AdArshA dhAkAlKathmandu, Jan 28

Nepal stunned Test giants New Zealand by 32 runs in their opening match of the ICC U-19 World Cup in Bangladesh to regain their status as giant killers in the youth cricket’s global show-piece.

Invited to make the first use of the pitch, Nepal made 238-7 in 50 overs and bowled New Zealand out for 206 in 47.1 overs. Nepal captain Raju Rijal led from the front with a composed 65-ball 48 and put on 61 runs for the fifth wicket with Aarif Sheikh.

It was Nepal’s second win over New Zealand and seventh overall against a Test playing nation. Nepal had defeated the junior Black Caps by one wicket to win the Plate Championship final in 2006. It was Nepal’s first victory over a Test playing nation since they humbled Zimbabwe by 99 runs in the 2008 Plate quar-ter-finals. Once given a moni-ker of ‘giant killers’ in the wake of a string of stunning results against big guns like South African (twice),

Pakistan, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, off late Nepal have been struggling even to quali-fy for the World Cup. They had missed out on the 2010 edition and finished 13th in 2012 before failing to qualify for the 2014 event.

While Afghanistan, Fiji, Canada, Namibia and Scotland made it to the finals

as champions among non-Test playing teams from their respective regions, Nepal needed to win the Global Qualifiers to secure the last available berth in the 16-team event in Bangladesh. But with Thursday’s win, Nepal have not only reclaimed the ‘giant killers’ tag but also opened a chance to enter the second

round. Nepal will play Ireland in their next game in Group D which also features three-times U-19 champions India.

Current Nepal national team skipper Paras Khadka,

who was part of the team that defeated New Zealand in 2006 Plate Final, was as excited as the rest of the country by Nepali colts’ latest exploit.

>> Continued on page 4

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Life & styLe sportsai closes denmark exhibit in protest

djokovic, Williams cruise into australian Open final

nepali, indian officials discuss implementation of power trade deal

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worLdrouhani hails ‘new time’ in iran-France relations

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caPital editiOn l Printed SimultaneOuSly in kathmandu, Biratnagar, BharatPur and nePalgunJ

Vol XXIII No 339 | 12+4 Pages Friday, January 29, 2016 (15-10-2072)

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Nepal colts pull off a coupStun Test playing nation New Zealand by 32 runs in their tournament opener in Bangladesh

Frosty relations headed for thaw after 4 months

ANIl GIrIKathmandu, Jan 28

Nepal-India ties seem to be headed for a thaw after four months frosty relationship following promulgation of the constitution in Nepal.

But after the first amend-ment to the constitution on January 23, there are indica-tions that stalled meetings of bilateral mechanism, visits and engagements between Nepal and India are going to resume.

High level visits to India from the Nepali side are also going to start soon.

Chief of the Army Staff General Rajendra Chettri is scheduled to make an official trip to India beginning Monday at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Gen Dalbir Singh.

Though the itinerary of his visit is yet to be unveiled by the Nepal Army Headquarters, according to officials, Gen Chettri will be conferred with honorary Chief of Indian

Army by President Pranab Mukherjee during a special function during his six-day visit to India. This is his first foreign visit of Gen Chettri after he took over the reins of the Army on September 10 last year.

Similarly, Finance Minister Bishnu Poudel will be travel-ling to New Delhi in the first week of February.

Officials said that Poudel’s

visit is crucial for setting the stage for the visit of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli. Finance Minister Poudel is scheduled to meet his Indian counterpart Arunj Jaitely and other senior Indian offi-cials during his Delhi stay. He will also discuss the utilisa-tion of India-announced line of credit of $1 billion for vari-ous projects.

>> Continued on page 4

‘Govt under control of fuel mafia’POsT rEPOrTKathmandu, Jan 28

Amid widespread criticism levelled at Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, his own party’s Secretary Yogesh Bhattarai, who is also the spokesperson for the party, censured him on Thursday, saying that “the Oli-led government was being controlled by fuel mafia”.

“Fuel mafia made inroads into the inner circle of the government in Kathmandu, while supporting the protest-ers in Madhes to rake in the moolah with such shenani-gans,” said Bhattarai while speaking to reporters at a pro-gramme organised by Press Chautari in Kakarbhitta.

“Black-marketeering of petro-leum products and cooking gas is rife, but the government has failed to break the hold of fuel mafia over essential ser-vices.”

The allegation from the par-ty’s senior leader comes at a

time when the government has backtracked from imple-menting Nepal Oil Corporation management committee’s decision to take action against NOC Managing Director Gopal Bahadur Khadka for his alleged

involvement in black-market-eering and deepening petrole-um crisis despite increased fuel supply from India in recent days.

“The government is empow-ered with unlimited power together with legal and consti-tutional rights. But it has failed to deliver when it comes public service,” said Bhattarai.

UML leaders have also accused Prime Minister Oli of “unilaterally” running the government, implying that there were no consultations within the party”.

Oli has not called a single central committee meeting after he became the prime minister in October.

No plan to form probe panel: Home Minister

POsT rEPOrTBIRatnaGaR, Jan 28

Ignoring the National Human Rights Commission’s call to form a committee to investi-gate into the Rangeli police firing in which three people were killed, Home Minister Shakti Basnet said on Thursday that the govern-ment had no plans to form any such committee.

On January 21, Dropadi Devi Chaudhary, Mahadev Rishidev and Shibu Majhi were killed in police firing when cadres of the Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha attempted to disrupt a pro-gramme organised by the CPN-UML’s youth wing Youth Association Nepal (YAN) in Rangeli of Morang.

Talking to reporters in Biratnagar Airport on Thursday, Basnet said, “The government has not thought about forming any committee to look into the [Rangeli] inci-dent.” Basnet’s remarks come a week after the District Administration Office formed a probe committee under the coordination of UCPN (Maoist) Morang constituen-cy-4 lawmaker Shiva Kumar Mandal. The committee com-prises CPN-UML district Chairman Mahesh Regmi and Nepali Congress’s Yadu Bista and other representatives from various organisations.

Activists of agitating Madhes-based parties have already said that they “do not recognise the DAO-formed committee” and demanded a

high level probe commission at the government level.

While calling on the gov-ernment to investigation into the incident on January 23, the NHRC had said, “It is a serious violation of estab-lished international human rights and citizens’ right to assemble peacefully, and their right to life.”

Home Minister Basnet’s statement on Thursday against forming any probe committee may also dash hopes of the kin of the deceased, who had claimed the bodies after the local administration had agreed to write to the Home Ministry recommending martyrs sta-tus for the deceased and free treatment for the injured protesters.

Year result2002 Defeat Pakistan by 30 runs (Group Stage) Defeat Bangladesh by 23 runs (Plate Semi-finals)2004 Defeat South Africa by one wicket (Group Stage)2006 Defeat South Africa by two runs (Plate Semi-finals) Defeat New Zealand by one wicket (Plate Final)2008 Defeat Zimbabwe by 99 runs (Plate Quarter-finals)2016 Defeat New Zealand by 32 runs (Group Stage)

MAjor iNterNAtioNAl wiNS

nepal-India ties

n Army chief, FinMin set to visit southern neighbourn Bilateral meetings resume, more on the cards

KatHMandu: Vikas Swarup, spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), on Thursday said the Indian side has been told that Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli would be visiting India. As you know, when the prime minister (Narendra Modi) congratulated KP Sharma Oli in October 2015 on his becoming the prime minis-ter of Nepal, he also extend-ed an invitation to him to

visit India, said Swarup during a press briefing in New Delhi. “Now we have been told that the prime minister of Nepal will be visiting India. The dates for the visit will be fixed through diplomatic chan-nels,” he added. Asked about Madhesi leaders’ vis-its to New Delhi, Swarup said India has always main-tained contact across the political spectrum in Nepal without taking sides. (pR)

We’ve been told about oli’s visit: delhi

n Nepali players celebrate their victory over New Zealand in the opening match of the ICC U-19 World Cup in Bangladesh on Thursday. PHoto CourteSy: CAN

rangeli police firing

NePAl FAreS BADly oN ePi

KatHMandu: Nepal con-tinues to rank among the worst four performers in protecting the human health and environment due to degrading air quality. The latest E n v i r o n m e n t Performance Index (EPI) 2016 released this week at the World Economic Forum puts Nepal 177 among 180 countries in terms of air quality.

