BANGLADESH

Bangladeshi teachers and students of the United State's Oklahoma University have expressed their concern as no 'substantial' progress have been made in the investigation into the journalist couple's murder.

In a media statement issued by the Students' Association of Bangladesh (SAB), they demanded immediate arrest of the killer.

"SAB members are deeply grief-stricken after losing a friend (Runi)," the statement added.

ATN Bangla senior reporter Meherun Runi and her husband Sagar Sarowar, who was news editor with Maasranga Television, were found murdered at their rented flat in west Rajabazar in the capital early last Saturday.

Runi and some other journalists went to the university in 2009 and the association organised a programme to honour all the Bangladeshi journalists, the statement added.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has complained to Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh that 80 per cent of the water from the Farakka Barrage goes to Bangladesh.

India's private television channel NDTV reported the interaction based on a letter the Trinamool chief sent to Singh.

Quoting a government official the report said, "Bangladesh was to get 35,000 cusecs during the dry season as per the water agreement between the two countries but was getting 82,801 cusecs due to the drainage of water from the barrage."

"The excess outflow of water from Farakka barrage through two damaged sluice gates has reduced its water level by three metres and is posing a threat of erosion at Jangipur area of Murshidabad district."

''The water level at the barrage, which should remain 21.90 metres has come down by three metres as gate numbers 13 and 16 have broken down,'' hydrologist Kalyan Rudra said.

The Ganges water-sharing agreement was struck with India during Awami League's tenure in 1996. A deal over sharing Teesta river's water was to be struck during Manmohan Singh's trip to Bangladesh last September, but the signing was stalled due to opposition from Mamata.

Scheduled to accompany the Indian prime minister on the tour, the West Bengal chief minister pulled out at the last moment saying that the amount of water to be given to Bangladesh was not disclosed to her earlier.

Head of the state government's experts' body studying the Teesta water-sharing issue, Rudra pointed out to the television channel that the excess outflow was causing scarcity of water at NTPC's Farakka plant as the feeder canals were also running out of water.

The barrage, commissioned in 1975, has 109 sluice gates, he said pointing out their annual maintenance was not carried out properly.

Mamata has been taking 'strong' stances against the Indian central government recently. She last declined to attend a function in her state that was inaugurated by central government's home minister P Chidambaram on Friday.

Her snub came a day after she lodged her protests against the home minister's new counter terrorism body - National Counter Terrorism Centre – a brain child of Chidambaram.

The Department of Livestock Services (DLS) has ordered relocation of its poultry farm adjacent to the National Zoo at Mirpur to Savar to protect the precious birds of the zoo from bird flu.

Director-general of DLS Ashraf Ali and the chief of the farm have been ordered to find out land for the farm in the outskirt of the city, livestock minister Abdul Latif Biswas told on Saturday.

"The farm has been affected by bird flu several times in past few years, putting the precious animals and birds of the zoo in danger," he said.

Farm chief Kalidas Sarker, a DLS deputy director, said they had been asked by the ministry recently to shift the farm.

"We are yet to start the work," he added.

According to Kalidas, the farm has properties worth about Tk 3 billion on a 21-acre land worth nearly Tk 2 billion.

It will take around Tk 15 billion for the government to shift it, he said.

The farm, built with financial aid of UN's World Food Programme in 1976, has a capacity to annually raise 1.8 million chickens, including 19,000 that lay eggs. It is possible to get 4.5 million eggs from the farm a year if it is run properly.

"But now only 700,000 chickens are raised and as many as eggs come annually," he said.

"The average production is 35-40 percent of the total capacity," Kalidas said.

He said the farm cannot be maintained properly due to lack of fund.

It needs Tk 35 million a year to maintain it in full pace, he said.

"But the government allocates only Tk 6-7 million. So it can't be used commercially."

The farm chief, however, admitted that it is risking the zoo animals.

The International Crimes Tribunal on Sunday declared a New Age article contemptuous but acquitted the accused with a strongly worded caution considering their image in the society.

The tribunal, formed to try crimes against humanity committed during the 1971 Liberation War, had on Oct 3 issued the contempt notice against the newspaper's publisher A S M Shahidullah Khan, editor Nurul Kabir, and special reports editor David Bergman.

All three, who were asked to respond, had decided to defend the article "A crucial period for the International Crimes Tribunal", written by Bergman.

After the daily newspaper's editor Nurul Kabir finished his statement in response to the contempt notice on Jan 19, the tribunal set the date to issue the verdict.

Bergman's counsel Mustafizur Rahman Khan also made a brief submission after Kabir finished his reply on Thursday.

CONTENTIOUS ARTICLE

The litigious New Age article primarily deals with the tribunal taking into cognisance charges against Jamaat-e-Islami's executive council member Delwar Hossain Sayedee.

One paragraph that had caught the attention of a tribunal member stated: "First, the tribunal seems to have taken cognisance for many of these twenty offences on the basis of looking at just one witness statement. It is difficult to see, unless the statements were extremely strong, how the tribunal could come to the conclusion that there is 'prima facie' evidence for the commission of an alleged 'crime against humanity' which took place forty years ago just on the basis of one witness statement."

Another part of Bergman's article reads, "What appears to have happened is that the tribunal did not look in detail at each and every alleged offence and consider how witnesses or other evidence supported the different elements of the offence."

In a later part of the article, Bergman wrote, "Moreover, there is a separate issue about whether the tribunal even had, in its hand, all the witness statements when it took cognisance."