Sunni party deny Iraq's national elections

The Sunni wing of Iraq's leading nonsectarian political coalition is dropping out of next month's elections, saying the vote will be illegitimate because of a Shiite-ordered ballot purge of hundreds of candidates.

A statement Saturday by the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue stopped short of urging Sunnis to boycott the March 7 parliamentary elections.

But it invited other political parties to withdraw. At least one, the National Council for Tribes of Iraq, said it would.

The Front for a National Dialogue is headed by Sunni lawmaker Saleh al-Mutlaq.

He was barred from running for re-election after a Shiite vetting panel accused him of having ties to Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath party. Al-Mutlaq has said he quit the party in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, with tempers high ahead of Iraq's national elections next month, even tearing down a campaign poster is a flash point between Sunnis and Shiites.

A spate of defaced, torn down or otherwise trashed posters of candidates across the country has prompted the Shiite-led Iraqi government to vow to impose prison sentences of up to a year on vandals.

But others, particularly Sunnis, see the harsh punishment as just the latest display of power by Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his allies. It comes on the heels of a ballot purge of more than 440 candidates, most of them Sunni, who are accused of being loyalists to Saddam Hussein's former Baathist regime.

"Democracy allows for any citizen to express his or her feelings," a 33-year-old man who would only identify himself by his nickname, Abu Harir, said Friday in Azamiyah, a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad. "It is unfair to impose this punishment."

Vandals burned some of al-Maliki's posters and threw black paint on those of former Premier Ayad Allawi in at least two Shiite-dominated Baghdad neighborhoods early Friday. Other posters were ripped. Both al-Maliki and Allawi are Shiite.

"One-year punishment is not harsh because of the corruption caused by this act," Shiite lawmaker Abbas al-Bayati, a member of al-Maliki's political coalition, said Friday. "They turn the legal competition to a violent one because when they rip the posters of one list, this list might react and by this they create violence in the street.

Environmental impact in Japan

Couple of months ago, I got the opportunity of visiting Japan's largest coal-fired Hekinan Thermal Power Plant. It is situated on the Mikawa bay located in Aichi prefecture (state) near Hekinan city, 40 km south of Nagoya, the city of Toyota. The station was installed by the Chubu Electric Power Co. which supplies electricity to an area of 37.78 × 104 km 2 .

Hekinan has 5 units and total power generation capacity of 4100 MW, making this the largest coal-fired power station in Japan and one of the largest in the world.

Within the 30-km radius of the power station, approximately 2 million people live. A crucial mission for the plant was “to preserve the earth's environment for future generations”. It has taken plenty of environmental measures by installing the latest equipment which led to enhance the thermal efficiency of the plant to reduce smoke emission, water emission and noise very effectively. They have done their outmost to protect the environment in a variety of ways. To hear and meet the local demand, the company involved the neighbouring people while conducting Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and disclosed every report to them from time to time.

In the EIA process so many measures were identified to keep the local environment most attractive. One of the significant measures was to consider the local aesthetic values and community facilities. This eventually created site attraction. Now the place is not only important for the large scale power plant but also for tourism and fishing facilities. The facilities that the company attributed for the community are called “Hekinan Tantopia” meaning Electricity Greenery Environment. The aesthetic values and community facilities that were taken into consideration are: the traditional yacht sailing, fishing facilities, creation of electric power museum, healing garden and eco-park.

On the Mikawa Bay sailing yacht is historically very popular. So the design of the power station is made in such a way that it looks like a sailing yacht. Use of aesthetic funnels and the standardization of colors and design of the buildings were matching a yacht.

The plant site was also important for the people who love fishing. So to compensate the sentiment of the community, company has made a “fishing park” near the northern water outlet of the power station.

The Healing Garden, situated to the south of the Electric Power Museum, has “healing and communication” as its theme. The garden features a large central lawn, flowerbeds, a bird lake, a chrysanthemum garden, a water garden and a herb garden.

