Bangladesh
gets $480 mln World Bank loans for food, power
DHAKA, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Bangladesh signed
on Thursday two loan agreements worth $480 million with
the World Bank in a bid to ease power and food crises.
The South Asian country will get a $130
million loan from the bank to cope with rising food prices,
which have pushed more than 4 million people back into
poverty, the World Bank said.
Another $350 million loan would be used
for Siddhirganj power plant, which will be the first integrated
gas-to-power project in Bangladesh, contributing 300 MW
of generation capacity to help offset the country's power
shortage.
It will also finance a 60 km natural gas
pipeline that will improve the reliability of gas supply
to the plant, and an 11 km electricity transmission line
so that power from the plant can be distributed to consumers.
The credit from the International Development
Association carries a service charge of 0.75 percent annually
and has 40 years to maturity, including a 10-year grace
period.
Bangladesh was hit by a food crisis after
last year's floods and a cyclone, which together damaged
nearly 3 million tonnes of food grains, causing rice prices
to double.
Nearly half of Bangladesh's more than 140
million people live on less than $1 a day, spending 70
percent of their total income on food. ($1 = 68.70 taka)
Bangladeshi
Paromita Mitra becomes Miss Mississipi Teen USA 2009
VoBD, New York - Paromita Mitra, 17, a Bangladeshi
immigrant in the United States, has won the crown for
the Miss Mississippi Teen USA 2009 competition, according
to a message received here on Tuesday.
The victory in the last week's competition,
sponsored by The Miss Universe Organization and NBC Universe,
will now bring Paromita to the Miss Teen USA Pageant competition
in 2009, to get a chance to embark on a year of traveling
around the world, working with incredible non-profit organizations
and attending red carpet events.
As a winner, Paromita received some scholarship
money, travel allowances, New York Film Academy Awards,
several custom designed cosmetics and jewelries, and speech
and communication training for Miss Teen USA, among many.
Paromita's onstage question was: What magazine
cover she would like to appear on and what her headline
would be.
"Time Magazine," she said and
preferred the headline to be "The headline would
be: A new generation for women". "Because I
believe that I could be a diverse addition to the Teen
USA programme," she said at the competition stage.
Daughter of Dr Amal and Ratna Mitra, Paramita
is a senior at Oak Grove High School in Hattiesburg, Mississippi
while she is the Senior Class President, a cheerleader,
a pianist, and a member of her school debate club and
the robotics team and in the future she wants to be an
aeronautical engineer and work for NASA.
With her areas of interests being astronomy,
physics, and math, Paromita likes Bengali music and dance
while in one of her last pageant competitions; she performed
a Bengali folk dance.
She plans to visit Bangladesh in summer
2009. She wants to help the underprivileged children here.
Q&A:
Bangladesh's Leader Fakhruddin Ahmed
The
announcement of a general election in Bangladesh often
signals the start of a season of political violence between
the country's two main parties. So there was trepidation
in Dhaka last week when Fakhruddin Ahmed, who heads a
"caretaker" government, announced that elections
would be held on Dec 18.
