The off-spinner, a key member of the West Indies Test, one-day and Twenty20 squads for the tour, had been suspended from bowling after being reported for a suspect action in 2008.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) said an independent test had found Samuels’ action to be legal following significant remedial work, and he could resume bowling.

“A comprehensive analysis revealed that his mean elbow extension was now comfortably within the 15-degree level of tolerance permitted under the relevant regulations,” the ICC said in a statement.

The independent analysis was performed by Bruce Elliott, a member of the ICC’s panel of human movement specialists, at the University of Western Australia, Perth, this month.

The spinner’s action, however, will continue to be scrutinised by match officials to ensure it remained legal, the ICC statement added.

Samuels, currently in Dubai with the West Indies team for a one-week camp ahead of the Bangladesh tour, said he was pleased to know he could resume bowling in international cricket.

“I have been waiting for this moment for a while now,” a West Indies Cricket Board statement quoted Samuels as saying.

“I am mainly a batsman in the team but it feels good to know that I can again contribute to the team in another area — with the ball. I am the kind of player who likes to be always involved in the game.”

Part-time spinner Samuels, 30, has so far bagged 57 wickets in one-day internationals and seven in Tests.

The West Indies, who arrive in Dhaka on October 4, will play two Tests, three one-day internationals and a one-off Twenty 20 match in Bangladesh. — AFP

Sonia Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’s daughter in-law and the head of India’s ruling Congress party, accepted the Bangladesh Freedom Honour from Bangladesh President Zillur Rahman at a reception in Dhaka.

“If Indira Gandhi could have been with us now, I know she would have been overwhelmed by the high honour you have bestowed on her,” Sonia Gandhi said in her acceptance speech.

Indira Gandhi was a friend of founding Bangladesh leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman — no relation to the current president — and her Congress government intervened militarily to help the country achieve independence.

The award recognises Indira Gandhi’s “direct support, cooperation, her strong role and unique contribution” to Bangladesh’s independence, said Dhaka’s cabinet secretary M. Abdul Aziz.

Under Indira Gandhi’s leadership India sheltered 10 million Bangladeshi war refugees, lobbied for Bangladesh internationally, secured the release of Sheikh Mujib from a Pakistani jail and finally “risked a war to hasten Bangladesh’s freedom,” he added.

Bangladesh has set up the honours to decorate 47 foreigners who helped the country during its struggle for independence and mark the 40th anniversary of its achievement, with Indira Gandhi’s the first to be presented.

Indira Gandhi was receiving “the highest state award for her outstanding contribution to our liberation,” Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s spokesman Abul Kalam Azad told AFP.

Other recipients include former Beatles musician George Harrison, for his Concert for Bangladesh which he staged in 1971. They will receive their awards later in the year, officials said. — AFP

Passengers were asleep on the ferry when it hit the wreck of a cargo ship that sank a few days ago in the river Meghna at Sarail, 90 kilometres (55 miles) from Dhaka, local police officer Abbas Uddin said.

“We have now found 26 bodies,” Uddin told AFP by phone from the site of the accident, adding that the death toll would rise as divers continued the recovery operation.

“It is a heart-breaking scene. Relatives of the victims are crying as we hand over the bodies. The families of those who are still missing are waiting anxiously on the river banks,” he said.

“There are more bodies trapped in the ferry. The divers are bringing them up now,” he said, adding that the total number of passengers on the boat was not known.

A team of divers from Dhaka was also scouring the river to look for bodies, while more divers were on their way from the capital, he said.

“More bodies will come out. One body was pulled out now while I was talking to you,” Brahminbaria district administrator Abdul Mannan told AFP by phone.

At least 60 people on the overloaded double-decker ferry swam to shore, police said.

Boat accidents due to lax safety standards and overloading are common in Bangladesh, which is criss-crossed by 230 rivers.

Some 37 people drowned in December last year when a passenger ferry hit a cargo ship and sank.

At least 85 people drowned in November when an overloaded triple-decker ferry capsized off Bhola Island in the country’s south.

A week later another boat sank leaving 46 people dead.

So far this year, dozens of people have been killed in several smaller boat accidents in Bangladesh.

Naval officials have said more than 95 percent of Bangladesh’s hundreds of thousands of small- and medium-sized boats do not meet minimum safety regulations.

But millions of people in Bangladesh rely on boats and ferries to travel to the capital or the delta nation’s major cities. — AFP

Richardson was captain when the West Indies overturned the form book in the 1996 quarter-final in Karachi and stunned South Africa, who had come through the league phase unbeaten.

