politics of just this kind of

culture war: “Are you a Muslim?

Then be aware that your culture is not welcome in our country. Your burkini is not ‘an outfit respecting good morals and secularism’.”

What these moves do is legitimise the very “Us vs Them” world-view which feeds extremism of both kinds. This drives ever more Muslims toward the conclusion that Islamist propaganda may have been right all along: Maybe the West does hate Muslims simply for being Muslims after all.

Thankfully, French courts have so far demonstrated that they still have their heads properly screwed on their shoulders, unlike some of the pandering local and national politicians. In one test case involving the ban in the city of Villeneuve-Loubet, the ban on the burkinis imposed by the mayor was overturned by the country’s high administrative court. But as things stand now, it looks like this political fight will continue for some time. Here’s to hoping that the voice of reason will prevail. l Azeem Ibrahim is an RAI Fellow at Mansfield College, University of Oxford and Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College.

He tweets @AzeemIbrahim. This article first appeared on Al-Arabiya.

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Board thanks ECB, Clarke

TOP STORIES

n Tribune Report Tigers likely to host Afghanistan Bangladesh, before taking on England in a bilateral home series, is likely to host Afghanistan for an ODI series. BCB’s cricket operations chairman Akram Khan informed that the exact dates are yet to be finalised. PAGE 25

Klopp disappointed as Liverpool haunted Juergen Klopp was again left to rue Liverpool’s profligacy in front of goal after their 1-1 Premier League draw with Tottenham yesterday as familiar failings prevented the visitors from taking all three points. PAGE 26

Manik all set for Sheikh Russel post Experienced coach Shafiqul Islam Manik is set to take charge of struggling Bangladesh Premier League outfit Sheikh Russel Krira Chakra after Maruful Haque resigned from his post on Friday. PAGE 27

Goal-filled group stage ends We couldn’t have asked for a better start to the day than watching Galaxy Group and Aarong Dairy for a do or die battle. One can say they both left with their heads held high as the score was locked at four-each at the end of regulation time. PAGE 28

Bangladesh midfielder Mousumi Jahan in full flow during their AFC U-16 Women’s Championship Qualifiers match against Iran at Bangabandhu National Stadium yesterday MAINOOR ISLAM MANIK

Iran outclassed n Tribune Report

Bangladesh kicked off their Asian Football Confederation Under-16 Women’s Championship 2017 Qualifiers with a spectacular 3-0 victory over favourites Iran on the inaugural day at Bangabandhu National Stadium yesterday.

The home side thoroughly dominated the opening half but were unlucky to see the scoreline goalless. However, they came back strong after resumption as Marzia Khatun, Mousumi Jahan and Tohura Khatun netted one apiece to earn Bangladesh vital three points.

Iran are considered one of the favourites in the six-nation Group C Qualifiers and beating the Persian outfit will provide the Bengal girls more confidence in their historic bid to ensure qualification for the final round in Thailand 2017.

Bangladesh faced Iran in the same event two years ago where they lost 2-1 but yesterday’s match showed how much the girls in red and green have improved. The result tells little about the actual dominance of the Bangladesh girls.

The home side could have scored at least three goals in the opening half as the first real chance came with only two minutes into the clock. Forward Sirat Jahan Shopna squandered a great opportunity to take the lead as

she skipped past the onrushing Iran goalkeeper Maedeh Davaji only to shoot wide.

Seven minutes later, Maria Manda hit the woodwork from the edge of the box after Marzia’s free-kick from 20 yards out rebounded off the wall.

The hosts almost took the lead in the 18th minute when Maria’s close-range shot was denied by a

WHAT THEY SAID GOLAM RABBANI CHOTON Bangladesh head coach

We won against a strong team but we proved [yesterday] what our girls are capable of and how much women’s football in Bangladesh has developed. They dominated the game from the beginning to the end and could have scored three-four goals in the first half.

We created more pressure in the second half and got the result.

SHADI MAHINI Iran head coach

Very hard game. This Bangladesh team are much better than two years ago. They worked very hard, played better. We knew that but didn’t expect such display before the game. This team are a great team. They are definitely one of the favourites.

lovely effort of the Iranian custodian following a Marzia free-kick.

Bangladesh exhibited great energy and spirit after resumption and came back strong to heap more pressure upon the opponents. Two minutes into the second half, Davaji produced a brilliant save to deny Maria’s strike from the middle of the box after collecting the ball from Mousumi.

Shopna shot over the bar just three minutes later.

Marzia gave Bangladesh the much-deserved lead in the 63rd minute. A long ball from Maria was blocked by Iran defender Hanieh Khodaparasti and Marzia shot on the rebound, finally beating the keeper. Mousumi doubled the lead three minutes later with a lovely shot from the right side of the box after Sanjida Akhter set her up with a pass.

Tohura, who was the highest scorer in Bangladesh’s title-winning campaign in the AFC U-14 Girls’ Regional (South and Central) Championship in May this year with 10 goals from four matches, came off the bench in the second half and sealed victory in the 86th minute.

