Tipaimukh deal struck 'silently': report

Dhaka, Nov 19 —Manipur's government has secretly struck an investment deal with a number of state-run organisations for setting up the controversial hydroelectric power plant and Tipaimukh dam on India's Borak River.

BBC said in a report that the agreement was signed on Oct 22 between the State Government of Manipur and hydro developers Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd and NHPC (formerly known as the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation Limited) at New Delhi under major wraps.

The deal would see the setting up of a joint company, which will be responsible for the construction of the dam and the power plant, the report said.

Hiron, aunt suspended over dowry claims

Barguna, Nov 18  — Primary school heads Shawkat Ali Hiron, divorced at his wedding, and his aunt Tahmina Khanam have been suspended for allegedly demanding dowry from bride Farzana Yasmin's family.

Kalaparha primary and mass education officer Ruhul Amin on Friday said Patuakhali primary and mass education officer Abdul Kader ordered the suspension taking retroactive effect from Nov 15.

"The suspension letters will be sent to them on Saturday as the office is closed [on Friday]. But they have been verbally informed," he added.

Hiron, who hails from Kalaparha upazila, is the headmaster of Uttar Chakamaya Government Primary School. His aunt Tahmina is the headmistress of Nilganj Primary Government Primary School in the same area.

UPDF denies opposing peace accord

Rangamati, Nov  18 —More than one senior leaders of United People's Democratic Front (UPDF) have sought to shake off the label that the regional political party is opposed to the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord of 1997 that ended decades-old bloody bush war.

"The UPDF itself has never said anything against implementation of the peace accord; instead, the media made it an anti-peace deal front," its central leader Alokesh Chakma told bdnews24.com on Friday.

He, however, added that the pact was incomplete in that it does not fully safeguard the rights of the hills people.

Alokesh said they are waging democratic movements to ensure the rights to land of the indigenous people.

The peace agreement was signed on Dec 2, 1997 between the Awami League government and the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity (PCJSS), which is United People's Party of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in English.

'Donors dither on transparency vow'

Dhaka, Nov 17 — A global campaign group says international aid donors are backing out of aid transparency promises, a UK newspaper reports.

UK-based campaign group Publish What You Fund told the London newspaper Financial Times the latest draft of the 'Outcome Document' to be agreed upon at a key international meeting on aid effectiveness showed some governments backsliding on commitments they have made.

At previous summits, the donors had promised more transparency, reduction of the practice of tying aid to purchases from the donor country and streamlining the bureaucracy by using recipient countries' financial and administrative systems.

Karin Christiansen, managing director of Publish What You Fund, told Financial Times on Tuesday, "Over the last couple of weeks, some donors have been trying to water down commitments on transparency. The current draft outcome document betrays a lack of ambition and an inclination among donors to defer to the lowest common denominator."

Greeks protest as France, Spain squeezed

Rome/Paris, Nov 18- Italy's new government has announced far-reaching reforms in response to a European debt crisis that on Thursday pushed borrowing costs for France and Spain sharply higher, and brought tens of thousands of Greeks onto the streets of Athens.

Italy's new technocrat prime minister, Mario Monti, unveiled sweeping reforms to dig the country out of crisis and said Italians were confronting a "serious emergency."

Monti, who enjoys 75 percent support according to opinion polls, comfortably won a vote of confidence in his new government in the Senate on Thursday, by 281 votes to 25.

He faces another confidence vote in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, on Friday, which he also expected to win comfortably.

Govt nods proposal to tax ministers

Dhaka, Nov 17 —The cabinet has cleared proposals to tax salaries of ministers and state ministers, who will have to pay income tax once they are passed by parliament.

The approval came from a cabinet meeting on Thursday chaired by prime minister Sheikh Hasina, her press secretary Abul Kalam Azad told reporters.

Prime minister Hasina had announced in the last budget session of parliament that ministers, state ministers and deputy ministers's salaries will be taxed.

The latest nod was a step towards the implementation of that announcement.

Azad said the proposals were about amendments to The Prime Minister (Remuneration and Privileges) Act-1975 and The Ministers, Ministers of State, Deputy Ministers (Remuneration and Privileges) Act-1973.

He said ministers discussed 14

Authorities foil NY protest bid

New York, Nov 18 - New York police prevented protesters from shutting down Wall Street on Thursday, arresting more than 200 people in repeated clashes with an unexpectedly small but spirited Occupy Wall Street rally.

Protesters took to the streets in rainy New York and cities across the United States for a day of action seen as a test of the momentum of the two-month-old grass-roots movement against economic inequality.

