Joint forces arrested three staff of Chittagong City Corporation while pilfering oil at Cement Crossing in Patenga on Sunday.

The detainees were identified as account assistant Abu Zaheer, office assistant Mohammad Alamgir and driver Golam Nur.

Silk line mourns

Begum Hazera Khatun, wife of late businessman and social worker S.H.Khan and mother of former National Cricket Captain Akram Khan and footballer Iqbal Khan breathed her last at Square Hospital after prolonged illness on Friday last, said a press release. She was 76.

She is survived by five sons, five daughters, grandchildren and a host of relatives. National cricketers Nafis Iqbal and Tamim Iqbal are her grandsons.

Washington, The Guardian—Rocketing global food prices are causing acute problems of hunger and malnutrition in poor countries and have put back the fight against poverty by seven years, the World Bank said.

Robert Zoellick, the Bank's president, on

AFP, KANPUR - Paceman Morne Morkel grabbed two big wickets in successive overs to boost South Africa's hopes of restricting India to a modest total in the third and final Test here on Saturday.

The 23-year-old dismissed well-set Venkatsai Laxman and former captain Rahul Dravid before the hosts reached 165-4 in their first innings at tea on the second day in reply to the tourists' 265.

REUTERS, MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan - Afghan authorities have discovered a mass grave containing at least 100 bodies believed to be victims of a Taliban massacre in the 1990s, security officials said on Saturday.

The grave was discovered in the northern province of Balkh, about 15 km from the city of Mazar-i-Sharif.Provincial security official Abdurrauf Taj said about 100 bodies had been found in the grave, which is about 100 metres from a residential area.

Agency

The government has invited the Awami League to pre-dialogue talks through a mobile-to-mobile text message, an adviser said.

Adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman told bdnews24.com Saturday that he had sent an SMS to acting AL president Zillur Rahman inviting the party's leaders for the next pre-dialogue session. The AL has picked eight senior party leaders for the next pre-dialogue session with the government, an AL leader said earlier

AFP, WASHINGTON - The Group of Seven has warned the global economy is sputtering and vigorously backed measures to prevent a recurrence of what is being called the worst financial crisis in seven decades.

Finance ministers and central bank governors of the G7 major industrialized countries said banks should adopt steps to "fully and promptly" reveal their risk exposure due to the current financial

AFP, LONDON - Top children's writers including Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling have signed an open letter calling on world leaders to take urgent action over Darfur to protect the stricken region's children.

The letter by the 15 authors, also including Judy Blume and Cornelia Funke, was released Saturday ahead of Sunday's Global Day For Darfur organised by rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

AFP, MOSCOW - South Korea's first astronaut, Yi So-Yeon, was to star Saturday in celebratory sing-song aboard the crowded International Space Station (ISS) as back on Earth Russia marked the 47th anniversary of sending the first man in space.

Yi, 29, docked Thursday along with Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko after a successful Soyuz space capsule journey from the Russian cosmodrome at Baikonur in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan.

AFP, BOAO - Chinese President Hu Jintao met here Saturday with Taiwan's vice president-elect Vincent Siew, according to a pool report, in the highest-level contact ever between the two sides.

The meeting is being viewed as the first major test of the ability of the incoming administration in Taiwan to improve relations with China, from which it split in 1949 after a civil war.

Staff Correspondent

Awami League presidium member Abdur Razzak has termed the lack of action against the hardliners responsible for Friday's violence at Baitul Mukarram Mosque "a double-faced policy of the government".

He told reporters Saturday that he held "anti-liberation elements" responsible for the incidents on Thursday and Friday.

Staff Correspondent

Adviser CS Karim, who launched the country's first-ever imaging show Saturday, put accent on the availability of logistics and training to enable the next generation to excel in digital imaging.

"Today we don't require papers and pens to express our thoughts with the emergence of digital imaging. The importance of image is inevitable.

Staff Correspondent

Awami League presidium member Motia Chowdhury stood in a queue Saturday morning at an Open Market Sale in south Basabo to buy rice.

"I live in Moghbazar," Motia told bdnews24.com.

Staff Correspondent

Bangladesh will have to turn to nuclear-generated power in future to get over energy shortfalls, the chief adviser's special assistant M Tamim said Saturday. "We cannot only depend on gas or coal for power production.

We must go for nuclear power in future," said Tamim, special aide for energy, power and mineral resources, during an exchange of views at the Press Institute of Bangladesh at Kakrail in the city.

AFP, WASHINGTON - The International Monetary Fund holds its spring meeting here Saturday amid what officials describe as the worst financial crisis since the 1930s Depression and as the global economy weakens.

The 185-member IMF, set up to oversee the reconstruction of Europe after World War II, warned Wednesday that the economic outlook was increasingly grim, with the United States in a recession from a housing meltdown whose effects are still spreading.

Chief Justice M Ruhul Amin Friday said demand for equal rights of women in every aspect of life is logical, reports UNB. "Women are about half of the total population.

Hence, their demand for equal rights is logical. Then why various incidents are taking place now centering the issue?" he said.

Amid apprehension of a severe food crisis and tight global supplies, official data showed that there has been a bountiful production of Rabi crops this season across the country, indicating that Bangladesh has potentials to achieve food autarky, reports UNB.

"Most of the Rabi crops, including potato, wheat, pulses, mustard, maize, onion, chilli and garlic, exceeded their production targets this year.

WASHINGTON, Apr 11: US consumer sentiment is now at its lowest level in 26 years, a closely-watched survey has found, reports BBC.

With sentiment knocked by recession fears, the University of Michigan''s index of confidence fell to 63.2 for April from 69.5 in March.

Pakistan and India have agreed to finalise their much-delayed bilateral tariff and transit fee issues to pave the way for concluding higher level talks between the two countries on April 23 over Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project, according to Dawn.

Sources told Dawn on Thursday that technical teams of both the countries would meet in Islamabad between April 16 and 18 to firm up their recommendations to be discussed by the petroleum ministers of Pakistan and India in their meeting on April 23.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation warned yesterday that near drought in parts of Zimbabwe could badly damage the maize harvest and render a precarious staple food problem critical within months, reports AFP.

“Extreme dry weather in several provinces of Zimbabwe is likely to cause serious damage to the main 2008 maize harvest,” the agency said in a statement on the southern African country, whose people are still awaiting full results of an electoral challenge to President Robert Mugabe on March 29.