On September 20, Deutsche Welle (DW), the German international broadcaster, opened a DW-Point; a station combining TV, radio and Internet access, at the Goethe-Institut, Dhaka. The festive handover of the multimedia info-terminal was attended by Frank Meyke, the German ambassador to Bangladesh; Thomas Bärthlein, head of DW-Radio services for Hindi / Urdu / Bengali; Torsten Oertel, director of Goethe-Institut Dhaka and Masud Mannan, director general, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The DW-Point at the Goethe-Institut offers visitors the use of three media: DW-TV, DW-Radio and dw-world.de -- the internet information service. German ambassador to Bangladesh Frank Meyke, said, "Bangladesh and Germany share a warm relationship and the opening of DW-point in Dhaka will open new windows of collaboration. In the coming days we hope to develop collaboration in education, science and other sectors." Thomas Bärthlein, head of DW-Radio services for Hindi / Urdu / Bengali, said, "For the last 30 years DW-Radio has been transmitting Bengali service from Bonn. From October 29, we will broadcast two sessions of Bengali transmissions -- 8am and 9:30pm -- covering all over the globe to be closer to our competitors such as BBC and CNN. We still broadcast in short-wave; we are talking with our counterpart to use FM band in near future. Then people here will be able to listen to DW Bengali in FM band." Torsten Oertel, director of Goethe-Institut, said, "This point will help Bangladeshis to know more about Germany and other parts of Europe." The inauguration at the Goethe-Institut was accompanied by a panel discussion entitled 'The challenges of equality -- the situation of Women in Bangladesh'. The event took up the theme of a current co-production by Bangladesh Betar and Deutsche Welle, which is being produced in Dhaka. (The Daily Star, Dhaka, 22 Sep. 2006)
(Source: MD. Azizul Alam Al-Amin, Rajshahi, Bangladesh)