‘Textbook Festival Day’ begins

Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid opened the much-awaited Textbook Festival Day by handing over books to the students of Residential Model School and College in the capital Tuesday morning.
Addressing the students, Nahid said the government has been distributing free textbooks to both primary and secondary students since 2010 to solve the textbook crisis.
In 2010, around 19 crore textbooks were distributed to students of primary and secondary levels.
A total of 26,17,74,606 free textbooks would be distributed this year, the minister added.
“That (the increasing number of distributed books) means the enrolment of students is increasing gradually,” an optimistic minister said.
He urged the students to concentrate on their studies to get the best possible education and to take the country to its desired goal.
The textbooks distribution is going on simultaneously across the country from today and it will continue for seven days.
On Monday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina formally inaugurated the distribution by giving textbooks to students of different classes at Gono Bhaban in the capital.
The government decided on free distribution in 2009 against a backdrop of textbook crisis. It has been distributing books to both primary and secondary students at the very beginning of academic sessions since 2010.
Previously, only primary students were provided with free textbooks.
All the textbooks of primary and secondary grades will also be available on the government's e-books website (www.ebook.gov.bd) and that of the NCTB (www.nctb.gov.bd).

60 killed in Ivory Coast Stampede

About 60 people were crushed to death in Ivory Coast's main city of Abidjan overnight after a New Year's Eve fireworks display, an emergency official and state radio said on Tuesday.
"There are around 60 dead, and about 200 injured, this is a provisional estimate," a rescue official told Reuters, asking not to be named.
He said the incident happened near Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium where a crowd had gathered to watch fireworks.
A Reuters correspondent said there were blood stains and abandoned shoes outside the stadium Tuesday morning, and government officials and rescue and security forces were still there.
"My two children came here yesterday. I told them not to come but they didn't listen. They came when I was sleeping. What will I do?" said Assetou Toure, a cleaner. She said she did not know if her children survived.

35 officials of Sonali, other business entities sued

The Anti-Corruption Commission on Tuesday filed 26 cases against 35 top officials of Sonali Bank and five business entities for misappropriating more than Tk 345 crore of depositors' money.
The names of Hall-Mark Managing Director Tanvir Mahmud and General Manager Tushar Ahmed were also included in the cases on charge of abetting the five companies in embezzling the amount.
ACC Deputy Director Mir Mohammad Zainul Abedin Shebly filed the cases with Ramna Police Station under anti-money laundering and corruption prevention acts, ACC sources said.
The five firms and Hall-Mark Group swindled a total of Tk 3,547 crore from Sonali Bank's Ruposhi Bangla Hotel branch with the help of some bank officials using forged documents between October last year and May this year.
Of the amount, Hall-Mark took Tk 2,686 crore showing fake documents.
Of the five firms, T and Brothers swindled Tk 317.52 crore, Paragon Knit Composite Ltd and its sister concern Tk 13.58 crore, DN Sports and its sister concern Tk 2.81 crore, Nakshi Knit and Composite Ltd and its sister concerns Tk 10.81 crore and Khanjahan Ali Sweater Ltd Tk 1.14 crore.
In May, a Bangladesh Bank probe revealed serious irregularities at Sonali Bank's Ruposhi Bangla Hotel branch in sanctioning and disbursing loans of Tk 3,547 crore to the five firms and Hall-Mark.
On October 4, the ACC filed 11 cases against 27 top officials of Sonali Bank and Hall-Mark for misappropriating over Tk 1,568 crore [funded portion of Tk 2,686 crore].
On August 30, Sonali Bank suspended 17 of its officials over the fraud.

