Nepali National Cricket Team Skipper Honored
Kathmandu January 20: Nepalese National Cricket Team Skipper, Paras Khadka, has been honored with the 1st Madan Bhandari Cricket Recognition ‘Samman’ this Friday.
Khadka was given this award by President of Nepal, Bidhya Devi Bhandari, during the First Cricket Mahotsav organized by Madan Bhandari Sports Academy at Kirtipur Cricket Ground.
The Madan Bhandari Cricket Recognition ‘Samman’ was instituted and awarded for the first time in Nepal. This award will be given every year to the contributors in Nepali Cricket. The award carries a purse of NRs. 25,000.
Mount Everest to be Scaled by Three Women Mountaineers
Kathmandu, January 20: A team of three mountaineers led by Lakpa Yangjee Sherpa is set to scale Mt. Everest on coming April.
The mainstream news about the scaling of the World’s Highest Mountain is true and has been further shared by Tourist Journalist Association this Friday during a Press Conference. Lakpa Yangjee Sherpa, Yangdi Sherpa, and Pashang Lhamu Sherpa are set to begin their expedition from April 7, 2018.
The Logistic Support will be provided by the Everest Hardware and will be climbing the peak through Ascent Himalayan Trek and Expedition Company.
Lakpa Yangjee was available for a comment during the conference.
We will start climbing the Everest for promoting tourism in the country, as well as increasing women’s participation in the mountaineering sector.Note: The comment has been modified slightly for the easy understanding of the readers.
Manange may lose his assembly seat
Rajib Gurung aka Deepak Manange, who was recently elected to the provincial assembly of Province 4, could lose his seat due to his conviction in an attempt to murder case and sentenced to the prison. But his disqualification for the seat will have to be ruled by the Supreme Court.
Patan Appellate Court had convicted Gurung five years ago for attempting to murder Milan Gurung alias Milan Chakre in 2007 and had imposed a five-year jail sentence on him.
According to Section 13 (9) of Provincial Assembly Member Election Act, 2017, a person who is slapped a minimum of five year jail sentence or more, cannot contest on election for six years after serving his/her jail sentence. Manange has served only for two years of his jail sentence and has to serve the remainder of his jail sentence himself as per rule.
The government had filed a case of attempted murder against 11 persons, including Rajib Gurung. Manange was imposed a two-year jail sentence by the Kathmandu District Court in this case. The Patan Appellate Court later struck down the sentence and imposed a five year sentence on Gurung for attempted murder.
Four other convicts in the case had moved the Supreme Court against the verdict but the SC upheld the appellate court verdict. Gurung had not challenged the appellate court verdict, nor can he appeal it now, as it had to be done within 130 days of the verdict.
Senior advocates Surendra Kumar Mahto, Satish Krishna Kharel and Ram Narayan Bidari said Gurung could be disqualified from the provincial assembly by an order of the Supreme Court if his election was challenged. Gurung was not barred from contesting provincial assembly election since nobody challenged his candidacy.
Joint Attorney of Election Commission Gita Prasad Timsina said, “EC cannot disqualify Gurung, as he has already been elected. The court will have to rule that he is disqualified to hold the post. The EC cannot know if somebody is ineligible to contest the election unless somebody lodges a complaint,” he added. EC Spokesperson Navaraj Dhakal said the EC was responsible for holding election and not disqualifying anybody after the election.
Senior Advocate Kharel said the governor of Province 4 could refuse to administer the oath of office and secrecy to Gurung if somebody submitted the court’s verdict and relevant documents.
Nepal’s export slights down
Nepal’s export to India and other countries has slowed to a crawl in the first five months (mid-July to mid-December) of this fiscal as major export items recorded negative growth in the given period.
Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) unveiled their macroeconomic data of the first five months where India’s share in total import of Nepal is increasing; export to India in terms of total export has been falling gradually over the months of this fiscal after the southern neighbor enforced goods and services tax (GST) on July 1.
As per the central bank’s report, exports to India stood at 53.3 per cent of total exports in first five months of this fiscal against 55.6 per cent in corresponding period of previous fiscal.
