Use social business to achieve MDGs

Experts urge countries on Social Business Day

Bangladesh yesterday celebrated the second Social Business Day along with a dozen countries, urging all nations to use the new economic theory to speed up efforts to reach millennium development goals.
All nations across the world have only less than five years to reach eight internationally agreed targets on poverty, hunger, maternal and child deaths, disease, inadequate shelter, gender inequality and environmental degradation set in 2001.
And in some areas, experts said, the picture is not very bright -- not only in Bangladesh but also in the rest of the world.
“We are doing well in some areas of MDGs, but not in all areas. We have to achieve the goals, but we have not enough time left,” said Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.
The anti-poverty champion said Bangladesh has gained a significant achievement in the last few years in terms of eradicating poverty. “We are ahead of many countries that are pushing hard to achieve the goal.”
“But in areas like cutting rate of maternal mortality we are lagging behind. It is a shame for a civilised society to accept that women are dying while giving birth to a child. It could be avoided,” said the 2006 Nobel peace prize winner.
“We cannot accept it. We have the capacity to stop it,” said Prof Yunus, whose Grameen Bank is credited with empowering millions of Bangladeshi women through microcredit.
His comments came at the inaugural ceremony of a daylong event organised to mark Social Business Day along with 12 countries across the world.
Yunus Centre, a hub of social business movement, organised the event at Sonargaon Hotel in the city, in association with Grameen Telecom Trust, Bangladesh-German Chamber of Commerce and IHS Alliance Fibreglass.
The event aimed at listening to the latest developments in social business around the world, and the know-how to use the concept to help people create their own ventures to fight social problems, organisers said.
The theme for this year's event is “achieving the millennium development goals through social business”.
Top officials of social business ventures from around the world, anti-poverty activists, economists, politicians, civil society members, academics and students took part in the event.
Despite all confusions and criticisms, the social business concept is well set to win, thanks to its sheer simplicity and transparency, said Dr Yunus.
“It is a simple idea and will attract more and more people from around the world,” he said. “The business is not about money. The essence of it is creativity and innovation.”
A social business is a non-loss and non-dividend company where investors can recoup their dividend but nothing beyond that. All profits will be used to improve the products and services offered, and/or to stretch the reach of the company.
Prof Yunus, also the microcredit pioneer, has developed the concept of social business, a type of business dedicated to solving a social problem.
“Social business is your capacity to change the world,” said the economist.
Thomas Stelzer, UN assistant secretary-general for policy coordination and inter-agency affairs, Saori Dubourg, president, regional functions and country management, Asia Pacific, BASF, Corinne Bazina, chief executive officer of Grameen Danone, Hans Reitz, founder of Grameen Creative Lab, Masaharu Okada, executive director of Grameen Creative Lab at Kyushu University in Japan, Rokia Afzal Rahman, president of Bangladesh Federation of Women Entrepreneurs, also spoke.

Discuss ConocoPhillips deal in JS: Menon

Workers Party MP Rashed Khan Menon has demanded discussions in parliament on the deal with US firm ConocoPhillips to explore oil and gas in two deep-sea blocks.

Taking part in budget discussions in parliament on Saturday, Menon said, "We'll have to extract our gas resource. We don't want to live in the Medieval Age. I demand discussions in the House on the deal."

"People own the state. But it cannot be allowed that they [people] will remain in the dark about the deal and some advisors, chairmen and secretaries will know all about it. I want to alert people about the game of the multinational gas firm," he added.

Referring to the admission of oil and gas company Niko Resources that it bribed former BNP junior minister A K M Mosharraf Hossain, Menon said, "Maybe, we'll see in the future that there had been underhand dealing in the agreement with ConocoPhillips, too."

On June 13, he told the House that while the government was planning to import LNG, the multinational company will have the authority to export 80 percent of gas, and the country will be left with the rest 20 percent only.

"This is a tragedy that on one hand, the government is planning to import LNG and allowing export of gas on the other," he added.