Meanwhile in the day’s other matches at the same venue, Chinese Taipei began their campaign with a convincing 7-1 victory over Kyrgyzstan while the United Arab Emirates and Singapore played out a 2-2 draw. l

Bangladesh Cricket Board has thanked the England and Wales Cricket Board and its president Giles Clark for the positive feedback regarding its scheduled bilateral away series against Bangladesh.

England’s tour of Bangladesh, comprising two Tests and three one-day internationals, fell into jeopardy following the terrorist attack in Dhaka in July this year.

The ECB earlier this month sent a three-member delegation to assess the venues and security arrangement in Bangladesh. Having gone through the assessment, the ECB on Friday confirmed its visit putting aside all speculation.

“We would like to thank the ECB, especially its president Giles Clarke, for giving out a positive decision on the tour. As of now, the tour is on schedule and we are expecting the England side to reach Dhaka in September,” said BCB’s chief executive officer Nizamuddin Chowdhury yesterday.

Meanwhile, the appointment of the national bowling coach will be made soon. According to Nizamuddin, the latest member of the Tigers’ coaching staff is likely to join

by Friday or Saturday. l

ICC to instigate match officials’ security n Tribune Report

The International Cricket Council chief executive officer David Richardson said the organisation will instigate its own security investigations to ensure confidence of the safety of its match officials for the bilateral series between Bangladesh and England.

The ICC CEO made the statement through a media release yesterday. Richardson in the press release welcomed the England and Wales Cricket Board’s decision to go ahead with the tour following the assessment of arrangements in Bangladesh.

“Where those threats are considered higher, cricket, like other sports, undertakes extensive security assessments in determining whether or not matches can go ahead. Under the expert guidance of Reg Dickason, England have concluded that it is safe to tour Bangladesh. We welcome this decision understanding the extent of the intelligence behind it where the safety of players and staff is of utmost importance,” said Richardson in the press release.l

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Tigers likely to host Afghans before England n Tribune Report

Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib al Hasan zooms in on a delivery during training at Mirpur’s Sher-eBangla National Stadium yesterday MAINOOR ISLAM MANIK

Bangladesh, before taking on England in a bilateral home series, is likely to host Afghanistan for an ODI series.

Bangladesh Cricket Board’s cricket operations committee chairman Akram Khan informed that the exact dates are yet to be finalised with the Afghanistan Cricket Board and that the two boards are currently in discussion.

The ongoing discussion with the ACB was initiated by the BCB in its effort to organise an ODI series at home before England’s arrival. The English side is scheduled to reach Dhaka on September 30

for three ODIs and two Test matches. The ODI series will begin on October 7.

The BCB is also in talks with one other team, apart from Afghanistan, for the home series.

“We are still in discussion with the needed personnel (and boards) but we cannot confirm anything at the moment. I hope we will be able to reach a conclusion soon and it will be informed accordingly,” said Akram.

Meanwhile, ACB media manager Aziz Gharwal confirmed that they are in talks with the BCB. “We are in talks with the BCB to play the series next

Iconic Francesco Totti, the one club man n Ali Shahriyar Bappa The transfer market in European football has gone crazy in the last decade. Prices of players have gone way too high these years. Lucrative salary offers often lure players from one big club to another. There is hardly any footballer these days who remain loyal and turn down humongous offers to join their rivals. When the word loyalty is uttered, one name will certainly come to mind and that is Francesco Totti – the one-club man.

The legendary attacking midfielder, fondly referred to as the “King of Rome” by fans, had chances to join many great clubs in his golden days but he stayed at AS Roma and served the club for many years. Winning trophies is an important part of any player’s career, but for Totti the greatest significance lies in the method and the meaning, not the triumph. Big clubs like Manchester United, Real

Madrid and Barcelona all tried to tempt him many times away from Rome. But the King of Rome stayed at Roma. For Totti, playing at Stadio Olimpico with passion and love for the club and for the supporters is much more worthy than winning trophies elsewhere.

Totti has spent his entire senior career with Roma, where even the most seemingly loyal footballers regularly change clubs in these years when offered a slightly better wage.

Totti is not only the captain of Roma, but also a talismanic symbol of the club.

Born and bred in the Eternal City, Totti supported Roma as a boy and joined the club’s youth team in 1989. He made his Serie A debut at the age of 16 in 1993. His rapid development encouraged coach Zdeněk Zeman to give him the club captaincy in 1997 at the age of 20. He scored 30 goals over the next three seasons, winning his first senior cap for the Azzurris in October 1998 and helping Italy to a runners-up spot at Uefa Euro 2000, where he was the man-of-the-match in the final against France.

Totti formed a brilliant attacking partnership with Argentine great

Gabriel Batistuta and led Roma to the Scudetto in 2000/01 under coach Fabio Capello. He was adjudged Italy’s footballer of the year in 2000 and 2003.