Stabber quizzed

Detectives investigating the gruesome murder of Bishwajit Das yesterday began quizzing six of the 10 arrestees in the murder case, now on remand, to ascertain if the murder was pre-planned and whether they were instigated by others.
A team from the Detective Branch of Police first interrogated Rafiqul Islam Shakil, known as a Chhatra League cadre, who hacked Bishwajit with a machete while the other assailants beat the poor tailor with sticks and iron rods.
Earlier yesterday, a Dhaka court remanded Shakil for eight days.
“We asked him [Shakil] why he and the others killed him [Bishwajit] and if it was a planned murder or not,” investigation officer (IO) of the case Tajul Islam told this correspondent last night.
So far 10 people have been arrested in the case, and with the remand of Shakil, the number of those remanded rose to six, the IO said.
A DB team led by Tajul yesterday morning produced Shakil before a metropolitan magistrate's court, seeking a 10-day remand, and the court granted an eight-day remand.
On Saturday, a Dhaka court remanded for eight days two other accused in the case -- Saiful Islam and Rasheduzzaman Shaon -- arrested on the previous day.
Three of the seven people held earlier for the murder were also remanded for eight days. They are Mahfuzur Rahman Nahid, HM Kibria and Mohammad Kayyum Miah.
In his forwarding report to the court yesterday, Tajul, who is an inspector of Bomb Disposal Unit of the DB, said Shakil is the prime accused in the case as they identified him from photos and video footages of the murder. Shakil was seen hacking Bishwajit with a machete.
Talking to this correspondent, the IO said all the six now on remand confessed their involvement in the murder but it was yet to be ascertained if they were Chhatra League activists.
“We are hopeful of unearthing everything concerning the murder soon,” he added.
Bishwajit, 24, was beaten and hacked to death by activists of the pro-Awami League student body Chhatra League at Johnson Road in Old Dhaka during the opposition-called December 9 blockade.
Detectives arrested Shakil, a second-year student of Islamic history at Jagannath University, at a relative's house in Barguna through tracking his mobile phone calls early Saturday. Later at night, they also recovered the machete from a shop on the JnU campus.

Daylight savings tied to bump in heart attack rates

Setting the clock ahead for daylight savings time may set the scene for a small increase in heart attacks the next day, according to a US study - which suggests that sleep deprivation may be to blame.
Researchers at two hospitals in the US state of Michigan, whose findings appeared in the American Journal of Cardiology, reviewed six years of records and found that they treated an average of 23 heart attacks on the Sunday when the United States switched to daylight savings time. That compared to 13 on a typical Sunday.
"Nowadays, people are looking for how they can reduce their risk of heart disease and other ailments," said Monica Jiddou, the study's lead author and a cardiologist at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak.
"Sleep is something we can potentially control. There are plenty of studies that show sleep can affect a person's health."
A 2008 Swedish report, for instance, found that the chance of a heart attack increased in the first three weekdays after the switch to daylight savings time, and decreased the Monday after the clocks returned to standard time in the autumn.
Jiddou told Reuters Health that her team wanted to see if their respective hospitals experienced the same increase and decrease in heart attacks seen in the Swedish study.
For the new study, she and her colleagues reviewed records for the 328 patients who were diagnosed with a heart attack during the week after a time change between 2006 and 2012, and for the 607 heart attack patients who were treated two weeks before and after the time shifts.
They found that except for the small increase on the Sunday that daylight savings time kicked in, there were no significant differences in heart attack rates in the first week after the spring clock change or in the fall, when people set clocks back.
The authors note, however, that the small trends they observed suggest shifts to and from daylight savings time may be linked with small increases in heart attacks in the spring, and small decreases in the fall.
They speculate that sleep deprivation resulting from the time changes could raise levels of stress hormones and inflammatory chemicals just enough to trigger a heart attack, especially in those already at high risk.
Though the slight increase in heart attacks in the days following time shifts were so small they could have been due to chance, Jiddou told Reuters Health that she believes the problem was the size of the study population.
"The numbers weren't necessarily striking, but the trends make you stop and think," she said.
But Steven Nissen, a cardiologist who is chair of the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, said that people should be carefully interpreting the findings.
"We haven't generally thought that missing an hour of sleep causes heart attacks. This may or may not hold up," Nissen said.
He added that while the study looks at a good question and he applauds the researchers' efforts, but stressed the limitations of the results and noted that the size of the effect is not huge.

