Haque Specialized Group's News

Hurricane Harvey slammed into the Texas coast on Friday as a Category 4 storm, bringing life-threatening winds and the likelihood of catastrophic flooding as the most powerful storm in over a decade hit the mainland United States. The hurricane made landfall northeast of Corpus Christi around 10 pm CDT (0300 GMT) with maximum winds of 130 miles per hour (209 km per hour). The storm is expected to move slowly over the Texas and Louisiana coasts for days, with forecasts for storm surges of up to 13 feet (4 meters) and over 3 feet (90 cm) of rain. As many as 6 million people were believed to be in Harvey’s path, as is the heart of America’s oil refining operations. The storm’s impact on refineries has already pushed up gasoline prices while the US Environmental Protection Agency lifted some rules on gasoline to reduce shortages. Fueled by the warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Harvey became the first Category 4 hurricane to wallop the United States since Charley in 2004 and the first to hit Texas since Carla in 1961. About 30 miles (45 km) from Corpus Christi and moving northwest, Harvey caused scattered power outages both on the coast near Galveston and 100 miles (160 km) inland. Donald Trump, facing the first large-scale natural disaster of his presidency, said on Twitter he signed a disaster proclamation which “unleashes the full force of government help” shortly before Harvey made landfall. While thousands fled the expected devastating flooding and destruction, many residents defied mandatory evacuation orders and stocked up on food, fuel and sandbags, drawing the ire of local authorities. “We’re suggesting if people are going to stay here, mark their arm with a Sharpie pen with their name and Social Security number,” Rockport Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Rios told reporters Friday, according to media reports. “We hate to talk about things like that. It’s not something we like to do but it’s the reality. People don’t listen.” There were initial reports of extensive damage in Rockport, near the eye of the hurricane, including structural damage to a high school, hotel and other buildings being used as shelters, according to local media. As a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, Harvey could uproot trees, destroy homes and disrupt utilities for days. It is the first major hurricane, of Category 3 or more, to hit the mainland United States since Hurricane Wilma struck Florida in 2005. In Corpus Christi, a city of 320,000 under voluntary evacuation, strengthening winds buffeted the few trucks and cars that continued to circulate on the streets. The storm toppled wooden roadwork signs and littered the streets with pieces of palm trees as white caps rocked sailboats in their docks. About 85 miles (137 km) north in Victoria, Mayor Paul Polasek told CNN he estimated that 60 per cent to 65 per cent of the town’s 65,000 residents defied the mandatory evacuation order. Jose Rengel, a 47-year-old who works in construction, said he was one of the few people in Jamaica Beach in Galveston that did not heed a voluntary evacuation order.  “All the shops are empty,” he said as the sky turned black and rain fell. “It’s like a tornado went in and swept everything up.” With the hurricane lashing the Texas coast, at least three cruise ships operated by Carnival Corp with thousands of passengers aboard were forced to change their plans to sail for the Port of Galveston. Two of them headed New Orleans to pick up fresh supplies, while the third delayed its departure from Cozumel, Mexico. Louisiana and Texas declared states of disaster, authorizing the use of state resources to prepare. The NHC’s latest tracking model shows the storm sitting southwest of Houston for more than a day, giving the nation’s fourth most populous city a double dose of rain and wind. The city warned residents of flooding from close to 20 inches (60 cm) of rain over several days. But Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner advised residents not to leave en masse, saying “no evacuation orders have been issued for the city.” Chaotic traffic from a rushed evacuation in 2005 with Hurricane Rita proved tragic. “Calm and care!” he said in a tweet. GASOLINE PRICES SPIKE Gasoline stations on the south Texas coast were running out of fuel as thousands of residents fled the region. US gasoline prices spiked as the storm shut down 22 per cent of Gulf of Mexico oil production, according to the US government. At a Willis, Texas, station, about 50 miles (77 km) north of Houston, Corey Martinez, 40, was heading to Dallas from his Corpus Christi home. "It has been pretty stressful. We're just trying to get ahead of the storm," he said. "We've never been through a hurricane before." More than 45 per cent of the country's refining capacity is along the US Gulf Coast, and nearly a fifth of the nation's crude oil is produced offshore. Ports from Corpus Christi to Texas City, Texas, were closed to incoming vessels and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Anadarko Petroleum Corp, Exxon Mobil Corp and others have evacuated staff from offshore oil and gas platforms. Concern that Harvey could cause shortages in fuel supply drove benchmark gasoline prices to their highest in four months, before profit taking pulled back prices. Meanwhile, US gasoline margins hit their strongest levels in five years for this time of year. The US government said it would make emergency stockpiles of crude available if needed to plug disruptions. It has regularly used them to dampen the impact of previous storms on energy supplies.....

