The two sides are slated to sign a slew of formal agreements and a joint venture between NTPC and the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) in the coming months. ??This is to improve the relationship between the two countries,?? Ministry of Power joint secretary M Ravi Kanth told The Indian Express during today??s joint working group meeting between India and Bangladesh. ??So far, transmission is moving very smoothly, now the power generation MoU between NTPC and BPDB will soon be signed.??

The MoU between the state-run Maharatna and BPDB will ultimately produce a joint venture company this year, which will be charged with collecting bids for a 1,240 mega watt (MW) supercritical power plant subject to international competitive bidding. Bangladesh will be responsible for fueling the coal-fired plant which will require less coal than subcritical plants to run at optimal efficiency. ??NVVN will authorize cross-border trade with Bangladesh and we are prepared if Bangladesh wants to sell power to India once 2×600 MW plant is complete,?? said a source in the Ministry of Power source on condition of anonymity. NTPC is in early stages of tendering 11 similar units in India subject to domestic norms which have nixed bids from foreign players who do not meet the tender requirements.

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Confronting what he calls the “single biggest threat to U.S. security,” Obama is looking for global help in his goal of ensuring all nuclear materials worldwide are secured from theft or diversion within four years.

On the eve of what would be the largest assembly of world leaders hosted by an American president since 1945 ? the San Francisco conference to found the United Nations ? Obama said nuclear materials in the hands of al-Qaida or another terrorist group “could change the security landscape in this country and around the world for years to come.”

While sweeping or even bold new strategies were unlikely to emerge from the two-day gathering, Obama declared himself pleased with what he heard in warm-up meetings Sunday with the leaders of Kazakhstan, South Africa, India and Pakistan.

“I feel very good at this stage in the degree of commitment and a sense of urgency that I have seen from the world leaders so far on this issue,” Obama said. “We think we can make enormous progress on this, and this then becomes part and parcel of the broader focus that we’ve had over the last several weeks.”

He was referring to what had gone before this, the fourth leg of his campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The United States is the only country to use the weapons, two bombs dropped on Japan to force its surrender in World War II.

The high-flown ambition, which the president admits will probably not be reality in his lifetime, began a year ago in Prague when he laid out plans for significant nuclear reductions and a nuclear-weapons-free world.

In the meantime, he has approved a new nuclear policy for the United States, promising last week to reduce America’s nuclear arsenal, refrain from nuclear tests and not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them. North Korea and Iran were not included in that pledge because they do not cooperate with other countries on nonproliferation standards.

That was Tuesday, and two days later, on the anniversary of the Prague speech, Obama flew back to the Czech Republic capital where he and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed a new treaty that reduces each side’s deployed nuclear arsenal to 1,550 weapons. Medvedev also arrives Monday to sign a long-delayed agreement to dispose of tons of weapons-grade plutonium from Cold War-era nuclear weapons ? the type of preventive action Obama wants the summit to inspire.

Obama welcomes the assembled world leaders at a Washington convention center late Monday afternoon, but begins the day with a morning meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, whose intelligence apparatus is deeply involved in the Afghan war.

He then will sit down one-on-one with the leaders of Malaysia, Ukraine, Armenia and China.

National Security Council spokesman Ben Rhodes said Obama would squeeze in a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey is a key NATO ally, and relations have been difficult recently, particularly over Iran. Rhodes said there were additional “pressing issues,” including normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia.

Throughout the two-day gathering, Iran will be a subtext as Obama works to gain support for a fourth round of U.N. sanctions against Tehran for its refusal to shut down what the United States and many key allies assert is a nuclear weapons program. Iran says it only wants to build reactors to generate electricity.

In an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Medvedev agreed that Iran’s nuclear program must be watched closely, but he said sanctions on the regime would have to be smart and effective because they often don’t work.

“They should not lead to humanitarian catastrophe, where the whole Iranian community would start to hate the whole world,” the Russian president said.

He rejected the idea of imposing sanctions on Iran’s petroleum industry.

“I don’t think on that topic we have a chance to achieve a consolidated opinion of the global community,” Medvedev said.

Support from Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao, who sees Obama privately Monday, is critical, but neither is firmly committed to a new sanctions regime.

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Bangladesh?s parliament has adopted a resolution giving full support to the U.N. secretary general?s proposal for a total nuclear disarmament plan, media reports said on Tuesday.

The resolution, moved by Speaker Abdul Hamid and approved unanimously by oral vote, called on the United Nations Conference on Disarmament to immediately begin negotiations on the proposed Nuclear Weapons Convention.

