Shanghai ready to welcome world to Expo

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SHANGHAI, April 30 (AFP): Shanghai is set to open the World Expo today by setting the skies along its riverfront ablaze with fireworks, welcoming the huge showcase of culture and technology with a bang.
Still basking in the glow of its successful hosting of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China is treating the Expo as an equally important display of its ability to organise an event on a massive scale.
From the United States to North Korea, a total of 189 countries will have exhibitions at the six-month event that is expected to attract up to 100 million visitors—the vast majority of them Chinese.
To show China’s most cosmopolitan city knows how to throw a party, organisers have hired the team behind the opening and closing ceremonies for the Vancouver Winter Olympics to stage Friday night’s Expo bash.
The ceremony will feature non-stop fireworks and a chain of searchlights along a 3.5-kilometre (two-mile) stretch of Shanghai’s riverfront, producers David Atkins Enterprises said in a statement.
“We look forward to stunning the world,” said Ignatius Jones, the ceremony’s artistic director.
A host of world leaders will attend the opening ceremony including French President Nicolas Sarkozy and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak.


Boro harvest excellent yield predicts bumper production in N-region
RANGPUR, April 30 (BSS): Harvest of Boro paddy is almost over with excellent yield rates predicting a record bumper production of the major crop in the country's northern region this season, farmers and officials said today.
The newly harvested Boro rice already appeared in the local markets in limited volume and expected to arrive fully within the next two weeks.
Harvest of the paddy in the low-lying lands, char areas, beels, haors, dried up beds of the rivers and tributaries are nearing completion and some 600 acres half-ripened crops have been submerged following untimely rise in the water levels of the rivers.
Meanwhile, the farmers have urged for formulating new paddy procurement policy to ensure fair prices for the farmers.
Officials in the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) said "The farmers have cultivated Boro on 39,818 hectares more land, which is 2.4 percent higher than the target, and the overall Boro production is expected to exceed the target of 65,45,873 tonnes this year."