Brian Lara smashed 111 off 94 balls to fashion a 19-run victory and a similar effort from Chris Gayle, Darren Bravo or Kieron Pollard could upset Pakistan’s applecart.

“Anything can happen in the knock-outs, you don’t get a second chance,” said the 49-year-old Richardson, who took over as manager for a two-year term in January.

“Every one starts on an equal footing.”

Darren Sammy’s men will need a desperate last fling at a time when they seem to be falling apart after two inexplicabe defeats against England and India from dominant positions.

They were on the brink of victory against England when, chasing a modest target of 244, they were comfortably placed at 222-6 before losing their last four wickets for three runs.

Against India on Sunday, they caved in again as eight wickets fell for 34 runs after they were 154-2 and lost by 80 runs.

The West Indies, who have now lost 18 successive matches against the leading nations, cannot afford another defeat.

All is, however, not over yet for the West Indies.

They return to the Sher-e-Bangla stadium in Dhaka where they shot out Bangladesh for their lowest one-day total of 58 in the league to romp home by nine wickets in a match that ended in under two hours.

Gayle and key fast bowler Kemar Roach are set to return after missing the India game, the former with a abdominal strain and Roach due to illness.

Pakistan, in contrast, have been the revelation of the tournament by topping Group A with five wins in six matches.

Shahid Afridi’s Pakistan broke three-time defending champions Australia’s unbeaten streak of 34 World Cup matches with a four-wicket win in Colombo on Saturday.

It was just the tonic Pakistan needed after being stripped of big-time cricket at home due to security concerns in their volatile nation and tainted by an unsavoury spot-fixing scandal.

The absence of former captain Salman Butt and pace spearheads Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif due to the controversy was not felt as the team rallied superbly under their inspirational captain.

All-rounder Afridi is the tournament’s leading bowler with 17 wickets with his fastish leg-breaks, while seamer Umar Gul has kept the pressure on at the other end with 13 wickets.

Afridi may have failed with the bat so far with just 65 runs in six games, but young guns Umar Akmal and Asad Shafiq have shone brightly in their first World Cup.

Akmal has scored 211 runs at 52.75 and Shafiq averages 124 in the two games he has played so far, while seasoned seniors like Misbah-ul Haq and Younis Khan have lent solidity to the middle-order.

Team manager Intikhab Alam, who was coach when Pakistan won the 1992 World Cup under Imran Khan, was delighted with his side’s performance so far.

The former captain attributed the success to “self-belief, fitness and high energy levels.”

“We are peaking at the right time,” Intikhab said. — AFP

Garment factories have been instructed to close for six hours every evening until the final on April 2 so that power cuts do not affect avid cricket fans watching the games on television at home.

“We have told the factories about the government decision and asked them to shut their plants in the peak power hours,” Manjur Rahman, head of state-owned Dhaka Electric Supply Company, said.

The order has enraged the country’s 5,000 garment exporters, who employ millions of Bangladeshis making cheap clothes to be sold overseas for Western brands such as H&M and Levi’s.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) wrote a letter to the prime minister and the minister of power, saying the evening shutdowns threatened the country’s business image.

“We have said the order to shut factories has already started affecting the garment factories. We won’t be able to ship our products in time if the order is not scrapped immediately,” said BGMEA president Abdus Salam Murshedy.

“All the companies have been booked with export orders. If they can’t export the orders in time, it will obviously anger the buyers. Our reputation as a top garment exporter will be seriously dented,” he told AFP.

Apparel export is the backbone of Bangladesh’s economy, accounting for 80 percent of all the country’s exports. The factories employ more than three million workers, mostly women.

“The whole economy will be affected because of this anti-industry step. We are great cricket fans, but that does not mean that we shall shut factories just to watch World Cup matches,” Murshedy said.

Bangladesh is struggling to tackle a major power crisis with regular outages as demand far outstrips supply.

The government took similar step during the soccer World Cup in 2010 as power blackouts during key matches saw tens of thousands of people stage violent protests, vandalising power offices and damaging cars.

Along with India and Sri Lanka, the country is a co-host of the World Cup cricket, which started in Dhaka on February 19.

On Friday night fans across the country erupted in celebration after Bangladesh beat Ireland in a nerve-wracking match. — AFP

A decade of inhaling fumes from the chemicals used to turn Bangladeshi raw hide into soft leather for shoes to be sold in the West has given Sumon, who started working in the tannery at 13, a shallow cough and stabbing chest pains.

