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VOL. 28, NO. 23, March 06, 2009 (Falgun 23 2065)
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THE GOVERNMENT HAS DECLARED OVER 7000 people killed during the people's war, people's movement II and the Madhes movement as martyrs. The cabinet meeting held at Singha Durbar on Friday (Feb 27) took this decision. "The cabinet has declared people killed during the Maoist struggle as martyr of people's war, those killed in people's movement-II as martyrs of people's movement and people killed during the Madhes movement as martyrs of Madhes movement," said Krishna Bahadur Mahara, Minister for Information and Communication and the spokesperson of the government. Most of the martyrs are people killed during the decade long People's War steered by the erstwhile CPN (Maoist). Earlier, the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction had submitted a list of names to the cabinet to declare them as martyrs. "Few names are yet to come and others need to be corrected," Mahara said.
AT LEAST TEN PEOPLE HAVE DIED and eight others injured when a passenger bus met with an accident in far-western Bajhang district on March 1, according to reports. The bus, which was heading to Mahendranagar from Bajhang, veered off the rugged hilly road and crashed some 300 meters below, it is learnt. There were altogether 17 persons traveling in the ill-fated bus.
THE US DEPARTMENT OF STATE IN ITS ANNUAL Country Reports on Human Rights Practices has said that Impunity for human rights violators, threats against the media, arbitrary arrest, and lengthy pretrial detention were serious problems in Nepal, says a release from US Embassy. Releasing the report in Washington DC, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States will pursue greater respect for human rights “as we engage other nations and peoples around the world.” On Nepal the report said that members of the security forces committed some human rights abuses during the year, and the Maoists, the Maoist-affiliated Young Communist League (YCL), and members of other small, often ethnically based armed groups committed numerous grave human rights abuses. Members of the Nepal Police (NP) and Armed Police Force (APF) occasionally used excessive and lethal force in response to continued demonstrations throughout the country, the report said. It added that numerous armed groups, largely in the Terai region in the lowland area near the Indian border, engaged in attacks against various entities, including civilians, government officials, members of particular ethnic groups, each other, or Maoists and expressed concern over violence against women and trafficking in persons, mainly women and girls.
THE GOVERNMENT OF JAPAN has agreed to extend a grant assistance of over US$6 million, or approximately Rs 542,750,000, to Nepal for food aid this year. Japanese Ambassador to Nepal Tatsuo Mizuno and Finance secretary Rameshore Prasad Khanal signed and exchanged the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) Wednesday on behalf of their respective governments. The assistance is provided with the basic objective of enabling the government of Nepal to procure rice and supply it to the food deficit districts, according to a release issued by the Japanese embassy informing about the food aid. The Nepal Food Corporation (NFC) is to distribute the procured rice through the national distribution network of the government of Nepal Japan, being a development partner to Nepal, has been providing food aid to Nepal for the last few years. Ambassador Mizuno expressed his wish that the extended food assistance shall be able to help the government of Nepal in addressing the urgent needs in the food deficit districts and in easing the difficulties of local people's daily life, thus contributing to further building of stable peace in Nepal.
THE GAS DEALERS’ FEDERATION HAS started distributing consumer cards in order to make the supply and distribution easy and effective. They have said that the distribution of consumer card will discourage the trend of hoarding and black-marketing. A family can get one card by paying Rs 10. Initially, the cards will be distributed to people living in specific areas of Kathmandu, which will be later expanded to cover the whole country. The federation launched the card distribution on Wednesday (Feb 25) by providing the first card to Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda.
IN THE LAST TWO MONTHS, the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has signed Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) for 31.448 MW power in total. After the NEA unveiled its liberal PPA policy to tide over the load shedding woes, it has been able to sign PPA with six companies, according to NEA managing director Uttar Kumar Shrestha. Two months ago, NEA had announced that it would sign PPA for power projects os up to 25 MW capacity openly. Only after companies sign PPA with NEA can they apply for generation license with the Department for Electricity Development.
FORMER CHIEF JUSTICE BISWONATH UPADHYAYA has been conferred with Shankar Lal Kedia Memorial Law award in honor of his contribution to the law and justice field. Chief justice Kedar Prasad Giri handed over the award to Upadhyaya. At the award ceremony held by Legal Practitioners’ Club, many awards were also given away to authors of best legal articles in different fields published in the past one year in the prestigious Kanoon bimonthly magazine. Constitutional lawyer Lalit Bahadur Basnet bagged the award for best-researched article. Other lawyers bagging different awards included Bhimarjun Acharya, Rajit Bhakta Pradhananga, Meghraj Pokharel, Shanta Thapaliya, Kamalraj Thapa, Dwarikaman Joshi, Madhav Basnet and Ajita Aryal. Likewise, appellate court judge Gauri Bahadur Karki, co-registrar of Supreme Court Til Prasad Shrestha and Buddhi Narayan Shrestha also received awards.