India, China and Bangladesh are the only countries performing worse than Nepal in an effort to improve the dra-matic decline in air qual-ity—a leading cause of death worldwide—accounting for 5.5 million deaths in 2013.

The EPI 2016 has ranked Nepal 149 among 180 countries, in overall performance. Finland is ranked on the top with Somalia in the bottom in EPI ranking released biennially.

The previous EPI ranked Nepal at 139.

The index, a Yale University-based initia-tive, measures national and global protection of ecosystems and human health from environmen-tal harm, draws out trends and highlights data gaps in priority areas. (details on pg2)

[ [Black-marketeering of petroleum products and

cooking gas is rife, but the government has failed to

break the hold of fuel mafiaY O G E S H B H A T T A R A I ,

S E c R E T A R Y, c P N - U M L

icc u-19 world cup

n Shakti Basnet

nJan 21: three people were killed when police opened fire on pro-testers in rangeli of Morang

nJan 22: the District Administration office forms a panel under uCPN (Maoist) law-maker to probe into the incident. Madhesi activists refuse to rec-ognise it

nJan 23: the National Human rights Commission asks govern-

ment to investigate into the inci-dent and bring the guilty to book

nJan 24: the kin of the victims receive bodies after local admin-istration agrees to right to the Home Ministry recommending martyrs status for the deceased

nJan 28: Home Minister Shakti Basnet says the government has no plans to form any committee to investigate into the incident

How things have panned out

thekathmandu postnews 02Friday, January 29, 2016

C M Y K

Nepal’s air pollution among worstPOST REPORT KATHMANDU, JAN 28

Nepal continues to rank among the worst four per-formers in protecting the human health and environ-ment due to degrading air quality.

The latest Environment Performance Index (EPI) 2016 released this week at the World Economic Forum puts Nepal 177 among 180 coun-tries in terms of air quality. India, China and Bangladesh are the only countries per-forming worse than Nepal in an effort to improve the dra-matic decline in air quality—a leading cause of death world-wide—accounting for 5.5 mil-lion deaths in 2013.

It has ranked Nepal 149 among 180 countries, in over-all performance. Finland is ranked on the top with Somalia in the bottom in EPI ranking released biennially. The previous EPI ranked Nepal at 139 in 2014.

The index, a Yale University-based initiative, measures national and global protection of ecosystems and human health from environ-mental harm, draws out trends and highlights data gaps in priority areas includ-ing air quality, water manage-ment, and climate change.

Under the air quality, one of the nine assessment areas to determine the overall EPI ranking, the exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5),

nitrogen dioxide, and percent-age of the population burning solid fuel indoors were meas-ured. The particulate matter (PM 2.5) is considered one of the most harmful air pollut-ants that lodge into human lungs and blood tissues, increasing the chances of lung cancer and other life-threatening respiratory diseases, among others.

“Air pollution has emerged as a biggest environmental health risk for the country,

particularly for Kathmandu where the rapid urbanisation and population growth makes the situation even worse,” said Dhiraj Pokharel of the Society for Legal and Environmental Analysis and Development Research (Leaders Nepal), an NGO working on indoor air pollu-tion. Over the years, the gov-ernment has made no signifi-cant effort to improve the air quality and mitigate the risks except for introducing poli-

cies and programmes but lacking implementation, he said. “We are still struggling to have a research on identify-ing the sources of harmful air pollutants, and level of expo-sures to human life,” Pokharel said.

The EPI report says that 75 percent of the total popula-tions in Nepal and India are exposed to unsafe levels of fine particulate matters as air pollution is a growing global problem. It situation is worse

in rapidly developing econo-mies like China and India than in wealthy and very poor countries. The report men-tioned that many Asian and African countries have not fared well in addressing envi-ronmental problems, includ-ing air quality as all have broad governance problems with long, troubled legacies. “Only well-functioning gov-ernments are able to manage the environment for the bene-fit of all,” the report added.

n Brick kilns seen from Nagarkot, Bhaktapur. Brick factories are one of the major factors contributing to air pollution. POST FILE PHOTO

Assaults against women in camps ‘on the rise’PRATICHYA DULALKATHMANDU, JAN 28

Seventeen-year-old Shivani (name changed) from Bhaktapur was molested while living in a temporary shelter after the April 25 earthquake.

“A man living next to our tent used to follow me. One evening, he molested me when I was in the lavatory,” she said.

Shivani kept the incident secret for months. In the meantime, she stopped going to the lavatory all by herself, fearing she would be assault-ed again.

The incidence of sexual assault against women and other gender-based violence (GBV) in the earthquake affected districts are on the rise, according to rights organisations.

A staggering 472 GBV cases were reported from female-friendly spaces set up by rights organisations in 12 districts in the wake of the earthquake, said Women Rehabilitation Centre.

Twenty-one of these cases were related to sexual assaults.

Similarly, Women for Human Rights (WHR) record-ed 20 GBV cases in Gorkha district.

Inter Party Woman Alliance (IPWA), a network of female politicians, also recorded sev-eral GBV cases in temporary shelters.

“Abrupt change in lifestyle due to the disaster had kept the victims from coming out. But now that life is getting back to normal, such cases are coming to light,” said Uma Thapa, communication officer of WHR.

Thapa said besides GBV cases, a large number of women were also denied relief and left out while documenting the earthquake victims for identity card distribution.

Sashi Shrestha, president of IPWA, said many women have been left to fend for themselves because they were not listed as the victims of the earthquake.

Nepal ranks 177 among 180 countries in terms of air quality. India, China and Bangladesh are the only

countries performing worse

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSEPARIS, JAN 28

In a milestone for artificial intel-ligence, a computer has beaten a human champion at a strategy game that requires “intuition” rather than brute processing power to prevail, its makers said on Wednesday.

Dubbed AlphaGo, the system honed its own skills through a process of trial and error, playing millions of games against itself until it was battle-ready, and sur-prised even its creators with its prowess. “AlphaGo won five-nil, and it was stronger than perhaps

we were expecting,” said Demis Hassabis, the chief executive of Google DeepMind, a British arti-ficial intelligence (AI) company.

A computer defeating a profes-sional human player at the 3,000-year-old Chinese board game known as Go, was thought to be about a decade off.

The clean-sweep victory over three-time European Go champi-on Fan Hui “signifies a major step forward in one of the great challenges in the development of artificial intelligence — that of game-playing,” the British Go Association said in a statement.

The two-player game is

described as perhaps the most complex ever designed, with more configurations possible than there are atoms in the Universe, Hassabis says.

Players take turns placing stones on a board, trying to surround and capture the oppo-nent’s stones, with the aim of controlling more than 50 percent

of the board. There are hundreds of places where a player can place the first stone, black or white, with hundreds of ways in which the opponent can respond to each of these moves and hun-dreds of possible responses to each of those in turn.

“But as simple as the rules are, Go is a game of profound com-plexity. There are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pos-sible positions,” Hassabis

explained in a blog.Such a search base is “too

enormous and too vast for brute force approaches to have any chance,” added his colleague David Silver, who co-authored the paper in the science journal Nature. So the team sought to create an AI system with a “more human-like” approach to a game Hassabis said “is played primarily through intuition and feel.”

AlphaGo uses two sets of “deep neural networks” containing mil-lions of neuron-like connections to reduce the search base to some-thing more manageable.

