Team effort takes Bangladesh to historic final

Bangladesh made it to the final of the Asia Cup, defying pre-tournament expectations with consecutive victories against their more fancied neighbours. It was only the second time they had reached the finals of a one-day tournament. The bowlers restricted Sri Lanka to 232, but rain siphoned off ten overs and reduced the target to 212. The increased asking-rate, 5.30 an over, gave both teams a chance, but enterprising batting by Tamim Iqbal on a spiced-up pitch gave their chase a kickstart. The Bangladesh middle order withstood the pressure and gave the expectant crowd a reason to show up in similar numbers for the final, on Thursday. 

Nasir Hossain proved once again why he is the find of the season for Bangladesh and Tamim put the farce of his earlier non-selection to rest. Nasir's calm half-century partnership with Mahmudullah ensured Bangladesh did not implode in the rush for a quick finish. The sea of green jerseys in the crowd were rewarded for staying in their seats even as Sri Lanka clawed back. Many clasped their hands in prayer once Bangladesh lost their fifth wicket, Shakib Al Hasan, but the temperament of the sixth-wicket pair showed why Bangladesh could start the finals not as underdogs, but contenders. India, waiting on the result of this game, will be headed home.

Sri Lanka were pegged back at the very beginning, when another Hossain, Nazmul, coming in for the injured Shafiul Islam, nipped out three top-order wickets. The middle order, led by Chamara Kapugedera, gave the innings some respectability, but were not able to post a challenging score on a ground on which two big chases had already been completed in the tournament.

A mid-innings downpour gave the pitch the kind of zip missing during the afternoon. Lasith Malinga tested the top order with bouncers that fizzed past the helmet, while Nuwan Kulasekara got the ball to swerve in to the right-handers to castle Nazimuddin and flummox the captain Mushfiqur Rahim.

Bangladesh were three down for 40, but the passage of play was punctuated by some blistering strokeplay by Tamim. His balance and follow-through were exemplary, especially in his driving through the off side. Mahela Jayawardene tried to plug that gap with a short point, and later with two fielders up close at cover and extra cover, but Tamim was not deterred. He lofted one over the covers and then whipped consecutive boundaries through midwicket, showing his class on both sides of the wicket. 

Shakib, after passing a tough test against some short bowling, settled in and crashed Suranga Lakmal for three consecutive boundaries through the off side. Tamim reached his half-century with a clip for four off Farveez Maharoof, and his pleasing strokeplay won the applause of the country's premiere Sheikh Hasina, also in attendance. He was dropped by Sachitra Senanayake, after lobbing a simple chance back to the bowler, but Senanayake finally got his man when an uppish slash was taken at point. Tamim walked back to a hush from the expectant crowd, with their hopes pinned on Shakib.

Shakib's battle with Senanayake was a compelling one. Shakib got on top of him initially with boundaries over extra cover, but once the bowler shortened his length, Shakib looked edgy. Unsure of the bounce, he stabbed at two consecutive deliveries and nearly lobbed both for catches. Senanayake got one to skid through and trapped him in front of leg stump to give Sri Lanka hope, with the hosts still 77 runs adrift.

Sri Lanka were guilty of easing the pressure on the batsmen by feeding them balls full on the pads, which were clipped away to fine leg. Nasir and Mahmudullah kept out the inswinging yorkers, did not panic when they played the ball to the fielders, and calmly picked up singles. Tillakaratne Dilshan was brought on after the quicks failed to take wickets, but the pair didn't change their approach. A firm push by Nasir was parried by mid-on to the boundary, leading to wild celebrations and a victory lap. 

The win was set up by Nazmul, who removed the power trio of Jayawardene, Dilshan and Kumar Sangakkara. Jayawardene missed a straight one, Dilshan chopped a delivery onto his stumps and Sangakkara spooned a catch to extra cover, bringing an end to an indifferent season with the bat for him.

Bangladesh came out with a sense of purpose, fielding with intent after winning the toss. They were aided by a surface which, though not the same used for the India-Pakistan game, appeared slower and suited their crop of bowlers. The medium-pacers bowled several slower deliveries to tighten the noose on the run-rate.

Kapugedera and Lahiru Thirimanne added 88 for the fourth wicket, but one of them needed to bat through the innings to set a competitive target. Upul Tharanga made a breezy fifty, but not for the first time since his demotion, he had to repair the damage done upfront, again raising questions about the structure of the batting line-up. 

Kapugedera, under pressure to keep his place, made good use of his promotion, using his feet to the spinners. A stroke of luck, though, gave Bangladesh the breakthrough when Thirimanne missed a nudge off Abdur Razzak and was stumped after the ball deflected off Mushfiqur's pads onto the stumps.

Tharanga's arrival perked up the scoring, as he punished a wayward Shahadat Hossain for three quick boundaries. Kapugedera managed a face-saving half-century, but his innings was cut short by a sharp reflex-catch by Shakib at extra cover. Shakib struck with the ball soon after, getting two wickets. Boundaries by the lower order pushed Sri Lanka to 232, but one could sense that was always going to be inadequate.

