Gandaki Province organises tourism promotion tour in three districts

A four-day tourism revival and rural tourism promotional tour has started with the objective of reviving tourism industry affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Village Tourism Promotion Forum (VITOF) of Gandaki Province organised tourism promotion tour in its three districts with the support from Nepal Tourism Board, Pokhara and Pokhara Tourism Council. A team comprising tourism-related officials and media persons is going to visit tourist villages in Kaski, Parbat and Baglung districts to spread...

Morocco acquires 65 million vaccine doses from China, UK

Morocco announced it has acquired 65 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from China’s Sinopharm and Britain’s AstraZeneca, as the north African kingdom prepares to launch a COVID-19 vaccination program that aims to immunize 80% of the country’s adult population. Health Minister Khalid Ait Taleb announced the figure at a Cabinet meeting Thursday. The government didn’t indicate whether the vaccines were purchased or provided by Covax, the global project to provide vaccines to developing countries,...

Bamdev repeats his stand to stay neutral

Vice-chairman of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) Bam Dev Gautam held a meeting with the leaders of the Prachanda-Nepal faction of NCP to discuss the party’s current political crisis. Gautam visited Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ on Saturday morning. Gautam’s press advisor Biswamani Subedi said the vice-chairman met Dahal at his residence in Khumaltar, Lalitpur. Subedi said the two leaders discussed the issues of dissolution of the House of Representatives and on-going crisis within...

NRA claims 90% work progress but many structures await rebuilding

While reconstruction of heritages like Ranipokhari and Dharahara caught the attention of many including the media, the real progress in post-quake rebuilding has happened at the reconstruction of private houses. According to the mobilisation of the housing grant, progress at private house rebuilding is more than 90 per cent. As much as 77 per cent of the beneficiaries that signed the grant agreement with the government have obtained the final instalment of the grant and 85.7 per cent have received...

500 new COVID-19 cases, 840 recoveries, three fatalities in last 24 hours

In 5,434 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the last 24 hours, as many as 500 persons, 213 females and 287 males, were found to have been infected with SARS-CoV-2.

State Minister Manandhar sets new record by singing for four hours

Minister of State for Urban Development of Nepal Ram Bir Manandhar sang 62 songs in a row and set a world record on Friday. Minister for Communication and Information Technology and Government Spokesperson Parbat Gurung had inaugurated four-hour-long singing programme at the Aashtanarayan Hall in Balaju in Kathmandu Friday. Minister Gurung praised the spirit of State Minister Manandhar to sing songs for four hours continuously.

Cinema theatres reopen

The cinema theatres which had remained closed for over nine months reopened from Friday across the country. The hall owners have opened the cinema halls with occupancy of 50 per cent spectators. Even though the government did not give permission, the Nepal Motion Picture Association, an umbrella organisation of cinemas, decided to reopen them. With the decision, the halls which were closed for a long time have been cleaned. Similarly, special security arrangements have been made in all the halls,...

Expand Civic Space For Participation

The sovereignty of citizens sealed in the Nepali constitution assumes that state power springs from bottom-up. It is accountable to their choice. Nepali state is entrusted with collective sovereignty of its citizens. It is deemed autonomous of the fissiparous bents of nation’s political parties which use their leverage against each other to monopolise grip on public institutions and flag general interests. The right of citizens to sovereignty, however, does not write to an awareness of working...

Human Development In Post-COVID Era

Marking its third decade of measuring the human development based on income, health and education, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) recently unveiled Human Development Report 2020 titled ‘The next frontier: Human development and the Anthropocene’. Emerging as an alternative to the dominant development discourse centred on economic thinking in 1990, UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI) stands as a valid measure of holistic development. Norway retained its first position in the...

Nepalis Still Awaiting Political Stability

In a parliamentary democracy, the parliament is often the only institution keeping the country a democracy. People do not directly elect the head of government. The head of state is often a monarch or a ceremonial president. Indeed, the country’s only claim to democracy comes from the legislators, who are elected to be the people’s representatives in the state. These legislators are expected to act as an extension of their voters in everything they do, including but not limited to, drafting laws,...