The total exported goods worth Rs 17.96 billion to India in the review period. According to NRB, export growth to India was just 5.5 per cent in the first five months compared to 22.6 per cent growth in first five months of last fiscal compared to the same period of 2015-16
Export of major export items like juice, cardamom, plastic utensils, GI pipes, among others, plunged heavily after the integrated GST increased the tariff to export to India.
Export of cardamom plummeted by 68.4 per cent to Rs 393.5 million in the first five months of this fiscal compared to the corresponding period of the previous fiscal. The country had exported cardamom worth Rs 1.25 billion in the first five months of last fiscal 2016-17.
“The exporters need to diversify the market of their products to minimize the risk of market concentration”, said Commerce Secretary Chandra Kumar Ghimire.
“As per the principle of not putting all the eggs in the same basket, exporters should pay attention to market diversification. For instance, Gulf countries, Pakistan and other nations could be the potential export markets for cardamom,” he said.
However, exporters have said that lack of market predictability had affected the investment in the country. Mainly, India is a huge market for Nepali primary goods. “To tap the market potential, processing of products, value addition, branding and marketing are must,” said Ghimire.
In contrast to the belief that multinational companies and foreign direct investment companies can crack the barrier in the concerned countries, export of juice plummeted considerably in the review period even as the Indian multinational, Dabur Nepal, has been exporting juice to India.
Experts have said that trade concentration in a single country can create huge problems like the Nepali exporters have been facing in export to India in the GST regime. India’s import tariff increased on juices, cardamom, processed foods, GI pipes and footwear, among others, in the current tax regime.
Imports from India have not been affected because there is zero GST in export of goods and services from India.
When GST was enforced, India had considered service export only if the service supplier received payment in convertible foreign currency. However, considering the request of landlocked Nepal and Bhutan, which use Indian transit for third-country trade, India has provided special provision for Nepal and Bhutan that payment in Indian rupee would also be considered as service export in the case of these two countries.
NT landline subscribers to as Prepaid
The only Public Switched Telephone Network service (PSTN) in Nepal popularly known as landline phone service has implemented real-time-billing system , from today.
Real-time-billing is also popularly referred for pre-paid system in telecommunication services; however PSTN is a postpaid service by Nepal Telecom.
Before the landline phone users of Nepal Telecom had used to settle bills after using the service and NT had not fixed any credit limit for its landline phone customers. Their billing was on the monthly basis and has to pay at the end and beginning of the new month.
However, now that NT has enforced the pre-paid system for PSTN service as well where the customers will be required to deposit certain amount before using the PSTN service and consumers will not be able to use the service exceeding the credit limit.
“We have enforced the real-time-billing system for PSTN service in a bid to make the service more effective. This move is also a part of NT’s long-awaited plan to switch all of its services to real-time billing system,” said Prativa Baidhya, spokesperson for NT.
Previously it also used to happen that you may have a little money in your wallet than that is actually billed. So you have to again visit the NT counter to pay the actual bill. Still some people visit Nepal Telecom counter to know and pay the bill but majority can check the bill themselves easily and then pay it through recharge cards or online services like esewa and some payment service from different banks. Here we are discussing the two easiest way to know the landline bill in Nepal and pay it online. Nepal Telecom is only the landline service provider here in Nepal. To know the PSTN landline bill, there two easy ways Namely IVR and SMS means.
Along with this, all telecommunication services of Telecom except the post-paid GSM service now follow the real-time-billing system. This system certainly believed to be more efficient and transparent.
However, NT officials have hinted that they will not start cutting connections of customers abruptly for the next few days as majority of PSTN customers are unaware of the new system. Since NT has been sending the variant of SMSs to its subscribers about their changes.
Until now, NT had been charging its PSTN customers a monthly rental of Rs 200 letting customers make an average of up to 175 phone calls, depending on the time (peak hours or off-hours) that a customer makes the calls. NT customers will now have to deposit a minimum of Rs 200 to use the PSTN service. Baidhya said PSTN customers could fix their credit limit themselves from now on.
In case a subscriber uses total credit before the month ends and the phone network is disconnected, Baidhya said PSTN customers could top up their balance using NT recharge cards or e-banking services. However, NT will have the system that could alert customers when they are about to exceed their credit limit. NT officials said PSTN customers would have to renew their credit on the first day of the Nepali month.