The agreement with the US firm came when the country is reeling under severe energy crisis and many factories are out of operation or cannot come on stream due to gas crisis.

A citizens' platform, the National Committee on Protection of Oil, Gas and Mineral Resources, Power and Ports', declared to enforce a general strike in the city on July 3, protesting the deal signed on June 16.

'GOVERNMENT'S POPULARITY DECLINING'

Menon slated the budget for the 2011-12 fiscal saying that there was no word on coal lifting policy in it.

"I thank the finance minister for his remark on fixing the goals of the budget, but he'll have to take some unpleasant decisions, or lese its implementation will be difficult," he said.

"People consider budget as a shopping bag which is getting squeezed gradually. The government's bag of popularity is also on the wane," he added.

'TARIQUE, COCO MODELS OF CORRUPTION'

The workers party president termed BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia's sons Tarique Rahman and Arafat Rahman Coco as 'models of corruption'.

"They have established themselves as role models of corruption among the youth. The nation will have to be protected from this rot," he said.

Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury MP said, "The sons [of Khaleda] were made looters by taking money from the state coffer. I urge Khaleda Zia to apologise to the nation for this."

He also urged the government to bring back and try Tarique, who is facing several corruption cases.

A Dhaka court on Thursday convicted Coco in a money-laundering case filed during the last caretaker government. Coco is now in Thailand, while Tarique in London.

http://www.bdnews24.com

G20 strikes historic farm deal

G20 farm ministers settled a deal on Thursday to tackle high food prices, agreeing to a watered-down declaration that fell short of France's ambitious proposals to tighten regulation of commodity markets.
"The member states of the G20 concluded an agreement this morning on an action plan on volatility of food prices and global agriculture," French Farm Minister Bruno Le Maire told journalists after chairing the meeting.
A communique was not immediately available, but a G20 source said it urged finance ministers of the Group of 20 major economies to improve rules and supervision of commodity markets.
The deal appeared to lack, however, a commitment for a tough crackdown on speculators that French President Nicolas Sarkozy had campaigned for in the run-up to the summit, the first-ever G20 agriculture meeting.
"We recognize that appropriately regulated and transparent agricultural financial markets are indeed key for well-functioning physical markets," the communique said, according to the source.
"On this basis we strongly encourage G20 finance ministers and central bank governors to take the appropriate decisions for a better regulation and supervision of agricultural financial markets," it added.
World food prices hit a record high earlier this year, reviving memories of soaring prices in 2007-2008 that sparked riots in developing countries, and giving fresh urgency to debate about how to improve a global food system that leaves some 925 million people hungry.
France had wanted all G20 countries to commit themselves to imposing position limits -- a curb on how much of the market an investor can buy into -- but the G20 source said the communique only said reforms could include trading limits.
The action plan includes increasing agricultural output, improving market transparency through a new database and removing export restrictions for food aid, Le Maire said.
France, which heads the G20 this year, was keen to crown agreement on areas like data transparency and policy coordination with firm proposals for regulating commodity derivatives, but partners like Britain had so far remained opposed to stringent controls on financial markets.
UK Agriculture Minister Caroline Spelman told Reuters on Wednesday that Britain backed efforts to improve regulation but said it was up to G20 finance ministers, not farm ministers, to come up with concrete measures.
Paris has taken a hard stance on negotiations in recent days, saying it would not sign a half-hearted agreement as it pushed for an ambitious deal that would boost Sarkozy's profile 10 months before a new presidential election.
Under the deal, G20 members agreed to exclude humanitarian aid from export restrictions, US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement.
G20 members had committed to getting the deal approved under World Trade Organisation rules, a source close to the talks said.
The scope of commitments on regulation and other divisive issues like biofuels and emergency food stocks would be limited, however, other sources had said.
Brazil, a major producer of sugar-based ethanol, has been staunchly opposed to suggestions biofuels contribute to rising food prices, while the United States has been sceptical on the idea of developing food stocks for humanitarian purposes.
"There will be some sentences about biofuels but these will be about the need for more studies, research, not really trying to introduce a drastic new approach," said a source, who was involved in last night's discussions.
Sarkozy had urged G20 farm ministers on Wednesday to adopt France's proposed action plan, including a tough line on speculators whom he blames for driving up food prices and fuelling political upheaval in some countries.
"A market that is not regulated is not a market but a lottery where fortune favours the most cynical instead of rewarding work, investment and value creation," he said.
European wheat prices tumbled 7 percent on Wednesday amid signs of intense competition on export markets, giving fresh evidence of market volatility which France sees as not justified by physical supply-and-demand factors