However, he had disappointing experiences with Italy at the 2002 FIFA World Cup and Uefa Euro 2004. But he returned from serious injury to help Italy win the 2006 World Cup in Germany, playing in all seven matches and scoring one goal – a last-minute winning penalty against Australia in the round of 16. The World Cup final proved to be his last match for Italy, his international career concluding with 58 caps and nine goals.

Totti played in various positions throughout his career - striker, winger, playmaker, false nine, attacking midfielder, trequartista or second-striker. Using his exquisite vision to pick them out with the wonderful range of passing that has always been his main strength, at times it felt as if Totti was playing the Roman gladiator he has tattooed on his right shoulder.

So far Totti has scored 304 goals in 758 appearances in all competitions for Roma. He scored his 211th Serie A goal in January 2012 to break Gunnar Nordahl’s 50-year long re-

cord of highest scorer with a single club in the history of the Italian league. He also holds the record of oldest goalscorer in Uefa Champions league history when he scored against Manchester City in 2014.

Totti spoke passionately about remaining a one-club man during an interview recently.

“Maybe that’s the difference between me and everybody else.

There aren’t many athletes who follow their hearts. They choose to go somewhere to win more and earn more money. They’re like gypsies.

If I thought only about the money and the finances, I would have changed teams 10 years ago. I’d earn more in respect to what I make now with Roma. For me it’s another choice, one of passion, not money.

I’ve always loved these colours and I’ve always desired to wear only this jersey. For me, this is an ideal marriage.”

This 2016-17 campaign will be his final playing season for Roma.

But his legacy will remain. The word Totti means bags of goals, wonderful skills, brilliant assists, passionate celebrations with fans and class that will forever remain in the Roma fans’ hearts and in football history. l

month but we are yet to sign the Memorandum of Understanding. We haven’t yet set dates for the matches but we will soon publish them on our website” said Gharwal.

If finalised, it will be the first ODI series between Bangladesh and Afghanistan and the Tigers’ first 50-over match since last November.

This year Bangladesh have only played six Twenty20 internationals when they appeared in the 2016 World T20 in India four months ago.

Bangladesh and Afghanistan have met thrice in international cricket, twice in ODIs and once in the T20 format. l

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‘Bilbao one of hardest away games for Barca’ n Reuters, Barcelona Barcelona coach Luis Enrique is expecting another gruelling game at Athletic Bilbao when the La Liga champions visit San Mames today.

Barca scrapped a 1-0 win in the fixture last season thanks to a second-half strike from Luis Suarez after Lionel Messi missed a penalty.

The Catalans were also thrashed 4-0 at San Mames in the Spanish Super Cup, the only domestic competition they failed to win last season.

Athletic only field players who were born in or brought up in the Basque Country but finished fifth in La Liga last season, missing out on Champions League football by two points and reaching the Europa League quarter-finals.

Although Barca won four of six meetings with Athletic last term, winning both legs of their King’s Cup quarter-final tie as well as both league games, Enrique is prepared for another testing game against Ernesto Valverde’s side.

“It is one of the most difficult games you can play away from home,” Enrique told a news conference yesterday.

“The fact Athletic have a limited market to choose from, and the fact they have the same coach, means it will be the same as always.

“We are excited to play at San Mames, a stadium we love with an atmosphere you get at few other grounds in the league,” the coach added.

“We’ll focus on the problems Valverde will cause us, pressuring us when we’re on the ball and giving us problems on the counter.” l

Tottenham Hotspur’s English left-back Danny Rose (L) scores their first goal against Liverpool in the English Premier League at White Hart Lane yesterday

REUTERS

Klopp dejected as Reds haunted by failings n Reuters

Juergen Klopp was again left to rue Liverpool’s profligacy in front of goal after their 1-1 Premier League draw with Tottenham Hotspur yesterday as familiar failings prevented the visitors from taking all three points.

Liverpool rediscovered the attacking menace they showed in their opening 4-3 victory over Arsenal but which deserted them during last weekend’s toothless

showing against Burnley.

The visitors’ relentless pressing and fluid movement led to Erik Lamela fouling Roberto Firmino in the box before James Milner stepped up to slam his penalty past Michel Vorm and give the visitors the lead.

“When you take a point at Tottenham for 99 per cent of teams it would be a good thing but today we saw the game different,” Klopp told Sky Sports. “We played a very good away game against a very strong

side.”

However, Liverpool were also profligate in attack, with Philippe Coutinho denied by Michel Vorm from close range and Sadio Mane twice thwarted by the Dutch goalkeeper during a one-sided first half.

“We must be more clinical,” Klopp added. “It’s not a game you win four or five. It’s difficult to create one chance, we had a few.

“We played football and defended really good,” Klopp said.

“It doesn’t feel too brilliant at the

Lewandowski treble as sixgoal Bayern rout Werder n Reuters, Munich

Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski celebrates after scoring the second goal against Werder Bremen in the Bundesliga at Allianz Arena on Friday REUTERS

Robert Lewandowski’s hat-trick helped give coach Carlo Ancelotti a flying start to his first Bundesliga campaign as Bayern Munich cruised to an easy 6-0 win over Werder Bremen at the Allianz Arena on Friday.