Game over? Computer beats human champ in strategy challengeE XC E E D I N G E X P ECTAT I O N S

AlphaGo has played millions of games against itself and surprised even its creators

with its prowess

Fourth most polluted in South Asia: Afghanistan (176); Bangladesh (173); Myanmar (153); Nepal (149), Pakistan (144); India (141); Maldives (137), Bhutan (110); Sri Lanka (108)

thekathmandu post news03 Friday, January 29, 2016

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Dahal for ‘serious’ talk with PM on governance issuesPOST REPORT KATHMANDU, JAN 28

Expressing its displeasure over performance of the gov-ernment, the UCPN (Maoist) on Thursday decided to hold a ‘serious talk’ with Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on ways to make the government effective. The party also instructed its government ministers to improve on their performances. The statement from a main coalition partner comes soon after the govern-ment completed its ‘honey-moon’ period.

After an extensive review of the government’s function-ing over 100 days last week, the three-day standing com-mittee meeting concluded that the government and its minis-ters have failed to meet the people’s expectations.

According to Vice-chairman Narayan Kaji Shrestha, party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal will talk with Oli regarding the weak-nesses of the government and its failure to meet people’s expectations.

“The Standing Committee meeting has concluded that the government need to cor-rect some of its decisions for making itself more effective and result-oriented,” Shrestha said, after the meeting. Shrestha added that he would be coordinating with the UCPN (Maoist) ministers and the party over their perfor-mances in the coming days.

During the meeting, UCPN (Maoist) leaders criticised the ministers as well as PM Oli for their lack of sincerity towards addressing the prob-lems faced by people. Some leaders said “there is no meaning of staying in the gov-ernment if it fails to provide relief to people”.

Shrestha, who was entrust-

ed to oversee the conduct of ministers, had stepped down from the responsibility stat-ing that he failed to do so due to non-cooperation from the Maoist ministers. He later changed his mind after Dahal convinced him that the party ministers would cooperate him in the coming days.

“Following requests of the party leaders, I have with-drawn the resignation,” said Shrestha, who had a heated exchange of words with the ministers during the meeting. Home Minister Shakti Basnet, Energy Minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi and Supply Minister Ganesh Man Pun had faced Shrestha’s wrath.

The meeting decided that

the ministers should learn a lesson from their mistakes and work more efficiently in the coming days.

Party Chairman Dahal told the ministers to introduce new programmes to give relief to the people suffering from the earthquakes and pro-longed blockade.

Dahal, who had floated the idea of a national unity gov-ernment incorporating the Nepali Congress and Madhes-based parties, told the minis-ters that the party would not withdraw its support to the government.

Shrestha, however, said the matter was not discussed in the meeting as the NC was busy with its convention.

n KP Sharma Oli n Pushpa Kamal Dahal

NC ready for conventions despite possible disruption

POST DISTRICT BUREAUKATHMANDU, JAN 28

Preparations for the village and municipal conventions of the Nepali Congress scheduled for Friday are in full swing in various Tarai districts despite possible obstruction by the protesting Madhes-based parties.

NC leaders and activists are busy garnering support for their favourites’ election in the district leadership. Election representatives deployed by the centre have reached the districts.

The election committees, however, are worried about possible disruption from the agitating Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha (SLMM) which has announced to disrupt the political programmes of three major parties in the plains.

The SLMM has hinted at disrupting the NC’s village and municipal conventions in some districts including Saptari, Dhanusha and Bara. In Morang, however, the pro-testing Tarai parties have pledged not to foil the con-

vention in the district.In Janakpur, the SLMM

took out a protest rally on Thursday on the eve of the

NC convention. Morcha cad-res demonstrated in front of the NC district party office in Janakpur-4. They also

took out a rally in front of lawmaker Chandra Mohan Yadav’s house in Sapahi, threatening him to leave the district.

Sanjaya Kumar Singh, Dhanusha chairman of the Sadbhawana Party, said the SLMM had taken out pro-tests throughout the district as per their strategy to foil the NC conventions.

“Madhesi Morcha activ-ists misbehaved with me while I was entering the party office,” said lawmaker and NC former Dhanusha president Smriti Narayan Chaudhary.

In Saptari, the SLMM has warned in a statement that it would not let the NC, CPN-UML and the UCPN (Maoist) hold any programme in the district.

“Some NC friends have urged us not to disrupt their programme. But we have informed them that we can-not reconsider our set pro-grammes,” said Saptari Chairman of Rastriya Madhes Samajbadi Party Gajendra Mandal.

(With inputs from our district correspondents)

n Nepali Congress leaders and activists hold a discussion on the eve of the party’s village and municipal conventions, on the NC office premises in Janakpur-4 on Thursday. Congress leaders do their party-related works out in the open as the office was torched and vandalised by protesters during the Madhes agitation two months ago. POST PHOTO: SHYAMSUNDAR SHASHI

MORANG: Nepali Congress central member Sujata Koirala has announced that she will run for the party president in the upcoming general conven-tion. During a press meet organised by the Morang Chapter of Nepal Press Union in Biratnagar on Thursday, Koirala said she had decided to file her can-didacy to give the party new direction. She also claimed that NC President Sushil Koirala would help

her to be elected as the party chief. “I have talked to Sushil Da. He’s positive about my decision,” she said. (PR)

Sujata vies for party chief

THAkUR ReTURNS fROM DelHI cARe

POST REPORTKATHMANDU, JAN 28

Tarai Madhes Loktantrik Party Chairman Mahantha Thakur returned home on Thursday night after undergo-ing a surgery in his left leg in New Delhi, India. Thakur’s aide Satyandra Mishra said he had a successful operation at Medanta Hospital.

Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha, an alliance of four Madhes-based parties of which the TMLP is a mem-ber, has been unable to decide on its further strategy in Thakur’s absence and person-al engagements of other top leaders.

Morcha top guns are pre-paring to hold an internal dis-cussion to decide the possibil-ity of forming an alliance with other agitating Tarai parties and changing the form of their agitation.

About 100 youth leaders, cadres desert Samajbadi Forum NepalPOST REPORTKATHMANDU, JAN 28

Ninety-six youth leaders and cadres of the Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum-Nepal have quit the party en masse, hard-ly seven months after the party was formed. The dis-senters led by Dev Limbu Labung, in charge of the par-ty’s youth wing, have expressed dissatisfaction at the working style of the party leadership.

Almost all the defectors were supporters of SSFN sen-ior leader Ashok Rai who in June had merged the Sanghiya Samajbadi Party Nepal with

the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum Nepal.

In a statement, the desert-ers have accused SSFN Chairman Upendra Yadav and Rai of acting as if the party belonged to “certain commu-nities”. They also criticised the duo’s authoritative work-ing style and “failure to make the party a political force of all the communities”.

“We had hoped the party would act as one of all com-munities including Janajatis, Muslims, Tharus, Madhesis and Dalits. The party now increasingly looks like that of Madhesis and Janajatis,” reads the statement.

SSFN leaders said the deserters were particularly unhappy at their lack of role in the party. Seven months after the unification, the party has been unable to assign duties to most of its leaders.

Sources said that several other leaders and cadres both at the central level and the grassroots have threatened to quit the party.

“Such things happen when the leadership fails to accom-modate the aspirations of young leaders. Youths are pro-gressive. They will move on if you fail to engage them. The leadership should find out the

cause or grievances and take concrete steps to address them,” said Ajambar Rai Kangmang, a central commit-tee member of the party.

Many leaders from the Rai faction are also unhappy about the party’s support for the border-centric protest. They claim that the protests centred on Nepal’s border with India were only benefit-ting “a few leaders engaged in black marketeering”.

SSFN was formed when the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum-Nepal, the Federal Socialist Party Nepal and the Khas Samabesi Party came together.

Govt not cooperating with TRC: SpokespersonNAGENDRA ADHIKARIKAVRE, JAN 28

Spokesperson for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Madhavi Bhatta has accused the government of non-cooperation in the TRC’s efforts to proceed with its works.