go to the link

 Asian nations moved to release emergency oil stockpiles on Friday as part of a rare global coordinated action by consumer countries to prevent high energy prices from stunting a stuttering economic recovery.

The move, led by Washington and criticised by the oil industry as an unnecessary distortion of markets, suggests a fundamental shift on the part of industrialised nations toward intervention in commodity markets as an economic policy tool.

Brent oil prices edged back up on Friday after tumbling to a four-month closing low on Thursday, reflecting doubts that the unexpected decision by the International Energy Agency to release 60 million barrels over the next month would have a long-term impact.

Japanese Economics Minister Kaoru Yosano said the move was a warning to speculative buyers but India's Oil Minister S Jaipal Reddy doubted the action would have an impact.

"Even if there is a slight increase in production (supply), those gains will not be made available to us because of unbridled speculation in the financial markets of the world," he said. "We don't know whether this (weaker oil prices) is a stable trend."

The stock release is only the third in the 37-year history of the agency that was set up as a counter weight to exporting group OPEC.

IEA Asian members Japan and Korea said that from next week they will start releasing oil reserves in line with the agency's targets.

Japan will cut the reserve requirement for oil companies by 7.9 million barrels over the next 30 days and South Korea will release 3.46 million barrels, together providing about 19 percent of the IEA target.

Australia and New Zealand, the remaining members from the Asia-Pacific region, are not participating.

The news follows a Group of 20 agreement, struck in Paris on Thursday, to tackle high food prices by boosting farm output, food market transparency and policy coordination.

The G20 deal is another sign that global policymakers are reaching beyond traditional economic policy tools to sustain global growth.

The world economy, recuperating from the 2008-2009 global financial and economic crisis, has shown signs of losing traction in recent months and the Federal Reserve acknowledged that this week by cutting its forecasts for growth in the world's biggest economy.

High commodity costs that sap consumers' spending power and squeeze manufacturers' profit margins are blamed for much of the slowdown.

SCARCE OPTIONS

Industrialised nations managed to pull their economies from the brink of depression by dishing out trillions of dollars in stimulus packages and slashing borrowing costs to record lows.

But that left rich economies from Japan to the United States with huge debt and few policy options if their economies were to weaken again.

While the release of oil was spearheaded by the United States and other developed nations, booming emerging powerhouses such as China and India are also set to benefit as they try to contain stubbornly high inflation without sacrificing too much growth.

"To some extent, it will help lessen some inflation pressure facing Asian countries and it is also good news for the global economic recovery," said Gong Jialong, former chairman of a body representing China's petroleum industry body.

Gong and others, however, compared the move that will increase daily supply by nearly 2.5 percent to currency market intervention. It is not something that could reverse a broad trend but it could help prevent excessive price moves.

"The hoped-for impact is not to induce a downward trend in commodity markets, but instead to head off potential price increases stemming from the increase in third quarter demand," said PFC, a Washington-based energy consultancy.

Seasonal oil demand ramps up in the third quarter as refineries prepare for the northern hemisphere winter when heating consumption peaks.

Another factor suggesting that the IEA decision will only have a short-term impact on prices is that oil faces an incremental increase in demand now that several countries are turning away from nuclear power generation following Japan's crisis, a Japanese government official said.