The champions went ahead with a stunning ninth-minute volley from Xabi Alonso before Poland striker Lewandowski opened his account four minutes later from a Franck Ribery through ball.

Lewandowski then effectively put the game beyond Werder’s reach one minute into the second half.

Captain Philipp Lahm and Ribery made it 5-0 before Lewandowski completed his treble

with a 77th-minute penalty, his second hat-trick of the season after he also bagged one in the German Cup last week.

Italian Ancelotti, who replaced new Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola at Bayern in the close season, said before the game that the Bavarians were aiming to win every competition this term.

Alonso opened the scoring against an outclassed Werder team when the Spanish midfielder was given time to control the ball before smashing it into the top corner of the net from 20 metres.

Ribery then cut the Werder defence wide open to set up Lewandowski’s first goal of the night.

Better finishing could have given the Pole his hat-trick before halftime. l

moment.”

Danny Rose struck a late equaliser after the kind of familiar defensive error which cost them dearly last season as Milner’s misjudged interception let Eric Dier in to cross.

“It was our first real mistake and it was a goal so that is not really fair,” Klopp added. “We showed we can be good.

“We were flexible in defending.

Wish we would have won it, but we have to accept a point.” l

China Fortune name Pellegrini as manager n Reuters Chinese Super League club Hebei China Fortune have appointed former Manchester City coach Manuel Pellegrini as their new manager, Chinese and British media reported yesterday.

Pellegrini guided City to their first Champions League semi-final last season, but announced in February that he would leave the Etihad Stadium on June 30. The Premier League club immediately named former Barcelona boss Pep Guardiola as his successor.

The 62-year-old Chilean joins big-name coaches Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson of Shanghai SIPG and Guangzhou Evergrande’s Brazilian Luis Felipe Scolari in China.l

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De Kock topscores as SA batsmen flourish n Reuters, Pretoria

QUICK BYTES Mayeda wins gold in National Shooting Mayeda Momtahina stunned her senior competitors by winning the gold medal in the women’s 10metre air rifle event in the 28th National Shooting Championship, beating Narayanganj Rifle Club’s Sharmin Akter yesterday. She scored 203.0 in the final round, .80 clear of Sharmin.

Mayeda was supposed to take part in the junior level but her coach Sabrina Sultana sent her in the senior event instead just before the competition.

And she surprised all by beating the experienced Sharmin in the final round to win the gold. Suraiya Akter of Narayanganj RC managed the bronze medal.

Quinton de Kock top scored as all South Africa’s batsmen got among the runs in a score of 283 for three on the first day of the second Test against New Zealand at Centurion yesterday.

De Kock showed sparkling strokeplay in a brisk 82 as he and Stephen Cook became the first opening pair to feature in a 100-run partnership for South Africa since December 2013.

Cook scored 56, Hashim Amla 58 and JP Duminy was 67 not out at the close along with captain Faf du Plessis (13). De Kock had been sent up the batting order after Dean Elgar suffered a freak ankle injury on the eve of the Test, and he punished the loose balls as he cracked 10 fours on his way to 50. l

–TRIBUNE REPORT

Qatar Football Association backs official Qatar’s Football Association said yesterday it fully backed its vice president, Saoud Al-Mohannadi, a day after a FIFA investigator recommended he be banned from the game for at least 2 1/2 years over allegations of non-cooperation with an inquiry. A FIFA statement did not detail what the inquiry concerned.

–REUTERS

DAY’S WATCH FOOTBALL STAR SPORTS 4 English Premier League 6:20PM West Brom v Middlesbrough 9:00PM Manchester City v West Ham

SONY SIX Spanish La Liga 10:15PM Las Palmas v Granada 12:15AM Athletic Bilbao v FC Barcelona

SONY ESPN Italian Serie A 9:00PM Inter Milan v Palermo 12:30AM Cagliari v Roma

TEN 2 12:35AM Monaco v Paris Saint-Germain

CRICKET TEN 3 3:00PM Australia Tour of Sri Lanka 3rd ODI

TEN 2 2:00PM New Zealand Tour of South Africa 2nd Test, Day 2

STAR SPORTS 1 8:00PM India Tour of West Indies 2nd T20

2ND TEST, DAY ONE New Zealand’s Doug Bracewell unsuccessfully appeals for the LBW against South Africa’s Jean-Paul Duminy on the first day of their second Test at Centurion Park in Pretoria, South Africa yesterday AP

BHF in quandary over Kurtz n Tribune Report

Former Germany international Oliver Kurtz was scheduled to land in Dhaka yesterday night to sit for an interview with Bangladesh Hockey Federation for the post of national team head coach.

The hockey federation has been in search for a coach for a long time now and after South African coach Giles Bonnet rejected the offer ow-

ing to security reasons, it asked the German Olympian to visit the capital city.