“I don’t like the work but I have no choice, I need the money,” Sumon, who uses only one name, told AFP as he pulled freshly tanned skins out of huge barrels of blue-grey chromium liquid, which is used to process raw hide.

Cow and goat skins, caked in salt or still bloody from the slaughterhouse, are stacked in piles inside the tannery, but Sumon said the stench from the raw hides is the least of his problems.

“When I first started, the chemical fumes made me so sick I couldn’t eat for two months, now I can’t even smell them,” he said.

“We get no training, no safety equipment — workers have to learn to be careful of the chemicals. I had a few accidents at first,” he added, pointing to large, burn-like scars on his forearms and shins.

In Hazaribag district, home to hundreds of tanneries like the Salma Leather Cooperation where Sumon works, the environmental and public health costs of the rapid growth of global demand for cheap shoes are on full display.

The area, once a pleasant, semi-rural district in the Bangladeshi capital, is now a wasteland of toxic swamps, garbage landfills and mountains of decomposing leather scraps, surrounded by slums where tannery workers live.

Piles of smouldering trash line the banks of the nearby Buriganga, which is classified as a “dead” river after it hits Hazaribag as pollution from the tanneries has made it impossible for any fish or plantlife to survive.

Every day, the tanneries collectively dump 22,000 cubic litres of toxic waste, including cancer-causing chromium, into the Buriganga — Dhaka’s main river and a key water supply — according to the ministry of environment.

More than 90 percent of tannery workers suffer from some kind of disease — from asthma to cancer — due to chemical exposure, according to a 2008 survey by SEHD, a local charity, with local residents being almost as badly affected.

Despite their shocking environmental and work safety records, business is booming in Hazaribag, as growing global demand for footwear coupled with rising manufacturing costs in China prompts western buyers to turn to Bangladesh.

Leather is the country’s fastest growing export, and Hazaribag’s tanneries produced the bulk of the 32 billion taka (460 million dollars) worth of leather shipped in 2009, mostly to Europe, Russia, Japan and China.

Leather exports were also up 45 percent year on year from July to November 2010, with shoe shipments to American markets alone up 50 percent in the same period, according to export bureau figures.

Eager for the leather industry — and its export earnings — to grow, the Bangladeshi government has long turned a blind eye to the rampant pollution and terrible working conditions inside the tanneries, activists say.

“The only reason the Hazaribag tanneries are allowed to operate is the export earnings,” said Rezwana Hossain, an environmental rights lawyer.

“These tanneries are operating right in the middle of the city, in the middle of residential areas and they are continuing to pollute the major river of the city, year after year,” she said.

“If you look at the environmental damage, the killing of the Buriganga river, the pollution of the city’s water supply, the public health costs — then these export earnings don’t look so impressive.”

The industry’s export earnings could increase significantly in the next few years if Dhaka can capitalise on the “China effect”, said Sayed Nasim Manzur, managing director of ApexAdelchi, a joint venture shoe manufacturer.

Brands like Jones Bootmaker and Macy’s already source shoes in Bangladesh, and many others are likely to follow suit, he said.

“But you can’t expect to export to the European Union if you’re polluting like they are at Hazaribag,” added Manzur, whose factories in Savar district have their own waste treatment plants, unlike the Hazaribag tanneries.

Successive Bangladeshi governments have promised to relocate the tanneries to Savar, north of Dhaka, and pledged to build a central effluent treatment plant to prevent water pollution.

The relocation also aims to force tanneries, many of which have been in Hazaribag since the 1970s, to set up purpose-built factories and improve safety standards for workers.

But progress has stalled, and while the government maintains the move will happen soon, no exact date has been set and the infrastructure at the new Savar site has not yet been completed.

The delay has not deterred foreign buyers, who are flooding the existing tanneries with orders.

Most of the raw hide tanned at Hazaribag is exported as semi-processed leather to shoe factories in Russia, China, Japan and Spain, where it is turned into shoes for the Western market, tannery owners told AFP.

Leather worker Sumon said the Salma tannery had become busier than ever.

“Workers haven’t seen any of the benefits though — the factory tells us buyers pay low prices for the leather, they say the tannery isn’t making much profit,” he said.

Sumon earns 6,000 taka (100 dollars) a month for a 12-hour shift, seven days a week, but says his main worry about his job is its impact on the health of his family who live close to the tannery.

“The tanneries pollute the water, and we all use the water — we drink it, wash it in. It smells bad, and it makes your skin itch, but what can we do,” he said. — AFP