?Any use of nuclear weapons would constitute international crimes, including crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, war crimes and genocide, with catastrophic global elects,? the New Age newspaper quoted the declaration as saying.

The resolution further urged all world governments and national parliaments to support the UN initiative. The resolution reflected Bangladesh?s policy for a world free of nuclear weapons, the report said. It reiterated the nation?s full support for nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear energy, it added.

The resolution also called upon nations with nuclear weapons capacities to divert the 100 billion US dollars spent annually on nuclear weapons programmes to climate change adaptation programmes and to the UN?s Millennium Development Goals instead.

Bangladesh, which was elected chair of the rotating presidency of the UN Conference on Disarmament earlier this year, approved the resolution ahead of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference scheduled May 3 to 28 in New York.

The NPT, which currently counts 189 signatories, was established in 1970 with the aim of limiting the spread of nuclear arms.
In an interview with the New York Times, Mr Obama said his administration was explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons. Those threats, he told the newspaper, could be deterred with “a series of graded options” – a combination of old and newly designed conventional weapons.

Mr Obama said he would make exceptions for “outliers like Iran and North Korea,” but that his new strategy was aimed at eliminating Cold War ambiguities about when such weapons could be used

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Eminent citizens organised the roundtable titled ‘Education and Education Policy’ at the Institute of Engineers, Bangladesh in the city.

Presiding over the roundtable, Justice Ghulam Rabbani said it is the education system, not religion, that can make a man rational, courageous, benevolent and selfless.

He urged all to work together to build a non-communal and democratic nation.

Noted academic Prof Serajul Islam Chowdhury said the nation wants a unified education system that will be free of discrimination, communalism and commercialisation.

People from the ethnic minorities and remotest areas should be entitled to the quota system, he added.

He also suggested providing subsidy to the poor students, minimising the financial gap between civil and military-run educational institutes, developing the curriculum and textbooks and increase the social status of the teachers.

Speaking as the chief guest, Rashed Khan Menon, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on education ministry, said the absence of an education policy since the independence gave birth to different education systems.

There was an attempt to incorporate different mediums into the mainstream in the proposed education policy, he said, adding that, “Implementation of the policy can be started from January 1 next year as we had said that the policy would be implemented in phases.”

“We could not yet implement the universal, people-oriented, democratic and non-communal education system as stated in the constitution, but the new policy is indeed a good start,” he said.

Prof Anu Muhammad of Jahangirnagar University said the education system has been commercialised which needs to be addressed immediately.

Many of the speakers, however, raised questions about the educational expenses and methods of the cadet colleges arguing that the draft education policy does not say anything about cadet colleges.

Prof Yasmin Haque of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) said the expenditure being spent on the students of cadet colleges is 40 times higher than the students of public universities.

Prof M Shamsul Alam of Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (Cuet) presented a keynote paper while Kabery Gayen and Prof Abul Kashem Fazlul Haque of Dhaka University (DU), Prof Shamsuddin Illyas of Rajshahi University, Prof Sushanta Kumar Das, Prof Rezai Karim Khandaker and Prof Tulsi Kumar Das of SUST, Dr Nazrul Islam, president of technical education sub-committee of National Education Policy-2000, Shyamol Kanti Ghosh, director general of Directorate of Primary Education, and Khandaker Asaduzzaman of Anti-Corruption Commission also spoke.
Prof Chowdhury demanded a unified, psychological and scientific education system and said that the mainstream education system should be strengthened.

Different quota systems should also be revoked, he said.

The national education committee has proposed an eight-year primary education. It has made English and religion & ethics compulsory from the third grade.

The draft recommends identical education system and syllabus for selected subjects at the primary level across the country to promote a fair education system. At the same time it mentions secularity.

Among compulsory subjects are Bangla, ethics, Bangladesh studies, mathematics, natural and social environments that includes climate change and IT & science.

The proposed policy aims at coordinating primary education delivered at government and non-government primary schools, kindergartens, madrasas and NGO-run schools. Besides the selected subjects other subjects can be inserted.

The government has said that the new education policy would become effective from January next.

Obstacle to higher education
RECENT media reports indicate, academics have identified weakness in English is a ‘major barrier’ to higher education in the country and have called for effective government initiatives to overcome the problem. Specifically, they pointed out that lack of proficiency in English among teachers and students have restricted themselves to cope with the rapid developments in the arena of knowledge. What is important for higher education is to have English education properly and effectively at pre-university level for acquiring knowledge. But students with very poor knowledge of English are coming to the universities. English knowledge is important also for employment abroad.