South-east of the Healing Garden site has been made most appealing to the visitors by creating an Eco-Park with “ecological afforestation” method. approximately 25% of the area of the power station planted with trees which has created a green belt. Visitors can observe so many wild birds and insects in the park.

Hekinan power plant is a unique example which can serve as a model for the successful conservation of environment as well as a good lesson EIA involving people -- how to accommodate of local aesthetic values and community facilities.


Md. Billal Hossain is a Director (Administration) of the Department of Environment.

India won without 4 stars

India overcame the absence of four top stars to beat South Africa by one run in a thrilling one-day international on Sunday and take a 1-0 lead in the three-match series.

Wayne Parnell was run out off the final delivery, attempting a second run that would have tied the match, to leave the Proteas on 297 all out in reply to India's 298-9.

The tourists were tottering at 225-8 in the 43rd over when the ninth-wicket pair of Parnell and Dale Steyn swung the day-night match around by adding 65 off 38 balls.

South Africa, needing 26 off the final 12 deliveries, smashed 16 runs in the penultimate over of Ashish Nehra that included a six each by Parnell and Steyn.

With nine runs required from five deliveries, seamer Praveen Kumar bowled Steyn and conceded just seven more off the next four to hand India a thrilling win.

Parnell hit a defiant 49 off 47 balls and Steyn plundered an 18-ball 35, but the pair failed to take the tourists across the line at the Sawai Man Singh stadium in Jaipur.

Earlier, Suresh Raina top-scored with 58 off 63 balls and Virender Sehwag hammered a typically aggressive 46 off 37 balls as the hosts piled up 298-9 after being sent in to bat.

South Africa's stand-in captain Jacques Kallis starred for the tourists with both bat and ball, claiming 3-29 from seven overs with his medium-pace bowling before making a fluent 89.

The veteran all-rounder hit six fours and a six before being eighth out, bowled by Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, 11 runs short of his 17th one-day century.

India took the field in the series opener without bowling spearheads Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh, and frontline batsmen Gautam Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh.

Harbhajan was given permission to miss the first two matches due to his sister's wedding, while the other three were injured.

Kallis led South Africa in the absence of Graeme Smith, who opted out of the one-dayers with a finger injury sustained during the Test series, which ended 1-1 last week.

When India batted, Sehwag and Dinesh Karthik (44) put on 79 for the second wicket in 75 balls after veteran Sachin Tendulkar was run out for four in the second over of the match.

Sehwag, who hit two audacious sixes over the third man and cover region, was unlucky to be run out when a Karthik drive was deflected to the non-striker's wicket by bowler Charl Langeveldt.

South Africa made a flying start as Herschelle Gibbs (27) and Loots Bosman (29) put on 58 for the first wicket off just 8.4 overs.

South Africa, who were 134-3 at one stage, lost three middle-order wickets for 27 runs to slip to 161-6 by the 35th over.

The second match will be played in Gwalior on Wednesday and the third in Ahmedabad on Saturday.

England Player in Dhaka

A 28-member England cricket team, with 16 players, arrived in Dhaka last night. The Lions will play three one-day internationals and two Tests on their month-long tour with two limited-overs and a three-day practice matches.

Left-hand opening batsman Alastair Cook is leading the team in both one-dayers and Tests in absence of regular skipper Andrew Strauss who opted to take a break in order to concentrate on the upcoming tours.

On their arrival, the English team left the airport straight for the hotel and refused to speak to the media. However, it was learnt that they would hold an official media briefing on the 27th, the day before the first one-day international. They have also called off today's scheduled practice session.

The tour will kick off with a limited-overs warm-up game against the Bangladesh Cricket Board XI on February 23 at the Fatullah Cricket Stadium where the second one-day warm-up game will also be held on February 25.

The first two one-day internationals, both day-nighters, will be held at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Mirpur. The teams will then travel to Chittagong to play the third one-day international and the first Test beside a three-day warm-up game. The second Test will be held at Mirpur.

England arrived here from the United Arab Emirates where they played two Twenty20 internationals against current world champions Pakistan, winning the first one and losing the last. On the other hand, hosts Bangladesh also arrived yesterday from a month-long tour of New Zealand where they played one T20, three one-dayers and one Test and lost all of them.