Published at: 2017-08-27 05:00:05

Rail communication of Khulna with the rest of the country was restored on Saturday after an eleven-hour disruption caused by a derailment. Rail officials said that a compartment of Rajshahi-bound Sagordari Express, including engine, had derailed near to Poradah Rail Station at about 8:00 pm on Friday. Poradah station master Shariful Islam said the rail communication was restored partially through a down line at about 7:30 am after a relief train from Ishwardi put the compartment back on the track in an 11-hour frantic effort. The rail communication of Khulna with Dhaka and North-Bengal will hopefully be restored fully by this noon, the station master added.....

Published at: 2017-08-27 05:00:05

Authorities say the death toll in Friday's militant attacks has risen to 89 with many more bodies of Rohingya insurgents found in areas around the scene of fighting. Many insurgents, injured during the attacks, were found dead in fields and roads around the zone of attack that encompassed three townships - Maung Taw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung.  That's a much wider area covered by the rebels compared to the insurgent attacks in October last year. At least security personnel -- 11 policemen and 1 soldier -- were killed when the militants attacked 19 police stations and outposts and then tried to storm a camp of the 552 Light Infantry regiment at Khamara. Military sources said at least 1,000 insurgents were involved in the attack, but residents in Maung Taw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung said many armed villagers joined the Rohingya rebels in the attacks with just sharp cutting weapons like machetes. The militants staged coordinated simultaneous attacks on 19 police outposts that cover 24 villages around Maung Taw and tried unsuccessfully to storm an army base, the Myanmar authorities said. The attacks came within hours of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, presenting his Rakhine Commission report to State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, marking a huge escalation in the Muslim insurgency in Rakhine State. The long dormant insurgency suddenly came to the fore in October last year, when Rohingya rebels killed nine policemen in coordinated attacks, prompting a massive military response marred by allegations of extra-judicial executions, rape and arson. The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a group previously known as Harakah al-Yaqin, or “Faith Movement”, which instigated the October attacks, claimed responsibility for the early morning attacks and threatened more. Just past midnight on Friday, around 1am local time, 19 police posts in 24 villages around Maung Taw township in northern Rakhine were encircled and attacked by guerrillas and villagers armed with automatic rifles and sharp weapons, said a statement from the State Counsellor's Information office. The police stations and outposts attacked were identified as  Natchaung, Tamantha, Kuntheepin-Chaungwa, Nantthataung, Nantthataung-Chaungwa, Meetaik-Chaungwa, Kyeekyun, Zeepin-chaungwa, Laungdon, Thihokyun, Zinpaingnyar, Tharaykonboung, Panyaungbingyi, Shweyinaye, Myinlut, Alethankyaw, Udaung (Natala), TaungBazzar, Phaungtawpyin and Maungtaw (Natala). Eleven policemen were killed in the attack, most of them brutally hacked with sharp weapons, bleeding to death from cut wounds, said Maung Taw MP U Maung Ohn. A Tatmadaw (military) press release said one soldier has also been killed when the rebels tried to storm the camp of the 552 Light Infantry Regiment at Khamara at 3am. The rebels were beaten back, the statement said. It said at least 77 rebels had been gunned down, many of them when they tried to storm the camp. But residents in areas around the three embattled townships told Mizzima on condition of anonymity that many of those attacking the police stations were not hard core insurgents but armed villagers who are bitter over military atrocities. "Many such villagers were later gunned down by troops during combing operations," one senior resident at MaungDaw said.   