Commissioner Bhatta also warned that the TRC would internationalise cases of rights violations if there was no environment for the com-mission to perform its man-dated activities.

Bhatta argued that viola-tors of human rights cannot be let off the hook on any condition. “Col Kumar Lama was arrested in the UK and if our commission is unable to work, many political leaders and officials can have his fate,” she said at an interac-tion in Dhulikhel on Thursday. “If the government and the parties do not cooperate with us, we will internationalise the issues.”

Nine months after the sign-ing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord, the government formed the commission last year assigning it to look into

the incidents of rights viola-tion during the decade-long insurgency. The agreement had envisaged the commis-sion to be formed within six months of its signing to take up war-era cases.

The commission cannot even collect applications from conflict victims as the government has not approved its regulations. The TRC had forwarded the draft regula-tions to the government five months ago. Bhatta warned of foreign interfer-ence into the transitional jus-tice process if the commission was prevented from function-ing properly. Then the com-mission would be compelled to ask the United Nations for help, which could give rise to international interest and meddling in Nepal’s affairs.

She said the rebel party was equally unhelpful in the pro-

cess. “Asked for details on the organisational struc-ture of both the parties, the then rebel Maoists have not answered us yet while the reply of the security forc-es is far from satisfactory,” said Bhatta. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has written to the government bodies and the former rebel party asking for their policies and strategies developed at different stages of the conflict.

In December, the TRC had sought warfare dossiers from Nepal Army, Nepal Police, Armed Police Force, National Investigation Department, Home Ministry, Security Council, Defence Ministry and former rebel party UCPN (Maoist).

The commission demanded their war policies and strate-gies for policy review, which is crucial for establishing the organisational or individual connection with the insurgen-cy-era incidents.

At least 16,000 people were killed, 1,300 disappeared, 80,000 displaced and hundreds tortured during the Maoist People’s War.

Hold local polls, House panel tells govtPOST REPORTKATHMANDU, JAN 28

The parliamentary Development Committee has directed the government to hold, at the earliest, election of the local bodies that have been without people’s repre-sentatives since 2002.

In a session with Minister for Federal Affairs and Local Development Kamal Thapa on Thursday, committee mem-bers expressed their concerns that citizens have been facing difficulties in accessing ser-vices from the local bodies in the absence of elected repre-

sentatives while regular development works and post-earthquake reconstruc-tion have been affected.

The committee also asked the government to decide within 30 days if it will hold the elections as per the transi-tional provisions or the normal condition of imple-menting the newly adopted constitution.

The last local elections--for VDCs, municipalities and District Development Committees--were held in 1997. After the local govern-ment’s term expired in 2002, civil servants have been head-

ing the local offices under a regulation drafted in 1998 as a transitional measure.

In Thursday’s meeting, Development Committee Chairman Rabindra Adhikari said they would help the government remove the legal hurdles for holding the elections.

Lawmakers Ajay Shankar Nayak, Mohan Baniya, Baijanath Chaudhary, Lal Bahadur Gurung, Sita Giri, Santa Kumar Tharu, Janaki Saud and Prem Bahadur Ale pledged help to the govern-ment for holding the polls. The process is under way to

amend the Local Self-governance Act-1999 and the local election working procedure.

Local bodies act as the gov-ernment’s closest link to the citizens as per the new consti-tution which proposes restructuring the state into three levels--federal, provin-cial and local. Article 56 provi-sions Village Council, Municipal Council and District Assembly.

In its decision, the Development Committee has directed the government to start making necessary arrangements for the election

immediately. The committee also directed the government to form a commission to determine the number and borders of Village and Municipal Councils as per Article 295.

The constitution states that the commission “shall be formed within six months from the date of commence-ment of the constitution”. The new charter came into force four months ago.

Minister Thapa replied that preparations for the polls were ongoing and that the opposition parties would be consulted for the same.

showcased

n Model houses of traditional communities on display during Ratnanagar Mahotsav in Chitwan on Thursday. The fair will last 10 days. POST PHOTO: BIMAl kHATIwADA

Bhatta warns of interna-tionalising cases of rights violations if there was no environment for commis-sion to perform its duties

BRewINg DIScONTeNTn Maoist ministers asked to improve on their performances following

Standing committee conclusion that the government has failed to meet public expectations

n UcPN (Maoist) leaders criticise PM Oli for lack of sincerity towards addressing the problems faced by people

n ‘There’s no meaning of staying in the government if it fails to provide relief to the people,’ some leaders warned.

n chairman Dahal asks ministers to introduce new programmes to provide relief to the people suffering from the earthquakes and the prolonged border blockade

thekathmandu postnews 04Friday, January 29, 2016

Man arrested with pistolRAJBIRAJ: Police arrested a man with a homemade pistol and two bullets from Koilada VDC-4 in Saptari district on Wednesday night. The man was identified as Dinesh Mukhiya, 32, of Sakarpura VDC-9. He was caught during a security inspection. (PR)

Elephant dies during treatmentKANCHANPUR: An injured wild elephant died dur-ing treatment in Kanchanpur district on Thursday. The wild tusker was found in an injured state at Punarbas VDC-2 on Wednesday night. District Forest Officer Shiva Prasad Sharma said the elephant had entered Nepal from the bordering Dudhuwa National Park of India. The animal was buried in the presence of Indian forest officials. (PR)

news digest

Max Min Rainfall teMp (0C) teMp (0C) (MM) Max Min Rainfall teMp (0C) teMp (0C) (MM)

Forecast: Cloudy in the far western region, partly cloudy in the hilly region, and mainly fair in rest of the country.

Kathmandu 16.8 4.0 0.0Dadeldhura 15.2 5.1 0.0Dipayal 23.2 3.4 0.0Dhangadi 20.9 5.2 0.0Birendranagar 21.4 3.4 0.0Nepalgunj 22.3 6.3 0.0Jumla 15.0 -2.9 0.0Dang 19.8 4.6 0.0Pokhara 18.0 7.8 TracesBhairahawa 21.1 6.4 0.0Simara 22.2 5.2 0.0Okhaldhunga 10.5 4.3 0.0Taplejung 0.9 4.8 0.0Dhankuta 15.8 7.4 0.0Biratnagar 24.0 7.0 0.0Jomsom 6.5 -2.4 0.0Dharan 22.5 12.0 0.0

source: Meteorological forecasting Division, Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, Kathmandu

weatheR watCh

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26 deaths in two months have locals worried

BHUSAN YADAVPARSA, JAN 28

Deaths of as many as 26 people in the past two months have left locals of the Satbariya settlement in Pokhariya Municipality-4, Parsa, worried, prompting them to seek some sort of divine intervention to protect them.

Villagers here have even started visiting temples and offering prayers to invoke “God’s mercy”.

“We don’t know who will die next,” said an anxious Rajeshwor Thakur, a local. Villagers said so many funer-al rites had to be performed in the past two months that they were running out of firewood.

According to them, people of different age groups--chil-dren, youths, adults and elderly—have died in the last two months.

Another local Shyambabu Chauhan said two of a family died in a span of 15 days. He called on the concerned authorities to look into the matter.

A team of the District Public Health Office (DPHO) surveyed the affected

village on Wednesday. DPHO Officer Raj Kishor

Prasad said eight children under the age of 12 had died in the village.

Three of them had died of diarrhoea, parents informed, adding that a newborn, who was underweight at the time of birth, also died.

Twelve persons who were above 55 years also have died while six deceased persons were aged between 12 and 55.

“In case of adults and elder-ly, they might have died of natural causes,” said Prasad, adding that some died of cancer, paralysis or kidney ailments. “We cannot catego-rise the situation as an epidemic.”

The DPHO team attributed children’s deaths to cold and diarrhoea. .