"Demand for fuel will rise globally with more countries unable to rely on nuclear power as much as that had initially hopes. That means prices have more reason to rise further than decline," he said. He declined to be identified because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

JPMorgan Chase, however, said that even some cooling effect on prices would prove a boon to the world economy.

"If our projections are realised, the IEA release provides the equivalent of a $140 billion stimulus to consumers," it said in a note. "The release will prove stimulatory to the global economy, particularly for emerging markets and the U.S."

DEEPENING CONSUMER CONCERN

The IEA decision was the culmination of a plan that President Barack Obama put into motion more than a month ago, and shows the deepening concern among rich nations over the economic damage from high energy costs.

Obama drew immediate criticism from the oil industry and Republicans, who called it an ill-timed misuse of stockpiles that risks leaving the government with less ammunition should a deeper supply crisis emerge.

Oil prices have risen 20 percent over the past year, pushing U.S. retail gasoline prices to $4 a gallon.

While Brent crude peaked above $125 in April, it has since fallen sharply. After dropping a further 6 percent on Thursday, prices are only a little higher than mid-February, just before the Libyan conflict began.

The IEA said the action would fill shortages caused by the Libyan conflict and get oil quickly to market while Saudi Arabia makes good on its pledge to pump more oil.

The 28-nation agency will decide whether to release more oil in a month.

The previous two releases followed abrupt shortages caused by the first Gulf War in 1991 and by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the global response was swift. In this case, it has been over 3 months since Libya's exports stopped.

The United States will provide 30 million barrels from its huge 727-million barrel crude reserve, about 1.5 days of U.S. consumption, with Europe supplying 30 percent in crude and refined products and the rest from Pacific OECD nations. 

Greek government survives, battles on to avoid bankruptcy

Greece's government will approve a new austerity package on Wednesday after it survived a confidence vote that was a crucial hurdle in a battle to avert the euro zone's first sovereign debt default.

Prime Minister George Papandreou's reshuffled cabinet aims to get parliamentary approval for a package of spending cuts, tax hikes and state asset sales by June 28 and implement it by July 3 to secure 12 billion euros ($17 billion) in aid that is vital to avoid bankruptcy.

The vote follows a European ultimatum linking the release of the next instalment of a 110 billion euro EU/IMF aid package to the tougher new five-year belt-tightening plan.

Without the loans, Athens would plunge into default next month, sending shock waves thr-ough the global financial system.

The euro rose in hopes that the immediate threat of market chaos could be avoided. But the gains were short-lived as traders remained worried about the will to implement harsh austerity measures against fierce public resistance and by doubts about Greece's ability to reduce its debt burden without some form of restructuring.

The yield on Greek government bonds tightened slightly against benchmark German Bunds, with the 2-year bond yield dropping 28 basis points, while Greek banking stocks opening flat after strong gains on Tuesday.

After some brief scuffles between police and protesters after the late night vote, the streets of Athens were calm on Wednesday with traffic running normally through Syntagma square where 20,000 demonstrators besieged parliament on Tuesday night.

The government won the late night confidence motion by 155 to 143 with two abstentions after all of Papandreou's Socialist Party deputies voted solidly with the government.

But with unions bristling for a fight and much of the public outraged by new austerity measures, implementing any reforms will be a challenge as Greece struggles in its worst recession in 37 years.

"Within the parliament there is no problem at all, the real problem is in society," said Costas Panagopoulos of pollster ALCO. "There's a lot of disappointment in the Greek society, there's a lot of anger and there's no hope at all. The new minister of finance and the government...have to offer some hope otherwise I cannot see how the government could remain stable."

Eurozone creditor governments were starting talks with commercial banks and insurers on Wednesday about a "voluntary" private sector contribution to a second rescue program for Greece, a source in the German government said.