The military press release said some Rohingya houses have been set on fire but said the "Rohingyas were doing it themselves to embarrass the government and security forces." Rakhine police chief Colonel Sein Lwin confirmed the rise in deaths was due to several badly injured policemen and rebels succumbing to both bullet and deep cut wounds. He said the road from Maung Taw to Buthidaung had been closed down to vehicular traffic. Pannpwint website carried pictures of a tall insurgent lying dead in a paddy field with a very long sword by his side. It also carried pictures of badly hacked policemen lying dead. Mizzima avoids carrying such pictures for risk of inciting inter-ethnic tensions. It was not yet clear whether those attackers killed were all armed guerillas or had some villagers among them or a mix of the two. The Rohingya militants appear to be adopting offensive tactics used by Maoists in India or Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Muslim insurgents in India's Kashmir, when they mobilise a large number of their supporters in the villages to conceal their guerrilla formations and then join the attack with much numbers to overwhelm the smaller deployments in outlying police stations or military outposts. . The villagers who have suffered at the hands of security forces tend to be more brutal in hacking and slashing the security forces. "That upsets the forces and leads to more atrocities, which means more alienation of the local population and more recruits for the insurgents. The rebels are working to a plan for not only demoralising their forces but also creating a recruitment base. It is now up to the military leadership to see through the rebel designs and control their forces," says regional insurgency specialist Subir Bhaumik, who has worked extensively on guerrilla campaigns in South Asia. This appears to be the biggest and most coordinated Rohingya rebel attacks since security forces started special operations in the Mayu mountains of northern Rakhine. The 33rd Light Infantry Division is involved in the massive operation designed to encircle the Rohingya rebel bases, block their escape routes to Bangladesh and decimate them. On Thursday, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan warned against 'long drawn operations' in Rakhine and stressed creating human rights awareness amongst Myanmar army and other security forces involved in the counter-insurgency operations during his meeting with Tatmadaw chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. The general later expressed his angst, 'questioning some facts' in the Kofi Annan report. Analysts believe the attacks were perhaps designed to divert the focus of the operations and force security forces into a heavy static deployment that would draw away numbers from the offensive operations. The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) claimed responsibility for the attacks in a Twitter post but did not either mention the number of deaths or how many fighters were involved. In the Twitter post, ARSA, accusing the Myanmar forces of killings and rape, said they had just taken   "defensive actions" in more than 25 different locations. The township of Rathetaung in northern Rakhine has been under "a blockade for more than two weeks which is starving the Rohingya people to death", it said. "As they prepare to do the same in Maungdaw … we had to eventually step in to drive the Burmese colonising forces away." The group warned of more attacks to come. ARSA is led by Ata Ullah, a Rohingya man born in Saudi Arabia. It has denied links to foreign militant groups but Indian and Bangladesh intelligence says ARSA has operational links to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, Indian Mujahideen and Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Tayabba (LET) Mizzima had earlier exposed a LET effort to recruit Rohingya youths for militant action under cover of providing relief in Rakhine camps through its humanitarian front, Fala e Insaniyat.   ....