Vow to complete war trial

Celebrating the 41st anniversary of victory in the Liberation War, people from all strata yesterday called for immediate completion of war crimes trial.
They also vowed to resist the fundamentalist and militant forces to establish a secular and prosperous Bangladesh.
The nation is bearing the stigma of war crimes since its birth in 1971. Initiative has been taken to try the war criminals, and the country is now waiting for the end of the trial to get rid of the burden of stigma.
"The last wish of my life is to see the execution of death sentences to war criminals. If the wish is fulfilled, my soul will rest in peace after my death," said Jahangir Alam, a freedom fighter.
Alam was observing the Victory Day celebration programme at the Dhaka University playground yesterday.
This was the wish not only of Alam, rather it appeared that the same were the wishes of thousands of people, who called for hastening the war crimes trial and upholding the spirit of independence.
"Like that of 1971, the whole nation will have to remain united against communalism, fundamentalism and militancy--this should be our victory day pledge," said Kajal Abdullah, a student of Dhaka University.
The nation yesterday celebrated the day saluting the valiant sons and daughters of the soil, who made their supreme sacrifices for the birth of Bangladesh.
On this day in 1971, Pakistani occupation forces chief general AAK Niazi along with 93,000 troops surrendered to the joint forces of Mukti Bahini and Mitra Bahini in Dhaka.
Bangladesh proclaimed its independence on March 26, 1971 after 23 years of struggle for self-determination, bringing down the erstwhile West Pakistani armed forces' genocidal wrath on its people the night before.
In a heinous genocide, the Pakistan army and their local collaborators -- Razakars, Al-Badrs and Al-Shams -- launched a barbarous crackdown on the innocent people of Bangladesh at midnight past March 25, 1971.
The nation, under the paramount leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, finally clinched independence on December 16 after the nine-month war.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina placed wreaths at the National Memorial in Savar on the outskirts of the capital at dawn.
Leader of the Opposition Khaleda Zia, different political, social and cultural organisations, senior government officials also gathered at the memorial to pay tribute to the martyrs.
Enthusiastic with the spirit of independence, people of all walks across the country rushed to the memorial of the martyrs to pay tributes to the war heroes.
Hasina also placed a wreath at the portrait of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at Bangabandhu Bhaban in the city's Dhanmondi before attending the Victory Day parade at 10:30am.
Later, Hasina took salute from the armed forces at the parade programme at the National Parade Square. President Zillur Rahman could not attend the programme due to illness.
The day was a public holiday. The national flag was hoisted atop all government, semi-government and other important establishments. The day was heralded by a 31-gun salute at dawn.
Bangladesh missions abroad also celebrated the day. Special prayers were offered in the mosques, temples and churches across the country.
Parts of the capital wore a festive look on the day. Many buildings were illuminated, while vehicle owners also sported the flag on their automobiles.
Streets had been swarmed with enthusiastic people carrying banners of different political, social, cultural and professional organisations, and singing patriotic songs.
Many were seen draped in green and red clothes matched to the national flag.
After placing wreaths at the National Memorial in Savar, LGRD Minister and Awami League General Secretary Syed Ashraful Islam said they hoped to end the war crimes trial and implement some verdicts before the next Victory Day.
To mark the day, newspapers published special supplements, television channels broadcast talk shows, cultural programmes and dramas.
Different political, social and cultural organisations organised elaborate programmes including discussions, rally, procession, photo exhibition, painting competition.

Sugar 'comforts babies during immunisations'

It appears that sugar really may help the medicine go down - studies suggest a few drops can comfort babies who are having their jabs.
The Cochrane team reviewed 14 studies involving more than 1,500 infants going for routine childhood immunisations or a heel-prick blood test.
Babies given a sugary solution to suck as they were about to be injected cried far less than those given water.
While sugar may pacify, it is unclear if it also relieves pain.
Experts say more research is needed to explore this.
Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
A small study published a couple of years ago in The Lancet medical journal looked at the responses of 44 infants given either sugar or water as they had a heel-prick blood test.
The sugar did not appear to make a difference to pain - all babies similarly grimaced and had comparable electrical activity measured with EEG readings in areas of the brain that process pain.
The lead researcher in the Cochrane review, Dr Manal Kassab of the Jordan University of Science and Technology in Irib, Jordan, said: "Giving babies something sweet to taste before injections may stop them from crying for as long.
"Although we can't confidently say that sugary solutions reduce needle pain, these results do look promising."
David Elliman of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said sugar solution was not used routinely in practice.
"Generally, doctors recommend that the mother holds the baby and comforts it while they have their immunisation. If she is breastfeeding still, she might want to breastfeed her baby at the same time.
"With older children we try to distract them. If you do the usual holding and comforting, I'm not sure how much sucrose would add.
"What we do know is that using a shorter needle tends to be more painful, even though this might seem counterintuitive. That's because the injections need to go into the muscle."
By the time a child has reached its second birthday it should have had around 10 different injections to protect against various infectious diseases, including measles, mumps and rubella.