"The finance ministry has invited banks and insurers for talks on a working group level in Frankfurt," the source told Reuters, adding that the same would begin elsewhere in the 17-nation single currency area.

Private bondholders will be asked to commit to rolling over their Greek bonds when they mature, but Berlin was forced to drop a more ambitious plan for a bond swap extending maturities by seven years after the European Central Bank objected.

Speaking hours after the vote, Mohamed El-Erian, head of Pimco, the world's biggest bond fund, said he expected Greece to end up defaulting on its debt.

"For the next three years, we're going to see different economies work out different problems. For European economies, especially Greece, it would be through default," El-Erian told a conference in Taipei.

Papandreou managed to stifle dissent within his party last week, replacing unpopular government figures with critics of the austerity plan and repeatedly hammering home the message of what was at stake.

"If we are afraid, if we throw away this opportunity, then history will judge us very harshly," Papandreou said in a final appeal for support before the confidence vote.

Having already missed targets agreed in its first, year-old bailout, Athens needs the reforms to keep receiving those funds and secure a second bailout worth an estimated 120 billion euros.

The new mid-term plan envisions raising 50 billion euros by selling off state firms and includes 6.5 billion in 2011 fiscal consolidation, almost doubling existing measures that have helped extend a deep recession into its third year.

Most analysts remain skeptical that Greece will be able to repay its vast public debt pile of 340 billion euros, 1.5 times its annual economic output and more than 30,000 euros for each of its 11.3 million people, even if the reforms are implemented

UK to provide £1bn in 4 yrs

The British government will provide 1 billion pound sterling in aid to Bangladesh for the next four years (2011-15).

"Climate change, poverty and governance are the key areas where the aid will flow in," said visiting British state minister for international development Alan Duncan on Wednesday.

He was talking to reporters after a meeting with finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith at the planning ministry.

The aid is double than the amount Bangladesh is currently receiving, he said.

Bangladesh is a wet country and it is vulnerable to climate change, he said adding, "It's [Bangladesh] playing a leading role in this regard."

DFID country head Chris Austin said social service, economic growth, improved governance and climate change are the four areas where the aid will come in.

"We're working with the government on allocation for each of the sectors," he said.

Muhtih said the British minister gave him some important suggestions about social security as it is declining. "We may do something about it,"

The finance minister said the UK minister suggested identifying the problems in exploration of mineral resources. "They wanted to know why foreign companies are not interested in exploration in the country."

The finance minister said even the UK was facing economic problem and even then they did not reduce the assistance for Bangladesh.

Duncan arrived in Dhaka on Monday on a three-day visit.

(1 pound sterling = 120.319 Tk)

see the link

Obama to set course for drawing down Afghan war

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will set the course for drawing down the U.S. war in Afghanistan on Wednesday, when he is expected to announce plans to bring roughly 10,000 American troops home in less than a year.
In a prime-time address from the White House, Obama is likely to outline a phased withdrawal that will bring 5,000 troops home this summer and an additional 5,000 by winter or spring 2012, according to a senior U.S. defense official. That timeline could allow military commanders to keep high troop levels in Afghanistan for two more crucial fighting seasons.
But the cuts expected this year may not be substantial enough to satisfy some lawmakers on Capitol Hill and a war-weary public.
The president reached his decision a week after receiving a range of options from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Obama informed his senior national security advisers, including outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, of his plans during a White House meeting Tuesday.
"The president is commander in chief," spokesman Jay Carney said. "He is in charge of this process, and he makes the decision."