It ended a mixed season for a travel-weary Sri Lanka, following the highs of Australia. Not too long ago, India were at their hotel rooms in Brisbane, hoping for a Sri Lankan defeat to push them into the CB Series finals. This time in a hotel not far from the ground, they were ironically hoping for a Sri Lankan win. There were no back-door entries for a team which has suffered its worst away season in recent history. 

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Dhaka won't pull out of UN court: Dipu Moni

Bangladesh will not withdraw from the UN court to have bilateral solution to maritime boundary dispute with India, says the foreign minister.

"We can always discuss the issue bilaterally with our neighbour, but we will not withdraw from the court for the sake of discussion," Dipu Moni said at a press briefing on Monday.

Bangladesh moved the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2009 to settle the maritime boundary dispute with India. On Mar 14, in a verdict over similar dispute with Myanmar, the UN court awarded Bangladesh 111,000 square kilometers of area in the Bay of Bengal.

"We cannot settle the dispute bilaterally and that's why we went to the court," Moni said.

The minister said she and Indian high commissioner Pankaj Saran had discussed the issue, but in the meeting he did not propose for bilateral discussion.

She, however, said if they want to have bilateral talks, Bangladesh is open to it.

OFFSHORE BLOCKS

The minister said the authorities concerned would determine the offshore blocks for exploration in the Bay.

"We cannot explore the blocks that was fixed earlier as they do not belong to us," she said.

"We want to have a just solution without hurting the legitimate interests of our neighbours."

Additional foreign secretary Khurshed Alam said now it is possible to redefine the blocks that belong to Bangladesh.

GOOD TIES WITH MYANMAR

This is a great victory for both the countries as now the long-standing dispute stands resolved, Moni said.

"With this verdict the friendly relationship with Myanmar would move forward leaving the dispute behind," she hoped.

The minister informed that the verdict in dispute with India is to be delivered in 2014. 

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Hitler 'had plans to rule world from Hollywood'

German dictator Adolf Hitler had a secret Nazi ranch near Hollywood in Los Angeles in the US state of California from where he intended to rule the world had his country won World War II, say historians.

Built by US sympathisers of the Nazi cause, Hilter's Murphy Ranch was tucked away in the idyllic Los Angeles hills between celebrity mansions and olive trees.

In fact, it was the heavily guarded home to a community of 50 Hollywood fascists who had planned to ride out the war there until the Third Reich was victorious, according to the historians.

The day after Pearl Harbour was bombed on December 7, 1941, police raided the place and took away its occupants.

Now ravaged by time, the property still stands a mile or so from the home of director Steven Spielberg; one of the most haunting landmarks in Los Angeles, it will soon be turned into a picnic area for hikers, the 'Sunday Express' reported.

Historian Randy Young said: "This was supposed to be the seat of American fascism from where Hitler would one day rule the US. They may've been Nazis but they're Nazis with taste."

In 1933, the 55-acre ranch was sold by screen cowboy Will Rogers to mining fortune heiress Jessie Murphy who later became enchanted by a charismatic German known only as Herr Schmidt who was secretly Hitler's special agent in California.

Hitler's man in Hollywood persuaded her to invest US dollars four million to equip the property with a diesel power plant, a 375,000 gallon concrete water tank, bomb shelter and 22 bedrooms.

The plan was to turn it into a fascist Utopia where they and their Nazi friends could farm the land and live self -sufficiently far from the world's gaze until their big moment came, say the historians.

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Fidel Castro knew ‘JFK would be assassinated’

Fidel Castro had prior knowledge that US President John F Kennedy was about to be killed, according to a new book by retired CIA analyst.

Rumours about the Cuban leader’s involvement in a plot to murder his fierce adversary have swirled for almost half a century since communist sympathiser Lee Harvey Oswald shot the US president during a trip to Dallas in November 1963.

Now author Brian Latell, who studied Cuban affairs as a CIA analyst in the 1960s and later became the agency’s chief intelligence officer for Latin America, says he is certain that Castro at least knew the attack was going to happen.

On the morning of November 22, 1963, the day Kennedy was killed, Castro ordered a senior intelligence officer in Havana to stop listening for non-specific CIA radio communications and concentrate instead on “any little detail, any small detail from Texas”, Latell claims in his new book ‘Castro’s Secrets – the CIA and Cuba’s Intelligence Machine’, set for release next month.

Four hours later, the airwaves came alive with news that Kennedy was dead.

Latell also claims that Castro was aware that Oswald, who had been denied a visa to visit Cuba at the country’s embassy in Mexico City, told staff there that he was going to murder Kennedy to prove his allegiance to the communist cause.

“Fidel knew of Oswald’s intentions and did nothing to deter the act,” the Daily Mail quoted Latell as saying in his book.