The government and the University Grants Commission have scopes to play effective roles to remove the weakness in English which is an appropriate medium of interaction worldwide. There are problems with English as a medium in higher education as more than 70 per cent of the university students in Bangladesh answer to questions in Bangla at their examinations although the texts are in English. The government should take initiatives to formulate a coordinated higher education policy for at least a decade or two to impart need-based education to the students as part of strategies for planned development of human resources.

Despite increased budgetary allocation for education, for updating education quality, curriculum and teaching, higher education here remains deprived of the increased allocation. Though the number of government and private universities and colleges has been steadily increasing, the rate of completion of courses is still very low. A combination of factors is related to the problems of high dropout rates at the college and university levels. They include poverty, according to academics as because higher education costs as high as $400 per year. Yet educated unemployment continues to rise.

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He said obviously there was a lot of suspicion out there, maybe for certain reasons, but everybody must recognise that the time was to move forward.
For example, Moriarty said, if Chevron and the government had worked together to increase Bangladesh?s vastly reduced power some people would insist that it was an evidence of conspiracy.?If the governments of Bangladesh and India sign a regional power sharing deal, some people would say it is a conspiracy,? he said.
The US envoy categorically said: ?It is not conspiracy, it is partnership.?
Moriarty however hailed Bangladesh for coming to a consensus on that energy is a priority.
?Improvement in energy situation would have knock on effects both on the industries and households,? he noted.

ABOUT James F. Moriarty
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

James F. Moriarty, October 3, 2007. Official U.S. State Department photoJames F. Moriarty is a United States diplomat and career foreign service officer with the rank of Minister-Counselor. As of 2008 he is the current U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh. His appointment was confirmed as by the Senate on March 14, 2008 and he was sworn in on March 26, 2008.

Prior to this assignment, Mr. Moriarty served as U.S. Ambassador to Nepal between 2004 and 2007. Before moving to Nepal, Ambassador Moriarty served in 2002?2004 as Special Assistant to the President of the United States of America and Senior Director at the National Security Council. He was responsible for advising on and coordinating U.S. policy on East Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific region. Ambassador Moriarty also worked in the White House in 2001?2002 as National Security Council Director for China Affairs.

In 1998?2001, Ambassador Moriarty served as Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. In 1994?1998, he led the General Affairs (Political) Section at the American Institute in Taiwan. Ambassador Moriarty shaped the U.S. response to Chinese missile tests in the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, and the ramming of a U.S. EP-3 plane off China?s Hainan Island. In these jobs and at the National Security Council, Ambassador Moriarty helped lay the groundwork for U.S.-China policy for the 21st century.

As Deputy Director of the State Department?s Office of United Nations (UN) Political Affairs in 1991?93, Ambassador Moriarty coordinated U.S. policy on UN Security Council issues. He received the American Foreign Service Association?s Rivkin Award for his principled approach to the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

Ambassador Moriarty was Diplomat-in-Resident at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1993?94. Earlier assignments in his career included postings at the U.S. Embassies in Pakistan, Swaziland, and Morocco, additional tours in Beijing and Taipei, and work on African issues at the U.S. Department of State. He joined the Foreign Service in 1975.

Ambassador Moriarty earned his Bachelor of Arts in History, summa cum laude, from Dartmouth College. He speaks Chinese, Nepali, Urdu, French and Bangla. Among his numerous awards are individual State Department Superior Honor Awards for his work in China (2000) and on Yugoslavia (1993) and two Group Superior Honor Awards. For his reporting and analysis in Pakistan, Ambassador Moriarty won the Director General?s 1987 Award as the State Department?s best reporting officer. He received a Presidential Pay Award in 2005 and, on numerous occasions, State Department Performance Pay.

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Now that he has been appointed ambassador to the United Nations for Bangladesh, Momen will have to field criticism of the six-month-old government he has agreed to represent. And some of that criticism is surfacing in his adopted state, Massachusetts.

Rafiq Islam, who lives in Falmouth on Cape Cod and has been in the United States for 26 years, contacted the Globe to say he had just returned from Bangladesh and found the crime and security situation to have deteroriated. He said that extrajudicial killings of political figures also have continued despite the promises of the new government.

