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Underprivileged children to perform
with Dutch theatrical troupe
Shawkat Marcel Khan
Underprivileged children will perform at a grand show along with the Netherlands Dance Theater at Dhaka Sheraton Hotel in the second week of January 2008.
Seventy-two children of Padakkhep and six dancers from the NDT will perform at the show, said the organisers.
To be organised by the Netherlands Dance Theatre and Padakkhep, the show will feature a colourful dance performance by the underprivileged children. Dhaka Sheraton Hotel will sponsor the programme.
The organisers hope that the show will help the underprivileged children forgetting their miseries and encourage them to experience a happier and fresher outlook on life.
'We will hold the show to develop the spirit and the way of thinking of those underprivileged children, who have been deprived of their basic rights,' said NDT choreographer Paul Lightfoot, also a member of the 6-member team.
Asked about the capability of the children of performing with a world famous theatre group, he said they (children) were very talented and could easily follow the NDT performers, who are preparing them for the show.
The team is in a seven-day tour of Dhaka now for rehearsal with the children.
The rehearsal sessions will continue till Friday and the organisers will hold a few more rehearsal sessions before the programme.
Other members the NDT team are Sol Leon, Amos Ben Tal, Shirley Esseboom, Medhi Bruno and Marjan Van Lier.
The NDT was established in 1959 by 18 members of the former Ballet of the Netherlands that broke away from the traditional orientated company.
The group was dedicated to explore new forms of dance, using different techniques that opened new ideas and experimentation.
The Netherlands Dance Theater is moving all around the world and is a regular inclusion worldwide for adding excitement to international events.
To disclose the detail of the programme, a briefing was held at the Dhaka Sheraton Hotel on Monday. Paul Lightfoot, Sol Leon, Amos Ben Tal, Shirley Esseboom, Medhi Bruno and Marjan Van Lier and Sinthia Siraj and Jayed Shams Mahbub of Sheraton Hotel attended the briefing.
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Nora Ali wins America's Junior Miss award
Kazi Azizul Islam
Seventeen-year-old Nora Ali, the second of three daughters of Bangladeshi immigrants, was crowned as America's Junior Miss 2007 last Saturday.
Nora won the final competition, held in Alabama, and bagged a reward of more than $60,000, according to http://wcco.com.
'I just want to start a business and maybe even start a bio-medical company with my older sister who does stem cell research. So I'm open to possibilities,' Nora told journalists.
Nora, an accomplished pianist, is also the second winner from Minnesota in the 50-year history of the Junior Miss programme.
Nora, who plans to attend Harvard in the autumn to prepare for a career in Business Management or Finance, said, 'I've learned a lot about myself. This whole programme taught me to be confident and just to be myself.'
She will depart for a media tour in New York City in a couple of weeks, and will also make appearances at various places throughout the country to promote the Be Your Best Self programme.
Nora's parents, Zaki Ali and Mahfuza Ali, emigrated from Bangladesh in 1977. They both earned their PhD's in chemistry and got jobs with 3M.
'We are very lucky. God blessed us with amazingly intelligent, talented children,' Mahfuza told journalists.
Nora's older sister Nicole, who plans to get her PhD in biophysics, earned a scholarship to Harvard for stem cell research which she started at age 14. Her younger sister Leeza is a rising 9th grader.
The competition is not a traditional beauty pageant; the girls are judged on the basis of their academic achievements, interview skills, and talent and fitness levels.
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Harry Potter festival held
Cultural Correspondent
Publishing house Angkur organised a festival of Harry Potter at the premises of the Central Public Library in Shahbagh on Friday.
The festival featured a prize giving ceremony among the winners of a quiz competition, held in last September across the country.
Litterateur Bipradas Barua was present as chief guest and proprietor of Angkur, Mesbahuddin Ahmed was present among the guests.
Rubaida Rouf won the first prize at the competition while Mahfuza Haque Polin and Mim won second and third prizes respectively. The organisers also awarded the participants of the quiz.
Bipradas barua said that it was interesting that the children in our country were not only busy with computer games, they were also reading books. He also appreciated the organisers for creating awareness about the world literature among the children of Bangladesh.