Dr Roshan Chaurasiya, Medical Superintendent of Pokhariya Hospital who was involved in the inspection, said they have not identified symptoms of communicable diseases in the village. “Patients suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes and other fatal diseases are not taking medicines regularly,” he said.

awaiting relief

n Earthquake victims gather to receive winter relief materials at Dandagaon Village in Lalitpur on Thursday. A Kathmandu-based organisation distributed blankets and winter wears to 67 families in the village. POST PHOTO: SURBINDRA KUMAR PUN

n Health workers interview the locals of Satbariya. POST PHOTO:

Quake-proof house for survivorsPOST REPORTMAKWANPUR, JAN 28

Seven-year-old Sabina Ghalan of Tistung, Makwanpur, inau-gurated the construction of an earthquake resistant house construction project on Thursday.

The project is being under-taken with the financial assis-

tance of Tearfund, a Christian charity organisation, with the technical support of RADO-Nepal. Krishna Dhital of

RADO-Nepal said their plan is to construct 600 homes in the quake-affected Tistung and Aagra VDCs.

Sabina, who survived the April 25 earthquake after being trapped under debris for nearly 20 hours, was cho-sen to lay the foundation stone for an earthquake resistant house at Tistung VDC-6. The

house will be handed over to 77-year-old Thulimaya Syangtan.

“The houses will be con-structed according to the building standards set by the government. Each house will cost around Rs 400,000,” Dhital added.

The project is expected to complete in six months.

Depression seen among prisonersPOST REPORTITAHARI, JAN 28

Depression has been diag-nosed among at least 300 inmates inside Jhumka pris-on in Sunsari district.

Dinesh Ghimire, the medi-cal officer at the prison, said 40 inmates are suffering from major depressive disor-der, displaying symptoms of psychosis.

“These prisoners are not

>> CoNtINUEd fRoM PAgE 1

Sources said that Indian Ambassador Ranjit Rae is also visiting India for the prepara-tion of PM Oli’s visit.

Dates for PM Oli’s India visit are yet to be fixed, but it is likely to take place in late February.

A meeting of energy secre-taries of two countries to dis-cuss the prospects of power exchange, master plan for installation of six cross bor-der energy corridors, import and export, infrastructure

enhancement, among other important agendas held on Wednesday and Thursday in Kathmandu is also being seen as the prelude to PM Oli’s visit to the southern neigh-bour. The meeting also dis-cussed power projects under-taken by Indian private firms and decided to hold a meeting with the Pancheshwor Development Authority in Kathmandu.

Officials said that several other meetings and engage-ments are also on the cards.

>> CoNtINUEd fRoM PAgE 1

“We are back with what we were known for in U-19 cricket. It proves we have inherent cricketing talent which can do wonders provided there are exposures and opportunities,” said Khadka.

“It’s an amazing feeling to beat a Test nation because we cannot be compared with them in terms of infrastruc-ture and resources. The boys have given a massive start to the tournament but there is still a long way to go,” he added.

Frosty relations ...

NePAl cOlTS PUll Off ...

Tearfund and RADO-Nepal to build 600 homes in two

Makwanpur VDCs

POST REPORTKAPILVASTU, JAN 28

A four-year-old girl of Rangapur VDC-1 in Kapilvastu has died from measles, taking the death toll in the district to seven since the disease broke out two weeks ago.

The District Health Office informed that Anita Yadav, the daugh-ter of Baliram Yadav, died on Wednesday at her home. The victim, who sustained tiny spots all over her body, had been bed ridden due to high fever for the past several days.

Children from ward Nos 1, 2 and 3 in Rangapur have shown symptoms of measles over the past week. Health workers have treated 48 affected children in villages of the district.

One-year-old Reshmi Khatun, Jannati Khatun, 5, and Mamuddin Mushalman, 7, who con-tracted the disease, have been admitted to Taulihawa Hospital. Public Health Officer Bishnu Jaishawal said their condition was get-ting better.

A team of health work-ers led by Rangapur Health Post in-charge Pramod Chaudhary has started treatment in the affected areas.

MeASleS clAIMS ONe MORe cHIlD

stable. They have been caus-ing trouble for others,” Ghimire said.

The prison holds 1,447 inmates, but the state only provides Rs 800,000 annually for prisoners’ treatment.

Jailer Ganesh Adhikari said besides the inmates with various mental disorders, there are also those suffering from heart, lungs, kidney and liver diseases.

“The treatment fund we receive is insufficient to treat the prisoners. The number of sick inmates is too high,” Adhikari said.

24 die off Samos island near TurkeyBBCLONDON, JAN 28

Twenty-four migrants have drowned off the Greek island of Samos near Turkey after their boat capsized.

A search is continuing for 11 missing people and 10 oth-ers were rescued, the Greek coastguard says.

Children were among the victims, and it was the second migrant boat to sink in as many days. Seven people drowned off the island of Kos on Wednesday.

Two hundred people have drowned trying to get to Greece this month. The EU is anxious to stop the influx from Turkey.

The nationalities of the lat-est migrant victims are not yet known. Most of those who risk their lives crossing to Greek islands, packed aboard rickety boats, are refugees

from the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The EU’s Frontex border agency is helping the search for survivors off Samos.

Migrants and refugees arriving on the Greek islands would immediately be sent back by ferry to Turkey, under a Dutch plan aimed at solving the crisis. Under the proposal, Labour party leader Diederik Samsom says that in return the EU would offer to take in up to 250,000 refugees a year currently in Turkey. The European Union said it was unaware of the plan, adding that it did not “push back” asylum seekers.

More than 850,000 people arrived on the Greek islands from Turkey last year. The plan would need to be in place by spring, before the next surge in numbers is expected, he says. Already some 46,000 have reached Greece in January. On Wednesday, a draft European Commission report said Greece had “seri-ously neglected” its obliga-tions to control the external frontier of Europe’s pass-port-free Schengen zone.

migrant crisis

worldkathmandu postthe

PG 05 | FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 2016 kathmandupost.ekantipur.com

Taiwan prez visits disputed islandTaiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, ignoring US criticism,

flew to a disputed island in the South China Sea on Thursday to reaffirm Taipei’s sovereignty and said the

trip was aimed at promoting peace. Ma’s one-day visit to Itu Aba came amid growing international concern over tension in the South China Sea, especially in the wake of Beijing’s rapid creation of seven man-made islands.

Galaxy’s largest solar systemA planet thought to have been free floating in space is actually in a colossal orbit around a star 1 trillion kilometers away. That’s accord-ing to astronomers in UK, US and Australia, who revealed this week that snappily-named planet 2MASS J2126 is in an orbit around its star 7,000-times the size of Earth’s orbit.

Former Ivorian prez pleads not guiltyFormer Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo pleaded not guilty to charges of planning post-election violence that left 3,000 dead, as his war crimes trial opened at the International Criminal Court. Hundreds of Gbagbo’s supporters gathered outside as the hearing began, demanding the release of a man they say is a victim of neo-colonial meddling.

India rebels kill 7 policemenPATNA: Suspected Maoist rebels have detonated a land mine, killing seven policemen and injuring six others in eastern India, a top police official said on Thursday. The policemen were return-ing from a search opera-tion in Palamau district of Jharkhand state when the land mine blew up their vehicle late Wednesday. Four police-men died instantly while three others died in a local hospital, said S. N. Pradhan, the police offi-cial. The rebels have been fighting for more than three decades in central and eastern India to demand a greater share of the region’s nat-ural resources for its indigenous peoples.

UN Yemen report ‘very serious’????: Britain said on Thursday it would take “extremely seriously” the findings of a United Nations report which says British military ally Saudi Arabia could have committed crimes against humanity in Yemen. A United Nations report on Wednesday said the Saudi-led coali-tion has targeted civil-ians in Yemen, docu-menting 119 sorties “relating to violations of international humani-tarian law”. The report has put political pressure on the British govern-ment which provides training to the Saudi military. (AGENCIES)

NEWS DIGEST

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Syria oppn mulls UN peace negotiationsAGENCE FRANCE-PRESSERIYADH, JAN 28

Syrian opposition members met for a third day on Thursday to decide whether to attend UN peace talks, with less than 24 hours before the negotiations were due to open in Geneva.

The Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee—formed last month in an effort to unite Syria’s frac-tious political and armed opposition—said it was wait-ing for clarifications from the United Nations before agree-ing to attend the talks, which were to open on Friday in the Swiss city.

Western diplomats have piled pressure on the opposi-tion to take part in the negoti-ations, part of the biggest push yet to resolve Syria’s nearly five-year civil war.

But after two days of meet-ing in the Saudi capital the Committee, which was formed to lead negotiations and insists it alone must represent the opposition, had yet to agree to participate.

The Committee has asked for “clarifications” after the UN issued invitations to other opposition figures and is demanding assurances from the international community that it will move to end regime attacks on civilians and allow humanitarian aid.

Salem al-Meslet, a Committee spokesman, said it was waiting for an answer from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the applica-tion of a Security Council res-olution adopted in December that endorsed a roadmap for peace.

He said UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura had already assured the opposi-tion that two of the resolu-tion’s articles—calling for immediate access for humani-tarian aid and an end to

attacks on civilians—were non-negotiable. Security Council members “must take their responsiblities and com-mit to applying resolution 2254. We are waiting for an answer,” Meslet said.

“We are serious about par-ticipating in the negotiations, the ones who are hindering the start (of talks) are those who are bombing and starv-ing civilians.”

The talks are part of a UN-backed plan, agreed by top diplomats last year in Vienna,

that envisages negotiations followed by a transitional gov-ernment, a new constitution, and elections within 18 months. The roadmap is the most ambitious plan yet to end the conflict which has killed more than 260,000 peo-ple and forced millions from their homes. Instead of meet-ing face-to-face, Geneva dele-gations are expected to engage in indirect negotiations.

Officials have said the talks, only the second dialogue between Syrians since the start of the conflict, would run over six months, with the first round expected to last between two and three weeks.Syria’s regime has designated its UN envoy Bashar al-Jaa-fari as its chief negotiator.

US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Committee members in Riyadh at the weekend and Washington has kept up the pressure on them to attend. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Wednesday the talks were a “historic opportunity” and urged the opposition to take part.

“It should seize this opportunity to test the regime’s willingness and intentions and expose before the entire world which parties are serious about a potential peaceful political transition in Syria and which are not,” he said.

In Kashmir, missing men revive the fears of ‘disappearances’AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSEDARDPORA, JAN 28

On a freezing winter’s day in a remote Kashmiri village, Begum Jan and her 10 chil-dren huddle around a wood burner inside their dimly-lit home, worried about the fate of their missing father.

The 42-year-old labourer has been missing since November and his family fears he may have been taken by the Indian army, whose presence in the disputed Himalayan territory many locals resent. Jan, 38, says she has no hope of her husband returning.

“If the army has taken him, they must have killed him,” she told AFP, her children sob-bing in the background.

Indian government forces deployed have faced charges

of killing locals in faked gun battles to claim cash rewards and win promotion.

Rights groups say as many as 8,000 people, mostly young men, were “disappeared” in Indian Kashmir from 1989, when an armed insurgency against Indian rule erupted in the Muslim-majority region.

The has been a sharp decline in such cases in the past decade but fresh inci-dents continue to be reported.

The latest incident has brought back memories of a 2010 incident in which sol-diers killed three young Kashmiri men and branded them as Pakistani militants.

Their deaths triggered months-long mass demonstra-tions across Indian Kashmir that ended with government forces killing 120 civilians.

A rare police investigation later found the three had been lured away by the soldiers and killed in a staged gun battle.

Situated close to the Indian side of the de facto border with Pakistan known as the Line of Control, Dardpora is a Himalayan picture postcard, surrounded by glittering pine trees and sparkling streams. But it has also been the scene of some of the ugliest epi-sodes of the decades-long Kashmir insurgency. Jan’s husband Ghulam Jeelani Khatana has been missing since November 17 when he and another villager, Hussain Khatana, left home with a sol-dier from Indian army.

WORLD POWERS TO TALK AFGHAN PEACE PLANASSOCIATED PRESSISLAMABAD, JAN 28

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday that representatives from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States will meet in the Pakistani capital Islamabad next month to dis-cuss how to resume the stalled peace process between Kabul and the Taliban.

The ministry spokesman, Qazi Khalilullah, said the February 6 meeting would continue the ongoing efforts to lay out a roadmap to peace for the war-shattered Afghan nation. It will be third such meeting in recent weeks.

Officials have said that Taliban representatives will be invited when the four coun-tries reach some understand-ing on the overall roadmap.

Khalilullah said Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will soon travel to Qatar as part of that effort, but did not elaborate on that visit.

Rouhani hails ‘new time’ in Iran-France relationsBBCPARIS, JAN 28

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has hailed “a new chapter” in French-Iranian relations, during his visit to Paris to discuss trade ties.

Rouhani hopes to agree sev-eral deals, including with French aircraft manufacturer Airbus for 100 planes.

Meanwhile, French car-maker Peugeot said it had agreed a joint venture in Iran worth 400 million euros.

Rouhani’s Europe tour comes after the lifting of international sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme.

Rouhani will also meet French President Francois Hollande. His five-day visit to Italy and France is the first by an Iranian president in nearly two decades.

‘Logic and prudence’The Iranian president was

greeted by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius dur-ing a welcome ceremony on Thursday at the Invalides monument in Paris.

Rouhani said: “The time is ripe for both countries to enhance their relations.

“Diplomacy at the negotiat-ing table can be quite effective - it can through logic and pru-dence... resolve problems,” he said. “Today we should make use of the post-sanctions era.”

Meanwhile, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he expected the two sides to agree deals in health, agricul-ture and the environment.

Iran is likely to need hun-dreds of new aircraft in the coming years as it re-estab-lishes commercial air travel

previously restricted by the sanctions. Iranian state TV said that as part of the deal with Airbus, 100 planes would be delivered to Iran over four years. Meanwhile, French manufacturer Peugeot said it had signed a joint venue with local carmaker Khodro to manufacture cars in Iran.

Pierre Gattaz, head of France’s Medef employers association, said he also expected deals to be signed with French railway operator SNCF, and aluminium compa-ny Fives.

“Iranians need everything. The country is not starting from scratch, it’s got a very educated workforce, a real development potential,” Mr Gattaz told reports.

Earlier this week in Italy, Rouhani met Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Pope Francis. Monday saw con-tracts worth about €17bn signed between Iranian and

Italian companies. At Rome’s Capitoline Museum, where Rouhani and Mr Renzi met, nude statues were covered up and wine was removed from official menus out of respect for the Islamic Republic’s strict laws govern-ing propriety.

But the move to cover the statues angered Culture Minister Dario Franceschini, who labelled it “incomprehen-sible”. He said neither he nor Renzi had been informed of the decision. Iranian diplo-mats also reportedly request-ed that no wine be served at Rouhani’s lunch meeting with Hollande, leading French offi-cials to postpone the meeting until after lunch.

During his meeting with Mr Rouhani, Pope Francis urged Iran to work with other Middle Eastern coun-tries against terrorism and arms trafficking, the Vatican said.

Up to 80,000 migrants to be expelled: SwedenAGENCE FRANCE-PRESSESTOCKHOLM, JAN 28

Sweden said it expects to expel up to 80,000 migrants whose asylum requests will likely be rejected, as another 18 people including children drowned off Greece on Thursday in a desperate bid to reach Europe.

As the continent grapples with efforts to stem a record flow of migrants, Swedish Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said the mass expulsions of people who arrived in the Scandinavian country last year would require the use of specially chartered aircraft and be stag-gered over several years.