He said that the new prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wazed, elected in a landslide victory in December, appeared to be doing what she had done in her first term as prime minister, from 1996 to 2001, promising change and then failing to deliver. “The situation has not improved very much. Many international watchgroups have criticized the government, and the so-called progress has not materalized. It is more of a political dictatorship than a real democracy,” Islam said.

I wrote about Momen’s appointment in the Globe on Tuesday. Last night I asked him by email to respond to criticism that the government isn’t doing enough or acting fast enough. Momen, who is traveling today to Bangladesh to collect his credentials for the UN post, answered by email before departing.

He said that in just a few months, the Awami League government led by Hasina in fact has made significant progress in a number of areas.

For example, he said the government had cut the prices of essential foodstuffs, including rice, by half in the last six months. To reduce corruption, the government has required Cabinet members to declare their wealth, and has made the financial system more transparent. The economy is likely to grow 5.5 percent to 6 percent this year, Momen said, ahead of earlier projections.

He acknowledged that there are law and order problems in Dhaka, the huge capital city, and that extrajudicial killings have continued, although he said the pace of such killings has been cut drastically. “More importantly, in the present government, both the Law Minister and the Home Minister have publicly stated that they will not tolerate any extrajudicial killing and those responsible would be punished to the fullest extent of the law. This is a good beginning. I have written personal notes to both the Ministers to fully stop the extra-judicial killing as it simply unacceptable.”

Momen said terror attacks by Islamist extremists had stopped since Hasina took office, but he added that because of campaigns against tax evaders and corruption, “many well-to-do people are upset and they are trying to derail the government.”

The daughter of one of the most prominent victims of extrajudicial violence in Bangladesh is Nazli Kibria, a professor at Boston University. Her father, Shah AMS Kibria, a member of Parliament and former finance minister, was assassinated in 2005. The family maintains a web site about Kibria and the assassination. The previous year, Hasina herself narrowly escaped a similar grenade attack.

Nazli Kibria applauded the appointment of Momen to the UN, but said she was upset that nothing had been done by the new government to bring the perpetrators of her father’s killing to justice. “My father was a member of the Awami League. We expected this new government to do something, but they?ve done absolutely nothing. My family is not happy about it,” she said.

Momen said in his email: “As you know, extra-judicial killing has become a norm, especially over the last seven years, and it is taking time to fully stop it.”

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????Yang made the statement as he was meeting with Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dipu Moni on the sidelines of the high-level UN conference on the world financial and economic crisis and its impact on development, which opened here on Wednesday and is to end on Friday.

During the meeting, Yang told his Bangladeshis counterpart that China and Bangladesh are friendly and close neighbors, the Chinese government attaches great importance to the Sino-Bangladeshi relations, and it is China’s adamantine policy to strengthen and develop the relations of friendship and cooperation with Bangladesh.

????China is willing to work with Bangladesh to further expand the bilateral cooperation in political, economic and trade, agricultural and cultural fields, the Chinese foreign minister said.

????In return, Moni said that Bangladesh and China enjoyed relations of friendship and cooperation for a long time, and Bangladeshi sees China as its close friend and cooperation partner.

????Bangladesh and China have frequent exchanges at all levels, and the bilateral cooperation has made great achievements, she said, adding that her country will work with China to promote the bilateral ties to a new level.

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On December 20, 2002, the United Nations General Assembly designated June 23 of each year as United Nations Public Service Day (resolution 57/277). It encouraged member states to organize special events on that day to highlight the contribution of public service in the development process and ensured the reflection of democratic values and participation of people.??

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p://gurumia.com/?attachment_id=1008″>

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Lawmaker of ruling Awami League, who earlier took newspaper headlines several times for his erratic and rude behaviour, on Friday landed in hospital after being beaten by own partymen for assaulting police officers at Chittagong port city.

The Water Transport Coordination Cell began operations on Friday after dropping MP and CCCI president Mohammed Abdul Latif from the post of adviser and convenor, leading to a run-in with police.

Shipping minister Afsarul Amin and Chittagong City Corporation mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury attended the launching programme as chief guest and special guest respectively.

The WTCC was formed in 2005 in association with Coastal Ship Owners’ Association and Bangladesh Cargo Owners’ Vessel Owners’ Association.

A memorandum of understanding signed with the chamber stipulated that the Chittagong Chamber of Commerce and Industry president and senior most vice-president would hold the post of adviser and convenor respectively.

But Latif, Awami League MP from Chittagong-10, thrust himself into the post of both adviser and convenor on being elected CCCI chief eight months back.