Organizers and city officials had expected tens of thousands to turn out for a demonstration following the New York police raid that broke up the protesters' encampment in a park near Wall Street on Tuesday.

A crowd that disappointed organizers throughout the day grew to several thousand after the standard workday ended and labour union activists joined a march across the Brooklyn Bridge, where last month more than 700 people were arrested during a similar march.

'All that needs be done will be done'

Dhaka, Nov – No government agency will ask any question about 'undisclosed income' invested in the stock market, and short-, medium- and long-term plans will be announced in a day or two, a prime minister-led meeting has decided.

An SEC member, briefing newsmen on the nearly 4-hour-long high-profile meeting on Wednesday night, said the commercial banks would go all out to inject more cash into the market that has seen poor turnover during the past weeks.

"No government agency will raise any questions about undisclosed income," Arif Khan said after the Ganabhaban meeting that ended minutes before midnight.

"The plans will aim to help the small investors recover their losses," he said adding they plans could be disclosed within one or two days.

BNP agitation to shield corrupt, war criminals: PM

Gopalganj, Nov 16 – Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has said the agitation of opposition BNP seeking restoration of the non-party caretaker government system mainly aims to protect the 'identified' war criminals and corrupt people.

"The BNP chairperson is waging movement to protect her two corrupt sons and halt the trial of those responsible for committing crimes against humanity during the Liberation War in 1971. But the countrymen will not respond to them," she said on Wednesday.

She was addressing a public meeting on Sheikh Lutfar Rahman Government College premises at Kotalipara upazila in Gopalganj district.

"When Awami League comes to power, the country is rewarded, but when BNP assumes power, the country is reprimanded."

Tarique 'spent money sent to S'pore'

Dhaka, Nov 16 — Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Debra LaPrevotte has told a Dhaka court about her findings in an investigation into the allegation of money-laundering against BNP chief Khaleda Zia's elder son Tarique Rahman and his friend Giasuddin Al Mamun.

At Dhaka's Special Judges' Court-3 on Wednesday, she said she checked Tarique and Mamun's bank accounts in Singapore's City Bank NA.

LaPrevotte found the senior vice chairman had travelled and bought many things with $50,613 he had withdrawn from Mamun's bank account through two VISA credit cards.

The US investigator said the FBI had investigated the matter at the request of the last caretaker government and the Anticorruption Commission.

According to the case filed by the ACC in 2009, Tarique and Mamun allegedly channelled funds worth over Tk 204 million or $ 2.73 million out to Singapore between 2003 and 2007.

Sayedee counsels boycott ICT proceeding

Dhaka, Nov 16 — Alleged war criminal Delwar Hossain Sayedee's defence lawyers have walked out of court after Justice Nizamul Huq joined the proceedings on Wednesday.

They filed two applications before walking out of the International Crimes Tribunal where Jamaat-e-Islami's executive council member is on trial on 20 counts of crimes against humanity including genocide, murder, rape, arson and loot.

Arguing for Sayedee, Tajul Islam told the court that the defence had filed two pleas on Wednesday morning, one demanding explanation from the tribunal, in the form of an order, why the tribunal's chairman Nizamul Huq did not recuse himself, and another for adjourning Sayedee's trial until the court disposed of its first application.

The tribunal said this application should have been filed at least the day before, according to custom that would allow them to be put up for hearing after completion of the court formalities.

The defence argued that it did not know whether Huq would be presiding over the court on Wednesday beforehand. Justice Huq pointed out that the hearing of that application had been disposed of and he had quite evidently not recused himself.

Tajul demanded that tribunal provide an explanation why despite what the defence deemed convincing arguments the chairman had not recuse himself and continued to hold hearings.

The tribunal fixed Nov 20 for disposing of that application but when urged to continue with the scheduled hearing of a review petition of Sayedee's indictment, the defence refused to proceed and walked out demanding that the tribunal chief explain himself first.

The tribunal said that the conduct of the defence lawyers had been "unwarranted" and "unbecoming". As for the review petition, the court said it was rejected since it was 'not pressed'.

Tajul told the press later that the defence would wait until its application is disposed of on Sunday. "We will decide then whether to continue with the hearings."

"We only hope that he behaves responsibly and steps aside."

The prosecution's Zead-Al-Malum briefing the press at the chief prosecutor's office said the defence had violated all kinds of ethics, code of conduct and customs that behove lawyers. "It was absolutely unprecedented and unacceptable."