Obama is also weighing a timeline for bringing home the remaining 20,000 of the 30,000 "surge" troops he ordered to Afghanistan as part of his December 2009 decision to send reinforcements to reverse the Taliban's battlefield momentum. The withdrawals would put the U.S. on a path toward giving Afghans control of their security by 2014 and ultimately shifting the U.S. military from a combat role to a mission focused on training and supporting Afghan forces.
The Obama administration has said its goal in continuing the Afghanistan war, now in its 10th year, is to blunt the Taliban insurgency and dismantle and defeat al-Qaida, the terror network that used the country as a training ground for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. As of Tuesday, at least 1,522 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to an Associated Press count.
About 100,000 U.S. troops are in the country, three times as many as when Obama took office. Even by drawing down the 30,000 reinforcements, there still will be great uncertainty about how long the remaining 70,000 troops would stay there, although the U.S. and its allies have set Dec. 31, 2014, as a target date for ending the combat mission in Afghanistan.
A reduction this year totaling 10,000 troops would be the rough equivalent of two brigades, which are the main building blocks of an Army division. It's not clear whether Obama's decision would require the Pentagon to pull out two full brigades or, instead, withdraw a collection of smaller combat and support units with an equivalent number of troops.
If Obama were to leave the bulk of the 30,000 surge contingent in Afghanistan through 2012, he would be giving the military another fighting season — in addition to the one now under way — to further damage Taliban forces before a larger withdrawal got started. It also would buy more time for the Afghan army and police to grow in numbers and capability.
Under that scenario, the emphasis in U.S.-led military operations is likely to shift away from troop-intensive counterinsurgency operations toward more narrowly focused counterterrorism operations, which focus on capturing and killing insurgents.
Afghan security forces and judicial institutions are expected to take up many aspects of the counterinsurgency fight by establishing the rule of law and respect for government institutions, U.S. officials in Afghanistan said Tuesday.
In recent speeches, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has criticized American forces, suggesting his ally is in danger of becoming an occupying force. He has even threatened action against international forces that conduct airstrikes and has accused allies of undermining and corrupting his government.
Yet there are concerns in his country about the withdrawals. Some of the areas slated to transition to Afghan control have been struck by attacks in recent weeks despite assertions by Karzai that peace talks have started between the U.S., his Afghan government and Taliban emissaries. Publicly, the Taliban say there will be no negotiations until foreign troops leave Afghanistan.
The transition to full Afghan control will begin in earnest on July 20 in five provincial capital cities and two provinces. The provincial capitals identified for transition are Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, plus capitals from provinces in the west, east and north and most of Kabul, the nation's capital. The largely peaceful northern provinces of Bamyan and Panjshir will also start to transition to Afghan control.
Some U.S. military commanders have favored a more gradual reduction in troops than Obama is expected to announce Wednesday night, arguing that too fast a withdrawal could undermine the fragile security gains.
But other advisers have backed a more significant withdrawal that starts in July and proceeds steadily through the following months. That camp believes the slow yet steady improvements in security, combined with the killing of Osama bin Laden and U.S. success in dismantling much of the al-Qaida network in the country, give the president an opportunity to make larger reductions this year.
Obama previously has said he favors a "significant" withdrawal beginning in July, his self-imposed deadline for starting to bring U.S. troops home. Aides, however, have never quantified that statement.
Pressure for a substantial withdrawal has been mounting from the public and Congress. Even Gates, who has said he favored a "modest" withdrawal, said Tuesday that Obama's decision needed to incorporate domestic concerns about the war.
"It goes without saying that there are a lot of reservations in the Congress about the war in Afghanistan and our level of commitment," Gates said during a news conference at the State Department. "There are concerns among the American people who are tired of a decade of war."
According to an Associated Press-GfK poll last month, 80 percent of Americans say they approve of Obama's decision to begin withdrawal of combat troops in July and end U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan by 2014. Just 15 percent disapprove.
On Capitol Hill, even the more moderate or conservative members of his party, such as Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, are pressing for significant cuts and a shift in mission.
"The question the president faces — we all face — is quite simple: Will we choose to rebuild America or Afghanistan? In light of our nation's fiscal peril, we cannot do both," Manchin said Tuesday.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said improved conditions in Afghanistan would permit Obama to withdraw at least 15,000 troops by the end of the year.
Obama aides have sidestepped questions about what role the cost of the war in Afghanistan played in Obama's decision, saying only that the president was focused on meeting the goal of transferring security by 2014.
Following the announcement on the drawdown, Obama will visit troops Thursday at Fort Drum, the upstate New York Army post that is home to the 10th Mountain Division, one of the most frequently deployed divisions to Afghanistan.
___
Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Matthew Lee and Donna Cassata in Washington and Solomon Moore in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

visit yahoo news

2nd term for UN chief Ban Ki-moon

The 192-nation UN General Assembly has unanimously approved a second five-year term for secretary-general Ban Ki-moon beginning January 1, 2012.