The aggrieved ship owners sat with the shipping minister who on June 3 directed senior vice president of the chamber Mohammed Abdus Salam to take the charge of convenor.

Ignoring the minister’s directives, Latif expressed his desire to retain the convenor’s post and got related papers signed by the chamber directors.

He decided to launch WTCC operations without intermediaries of the ship owners’ association while the latter retaliated by cancelling the MoU with the chamber signed four years ago

Around 10am on Friday when Latif, accompanied by some hundred supporters, attempted entering the WTCC office, the police stopped them and an altercation arose

A close aide of the lawmaker, Enamul haque Muniri, alleged that the policemen and the supporters, belonging to a particular faction of the ruling party, have manhandled the lawmaker sending him to a private facility for treatment with a fractured arm.

He(latif) kept lying there even after Shipping Minister Afsarul Amin and Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) Mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury walked past him to the meeting where they were the chief guest and special guest.

Later, Bangladesh Chhatra League activists carried the lawmaker out of the building around 5:30pm.

The WTCC was formed in 2005 merging two organisations of inland cargo vessel owners–Coastal Ship Owners Association of Bangladesh (COAB) and Bangladesh Cargo Vessel Owners Association (BCVOA).

As per a memorandum of understanding COAB and BCVOA signed with the CCCI, the senior vice-president of CCCI was to act as the convener of WTCC while the CCCI president would act as an adviser.

However, Latif even after becoming the president of CCCI on December 15, 2008, clung on to the convener and the adviser posts.

As vessel owners drew the shipping minister’s attention to the matter, the minister directed them to form an ad hoc committee following the rules of the organisation.

On June 3, COAB and BCVOA formed the 14-member ad hoc committee, excluding Latif, and made Gazi Belayet Hossain Mithu the convener.

The ad hoc committee was to form a new constitution to run WTCC under a new management, excluding the CCCI, and elect a new committee.

The ad hoc committee informed Latif of his expulsion from WTCC in a letter Thursday.

The meeting of the ad hoc committee was held as scheduled.

Latif earlier took the newspaper headlines first for humiliating two police officers at Patenga on one occasion, misbehaving with another police officer on a Biman flight and rudely rebuked deputy commissioner of the port city in two other incidents.

On another occasion he was criticised for his rude behaviour with a port officials, including a senior navy officer serving on deputation at the main port, in presence of a visiting parliamentary delegation.

?Interview:

Latif alleged, “Shipping minister Afsarul Amin and Chittagong mayor ABM mohiuddin Chowdhury set the police to stop him entering WTCC office.”

“At their instruction police kept beating me mercilessly until I fell on the ground.”

He alleged that the minister and his men were trying to occupy WTCC office to establish a reign of plundering.

“It is because of them that the country has become a land of thieves and cheats,” he said.

A Short? Interviews on the scuffle by M A LATIF ?from Metropolitan Hospital with The editor( www.gurumia.com ?) Md Moshiur Rahman ?when meet him to see his phisical condition .

Grumia : Say something in short about the scuffle.

M A Latif : I have courage to say truth and i am a politician to change the Contry? to a expected developed level. Problem is our system does not allow change easily .(system- political and burucrates positions- traditions-profit maker). So this is an example that the root of facilitor goast are still strong . To get real change of? the old political goast and get ?a real reform political views ?we may? sometime fall in such a situation .

Gurumia: How are you felling now ?

MA Latif : I feel pain on my left hand ?.neck and backbone,

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GDP GROWTH TARGET:

?The total figure of the budget is Tk 1,13,819 crore for the next fiscal year.

?The budget speech is being announced amid the absence of the opposition lawmakers who have been boycotting the important session since it’s beginning on June 4 centring a disagreement over seating arrangement in the House.

?

940MW power to be added to national grid.

?

Communication sector gets Tk 6,100

Money can be whitened for investing in specific sectors

Tk 5,000cr to continue stimulus programmes.

Defence spending up- www.bdmilitary.com

?The government has raised military spending to Tk 8,382 crore in the proposed budget.Finance minister AMA Muhith, in his budget speech on Thursday, also proposed to raise the original allocation of Tk 7,967 crore in the current fiscal to Tk 8,196 crore in the revised budget for FY 2009-10.

He told parliament that the government was set to keep the armed forces “above all controversy.”

“Currently, we do not have any codified defence policy,” Muhith said and added that they would follow a participatory approach in formulating a National Defence Policy.

The finance minister also stressed reinforcing diplomatic initiatives along with restructuring the defence system to ensure national security.

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