NT’s statistics show that there are almost 600,000 customers of PSTN service of the company.
Meanwhile, NT has also urged its landline customers to dial 197 for additional information about the new system and give feedback.
Surviving with cancer with no radiotherapy machine in the country
Monica Kyotazala has lived with this life-threatening immedicable disease for 12 years.
In 2006, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and her body shows the physical ravages of the condition.
Painfully thin and with a faltering voice, she explains how she went without adequate medical treatment for close to two years, after Uganda’s only radiotherapy machine broke down.
After the machine failed, doctors prescribed two doses of chemotherapy for Ms Kyotazala.
“I didn’t have the money,” she says, beginning to cry. “I spent a month without getting the treatment. My children were trying to raise the money. So I survived on just morphine, for the pain. I had to go back home and wait.”
For Ms. Kyotazala, and patients like her, the wait is finally over.
Decades ago, cancer was among very rare diseases in Uganda but today the story has changed. The situation is so bad that almost every day there are new cases in various hospitals across the country. It is almost becoming like malaria. According to experts, although everyone is prone to cancer, some people are more at risk due to factors such as environmental, genetic, habits and chronic infections.
Friday marks the official unveiling of Uganda’s new Cobalt 60 radiotherapy machine.
Its predecessor failed in April 2016, after 21 years in operation.
Those who could afford it went abroad for treatment, including to Kenya and India. Those who couldn’t have to pay for alternative forms of treatment, or wait in distress.
Some got worse, and died.
“Thanks to the scientific method, most people in “developed” countries have an outlook of mild deism. We assume things like weather and disease operate according to fixed natural laws. Every so often, though, problems impinge on us so directly that we stretch beyond that mildly deistic stance and ask God to intervene. When a drought drags on too long, we pray for rain. When a young mother gets a diagnosis of cervical cancer, we solicit prayers for her healing. We beseech God as if trying to talk God into something God otherwise might not want to do.” – Philip Yancey
The arrival of the new machine is potentially life-saving, even if it remains the only one for a country of more than 40 million people.
Ms Kyotazala has already had 15 back-to-back sessions in the new device, treatment that requires her to make a 120-km (75-mile) journey from her village in Iganga, eastern Uganda, to the country’s capital, Kampala.
She says she is finally hopeful of making a recovery.
Cancer costs
At the Uganda Cancer Institute at Mulago National Referral Hospital, radiotherapy is free, but chemotherapy and other cancer treatments are not.
The cheapest dose of chemotherapy costs around 300,000 Uganda shillings ($85; £60). More expensive treatments cost as much as 1m shillings ($280; £205), says Rose Kiwanuka, head of the Palliative Care Association of Uganda.
“Sometimes patients cannot even find all the doses prescribed at the national hospital,” she adds. “They would have to buy them from private pharmacies, if they are in stock, and then bring the drugs to the doctors. That just goes to show the need for radiotherapy.”
The Uganda Cancer Institute is hailed as a centre of excellence across the region and receives about 7,000 new patients every year, and close to 37,000 return visits. Its patients come from Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Burundi, and even some parts of Kenya and Tanzania.
About three-quarters of all new cases would require radiotherapy.
New Radiotherapy machine
Friday marks the official unveiling of Uganda’s new Cobalt 60 radiotherapy machine.
Its predecessor failed in April 2016, after 21 years in operation.
Those who could afford it went abroad for treatment, including to Kenya and India. Those who couldn’t have to pay for alternative forms of treatment, or wait in distress.
Some got worse, and died.
“Thanks to the scientific method, most people in “developed” countries have an outlook of mild deism. We assume things like weather and disease operate according to fixed natural laws. Every so often, though, problems impinge on us so directly that we stretch beyond that mildly deistic stance and ask God to intervene. When a drought drags on too long, we pray for rain. When a young mother gets a diagnosis of cervical cancer, we solicit prayers for her healing. We beseech God as if trying to talk God into something God otherwise might not want to do.” – Philip Yancey
The arrival of the new machine is potentially life-saving, even if it remains the only one for a country of more than 40 million people.