The former South Korean foreign minister, who took over from his predecessor Kofi Annan in January 2007, was re-elected to the world body's top job by acclamation on Tuesday, reports Reuters.

Critics say he is too deferential to major powers, but he has won praise for his policies on climate change and the protests sweeping the Middle East.

When he announced his candidacy two weeks ago, Ban pledged to keep leading the world body as a "bridge-builder" in a time of unprecedented global change.

BBC reports when Ban was first elected, powerful nations in the Security Council seemed to want a low-profile leader after the schisms of the 2003 Iraq war.

Following the re-appointment, UN General Assembly president Joseph Deiss praised Ban for "his remarkable leadership" of the world body, according to the UN's official website.

"In a complex, difficult international environment, you have strengthened the role and the visibility of the United Nations by adopting reform measures; launching exciting, innovative initiatives; and calling faithfully and constantly for respect for human rights, the rule of law and the other values rooted in our Charter," Deiss told the assembly.

Representatives of the regional groups among UN member states also welcomed the decision during separate addresses to the assembly meeting.

IMF likely to select new chief June 28

 http://biz.bdnews24.com/details.php?cid=4&id=198984

The International Monetary Fund said on Monday its executive board will meet on June 28 to discuss the strengths of the two candidates for managing director, with the aim of completing its selection by June 30.

The fund said in a statement that Mexican central bank governor Augustin Carstens is visiting the fund on Monday and Tuesday of this week for a series of interviews, while French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde will visit on Wednesday and Thursday.

Both are vying to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who resigned as IMF chief last month on after being charged with sexually assaulting a New York hotel maid -- an allegation he denies.

Lagarde is considered the favourite, but some officials from emerging market countries have called for an end to the tradition of naming a European to head the global rescue lender.

"In terms of the selection process, although the board may select a managing director by a majority of the votes cast, the board's objective is to select the managing director by consensus in a formal meeting," the statement from an IMF spokesperson said.

The candidates will meet both with the executive board as a group as well as individually with country executive directors.

The IMF said it would publish the candidates' statements to the board on its website after the meetings. It also said it will announce the final selection of the next managing director through a press release.

MLM

http://www.bdnews24.com/bangla/details.php?id=162436&cid=4

Rumana Madam

 Rumana Monzur, who lost both her eyes following torture by her husband, has demanded justice. 

At a press conference at LabAid Specialised Hospital on Tuesday, the Dhaka University teacher described how her husband, Hassan Syed, brutally assaulted her on June 5 at her father's Dhanmondi residence. 

Rumana, an assistant professor of international relations, returned home from Chennai, India on Monday. 

Quoting doctors, her father Monzur Hossain told reporters at the press conference that his daughter could get back her eyesight only in case of any miracle. 

Rumana was sent to Chennai for better treatment as her eyes were badly ruptured by the attack. "Her eyes need multi-disciplinary treatment in a modern eye set-up," chief eye consultant at the hospital Dr Ansarul Huq had said last week. 

Rumana, doing a master's degree in Political Science at the Vancouver campus of the University of British Columbia in Canada, said her husband tried to gouge her eyes out and chew her nose off. 

On June 15, Hassan was arrested and later grilled in a case filed in connection with the torture. 

He claimed she had an extramarital affair with an Iranian man, whom Rumana met in Canada. 

She was supposed to submit her thesis paper in October.