NEW WINDOWS MOBILE

Microsoft unveiled a new version of its mobile operating system on February 15 as the US software giant seeks to regain lost ground in the highly competitive smartphone market.

Chief executive Steve Ballmer presented the Windows Phone 7 Series at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, ending months of speculation about what Microsoft had in store for the industry's biggest trade show.

"We're taking a step, I think a big step," Ballmer said, adding that devices fitted with the new software would be available in time for the winter holiday shopping season. "I'm enthusiastic about the direction that we're heading."

"We hope 7 is our lucky number," he said.

Microsoft has been up against strong competition from Internet giant Google's Android, as both newcomers fight for a share of a market dominated by the Blackberry and Apple's iPhone.

"The primary goal of Windows Mobile 7 is clearly to address Microsoft's shortcomings in the consumer mobile market," said Charles Golvin, analyst at research firm Forrester.

"All plaudits for their persistence aside, in my view this is their final chance to get it right," Golvin said.

Google has made a splash in the mobile phone industry with its Android operating system, launched in 2007, and phone makers have announced that they would release several more smartphones with this platform this year.

In its upgrade, Microsoft completely changed the platform's interface and installed the capabilities of its Zune MP3 player, which has only been available in the United States.

The system includes six "hubs" that group services by themes, such as a "people" inbox that includes emails, text messages and updates from social network activities, or an Xbox Live icon for online games.

Microsoft-powered touch-screen phones will be rolled out later this yea

33 civilians are dead in Afgan

The Afghan Cabinet says at least 33 civilians are dead as the result of Nato airstrike in southern Afghanistan — an incident that is inflaming already heightened sensitivities over noncombatant casualties in the war.


In a statement released on Monday, the Afghanistan Council of Ministers strongly condemned the airstrike, saying it was "unjustifiable."


The Cabinet says initial reports indicate that Nato fired Sunday on a convoy of three vehicles killing at least 33 civilians, including four women and one child. The ministers say 12 others were injured while they were on their way to Kandahar.


Nato has confirmed that its planes fired on what it believed was a group of insurgents in southern Uruzgan province, but later discovered that women and children were hurt.


THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.


KABUL (AP) — A Nato airstrike in southern Afganistan killed at least 21 civilians, the Afghan Interior Ministry said Monday, in an incident that could inflame already heightened sensitivities over noncombatant casualties.


Nato forces confirmed in a statement that its planes fired Sunday on what it believed was a group of insurgents in southern Uruzgan province on their way to attack a joint Nato-Afghan patrol, but later discovered that women and children were hurt. The injured were transported to medical facilities.


The Afghan government and Nato have launched an investigation.


Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said the Sunday morning airstrike hit three minibuses traveling on a major road near Uruzgan's border with central Day Kundi province. There were 42 people in the vehicles, all civilians, Bashary said.


The Nato statement did not say how many people died or whether all the occupants of the vehicles were civilians.


Afghan investigators on the ground have collected 21 bodies and two people are missing. Fourteen others were wounded, he said.


"We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives," Nato commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in the statement. "I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission. We will redouble our effort to regain that trust."


McChrystal apologized to President Hamid Karzai for the incident on Sunday, Nato said.


On Saturday, Karzai had admonished Nato troops for not doing enough to protect civilian lives. During a speech to the opening session of the Afghan parliament, Karzai had called for extra caution on the part of Nato, which is currently conducting a massive offensive on the southern Taliban stronghold of Marjah in neighboring Helmand province.


"We need to reach the point where there are no civilian casualties," Karzai had said. "Our effort and our criticism will continue until we reach that goal."


Nato has gone to great lengths in recent months to reduce civilian casualties — primarily through reducing airstrikes and tightening rules of engagement — as part of a new strategy to focus on protecting the Afghan people to win their loyalty over from the Taliban.


This is the largest joint Nato-Afghan operation since the Taliban regime was ousted from power in 2001. It's also the first major ground operation since President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan.