Kurtz, who was the Bangladesh assistant coach from 2009-10, is likely to sit with the BHF today but the German, a convicted drug addict, doesn’t have the finest of records off the field, which the hockey federation was previously unaware of.

Kurtz was a member of the

gold-medal winning German team in the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992 but was found positive after a dope test in 1995 during the pre-Olympic qualifiers for Atlanta 1996. He was suspended for two years for taking cocaine.

The German also has a poor record in his recent coaching career as he was sacked from the post of the Oman hockey team due to below-par displays. l

Balotelli still has time to change, says Verratti n AFP, Milan Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Marco Verratti believes Italy outcast and former Serie A bad boy Mario Balotelli can fight his way back into the national squad, if he changes his mental approach.

Controversial striker Balotelli has not played for Italy since their first-round exit from the 2014 World Cup and is facing an uncertain future after being told to leave Liverpool by Reds’ boss Jurgen Klopp.

But PSG and Italy star Verratti believes 26-year-old Balotelli, who has recently been linked with a move to Serie A side Palermo as well as Ligue 1 side Nice, still has time to turn his career around.

“He’s one of the greatest strikers I’ve ever played with. He’s physically strong and in front of goal he rarely misses,” Verratti said in comments reported by Mediaset Premium.

“His problem is his head. I hope the chance comes for him to turn things around. He’s a great guy. In football you can’t afford to think on an individual level, you have to think of the collective.

“He’s still young, he has plenty of time to change.”

Verratti is set to play for Italy in a friendly against France next week in what will be his first Azzurri outing since their qualifying campaign for Euro 2016.

Verratti, 23, missed the tournament itself after being forced to undergo a hernia operation in May.l

SOUTH AFRICA 283/3 (De Kock 82, Duminy 67*, Amla 58) v NEW ZEALAND (TOSS)

Manik all set for Sheikh Russel post n Tribune Report Veteran coach Shafiqul Islam Manik is set to take charge of struggling Bangladesh Premier League outfit Sheikh Russel Krira Chakra after Maruful Haque resigned from his post on Friday.

Sheikh Russel owner and officials have been in touch with Manik in the last couple of weeks as the club have been stuttering in the top-flight from the beginning of this season.

Out of six rounds played so far in the premier league, Sheikh Russel have experienced their worst start in history, losing five matches, drawing one and winning none under the guidance of Maruful.

They also failed to perform upto expectations in the Independence Cup and Federation Cup while in the Asian Football Confederation Cup Qualifiers in Bhutan, they lost one and drew the other game to crash out of the event.

Maruful, who guided Sheikh Russel to the treble in the 2012-13 season, had nothing to say following his team’s recent performances.

“I can say I failed. I couldn’t motivate my team. The team failed to perform upto their ability. As a coach I have to take responsibility,” said the former Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club and national team coach.l

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11TH ASCENT CUP

Goal-filled group stage ends Quddus and n Arsalan Syed Shabab

back from a goal down to beat their opponents 5-2 at the final whistle.

Striker Munir delivered a hattrick while Jasim and Palash also scored.

This puts them in a precarious position to win their group. With their director present in the stands, Rahimafrooz decided to put on a spirited performance.

AARONG DAIRY 4 4 GALAXY GROUP

We couldn’t have asked for a better start to the day than watching Galaxy Group and Aarong Dairy for a do or die battle. One can say they both left with their heads held high as the score was locked at foureach at the end of regulation time.

It was good to see whipping boys Galaxy Group put in four goals past the Aarong Dairy goalkeeper for a change. Similarly, Aarong Dairy also milked the occasion after they put in the same. Bravo to both the teams. Top-scorer for Aarong was Salahuddin with two and Molla did the same from the other end.

JAAGO 0 8 QUBEE

Qubee knew going into this match needing seven goals to Group H after having watched the match between Securex and Rahimafrooz.

Just in case anybody needed to know, they scored eight for good measure putting them in the driving seat for the next round. Let us not take anything away from Jaago who has been an absolute inspiration for all the teams in this year’s Ascent Cup as they showed what true sportsmanship is all about.

COMFIT 12 1 SWISS CONTACT

Comfit put in the first cricketing score of the day as they whitewashed Swiss Contact to a 12-1 lashing. Star striker Asgar scored an impressive five goals while Raju also scored a hattrick for the garment giants. Swiss Contact were left to reflect on better days gone by and prepare for their next match in the bowl.

BATB 3 0 ORION GROUP

BATB continued to impress as they edged out Orion Group 3-nil. Shish and Ashrakat were all involved in the score sheet and were the players to watch in this tactical engagement. However, it was twinkle toes Nafees who did the most damage from the midfield. Orion Group still seems shell shocked on their debut outing in the Ascent Cup. However, they seem to be improving by the minute. Good luck to them for their future matches.

