Rameswaram, Nov. 14 : Four persons were admittd to hospital when they fainted in the shock following a lightning, police said here today.
They were attending a meeting at a school when the incident occurred. The students ran helter-skelter after the lightning struck the sea coast yesterday, police said.
Heavy rains lashed Rameswaram Island and surrounding areas since last night and the sea level had increased by 25 cms, they said.
Dhaka, Bangladesh – The U.S. dollar gained further against the Bangladesh Taka (BDT) and reached at a new record at Tk 72.95 on Tuesday due to short supply of the greenback in the inter-bank foreign exchange (forex) market.
The banks quoted the dollar rate at Tk 68.50-72.95 on the day against Tk 68.50-71.90 of the previous day in the forex market. It rose by Tk 1.05 per unit in a single day.
According to treasury officials, the volatility showed in the local forex market from the beginning of this week as declining the flow of remittances, increased pressures on import payments and political unrest.
The Bangladesh Bank (BB), the country’s central bank, has directed the chief executive officers of commercial banks to monitor closely the forex deals to avoid abnormal volatility in the market, the central bank sources said.
The instruction came at a meeting with the managing directors and chief executive officers of 14 commercial banks, held at the central bank on Tuesday with the BB Governor Salehuddin Ahmed in the chair.
“A few number of Private Commercial Banks (PCBs) are quoting higher rates of the US dollar against the local currency without maintaining ethical practices,” a senior fund manager of a commercial bank told the AHN in Dhaka on Tuesday.
He also said the central bank should intervene in the market through selling the greenback to the dollar-hungry banks to bring back normalcy in the forex market.
Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in Rameswaram told Thinakaran, a Tamil Nadu daily that corpses of Tamils youths float in sewages in the North-East of Sri Lanka.
A large number of Tamils flee from Sri Lanka to the southern coast of India due to escalation of violence in Sri Lanka.
17 refugees including five children from Thirukadalure in Trincomalee and Illupankaulam in Vavuniya reached Kothandar Ramar Kovil Beach in Rameswaram on November 11th.
Koneswaran, one of the refugees, told Thinalkaran that the Tamil youths arrested by the army disappear and later they are found dead in sewages and that they are fleeing from North-East to save their lives.
Another refugee by the name of Jagetheswaran stated that the army brands every Tamil youth as a tiger and attacks.
Pirinthiny, a woman refugee, stated that due to the closure of A9 there is a scarcity for food items leading to a price hike.
One soldier has been killed and 11 people wounded after a group of Buddhist monks was attacked by bombers in southern Thailand.
Several monks were among those injured when a remote-controlled device in a rubbish bin was detonated by mobile phone as five Buddhists collected alms in a street in the city of Narathiwat, police said.
The attack is believed to have been carried out by Muslim separatists who have been fighting Thailand’s mainly Buddhist government since early 2004.
The soldiers were accompanying the monks to protect them from attack.
One soldier died on his way to hospital, while other soldiers, monks and four passers-by were wounded, police said.
Muslim insurgency
The insurgency in the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat – an Islamic sultanate until Bangkok annexed the region a century ago – has shown no sign of abating since a coup led by a Muslim general overthrew Thaksin Shinawatra, the elected prime minister, on September 19.
Muslim separatists carried out a series of attacks last week.
In Narathiwat province, separatists set off a bomb under a table at a crowded teashop, killing four people, on Friday.
A week earlier, a migrant worker from Myanmar was beheaded in front of his teenage daughter.
The militants tossed his head on the side of a village street in Narathiwat and then set off a remote-control bomb when police tried to retrieve it.
Since the coup, Surayud Chulanont, the former army chief appointed prime minister by the military, has said he wants a peaceful solution to the violence.
He has offered to hold talks with leaders of the Muslim insurgency, a reversal of policy from the days of Thaksin.
However the military also extended the emergency rule ordered by Thaksin, which gives sweeping powers to the authorities.
Aceh peace-deal eyed
During an official visit to Jakarta on Saturday, Surayud hailed Indonesia’s Aceh peace accord signed in Helsinki last year which ended a separatist insurgency which had killed 15,000 people since 1979.
“Indonesia has set a model in solving the conflict in the Aceh province successfully,” a Thai government web site, thaigov.go.th, quoted Surayud as saying after meeting Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian president.
“The Aceh model is a good example to bring peace to southern Thailand,” Surayud said.