The defence had petitioned on Oct 27 that Justice Huq should remove himself, 'recuse' in legalese, from the tribunal claiming that his neutrality had been compromised because of an earlier involvement.

Huq, the defence argued, had been part of a people's enquiry commission in 1993 and 94 and as such had collected evidence and testimonies against Sayedee. The defence held that the tribunal chair would then naturally harbour preconceived notions about the accused.

The prosecution raised a legal point and said the petition was not maintainable or in form. The prosecution further pointed out that the commission in question was not in any way part of the ongoing trial. Nor did it have any legal coverage.

The other two judges of the tribunal, ATM Fazle Kabir and AKM Zaheer Ahmed, held a hearing of that petition on Nov 13 in a crowded courtroom.

They ruled the following day that the laws did not provide for the tribunal judges to remove a co-judge. They also pointed out that the previous cases cited by the defence counsel Abdur Razzaq where judges were recused had the privilege of such laws. In conclusion, they left the matter of recusal to the 'good conscience of the judge' in question.

bdnews24.com

DSE index rises 250 pts in 10 minutes

Dhaka, Nov 16 —The benchmark Dhaka Stock Exchange general index has marked a staggering 252.15 points rise in the first 10 minutes of trading on Wednesday, apparently buoyed by the prime minister's emergency meeting with stakeholders in the evening.

Massive trading, shares worth Tk 340.37 million changing hands by 11:10am. The DGEN stood at 4901.48 points, with prices of 141 issues rising and four falling.

The index plummeted 559 points from the start of the week's trading. It lost 341 points on Sunday and Monday, and on Tuesday, the index lost 228.20 points or 4.67 percent to stand at 4649.32 points at close.

Small, individual investors have been taking to the streets in Motijheel business district to protest the freefall for the past few days.

Sheikh Hasina rushed the meeting to discuss the stock market situation, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman M Khairul Hossain confirmed bdnews24.com on Tuesday.

The finance minister, Bangladesh Bank governor, Bank and Financial Institutions Division secretary, National Board of Revenue chief, head of Investment Corporation of Bangladesh and the representatives of banks and insurance companies are expected to attend the meeting.

After the December-January capital market scam, the government formed a committee to investigate the matter. Several steps, including overhaul of SEC, were taken following the panel's proposals.

Several other steps were also taken by bankers, the central bank, NBR and ICB to stabilise the sagging stock market.

But nothing seemed to be working out as the prices of shares have been maintaining the downward trend.

bdnews24.com

Ban Ki-moon leaves Dhaka

Dhaka, Nov 16 — UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has left Dhaka after a three-day official visit to Bangladesh.

He left Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport for Thailand around 8.50am on Wednesday, the foreign affairs ministry's external publicity wing director general Mohammad Shamim Ahsan told bdnews24.com.

Ban is scheduled to visit the flood-affected areas of Thailand and meet the country's prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

The final leg of his trip would take him to Indonesia where he would visit a community health centre and meet representatives of communities affected by deforestation in the central Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo.

The UN secretary-general will conclude his trip in Bali after attending the fourth summit of the UN and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

He is scheduled to return to New York on Nov 20.

This was the second visit by the UN chief to Bangladesh. His last visit was in November 2008.

bdnews24.com

Euro zone looks to Italy, Greece moves to ease crisis

ROME/ATHENS, Nov 16 - The euro zone looks for some respite Wednesday, with Italy due to unveil a technocrat-led cabinet and a new Greek coalition expected to win a confidence vote, as Europe battles to prevent its debt woes from dragging down the world economy.

Former EU commissioner Mario Monti is set to inform Italy's president that he has assembled a new government, whose most pressing task will be to get a fractious political class to agree to painful structural reforms designed to rescue its debt-laden finances.

In Athens, new prime minister Lucas Papademos expects an easy win in a confidence vote, but rebuilding Greece's shattered finances will be a daunting task with his national unity government already split over new austerity measures.

With financial markets sceptical that unelected technocrats will have the political clout to impose unpopular reforms, the two-year debt crisis risks engulfing the entire currency bloc and hurting global growth.

Asian shares and the euro fell Wednesday as signs that rising borrowing costs were affecting AAA-rated France stirred fears that even core euro zone members may not escape contagion from the region's debt crisis.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan fell 1.3 percent, while Japan's Nikkei stock average slipped 0.1 percent Wednesday.

The euro hit a five-week low and was down 0.6 percent against both the dollar and the yen, standing at $1.3453 and 103.66 yen respectively, as euro zone jitters spurred risk aversion moves.