GREEN DELTA 5 2 RUNNER GROUP

Green Delta hit the ground run-

An action from the 11th Ascent Cup group-stage match between Swiss Contact and Comfit Composite (R) ning after shading out Runner Group in a 5-2 rout. Runner Group were left to rue their chances and wonder whether the absence of the Japanese duo had anything to do with the result. The playmaker-cum-captain Nipul Barua and Hira both scored a brace for Green Delta while Saiful put two past the Delta custodian.

the final minutes of the match.

ORION POWER 1 1 BRAC

METRONET 4 2 ASIATIC 360

After having watched the miseries of their sister concern Orion Group, Orion Power took it upon themselves to restore some semblance of pride by drawing against their opponent Brac in an engaging encounter that finished 1-1 to both sides. Brac must have felt that they had this game in the bag had it not been for some lacklustre defending towards

IIDFC 6 0 ENERGY PAC

IIDFC continued to pile on the misery upon their Group E opponents.

Today was the turn of Energypac who have been impressive thus far but failed to resist the marauding attack of Shamim, Hanif, and Rashed who scored six between them.

Asiatic’s dismal run in the Ascent Cup was highlighted yesterday when they surrendered a 4-2 lead to the other minnow of the group Metronet. The screams heard in the auditorium all seem to come from the corner sporting bright yellow colours of Metronet. Joy and Pitul of Asiatic did try to salvage a point but Rafiul, Mizan, and Ferdous ran

REZWAN HUQ

the advertisers ragged in the midfield and eventually won the game.

DHAKA TRIBUNE 3 1 AUGMEDIX

Augmedix put in quite a fight to stop Dhaka Tribune, but their valiant effort proved futile as the former champions took home the glory with the captain Moon slotting in a fine brace and Baizid putting in one as well. It has a been an absolute pleasure to watch the newcomer Augmedix get better with each performance. We wish them well in their remaining matches.

SECUREX 5 2 RAHIMAFROOZ

Securex continued to make life difficult for themselves as they botched up, in what would have been an easy outing with Rahimafrooz. Instead they had to come

The first high voltage match we witnessed this year was between last year’s runners up Bando and the surprise package of the tournament, Meena Sweets. This was one match that had the thrills, spills, and chills that one comes to expect from a high-pressure encounter.

Within the first couple of minutes, a goalkeeping howler from the Bando side put the game in Meena’s favor.

From then on it was helter-skelter from every inch of the pitch. Captain-cum-CEO Imran of Bando Design did his goal tally no harm as he added two more to his overall haul, a mind blowing 19 goals in three games – any other aspirants for the golden boot may as well hang up their cleats now. The game ended 7-2 for the clothing manufacturers while newcomers Meena Sweets can hold their head high for putting in such a fine performance. l

Djokovic faces race against time for US Open defence

Serena relaxed but unsure about shoulder n Reuters, New York Top-seeded Serena Williams said on Friday that she was not sure about the state of her balky right shoulder but felt more relaxed entering next week’s U.S. Open than last year.

In 2015, Williams came to Flushing Meadows needing a record-setting seventh U.S. Open singles crown to complete a rare calendar year grand slam sweep of the four major titles. She fell short, losing in a shocking semi-final upset to unseeded Italian Roberta Vinci. l

BANDO DESIGN 7 2 MEENA SWEETS

n Reuters, New York

United States Tennis Association Chairman, CEO and President Katrina Adams takes a selfie with reigning U.S. Open singles champions Flavia Pennetta and Novak Djokovic on Friday AP

Troubled by injury and a private matter that affected him at Wimbledon, world number one Novak Djokovic concedes that time is against him as he prepares to end his grand slam season on a high at the U.S. Open.

The Serb, aiming to win his 13th grand slam crown, is battling a left wrist injury which threatens to derail a 2016 campaign that began strongly with an Australian Open victory and saw him complete a career grand slam at the French Open in June.

After an early defeat at Wimbledon, Djokovic suffered his wrist injury before the Rio Olympics, where he was ousted in round one.

“The wrist hasn’t been in ideal shape for the last three-and-a-half weeks but I’m doing everything in my power to make sure I’m as close to 100 percent as possible during the course of this tournament, at least for the beginning of it,” Djokovic told reporters at Flushing Meadows on Friday.

“Sometimes time is what you need as an athlete and because the U.S. Open is around the corner I don’t have too much time.”l

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Summit (4) 3 Tiny (5) 8 Operatic air (4) 9 Smart and fashionable (4) 11 Convey (5) 12 Large volume (4) 14 Self (3) 15 Make merry (5) 18 Discourage (5) 19 Mature (3) 21 Dash (4) 24 Eating places (5) 26 Alone (4) 27 At all times (4) 28 Durable fabric (5) 29 Extremities (4)

DOWN 1 Sly (4) 2 Send out (4) 4 Spoil (3) 5 Arabian gazelle (5) 6 Common heather (4) 7 Nigerian city (5) 10 Innermost part (4) 11 Woodworkers instrument (5) 13 Limiting marks (5) 16 Time periods (4) 17 Visages (5) 18 Postpone (5) 20 Donated (4) 22 Naming word (4) 23 Explodes mildly (4) 25 Work unit (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 7 represents S so fill S every time the figure 7 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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Showtime

From Bangladesh to Hollywood n Sajal Khan Aref Syed is a popular actor, model and entrepreneur in Bangladesh, who played a great role in his first feature film-acting debut in Anil Bagchir Ekdin (A Day in the life of Anil Bagchi).