In an interview published in The Miami Herald, the author, now a respected senior lecturer on Cuba at the University of Miami, says he discovered the information in interviews with former Cuban intelligence officers, backed up by declassified US government documents.

“I don’t say Fidel Castro ordered the assassination, I don’t say Oswald was under his control. He might have been, but I don’t argue that, because I was unable to find any evidence for that,” he said.

“[But] everything I write is backed up by documents and on-the-record sources.

“Did Fidel want Kennedy dead? Yes. He feared Kennedy. And he knew Kennedy was gunning for him. In Fidel’s mind, he was probably acting in self-defence,” he added.

He interviewed former Cuban intelligence officer Fiorentino Aspillaga Lombard, who defected to the US in 1987. He told the author that he informed the CIA at his debriefing that Castro personally issued the order to listen specifically for anything about Texas.

The claim that Castro was aware of Oswald’s promise to Cuban embassy officials that he was going to murder Kennedy comes from several sources, including a former FBI informant and ‘superspy’ Jack Childs, who penetrated the dictator’s inner circle.

Childs said that the Cuban premier told him that Oswald “stormed into the embassy, demanded the visa, and when it was refused to him headed out saying, ‘I’m going to kill Kennedy for this’.”

Meanwhile, Castro was claiming publicly that Oswald’s visit to the embassy was “a minor matter” that had not been noticed by senior officials in Havana.

Subsequent investigations by the US security agencies, and the official Warren Commission inquiry into Kennedy’s assassination, looked at Castro’s possible involvement but concluded that Oswald was a lone gunman acting independently.

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Civic group voices concerns over HC rule on Asif Nazrul

A group of citizens, including jurists, journalists, politicians, writers and educationists, on Saturday expressed concerns over the High Court’s summoning professor Asif Nazrul for giving a political analysis on a private television channel on March 12.

The High Court on March 15 directed Dhaka University’s law department teacher
Asif Nazrul to appear on March 22 to explain his critical analysis of the political events plagued by perpetual rivalries and bitterness.

The court said his statement was ‘likely to cause cracks in the law and order and democratic order of the country’.

Asif Nazrul in a TV talk show had expressed fear that forces like that of January 11, 2007 might emerge again if confrontational politics continued.

The citizens in the statement said that Asif Nazrul had been was writing on Bangladesh’s politics and legal affairs and giving statements on the issues in media for years and the apprehension he expressed in the televised talk-show on March 12 were voiced by many others, including politicians, in recent times.

‘We believe that voicing such concerns is not illogical against the backdrop of the politics of confrontation the major political parties practise now in the country,’ they noted.   

The signatories to the statement are: adviser to a past caretaker government Hafizuddin Khan, Awami League leader Mahmudur Rahman Manna, jurists Shahdin Malik and Sara Hossain, Dhaka University professor Amina Mohsin, BRAC University professor Pias Karim, Gana Swasthya Kendra chairman Zafrullah Chowdhury, Bangladesh Jatiya Party chairman Andaleeve Rahman Partho, former AL leader Noor-e-Alam Siddique, economist Debapriya Bhattachariya, Shahnaj Huda, Shirin Haque, Sumaya Khair and journalists Syed Abul Maksud, Mizanur Rahman Khan, Nurul Kabir, Abu Sayeed Khan, Anjan Roy and Monir Haider.
The statement also said expressing concerns at the time of country’s political crisis was a constitution-recognised fundamental right of the people.  

The High Court constitutionally should preserve the people’s fundamental rights, including the freedom of expression and should function as the safeguard against any threat to the people’s freedom of expression, the statement read.

It also said, ‘The High Court, on the contrary, issued a rule on Asif Nazrul, and asked the home secretary, inspector general of police and Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner as to why sedition charges should not be brought against Nazrul for exercising his right to the freedom of expression.’

The citizens’ group said that they thought such step of the higher court was tantamount to a threat to the people’s freedom of expression, free-thinking and to mass media.

The statement said the civic group had also observed with concerns that the same bench of the High Court over the last couple of months had taken some steps which made ‘uncertain the process of exercising people’s fundamental rights, discharging their civic duties, and of people’s participation in building a democratic society.’

The statement also noted that the same bench had earlier issued rule on some of those who took part in TV talk shows asking them to appear before the court. 

Referring to another rule issued by the same bench over the killing of journalist couple Sagar and Runi, the group said the journalist community had resolved not to abide by the court directives terming it an ‘obstacle’ to the freedom of the press.

‘We think the rule on Asif Nazrul is also a threat to the freedom of the press,’ the statement said.

‘Such continuous steps from the Supreme Court have called into question the role of the country’s judiciary as far as ensuring freedom of expression and free-media is concerned,’ the statement added.

‘We think such steps will thwart the path of constructive criticism against any government failing to practise democracy and implement its electoral pledges and will encourage government’s repressive measures,’ read the statement.

The group urged the chief justice to take necessary measures so that the country’s higher court played a sensitive and sympathetic role towards ensuring freedom of expression and of the press.

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