“We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000,” he told Swedish media, adding that police and migration authori-ties had been tasked with organising the scheme.

Of the 58,800 asylum

requests handled by Swedish migration authorities last year, 55 percent were accept-ed. Many of those requests were however submitted in 2014, before the large migrant flow began.

Ygeman said he used the 55 percent figure to estimate that around half of the 163,000 asy-lum requests received in 2015

would likely be rejected.Sweden, a country of 9.8

million, is among the European Union states with the highest proportion of ref-ugees per capita.

More than one million peo-ple travelled to Europe last year—the majority of them refugees fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

n Begum Jan (behind left) with some of her children at their home in Dardpora, on the Indian side of the de facto border. AFP/RSS

free hunting society

n Hunters pulled wolves killed in a filed near the village of Khrapkov, Belarus, on Thursday. Wolves, foxes and raccoon dogs can be hunted all year around as they are not wanted in Belarus, the keepers said. REUTERS

n French Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius (left) and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani attend a ceremony in the courtyard of the Hotel des Invalides in Paris, France, on Thursday. REUTERS

n Children Nor, Saleh and Hajaj Fatema from Syria sleep outside the Swedish Migration Board in Marsta, outside Stockholm, Sweden. REUTERS

AL-BAB: De Mistura’s office said on Tuesday it had issued invitations to the talks, but refused to say who had been invited.

The Committee, which earlier this month named Mohammed Alloush of the Islamist rebel group Army of Islam as its chief negoti-ator, confirmed it had received an invitation, but so did several other opposi-tion figures not belonging to the body. It was unclear whether the others had been invited as official dele-gates or as observers.

Russia, a key Assad ally, has called for broader oppo-sition representation at the talks while Ankara has

warned against any partici-pation of Kurdish forces it says are linked to Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Critics have accused Moscow of killing hundreds of civilians in the strikes and on Thursday a monitor said at least 44 civilians had died in sus-pected Russian air raids in parts of northern and east-ern Syria under IS control.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes on Wednesday had killed 29 civilians in villag-es in the eastern Deir Ezzor province and its provincial capital, and another 15 civilians in and around the city of Al-Bab. (AFP)

‘Russian strikes’ kill 44

In an agency framework to analyse politics, the elected leaders could be viewed as the agents and the people as the principals. Between the agents and the principals is the bureaucracy that acts as the intermedi-ary. The bureaucracy gives content to the

idea of the state and serves as an important link between the aspirations of the people and the response of the national polity. In this conceptualisation, the efficiency and effectiveness of the intermediary becomes the crucial element for stability as well as for change.

The intermediaryNormally it is believed that the bureaucracy has the expertise as well as the resources to transform policies into implementable pro-grammes. However, it cannot be effective if it does not have the support of the political leadership. The nature of this support has to recognise the autonomy of the bureaucracy and the need for resources required to carry out its tasks.

But the mission of the bureaucracy or the intermediary in this principal-agent rela-tionship is not independent of the legitima-cy of the political leadership and the objec-tives that it considers to be a primary con-cern. In a multiparty democracy, the ques-tion of legitimacy hinges on the formal pro-cess defined to shape the principle of consti-tutional equilibrium as well as the ability of the political system to deliver services roughly in line with the expectations of the people. In countries like Nepal that have claimed more than once that their constitu-tion is “probably the best in the world”—promulgating a constitution is easier than implementing it. Even the “best” constitu-tions have not worked for us. The country had five different constitutions in the last 60 years and they all had been declared as being democratic and rooted in the realities of our nation. And yet they have failed.

Formally, we have all the ingredients for a legitimate agency relationship in politics: Periodic election and constitutional provi-sions to tame political masters and a Civil Service Commission to institutionalise a merit-based autonomous bureaucracy. And yet it is clear that just having a formally

correct relationship is not enough. Basically we have a democracy that has been unable to deliver on its promises. The system so far has been neither liberal nor progressive. From a liberal perspective, the state has failed on its primary task of generating an atmosphere that allows individuals to exer-cise their creative abilities freely. Similarly from a progressive standpoint, the state has not been able to constrain the emergence of a new class of “robber barons” for whom not economic liberalisation but “liberalisation of corruption” has become the norm. However, a failed agency relationship in Nepal continues without any major upheav-al so far primarily because of two elements: (a) remittances and (b) foreign aid.

The two elementsIn Nepal the population shift from the rural areas to urban areas continues. Normally this should have been associated with indus-trialisation, urbanisation and a general increase in the productivity of labour. However, in our case the story is different. Agricultural productivity has remained vir-

tually stagnant. Due to lack of employment opportunities in the non-agricultural sector, the youth population, which should have been a “demographic dividend”, has become a burden. Thus, the exodus of the youths from rural areas has not been within the country. Most of the young rural labourers are joining the urban labour force outside of Nepal at a low wage and mostly in activities that do not need any skills. Cheap labour, which would have increased the country’s output if the investment environment was favourable, has been at the service of other countries. Thus, the oft-noted economic transformation observed in other develop-ing countries—a shift from a low productive agricultural to a more productive industrial sector—has not taken place here. In fact, the contribution of manufacturing to the coun-try’s GDP has declined over a decade, from ten percent to six percent. Industrial employ-ment is scarce. Majority of new entrants to the labour force cannot find jobs inside the country and are, thus, forced to migrate abroad for employment. If these unem-ployed, frustrated youths had remained in

the country, it would have certainly reflected in political tensions and social upheavals that would have posed an existential threat to the political elites. Then to survive, the political elites would have been forced to implement positive changes. But the availa-bility of alternative employment opportuni-ties abroad has allowed the continuation of an agency relationship that does not see the need for radical changes to improve service delivery to the people.

The increase in remittance has, for the time being, partly solved the issues of employment for the new entrants to the labour force and balance of payment. It has encouraged the growth of a consump-tion-orientated economy and a revenue base comprising mainly indirect taxes. With no pressure on the employment front and no immediate threat of a revenue crisis, politi-cal elites have been free to continue political experiments, using the bureaucracy (the intermediaries) for loot and plunder (bhag-banda culture) all in the name of people and democracy.

The second element sustaining an unhealthy agency relationship in Nepal is foreign aid. This may seem surprising. Is foreign aid not necessary to supplement our low level of investment? Is the success of a finance minister in Nepal not measured by the amount of multilateral aid and bilateral generosity that he is able to acquire and manage? The answer is both yes and no. On the one hand, if the agency relationship sees foreign aid as a supplement to investments, a progressive decline in foreign aid is the route to development over time. On the other hand, if in the name of development, foreign aid becomes an unwitting ally for the main-tenance of a regime geared to extract rents for the political elites, it can become a cause of failed development as well as indirect interference by international actors in the internal affairs of the state, as is happening in Nepal.

Unless the political elites in Nepal become aware of the destructive nature of the agen-cy relationship developing in the country, we are headed for more political instability and confusion. It will create a fertile ground for an increasing number of our young people leaving the country; it will also make us a basket-case nation, where poverty becomes the basis for our begging bowl for more for-eign aid and with it more foreign counsel and intervention, all in the name of stability, development and people.

Lohani is a senior leader of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party

The latest Corruption Perception Index (CPI) by Transparency International (TI), a Berlin-based international watchdog, has reaffirmed what we already know: The scale and scope of corruption in

Nepal has worsened and our control mechanisms are not working. The country slipped four positions down from last year’s ranking, coming in at 130th place—with a score of 27—among 168 countries surveyed.

The CPI measures the extent of corruption within a country on a scale of 0 to 100. Countries securing “high-er scores are rated as very clean and those with low scores are perceived to be highly corrupt.”

Among South Asian countries, Bhutan—with a score of 65—stood out as the least corrupt country, followed by India (38), Sri Lanka (37), Pakistan (30), Bangladesh (25) and Afghanistan (11). The Maldives was not includ-ed in the survey. Neighbouring China stood at 83rd position with a score of 37.