The film is set in the backdrop of Bangladesh’s 1971 Independence War. Recently, he was awarded the Meril Prothom Alo Puroshkar 2015 for best actor, critics’ choice in April 2016. He has gained a name for his debut in Anil Bagchir Ekdin. After the success in his first film, his next project is a Hollywood film titled Curse of the Kohinoor. Aref Syed is very excited about his next project because this film will be released both in Hollywood and Bollywood.

How did you get involved in a Hollywood film?

It happened very unexpectedly and organically, I guess. I didn’t know the team of this film in particular or anything really. It so happens that someone from the producer’s team, the coproducer Sumon Arifin, was aware of my acting in the first short film I did in Bangladesh back in 2010, titled The Professionals (written by Cal Jahan and produced by Bridge Entertainment Ltd). So when the team was looking to audition actors for my character in Bangladesh, my name was suggested. The team then researched my prior performances online through my Facebook and YouTube pages. They liked my work, and then invited me for an audition.

Thereafter, within a few days, after the director saw my audition video (as he wasn’t in Bangladesh yet), I was offered the role.

How did you feel when you heard that you are going to do your next project in Hollywood?

I only had two days to prepare for the audition, so I really tried to give my best, like I do for any project. When I was offered the role, I was quite elated of course. That’s not just because it’s a Hollywood film that will be released both in Hollywood and Bollywood, but also because it’s a great character for me, that too in a completely different language, both of which I haven’t tried ever before as an actor. So for that challenge itself, I’m really excited to be part of Curse of the Kohinoor.

Which role are you going to play in this movie?

Aref said I’m not at liberty to divulge anything about the film or my role at this point. Except to say, it’s a very exciting and challenging character. It is in Hindi actually, so that’s also a big challenge for me to do as an actor. Not to mention, COTK is a swashbuckler genre film, which for me is a first, and that makes it fun and challenging. I couldn’t be happier to have the awesome team that I’m collaborating with on this project, including my amazing co-actors, Rahsaan Noor, Tarini Pal, Vritika Ramnani, producer Ridwan Zayd (from Ziryab Entertainment), and especially my director Raghav Murali.

You were awarded Meril Prothom Alo Puroshkar 2015 for Best Actor (Film) Critics’ Choice in April 2016. Do you think this award makes you more confident?

Definitely, yes, of course. I’m so grateful for such an honour that too in my first work and my first film. I’m so thankful to the whole team of that film, especially, director Morshedul Islam and the producer Bengal Creations Ltd. More than anything really, I take this award not

as an ‘award’, but as a huge responsibility to do better and take on more challenging and different projects as an actor going forward.

Your first movie was Anil Bagchir Ekdin, which is set in the backdrop of 1971 Independence War. Your next project is a Hollywood film; do you think it will be more challenging?

I feel every film and every character is a challenge if one is to do it, honestly. It doesn’t matter which medium it’s in (TV, theatre, short film or feature film).

When I did Anil Bagchir Ekdin, that was the toughest challenge for me as an actor. Now, Curse of the Kohinoor seems just as challenging, if not more. I love challenges as a performer because that’s how we learn and grow, and that’s how we can try keeping our audience entertained and interested. It is also a huge honour and responsibility for me personally to be able to represent my motherland Bangladesh, and my Bangladeshi film industry on a global platform. I request everyone to pray for our project and me.

I pray we make a good film with all your blessings and support.l

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Advocates of education n Showtime Desk Celebrities aren’t just about the show business. They can also do plenty for the betterment of mankind. There are so many celebrities who battle gossip in the media regarding their gorgeous lifestyles, but what the public doesn’t see is the positive contributions to society. Here’s a look at some of them.

that builds schools, trains teachers and funds scholarships in the developing world. The charity has built 252 schools since 2009, and in 2013, Justin went to Guatemala to see how the project works.

Watch the video below to see how he joined in building a school in the jungle and chatted to the local children during a trip he described it as a “magical experience.”

Priyanka Chopra

Ben Affleck

The Bollywood actress, singer and former Miss World is a vocal advocate of women’s rights and girls’ education. She was made a UNICEF National Ambassador for child rights in 2010, supports the UN Girl Up campaign and is a narrator on the 2013 film Girl Rising. Priyanka has said that her desire to help others has come from her parents, who were both doctors, and who volunteered in their spare time to offer health care to the rural poor in India

Movie star Ben Affleck is a man of many parts - actor, writer, director and producer. He’s won countless awards, including two Oscars and three Golden Globes. A few days back, he added another - Favourite Humanitarian at the People’s Choice Awards 2015.

on world leaders to keep their promise that all children would be in school by the end of this year.