"Markets are clearly expecting a circuit breaker to alleviate pressure on periphery bond yields," said David Scutt, a trader at Arab Bank Australia in Sydney. "If no announcement is forthcoming in the days ahead, one suspects that situation could unravel fairly quickly.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Europe had a difficult task in boosting the creditworthiness of some of its economies while also boosting growth.

"That's a difficult balance and you can see they're struggling with it but I think they're gradually making progress," he told a conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. "This is absolutely within Europe's capacity to solve and it's within their ability.

France has become the latest euro zone member to come under pressure after a spike in its borrowing costs on jittery bond markets fuelled concerns that the euro zone's second biggest economy was also being sucked into the spiralling debt crisis.

With a Brussels-based think-tank warning that Paris's economy should be "ringing alarm bells," Finance Minister Francois Baroin sought to calm fears about France's finances.

"We have the necessary room to manoeuvre within the budget to meet our 2012 deficit target even if the economy slows more than expected," he said in an interview in Wednesday's edition of Les Echos. "Even with growth of 0.5 percent we can cope.

Baroin said the government was not working on a third savings package after announcing a second round of belt-tightening in three months last week in order to keep its deficit targets within reach, despite slowing growth.

Data Tuesday showed the economy of the 17-nation euro zone barely grew in the third quarter. ECB President Mario Draghi has predicted the currency bloc will be in a mild recession by the end of the year.

MONTI CABINET

Against that backdrop, Italian prime minister-designate Monti is to unveil his cabinet line-up after a meeting with President Giorgio Napolitano scheduled for around 10 am (British time).

His cabinet, expected to feature experts, academics and some politicians, will have the job of speeding up reform of pensions, labour markets and business regulation in order to put Italy's finances on a sustainable path.

Yields on Italy's 10-year BTP bonds climbed to over 7 percent Tuesday, the level at which Greece and Ireland were forced into bailouts. Italy must refinance some 200 billion euros (171 billion pounds) of bonds by the end of April.

In Greece, the first task facing Papademos will be to implement the painful tax hikes and spending cuts needed to secure fresh loans and stave off bankruptcy that could force Greece's eviction from the single currency.

At stake is an 8-billion-euro loan tranche that Greece needs to meet repayments due next month and a new bailout worth 130 billion euros. Greece will need some 80 billion euros of that second rescue package in early 2012.

The confidence vote is scheduled for 1 pm (British time) and Papademos looks certain to win. But the former ECB vice president already faces a rebellion from conservatives who form a key part of his crisis coalition.

The New Democracy lawmakers are defying a European Commission demand for a written pledge from the three coalition partners on meeting the terms of Greece's bailout.

Weary and angry after two years of austerity, tens of thousands of Greek protesters are expected to join an annual rally Thursday to mark the November 17 student uprising in 1973 that helped topple the 1967-74 military junta.

DEBATE OVER ECB ROLE

The United States is increasingly worried that Europe's debt crisis is mushrooming into a wider systemic problem.

Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the European debt crisis was the leading risk to the US recovery.

The survival of the 17-state currency zone in its existing form is at risk, and EU governments have until a summit on December 9 to come up with a bolder and more convincing strategy, involving some form of massive, visible financial backing.

Baroin, the French economy minister, told Les Echos he believed the ECB had an important role to play in calming the euro zone's debt crisis, but acknowledged, as did Geithner, that

Germany had reservations.

Many analysts believe the only way to stem the contagion for now is for the European Central Bank to buy large amounts of bonds -- effectively the sort of quantitative easing undertaken by the US and British central banks.

This has been anathema in Germany. But Tuesday Peter Bofinger, a member of the group of economists that advises the German government, said the ECB should indeed become the euro zone's lender of last resort if the bloc's debt woes risked tearing apart the financial system.

"If politics can't do it, then the ECB must do all it can to bring interest rates down to more reasonable levels," Bofinger said at Euro Finance Week.

bdnews24.com

Judge upholds eviction of Wall St protesters

NEW YORK, Nov 16  - A judge has upheld New York City's right to evict Occupy Wall Street protesters from a park after baton-wielding police in riot gear broke up a two-month-old demonstration against economic inequality.

Protesters who had been kicked out in a surprise predawn raid were allowed back 16 hours later but were banned from bringing the tents and sleeping bags that had turned a square-block park near Wall Street into an urban campground the past two months.

New York Supreme Court Justice Michael Stallman on Tuesday found the city was justified in enforcing a ban on sleeping in Zuccotti Park, saying the new rules still protected protesters' free-speech rights under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

The judge ruled merely that the case lacked the urgency to approve or strike down the new park rules immediately. The underlying case will be heard at a later date.