Published at: 2017-08-27 05:00:05

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un guides a target-striking contest of the special operation forces of the Korean People's Army (KPA) to occupy islands in this undated picture provided by KCNA in Pyongyang on Aug 25, 2017. KCNA via Reuters North Korea fired several short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast early on Saturday, South Korea and the US military said, as the two allies conducted annual joint military drills that the North denounces as preparation for war. The US military’s Pacific Command said it had detected three short-range ballistic missiles, fired over a 20 minute period. All of the missiles failed, with one blowing up almost immediately after launch, while two others failed in flight, it added. The South Korean Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the projectiles were launched from the North’s eastern Kangwon province and flew in a northeasterly direction about 250 km (155 miles) into the sea. Pacific Command said the missiles did not pose a threat to the US mainland or to the Pacific territory of Guam, which North Korea had threatened earlier this month to surround in a “sea of fire”. Tensions had eased somewhat since a harsh exchange of words between Pyongyang and Washington after US President Donald Trump had warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un he would face “fire and fury” if he threatened the United States. North Korea’s last missile test on July 28 was for an intercontinental ballistic missile designed to fly 10,000 km (6,200 miles). That would put parts of the US mainland within reach and prompted heated exchanges that raised fears of a new conflict on the peninsula. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the missiles did not reach its territory or exclusive economic zone and did not pose a threat to Japan’s safety. MILITARY DRILLS The South Korean and US militaries are in the midst of the annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills, which the North routinely describes as preparation for invasion, that involve computer simulations of a war to test readiness and run until Aug 31. The region where the missiles were launched, Kittaeryong, is a known military test site frequently used by the North for short-range missile drills, said Kim Dong-yub, a military expert at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul. “So rather than a newly developed missile, it looks to be short range missiles they fired as part of their summer exercise and also in response to the Ulchi Freedom Guardian drill,” he said. The United States and South Korea are technically still at war with the North because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The North routinely says it will never give up its weapons programmes, saying they are necessary to counter perceived US hostility. Washington has repeatedly urged China, North Korea’s main ally and trading partner, to do more to rein in Pyongyang. China’s commerce ministry late on Friday banned North Korean individuals and enterprises from doing new business in China, in line with United Nations Security Council sanctions passed earlier this month. TRUMP BRIEFED The White House said Trump had been briefed about the latest missiles but did not immediately have further comment. The US State Department did not immediately comment about the Saturday launches. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this week credited the North with showing restraint by not launching a missile since the July ICBM test. Tillerson had said he hoped that the lack of missiles launches or other “provocative acts” by Pyongyang could mean a path could be opening for dialogue “sometime in the near future.” Trump also expressed optimism earlier this week about a possible improvement in relations. “I respect the fact that he is starting to respect us,” Trump said of Kim. North Korea’s state media reported on Saturday that Kim had guided a contest of amphibious landing and aerial strike by its army against targets modelled after South Korean islands near the sea border on the west coast. In a report that lacked the North’s usual belligerent threat against the United States, its official KCNA news agency quoted Kim as telling its Army that it “should think of mercilessly wiping out the enemy with arms only and occupying Seoul at one go and the southern half of Korea.” A new poster on a North Korean propaganda website on Saturday showed a missile dealing “a retaliatory strike of justice” against the US mainland, threatening to “wipe out the United States, the source of evil, without a trace.” On Wednesday, Kim ordered the production of more rocket engines and missile warheads during a visit to a chemical institute of the Academy of Defence Science, an agency that he fostered to develop its ballistic missile programme. Diagrams and what appeared to be missile parts shown in photographs published in the North's state media suggested Pyongyang was pressing ahead with building a longer-range ballistic missile that could potentially reach any part of the US mainland including Washington. It is also believed to be developing a new solid-fuel missile of a class that it has previously tested in submarine launches.  ....

Published at: 2017-08-27 05:00:05

Now that almost half of the country is literally under flood waters with human misery at a terrible state, many quarters are looking back to find flaws with the authorities concerned who, as it now appears, have done little sitting on big flood protection projects. There are projects, some of which are believed to be well targeted to address flood control during the monsoon season. One such project taken up way back in 2011 is languishing with little or no progress, having already over-run completion deadline by more than two years ago. The project titled 'Pre-monsoon Flood Protection and Drainage Improvement in Haor Area' was a well designed one with components meant to particularly address the situation in the low-lying haor belt of greater Sylhet and Mymensingh districts. Given that the haor belt is highly vulnerable to flash floods and that there are some unique features too in the way floods affect the livelihood of millions of people living in the areas, the aforesaid project was supposed to be a milestone in controlling flood waters. Costing over Tk 7.0 billion, the project was meant to protect nearly 30 upazilas of Sylhet, Sunamganj, Moulvibazar, Habiganj, Kishoreganj and Netrakona from mansoon flooding. Thirty six of 52 haor areas under the project were in Sunamganj. A priority project by all means, it had the work-plan of building and repairing flood protection embankments and improving drainage system in the belt that experiences highest rainfall in the country.  Like the fate of most other projects in different fields, this one too got snagged due to many hurdles, which among others allegedly included non-disbursement of funds, lack of adequate manpower to execute and monitor progress of work, and indeed importantly, lack of thrust on the part of the implementing agency --the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB).  The sorry state of the project is clearly evident from a report published in a national contemporary saying that since the inception of the project, the BWDB has so far been able to  spend as little as one fifth of the project fund, including the over-run period that makes the project tenure six years. Worst perhaps is the fact that during the period as many as eleven project directors got appointed-a clear enough indication that neither the concerned ministry nor the implementing agency took care to see that the project is completed in due time under able leadership. Observers, while expressing frustration over the project, are of the view that had the works been done as scheduled and designed, people in the large swathes of the haor belt could have been protected from the current deluge. If disbursement of fund, among others, is actually one of the reasons for poor progress, it is inconceivable why the project was undertaken when funding was not certain.  It is pretty well known that projects such as the aforesaid one can only see success if all the inter-related components work simultaneously. Otherwise, half-done works when restarted after undesirable lapse of time, the very foundation of the work gets weakened rendering it useless. It is not known what the government is thinking to find a way out, if any, to address the matter.....

Published at: 2017-08-26 05:00:05