Ms Kyotazala has already had 15 back-to-back sessions in the new device, treatment that requires her to make a 120-km (75-mile) journey from her village in Iganga, eastern Uganda, to the country’s capital, Kampala.
She says she is finally hopeful of making a recovery.
Cancer costs
At the Uganda Cancer Institute at Mulago National Referral Hospital, radiotherapy is free, but chemotherapy and other cancer treatments are not.
The cheapest dose of chemotherapy costs around 300,000 Uganda shillings ($85; £60). More expensive treatments cost as much as 1m shillings ($280; £205), says Rose Kiwanuka, head of the Palliative Care Association of Uganda.
“Sometimes patients cannot even find all the doses prescribed at the national hospital,” she adds. “They would have to buy them from private pharmacies, if they are in stock, and then bring the drugs to the doctors. That just goes to show the need for radiotherapy.”
The Uganda Cancer Institute is hailed as a centre of excellence across the region and receives about 7,000 new patients every year, and close to 37,000 return visits. Its patients come from Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Burundi, and even some parts of Kenya and Tanzania.
About three-quarters of all new cases would require radiotherapy.
Total Patients?
But the new machine isn’t enough. “Globally, in the best-case scenario, for every 250,000 people you should have one radiotherapy machine,” says Dr Jackson Orem, a senior oncologist and director of the Uganda Cancer Institute. He says that even having one machine for 500,000, or one million, people would help. Uganda, which has a population of more than 40 million, is a long way from that. But Dr Orem is confident that Uganda’s cancer care provision will improve. “This crisis that we have just come through has helped us to come up with strategies,” he says. “In less than a year, we are likely to have an upgraded machine called a linear accelerator. And that is going to be one of four others that we are going to acquire. “So I think the crisis has brought with it what I would call a silver lining to a dark cloud.” It’s a long way off from one machine for every 250,000 people, but for patients like Ms Kyotazala this could be the difference between life and death.Bollywood cinema smashes the taboo
The world’s first feature film on female’s period is set to be released all around the world with a message and goodwill against the monthly periods on female. This comedy segment carries a message to against the taboo of female menstruation.
This scene captures the 20-year struggle by a poor school drop-out from southern India, starting as a guy that he had to buy sanitary pad for his menstruated wife and ends up changing the mentality of all the men and certainly the women of all around the world.
Muruganantham, now 55, threw himself into researching a cheaper alternative.
Period poverty leaves an estimated 300 million women in India without access to sanitary products – making them vulnerable to disease, infertility and even death.
He began analyzing pads from Western companies, canvassing opinions – and used napkins – of female medical students and, finally, tested his inventions out himself.
“I wanted volunteers to try my new pads and give me feedback – but not even my wife was ready.”
It all came at a cost.
“My wife left, mother left. The whole village thought I had a sexual disease,” he explains.
“The great mother whom we call Innana gave a gift to woman that is not known among men, and this is the secret of blood. The flow at the dark of the moon, the healing blood of the moon’s birth – to men, this is flux and distemper, bother and pain. They imagine we suffer and consider themselves lucky. We do not disabuse them.”
“In the red tent, the truth is known. In the red tent, where days pass like a gentle stream, as the gift of Innana courses through us, cleansing the body of last month’s death, preparing the body to receive the new month’s life, women give thanks — for repose and restoration, for the knowledge that life comes from between our legs, and that life costs blood.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
But he persevered, and in 2006 launched not-for-profit Jayaashree Industries, which supplies machines making Muruganantham’s sanitary pads at cost-price to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and women’s organizations across India.
Today it reaches an estimated 40 million Indian women, and there are plans to take the machines to Kenya, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Bangladesh.
As a female oriented movie, Glazing Twinkle Khanna, Akshya’s wife and producer of his upcoming film Padman, has tweeted the first look of the film and it seems Akshay Kumar is all set to work his charm again. She says her immediately gripped by the magnitude of what he had achieved. “I thought this was a remarkable story which really needed to reach every household in India, and globally, because I think the taboo around menstruation is not just in India, it’s a global problem.”
This 50-years-old popular and powerful Indian role model has a history of political message projects and is now calling for sanitary pads to be made free for all women in India to secure the female hygiene
“Tackling the taboo is very important to me, because I am only now learning about the extent of the crises that countries around the world have been suffering with and certainly this will be one of the first pictures to polarize the attitudes against the taboo and consequently the female menstrual cycles,” he tells.