After the judge's ruling, police lifted barricades at two points, letting people back in one by one. Several hundred protesters were in the park under a light drizzle, and the crowd thinned as the night wore on. The mood was largely free of tension.

Demonstrators have occupied the park since Sep 17 to protest what they see as an unjust economic system that favours the wealthiest 1 percent at a time of persistently high unemployment. They also decry a political system that bailed out banks after reckless lending sparked the financial crisis.

Mayor Michel Bloomberg ordered the eviction, saying the square-block Zuccotti Park had become a sanitation hazard and a fire trap.

The decision angered members of a movement that has spread throughout the United States and the world, and it came two days before demonstrators planned to shut down Wall Street outside the New York Stock Exchange.

"He's a billionaire and he's defending his class. He is the 1 percent," said Naomi Brussel, 69, retired social worker from Brooklyn.

Hundreds of police stormed the camp around 1 am and dismantled tents, tarpaulins, outdoor furniture, mattresses and signs, arresting 147 people, including about a dozen who had chained themselves to each other and to trees.

The New York Civil Liberties Union said it was "deeply concerned" about the police department's "heavy-handed tactics" and said seven journalists covering the events were arrested.

While the park was cleared of protesters, sanitation workers blasted the square with water cannons, erasing odours of urine and human waste.

"His (Bloomberg's) response makes him seem completely out of touch to me and he comes off as a benevolent dictator," said protester Douglas Paulson, 31, an artist from the New York City borough of Queens.

The eviction followed similar actions in Atlanta, Portland and Salt Lake City. Unlike in Oakland, California, where police used tear gas and stun grenades, New York police said most protesters left peacefully.

In London, authorities said they were resuming legal action to try to shift anti-capitalism protesters who have set up camp at St Paul's Cathedral.

Toronto officials also told protesters to break camp and leave on Tuesday. In Los Angeles, city officials have opened talks with some members of the Occupy LA group to work out a timeline for moving their encampment from the lawn surrounding City Hall, where about 500 tents are standing.

BLOOMBERG'S CALCULATION

Bloomberg, a self-made billionaire whose wealth made him a target of the protesters, ordered the eviction at the request of the park owner, commercial real estate company Brookfield Office Properties.

The mayor's loyalties have been divided since the protests began. Socially liberal and a supporter of free speech rights, Bloomberg is also a former Wall Street trader who made a fortune selling news and information to the financial industry through his eponymous company, Bloomberg LP.

He has two years left on his third and final 4-year term.

"The political clock was already winding down toward people opposing him. I think this will further weaken him. It will mobilise his opponents more than it will mobilise his supporters," said Ken Sherrill, professor of political science at Hunter College.

Three prominent potential successors, City Council speaker Christine Quinn, comptroller John Liu and public advocate Bill De Blasio, issued statements using language like "unacceptable" and "legally questionable" to describe the raid. All are Democrats and Bloomberg, now a political independent, was first elected as a Republican.

But Bloomberg also pleased his allies on Wall Street and neighbours who had grown tired of the protest.

"It's made him look like a stronger leader. He sought to avoid violence and control what could have been a very difficult situation," said political consultant Hank Sheinkopf. "He'll be remembered for handling this the right way."

bdnews24.com

Facebook hit with unsolicited porn, violent videos

LOS ANGELES, Nov 16 - Facebook Inc said on Tuesday that it is investigating a rash of unsolicited graphic images that hit some users' accounts this week.

The images, Internet links and videos depicting pornography and violence have hit some people's Facebook newsfeeds in recent days.

"We experienced a coordinated spam attack that exploited a browser vulnerability," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in a statement emailed to Reuters. "Our efforts have drastically limited the damage caused by this attack, and we are now in the process of investigating to identify those responsible."

Facebook does not know yet who was behind the attack and a motive was not clear, Noyes added during an interview with Reuters.

Facebook users were tricked into pasting and executing "malicious" javascript in their browser URL bar, which led to them unknowingly sharing the content, Noyes explained.

Facebook engineers have been working to reduce this browser vulnerability, he added.

Facebook and other "Web 2.0" sites are easy targets for such attacks because they pull in a lot of content from outside sources, according to Paul Ferguson, senior threat researcher at Trend Micro Inc.

"It seems every other day there is some new Facebook 'threat,' but this is just the new reality of Web 2.0 and social networking," Ferguson said. "It is 'low-hanging fruit' for criminals."

bdnews24.com