Mesbahuddin Ahmed said that they had published the Bangla translation of five episodes of the Harry Potter series and had received huge response from the readers both at home and abroad.
The publishing house has published the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
The festival took a festive mood as a large number of the members of Harry Potter Readers' Forum gathered at the premises.
The organisers have plans to arrange more programmes relating Harry Potter. According to them, they want to help the children in creating a creative fantasy world in their mind.
They said that they have also plan to invite the writer of Harry Potter, JK Rowling in Bangladesh.
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Children theatre fest ends
Cultural Correspondent
A fifteen-day children theatre festival organised by the People's Theatre Association ended on Friday honouring children theatre activists and artistes.
The award giving ceremony was held at the Shaukat Osman Auditorium of the Central Public Library.
Professor Zillur Rahman Siddiquee handed over the prizes among the winners and participants as chief guest while theatre personalities including Ataur Rahman, Asaduzzaman Noor, Jhuna Chowdhury and Shahjahan Shah were present as special guests.
The event was chaired by Liaquat Ali Lucky.
The organiser awarded Abdul Hye Durbar, Toufiq Hassan Moyna, Mamtaz Hossein, Sheikh Mehedi Hassan, Saju, Sheikh Zahid and Sirajul Azam with the Shishunatya Padak 2007. Besides, the organisation also honoured 100 child artistes with the Manchakuri Padak.
On the concluding day of the festival, Amader Khelaghar Amader Pathshala by Nishchitapur Theatre of Thakurgaon was staged. Rangpur Shishu Natya Kendra of Rangpur performed classical music while People's Reparatory Theatre of Dhaka staged Rastar Chhele.
A total of 72 plays were staged during the festival.
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Readings in Microeconomics
This book of Readings is intended to provide students in Bangladesh an introduction, from original sources, to the concepts and tools of modern microeconomics. Textbooks generally focus upon what is clearly known and agreed upon; they do not impart the thrill of meeting new problems, nor do they focus upon the fact that there is often a considerable distance between the problem one initially wished to solve and the final problem that one could solve. Learning about these issues is a necessary part of one's education.
Starting from classic articles such as Radford's Economics of a P.0.W. Camp which elaborates in accessible style how markets arise and function even in the most unusual circumstances, the Reader goes on to articles which deal with the value theory, utility maximisation, consumption-loan model, market mechanism and insurance markets, a foundational piece for recent economic theory, to articles on uncertainty and agency theory. Additionally the articles introduce to the students some of the best minds that have treaded the subject. To make the Readings self-contained in coverage, Fahad Khalil has provided an Introduction to Game Theory. The book should be of vital importance to students, especially those aspiring to go abroad for studies and practitioners of economics who are interested in analyzing human activity in the market.
Fahad Khalil is Associate Professor of Economics at University of Washington Seattle. He obtained his Ph.D from Virginia Tech in 1991. He specialises in the Economics of Information and the Theory of Incentives. His articles have appeared in various journals including American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Theory, RAND Journal of Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Public Economics, and International Economic Review. He was awarded the Young Economist Prize (1998-2000) by the Bangladesh Economic Association.
Salim Rashid is Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
He obtained Ph.D from Yale University in 1976. His present area of interest is Development Economics. He has consulted for the UNDP, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. His articles have appeared in various journals including TheEconomic Journal, Journal of Economic Theory, Econometrica, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Economica, History of Economic Ideas, and International Economic Review.
Among his books are Economies with Many Agents, The Myth of Adam Smith, and Economic
Policy for Growth. UPL have published two of his edited volumes on Rotting from the Head: Donors and LDC Corruption and "The Clash of Civilisations?": Asian Responses.
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America's Queen of Opera dies
Reuters Los Angeles
Beverly Sills, the world-renowned soprano who became the most popular opera singer in America in modern times, died on Monday evening in New York from inoperable lung cancer, her manager said.
Sills, 78, died at her home in New York after being released from hospital on Friday where she was being treated for a broken rib, her manager Edgar Vincent told Reuters.
Sills rose from the ranks of sopranos to become a great American diva in the 1960s and 1970s, and expanded her career beyond performing to run two major opera companies - the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Opera.
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