“I’m ashamed to say how little of all this I knew, which is why this issue has become so close to my heart.
“The conversation is starting though – I’ve seen men talking about pads on my social media account.
“After Pad Man starts the conversation, it will be up to audiences to take it forward and help to end all of the taboos around periods worldwide.”
“We have worked with Muruganantham for a few years now – we use one of his machines in India – and he really does have a halo,” she says.
“The conversation has definitely been started around this film – the words ‘pad’ and ‘periods’ have been used more in the last month than in the last 10 years.”
The potentially revolutionary nature of Pad Man lies not only in how it tackles a subject that is still considered unmentionable in many countries, but also in the vote of confidence from distributors Sony Pictures in giving a foreign language film about periods a worldwide release as a major motion picture.
The real ‘Pad Man’, who now has a daughter with his wife after she came back to him, feels “happy” about seeing his life on the big screen but prefers to throw a spotlight on the women taking the movement forward.
Despite his success, he owns no shares in his company and earns roughly 70,000 Rupees (£790) a month – enough for him to cover the storage and transportation for the raw material he imports from the US and Germany.
“A school drop-out, to a rural innovator, to now [there being] a movie, shows the power of dreams,” Muruganantham says.
“My vision is to make India into a 100% sanitary-pad using country. Menstruation is no more a taboo.”
As like this movie even Western and Far-Western Nepal is suffering with this harmful tradition that turns girls into untouchables and consequently lives far from the family, mostly on domestic livestock’s shelter.
The reason for that lies in a Nepali tradition called Chaupadi Pratha. Actually, it was banned by law in 2005 but is still commonly practiced in the mid and western regions of Nepal. This tradition stipulates that menstruating girls and women are dirty and impure. They are not allowed to enter the kitchen, to attend school or interact socially.
Periods in Nepal are treated as something dirty, impure and contaminating. Girls and women are alienated from society as well as their friends and families during their time of the month. They are forced into harmful social restrictions and have to face inhumane conditions and humiliation.
The most dangerous part of practicing Chaupadi is when girls and women are forced to leave the house. In most cases, that means moving to a small shed in the woods, animal sheds or so-called mud huts. These huts, apart from being dirty, dark and small, hardly ever give adequate shelter against wild animals, rape or the cold.
Pad Man will be released on April 13, 2018.
After building toilets, Akshay Kumar takes on menstrual hygiene
Padman tells the life story of Tamil Nadu-based social activist Arunachalam Muruganantham, who revolutionized the concept of menstrual hygiene in rural India by creating a low-cost sanitary napkins machine. This true inspirable story is played by Bollywood star Akshay Kumar – cycles through his local village waving cheerfully. Apart from Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar is probably the only Bollywood actor who is receiving critical and commercial acclaim with most of his films. In fact, it seems like he has found a formula that works every time for the shake and the worthen matinee popcorn show up. It started in 1998 when newly married Muruganantham noticed his wife Shanti hiding something. “It was a nasty rag cloth – she was going to use it during her menstruation. I wouldn’t even use it to clean my vehicle,” he tells to address his wife. Unbeknown to his neighbors, he is testing the effectiveness of his new invention by wearing pink pants and a home-made sanitary pad which is slowly filling with goat’s blood from a football bladder tied around his waist. With this Muruganantham invented a low-cost machine that revolutionized women’s sanitary. On the initial phases this led up with laughter and taboo senses but gradually this laughter of the comedy – Pad Man hiked up with a worth. “So I decided to gift her a sanitary pad. The shopkeeper gave it to me as a smuggled product. Out of curiosity I opened the packet. The cotton product was sold for four rupees (4p) – 40 times what it cost to make.”
Muruganantham, now 55, threw himself into researching a cheaper alternative.
Period poverty leaves an estimated 300 million women in India without access to sanitary products – making them vulnerable to disease, infertility and even death.
He began analyzing pads from Western companies, canvassing opinions – and used napkins – of female medical students and, finally, tested his inventions out himself.