But mistakes have continued. In the ongoing offensive against Marjah, two Nato rockets killed 12 people in one home and others have gotten caught in the crossfire. At least 16 civilians have been killed so far during the offensive, Nato has said, though human rights groups claim the number is at least 19.


Last Thursday, an airstrike in northern Kunduz province missed targeted insurgents and killed seven policemen.


Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, said on NBC's "Meet The Press" that Marjah was the opening salvo in a campaign to turn back the Taliban that could last 12 to 18 months.


But the continued toll of civilian lives will only make it harder for Nato in its goal to win over the support of local Afghans against Taliban militants in the south.


The newly appointed civilian chief for Marjah arrived Monday to begin the task of restoring government authority after years of Taliban rule even though Nato troops are still battling insurgents in the area.


District leader Abdul Zahir Aryan will be flying into Marjah for the first time since the massive Nato offensive began February 13. He plans to meet with community leaders and townspeople about security, health care and reconstruction, he said in a phone interview Sunday.


"The Marines have told us that the situation is better. It's OK. It's good," Aryan said. "I'm not scared because it is my home. I have come to serve the people."

Huge Peopole Will Use Phone 2010

The ranks of cell phone subscribers will swell to five billion people this year thanks to the growth of smartphones in developed nations and mobile services in poor nations, a UN agency said on February 15.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) also said the number of mobile broadband subscriptions would exceed one billion this year after reaching 600 million in 2009.

"Even during an economic crisis, we have seen no drop in the demand for communications services," ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure said in a statement at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the industry's biggest trade show.

The number of mobile subscribers had reached 4.6 billion people last year.

"I am confident that we will continue to see a rapid uptake in mobile cellular services in particular in 2010, with many more people using their phones to access the Internet," Toure said

In the developing world, the growth has been driven by the use of phones for mobile banking and health services, the ITU said.

"Good examples include sending SMS messages to deliver instructions on when and how to take complex medication such as anti-retrovirals or vaccines," he said, adding that such uses can save millions of dollars and lives.

People with no bank accounts but mobile subscriptions are also increasingly able to do financial transactions with their phones in developing countries, he said.
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NOKIA FOR BANGALI

Morshedul Haque, an employee of a state-owned bank, always seems puzzled about the operating system (OS) of his cellphone. Most of the times he is seen taking tutorials from his university-going daughter on 'How to operate the device properly'.

A small-time rice trader of Chittagong, Rokibul Islam, treats texting system of his cellphone as a 'curse' of his life. As a businessman, he often gets huge text messages. But he had to appoint an assistant to receive the messages and to reply as per Rokib's instructions.

These are common scenarios of daily lives of many Bangladeshis.

People like Morshed and Rokib could breathe a sigh of relief if they could understand their handsets' features in their own languages.

Understanding the gravity of the situation, many mobile handset manufacturers now opened up separate segments to only concentrate on how to reach this particular portion thus they can easily understand and use their features according to their wills.

Nokia, the world leader in mobile handset manufacturing, has been working to deal with this particular issue for a certain period of time. As part of it, Nokia on Tuesday unveiled five new affordable and user-friendly handsets -- Nokia 1280, Nokia 1616, Nokia 1800, Nokia 2220 slide and Nokia 2690 -- in their Bangla language support range in order to make mobile communication easier and simpler which will help both urban and rural people to access information.

Speaking at the launching programme at Shilpakala Academy, Nowfel Anower, head of marketing of Nokia Emerging Asia, said Nokia launched these phones in February to pay tribute to the martyrs of the language movement in 1952 and the International Mother Language Day as well.

He said, “As mobile technologies are for empowering entrepreneurs and providing consumers with knowledge, entertainment and the ability to connect with friends and family, these new handsets will offer consumers a whole new range of opportunities, including getting their first digital identity, without the need for a PC.”

Bangla-supported operating system is one of the common key features of these newly launched handsets. Even those, who find it difficult, would feel comfort with these. Other features are exactly the same of Nokia's regular phones in affordable range. The price range of the devices starts from Tk 1870 to Tk 4995.