Surayud also went to Kuala Lumpur this week for talks with Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who promised full co-operation with Thailand.
Under Thaksin-era relations between Thailand and Malaysia became strained after Bangkok accused mainly-Muslim Malaysia of sheltering Islamic insurgents.
Police banned all political gatherings in Bangladesh’s capital as a major political alliance plans to paralyze the capital with a massive strike starting Sunday to press for election reforms.
The Dhaka Metropolitan Police said Saturday it has banned “processions, rallies, demonstrations, sieges, sit-ins and blockades” as well as carrying arms, sticks, oars, explosives and other potential weapons.
The ban came after the alliance led by Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina said Saturday it would choke roads and rail links with sit-ins to press for the resignation of election officials accused of bias.
“We have no other option but to go for street protests,” alliance spokesman Abdul Jalil told reporters Saturday.”We have given time to act, but our demands are not met”.
Obaidul Quader, another alliance spokesman, said protesters would peacefully gather on Sunday at about 24 spots in the capital, Dhaka.
“Our protests will be peaceful,” Quader said.
The alliance has been demanding removal of the Chief Election Commissioner M.A. Aziz and his three deputies, accusing them of favoring former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s four-party coalition. Aziz denied the allegation.
Zia’s alliance is backing Aziz.
Sunday’s protests will come after less than two weeks after deadly political riots over an alleged attempt to rig the upcoming election left at least 27 people dead across the country.
A Burmese ferry with passengers onboard was hijacked by a gang of Bangladeshis on the 8th of November, 2006, report local and official Burmese sources.
Around 6:30 p.m. on the day, the gang boarded the ferry at San Pae Bin Rin Village and took control of the vessel – steering it to unknown location, said local source relaying information from a Burmese official.
The ferry operates between Maungdaw and Taungbro on the Naff River, which marks the border between Burma and Bangladesh, and San Pae Bin Rin on the Naff River opposite Bangladesh’s Nila Village.
A border security official from Burma reported that a high-ranking official from the Burmese Immigration Department in Taungbro is among the kidnapped passengers – most of whom are local public officers.
Currently, a team of Burmese officers is visiting local areas, including Rakhaing villages on the Bangladesh side of the border, to investigate the hijacked ferry.
The loot from onboard the ferry is estimated to be worth about 10 million Burmese kyats.
At the time of the hijacking, troops from the San Pae Bin Rin Nasaka outpost fired some shots in an attempt to get the ferry to stop. The hijackers still managed to escape to Bangladesh.
There have been no demands for ransom money for any of the kidnapped victims
“The state of non-happening is once again strung together by the beads of rhetoric. But it no longer sparkles as in the olden days to cover the dark patches of national failures.
Nothing possibly could be worse than what it is today. Only doom can beat it all. Hence optimism fights back in a pitch dark tunnel of an unrewarding politics that holds little light at the end of it. Or it may as well be a blind tunnel with no way to go. We are just in the middle of it singly, collectively, and as a nation.
If the flower of democracy has wilted before it could blossom, we have no tears to shed for it. Because it hardly existed even in its distorted frame.”
(Enayetullah Khan; Holiday, March 1975)
Situated in the Caribbean Sea a few miles off the north coast of Panama, the San Blas de Cuna Islands are the home of the Cuna, a traditional society of Native Americans. Most of these tropical islands are very small. Many are surrounded by coral reefs. The islands are part of Panama, but are primarily administered by the Cuna tribe
Sri Lankan Navy attacked fishermen from Rameswaram at sea on Tuesday (November 7th) and 20 of them are missing. It is suspected that they had been abducted.
500 fishing boats went for fishing with tokens issued by fisheries department from Rameswaram on that day. While they were fishing in the mid seas, the Sri Lankan Navy fired shots in the air and moved towards them. Fear stricken fishermen collected their fishing nets and got ready to return.
Sri Lankan sailors entered their boats and attacked them mercilessly. They damaged the fishing gear and other belongings of the Indian fisherman. They even forcibly took away their catch
In the meantime five boats bearing the numbers RMS 656, 602, 1374, 812 and 2000 have not returned to the shore.
The missing fishermen are Velsamy(45), Kannan(30), Thankaraj(50), Rajathurai(50), Subramani(50), Karupaiya(45), Chandren(45), Jaleem(40),Perumal(35),Arumugam(45),Vellasamy(30),Ganeswaren(35), Thavasi(45), Sheik(27) Bapu(25) and Muthukumar(25).
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