Bangladesh

Bangladesh on Monday evacuated hundreds of thousands of people to emergency shelters on the southwestern coast as a cyclone hit the country, as well as neighbouring India, officials said.

Government weather forecaster Sanaul Haq said Cyclone Aila made landfall between Bangladesh's Khulna district and Sagar Island in India's West Bengal state, unleashing a tidal surge as high as two metres (seven feet).

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's three-month old government has appointed a former bureaucrat as the new chief of the independent Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) nearly a month after resignation of former army chief Hassan Mashhud Chowdhury.

A government statement last night announced appointment of former secretary to the government Ghulam Rahman, currently serving as the chairman of Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission.

The government also downgraded the status of the ACC chairman to a Supreme Court judge from the status of a minister, which was being enjoyed by General Chowdhury.

Bangladesh has decided not to make fresh recruitment against the 10 per cent vacant posts in government sector to curtail public spending in view of the global recession.

"The government takes the decision on jobs cut prompted by the logic of saving the public resources," Finance Minister AMA Muhith said at a function yesterday, a day after a government circular disclosed the plan.

Bangladesh blocked access to the video-sharing site YouTube after it hosted a recording of a tense meeting between the prime minister and army officials following a bloody mutiny by border guards, officials said Monday.

The insurrection last month claimed more than 70 lives, shook the two-month-old government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and raised tensions with the powerful military, which opposed her handling of the incident.