“I wanted volunteers to try my new pads and give me feedback – but not even my wife was ready.”
It all came at a cost.
“My wife left, mother left. The whole village thought I had a sexual disease,” he explains.
“The great mother whom we call Innana gave a gift to woman that is not known among men, and this is the secret of blood. The flow at the dark of the moon, the healing blood of the moon’s birth – to men, this is flux and distemper, bother and pain. They imagine we suffer and consider themselves lucky. We do not disabuse them.”
“In the red tent, the truth is known. In the red tent, where days pass like a gentle stream, as the gift of Innana courses through us, cleansing the body of last month’s death, preparing the body to receive the new month’s life, women give thanks — for repose and restoration, for the knowledge that life comes from between our legs, and that life costs blood.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
But he persevered, and in 2006 launched not-for-profit Jayaashree Industries, which supplies machines making Muruganantham’s sanitary pads at cost-price to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and women’s organizations across India.
Today it reaches an estimated 40 million Indian women, and there are plans to take the machines to Kenya, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Bangladesh.
As a female oriented movie, Glazing Twinkle Khanna, Akshya’s wife and producer of his upcoming film Padman, has tweeted the first look of the film and it seems Akshay Kumar is all set to work his charm again. She says her immediately gripped by the magnitude of what he had achieved. “I thought this was a remarkable story which really needed to reach every household in India, and globally, because I think the taboo around menstruation is not just in India, it’s a global problem.”
This 50-years-old popular and powerful Indian role model has a history of political message projects and is now calling for sanitary pads to be made free for all women in India to secure the female hygiene
“Tackling the taboo is very important to me, because I am only now learning about the extent of the crises that countries around the world have been suffering with and certainly this will be one of the first pictures to polarize the attitudes against the taboo and consequently the female menstrual cycles,” he tells.
“I’m ashamed to say how little of all this I knew, which is why this issue has become so close to my heart.
“The conversation is starting though – I’ve seen men talking about pads on my social media account.
“After Pad Man starts the conversation, it will be up to audiences to take it forward and help to end all of the taboos around periods worldwide.”
“We have worked with Muruganantham for a few years now – we use one of his machines in India – and he really does have a halo,” she says.
“The conversation has definitely been started around this film – the words ‘pad’ and ‘periods’ have been used more in the last month than in the last 10 years.”
The potentially revolutionary nature of Pad Man lies not only in how it tackles a subject that is still considered unmentionable in many countries, but also in the vote of confidence from distributors Sony Pictures in giving a foreign language film about periods a worldwide release as a major motion picture.
The real ‘Pad Man’, who now has a daughter with his wife after she came back to him, feels “happy” about seeing his life on the big screen but prefers to throw a spotlight on the women taking the movement forward.
Despite his success, he owns no shares in his company and earns roughly 70,000 Rupees (£790) a month – enough for him to cover the storage and transportation for the raw material he imports from the US and Germany.
“A school drop-out, to a rural innovator, to now [there being] a movie, shows the power of dreams,” Muruganantham says.
“My vision is to make India into a 100% sanitary-pad using country. Menstruation is no more a taboo.”
Will it influence the Nepal’s Chhaupadi Pratha (छाउपडी – Menstrual Taboo In Nepal)?
As like this movie even Western and Far-Western Nepal is suffering with this harmful tradition that turns girls into untouchables and consequently lives far from the family, mostly on domestic livestock’s shelter.
The reason for that lies in a Nepali tradition called Chaupadi Pratha. Actually, it was banned by law in 2005 but is still commonly practiced in the mid and western regions of Nepal. This tradition stipulates that menstruating girls and women are dirty and impure. They are not allowed to enter the kitchen, to attend school or interact socially.
Periods in Nepal are treated as something dirty, impure and contaminating. Girls and women are alienated from society as well as their friends and families during their time of the month. They are forced into harmful social restrictions and have to face inhumane conditions and humiliation.
The most dangerous part of practicing Chaupadi is when girls and women are forced to leave the house. In most cases, that means moving to a small shed in the woods, animal sheds or so-called mud huts. These huts, apart from being dirty, dark and small, hardly ever give adequate shelter against wild animals, rape or the cold.
Pad Man will be released on April 13, 2018. 