Taylor Swift

The best-selling artist of 2014 moved to New York last year and dedicated all proceeds of her October single “Welcome to New York” to the city’s public schools. Taylor has a history of helping. In 2012, she donated $4million to launch the Taylor Swift Education Center at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. In the same year, she also donated $60,000 to the music departments of six US colleges.

Selena Gomez

The youngest ever UNICEF ambassador, American actor

Shakira

The Colombian star founded Fundación Pies Descalzos in 1997. Her organisation provides displaced and underprivileged children in the South American country with access to quality education. She was invited to The White House by President Obama in 2010 to discuss early childhood development, and in 2011 was appointed as a member of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. Last year, she joined the fight to get all of the world’s children into school by becoming a member of the Emergency Coalition for Global Education Action.

Justin Bieber

The Canadian is an active supporter of Pencils of Promise, a charity committed to education

Ben was awarded the title for his work with the Eastern Congo Initiative, a non-profit he cofounded. Its work includes helping vulnerable children through education and health projects, as well as reintegrating former child soldiers into their communities.

And you can do your bit for education too, by signing the #UpForSchool Petition that calls

and singer Selena visited Nepal last year. At the Satbariya Rapti Secondary School, she watched children studying math, science and spoke to members of a “child club”. She said: “Many of the children I talked to expressed a desire to be future leaders in their society, and I was moved to hear them emphasise the importance of education.”l

WHAT TO WATCH Baby’s Day Out Star Movies 9:30pm Baby Bink couldn’t ask for more; he has adoring parents, he lives in a huge mansion, and he’s just about to appear in the social pages of the paper.

Unfortunately, not everyone in the world is as nice as Baby Bink’s parents, especially the three enterprising kidnappers who pretend to be photographers from the newspaper.

Cast: Lara Flynn Boyle, Joe Mantegna, Joe Pantoliano

Clash of the Titans HBO 9:30pm Perseus demigod, son of Zeus, battles the minions of the underworld to stop them from conquering heaven and earth.

Cast: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes Snakes on a Plane WB 10:40pm An FBI agent takes on a plane full of deadly and venomous snakes, deliberately released to kill a witness being flown from Honolulu to Los Angeles to testify against a mob boss.

Cast: Samuel L Jackson

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Zee Studio 7:15pm When New York is put under siege by Oscorp, it is up to Spider-Man to save the city he swore to protect as well as his loved ones.

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx Godzilla (2014) Movies Now 9:30pm The world is beset by the appearance of monstrous creatures, but one of them may be the only one who can save humanity.

Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

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Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina talks to reporters during a press conference on Rampal power plant yesterday at Ganabhaban BSS

PM affirms Rampal plant won’t harm Sundarbans n Aminur Rahman Rasel Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has blasted groups and individuals opposing the Rampal coal power plant for spreading “negative, baseless, fictitious and misleading information” and questioned the motive of the BNP chief for supporting the protests.

From a press conference yesterday at Ganabhaban, the premier reiterated that the 1,320MW plant would not cause any harm to the Sundarbans mangrove forest.

She alleged that the protesters were creating panic among the people by portraying the project as destructive.

Hasina, who unveiled the foundation plaque of the project on October 5, 2013, smelt conspiracy in BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia’s expressing solidarity with the anti-Rampal movement.

The government maintains that they would use high-end technology at the plant to mitigate environmental hazards and that the process would be monitored by the regulator, Department of Environment.

From an agitation programme at the Central Shaheed Minar on August 20, the National Committee announced to observe Dhaka March on November 24 if the government does not cancel the project by this time, and a grand rally in Dhaka on November 26.

The prime minister yesterday presented examples of coal-based plants in different countries. Prior to her speech, Director General of Power Cell Mohammed Hossain gave a presentation on different aspects of the project.

Labelling the protesters

as “anti-development vested quarters,” Hasina said that the plant’s location was about 14km away from the outer boundary of the Sundarbans.

“We are going to set up an ultra super critical power plant at Rampal. The plant will be equipped with the best technologies of the world,” she said.

The premier also said that her government would plant around 5 lakh trees in the surrounding area of the plant. The project would generate employment for the people who cut trees of the forest, she said.

Hasina assured that they would import best quality coal from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa. “All sorts of modern technology will be used to curb any kind of pollution,” she added.

Denying the possibility of pollution of the Pashur River water, Hasina said that the authorities would dredge the river regularly to maintain navigability.

She recalled that the Unesco declared the Sundarbans a World Heritage during her rule “due to its effective initiatives.”

Terming coal the “most reliable source of future energy,” Hasina, who won the UN Champions of the Earth Award last year, said it would impossible to continue supply of natural gas to the gasbased power plants in near future.

Developed countries like the USA, France, Germany, China, Japan and neighbouring India meet about 40% to 98% of their electricity demand from electricity generated by the coal-based power plants, “but it is little below 2% in Bangladesh,” she said. l

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