Nokia 2220 is currently available in the market. Nokia 1616 will be available in the market in the last week of February, Nokia 2690 in March while Nokia 1280 and Nokia 1800 in April.

Family Tree

FEBRUARY 21, the Language Martyrs' Day, is observed not only by the Bangalees. It is also recognised worldwide as the International Mother Language Day. Use of language is probably the single most important factor in the extraordinary development of humans as Homo sapiens or 'wise man'. But when did language, notably Bangla, emerge as a separate language? How or do we recognize our mother tongue after birth? What does science say?

More than a decade ago, I came across an article in the journal, probably the Scientific American, and was excited to find Bangla as an important branch in the family tree of the original Indo-European language. Such a family tree was constructed 150 years ago at the inspiration of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. Legendary physicist Satyendranath Basu is said to have once remarked in reaction to those who doubted Bangla's potential as a medium for studying science said, 'either they do not know the language or they do not know science'! Moreover, I was proud to know Bangla as one of the oldest and original languages that has survived torments over a millennium, but many others could not withstand. I found more reasons to nurture it than ever.

Early last year, a group of scientists spanning four continents constructed a phylogenic (evolutionary developmental history) tree of languages based on genetic makeup of Helicibacter pylori, the bacteria causing gastric ulcer. Funny, isn't it? Would you call it a science? Well, the bacteria colonized our stomach since prehistory, and have migrated from our human origin in Africa to wherever we went. Variation in its DNA from populations of various nations (or languages) closely matched human migration history based on archaeology and computational linguistics. The implication of the study is that the historical change in the pattern of our language follows the genetics of this key bacteria hiding in our body (Science, January 23, 2009). I hope Bangladeshi scientists would soon venture to determine a similar archaeo-genetic date of our Bangla language.

Now German researchers found out that newborns cry in their mothers' language, too. During the last few months of foetal life, babies can hear what their mothers are saying in “melodies” peculiar to a specific language. Each spoken language has its pattern of high and low pitches. Newborns recreate those familiar patterns in at least some of their cries. The group studied 30 newborns in French-speaking families and 30 German-speaking families. German newborn's cries tended to start high-pitched and gravitate to lower pitches. French newborns cries started low pitched and then moved higher. Comparative intonation patterns characterize German and French words and phrases used by fluent speakers. The team suggests that newborns adapt their cries to melodic patterns characteristic of the language they heard during the final months in the womb, and human infant's crying is important for seeding language development. The results appeared online in Current Biology on November 5, 2009. This scientific study reminded me of an experiment I myself conducted.

Before the birth of by first son, my wife and I took several courses on child birth, prenatal and postnatal child care. Based on the prevailing hypotheses we were challenged to do two experiments, one of which was to prove or disprove if a child can respond to sounds that it heard while in the womb. It interested me because while in Bangladesh, I heard family elders' advise to say kind words in front of a pregnant woman so that the child after birth would learn good words. We took the challenge and during the whole period of my wife's pregnancy, played Bethoven's 6th symphony piano recital, and 3-4 selected Tagore songs, in addition to talking among ourselves with an overt intension for the fetus to listen.

On a Saturday morning as I was getting ready for my lab, emergency made me drive my wife to the hospital instead. Within a minute of birth, the child started incessant screaming at the top of his lungs in the commotion of five nurses and the gynaecologist. I tried to console him by saying 'baba tomar ki holo' in an affectionate tone. Before I could finish saying, the baby stopped screaming. Like me, everybody in the room was surprised to pause from what they were doing! The baby started screaming soon after. To make it scientific, I repeated my words, and the baby stopped. The practice continued few more times. Unmistakably the baby recognized my voice, but of none of the nurses or of the doctor. Later, at home the baby would find comfort from distress whenever we played the music familiarized during his foetal stage. I also did the other experiment on his vision. We confirmed that a newborn can remember things learned in the womb including voice recognition, and can see too.


The author, a former Dhaka University teacher, is a biomedical scientist working in the USA.