The TI findings point to several interrelated prob-lems that have deep roots in the breakdown in public sector governance in Nepal. While Nepal performed relatively well on the indicators relating to civil socie-ty’s access to public sector, it fared very poorly on indi-cators relating to international trade and public pro-curement. Despite the presence of 16 anti-corruption agencies, the Nepali state’s control of public sector corruption was seen as weak. The performance of exec-utive, Parliament and judiciary was also reflected poorly in the survey.

Nepal’s dismal performance was attributed in large part to the gross bureaucratic indiscipline leading to inclination among civil servants to abuse their author-ity for personal gains. TI calls this grand corruption. “Grand corruption is the abuse of high-level power that benefits the few at the expense of the many, and causes serious and widespread harm to individuals and socie-ty. It often goes unpunished,” TI said in a statement.

In fact, TI has launched a global campaign this year calling on the public to unmask those behind grand corruption through a vote at unmaskthecorrupt.org. A national version of a similar campaign, linked to a global movement, is needed to name and shame the corrupt. As the TI report points out, corruption can be controlled if people get together. This was amply demonstrated in countries like Guatemala, Sri Lanka and Ghana where citizens and activists have taken strong actions to oust the corrupt through sustained public pressure.

Increasing instances of corruption by those in posi-tion of authority call for a new mechanism that will watch the guards. In India, demands for a Jan Lokpal (people’s ombudsman) as part of the civil society’s anti-corruption drive spearheaded by Anna Hazare have done much to highlight the limitations of the existing corruption control regime, when it comes to offering checks and balances against those who occupy high offices. Since the context is similar, a Jan Lokpal makes sense for Nepal too—to control the abuse of pub-lic offices and grand corruption.

Corrupt to the coreNepal’s endemic corruption will be

checked through public ombudsmen

Flawed agency relationshipIncrease in remittance has for now partly solved the issues of employment and balance of payment

EDITORIAL

PRAKASH CHANDRA LOHANI

thekathmandu posteditorial 06Friday, January 29, 2016

If unemployed, frustrated youths had remained in the country, it would have certainly reflected in political tensions and social

upheavals that would have posed an existential threat to the political elites

Since 1993

See you around

SUBODH DAHAL

People have been migrating since the Stone Age. They would move from one place to another in search of animals and water since animals were the only

source of food and hunting was the only way to survive. Today, however, migra-tion is not confined to subsistence. Humans are migrating from one corner of the world to another not just for sur-vival, but also for better opportunities, environment and education. The number of international migrants is increasing by the day. According to the UN Population Fund, the number of interna-

tional migrants swelled to 244 million in 2015 from 232 million in 2013. The increase in the number of international migrants shows that moving has become a global phenomenon, which has a huge impact on almost every nation.

Poor countries are a source of interna-tional migrants while rich countries are the recipients. International migration produces costs and benefits for both the source nation and the recipient nation. The former suffers brain drain or short-age of manpower due to the exodus of its working-age population, but enjoys remittance sent home by the migrants. The latter enjoys brain gain or a solution

to its problem of manpower shortage, but bears the welfare cost of immigrants because it has to provide them social security benefits.

Nepal has not remained untouched by the trend of international migration. Around 2.2 million Nepalis are presently living abroad. In 2014, about 520,000 Nepalis left the country, and a majority of them went to the Gulf and Malaysia as migrant workers. Most Nepali migrant workers have been unskilled and uneducated people. However, the trend of educated and skilled people leaving the country has

also risen due to the meagre compensa-tion they get in their hyperinfla-tion-racked country. International migration has become a major pillar of the national economy since remittance inflows to Nepal reached an estimated $5

billion in the fiscal year 2013-14, equivalent to 28 percent of the

GDP. Besides, remittance has also been a major factor in reducing poverty in Nepal.

Nevertheless, international migration for employment has also brought some problems to Nepal. First, the agricultur-al and industrial sectors are facing

labour shortages, forcing these sectors to hire more expensive Indian labour which has eroded their competitiveness. As a result, their products cannot compete with cheaper foreign imports. This has put their survival at risk. Besides, inter-national migration has a negative impact on the social life of the migrants such as disintegration of families, single parents and divorce. In addition, the unfair treat-ment of migrants regarding wages and exploitation has emerged as another big issue, which is getting worse due to Nepal’s weak diplomacy. In point of fact, international migration for employment has been both a boon and bane for Nepal.

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Migrants and refugees have long been a dis-tressing reality of the modern age.

Even so, the issue was forced into the headlines only when, during the latter half

of last year and beyond, the numbers of desper-ate people trying to enter Europe reached such staggering proportions that the scale of the current crisis of dislocation became impossible to gloss over.

Since then, various countries’ responses have served, in several instances, to expose as hollow rhetoric what was earlier projected as lofty com-mitment to the ideals of humanity and human rights, no less the dignity and equality of man.

Consider, for example, the case of Denmark, not so long ago a very vocal champion of refu-gee rights. Recently, however, it has taken stock of the implications of having registered during 2015 21,000 asylum applications against a popu-lation of 5.6 million people—making Denmark one of the top EU destinations per capita.

And as a result, following a series of polls showing that some 70pc of Danes rank immigra-tion as their top political concern, parliament approved on Tuesday legislation that has drawn widespread condemnation.International criti-cism is homing in on the plan for asylum seek-ers to be stripped of cash and items of value exceeding $1,450, and the fact that family reuni-fication has been delayed to three years.

From as high a forum as the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, has come the observation that the bill passed by the Danish parliament - sadly enough, by a huge majority—violates several conventions on rights and refugees.The right-wing government of Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen is shrugging off the criticism, insisting that the country must take action, and that the world must come together to formulate a joint solution to the migrant crisis.

The latter is unarguable. Even so, Denmark’s stance is opprobrious since it will further vic-timise the most hapless. It can only be hoped that the Scandinavian nation’s actions do not set a precedent for the inhumane treatment of those fleeing unbearable suffering

Denmark’s callousnessHopefully nation’s actions do not set a precedent

WORLDVIEW

Nepal’s dependence on imported food could become risky. We have seen from the energy crisis after India’s unofficial blockade that being dependent on other countries for the supply of essentials is

not wise. The same scenario could repeat itself if we become dependent on imported food. This time around, we did not see real hunger because Nepal still produces a major part of basic food required in the country. But that luxury would soon end if the dependence on imported food deepens in future. And, given the existing realities, this is likely unless the country reduces food imports.

Nepal’s dependence on India for food imports has been growing over the years. Nepal imported Rs137.2 billion worth of food in the fiscal year 2014-15, which is about 17 percent of the total import of Rs784.6 billion. Total food imports from India have more than doubled in just six years—from Rs375.6 billion in 2009-2010 to Rs784.6 billion in 2014-15. The share of agri-cultural import has consistently been grow-ing—from 11.8 percent to 17.5 percent in this six-year period. Now, the value of agri-cultural import exceeds that of petroleum products.

Uncertain future Externally dependent countries face greater risks in supply chain of food than in non-food products. This is because of the great-er uncertainty in the food production pro-cess. Food production faces the vagaries of weather, ecological problems, and natural disasters. In such a case, food-supplying countries may have a shortfall in produc-tion in certain years and then they will ban the export of their food. In addition, there could be other political interests to ban export.

Natural disasters including the adverse impacts of climate change will surely cause an overall decline in production. Nepal pri-marily depends on India for food imports, and India has started to face huge challeng-es to increase farm productivity due to deg-radation of resources, water shortages and climate-change induced disasters. A UN report titled ‘Climate Change 2014 Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability’ even went on to say that severe stress on water resources and food-grain production in the future might force India to resort to armed conflicts with other neighbouring coun-tries. The same report states that impacts of climate change would be severely felt in the Indo-Gangetic plain, where there could be severe droughts even in areas that flood regularly. Given this expected situation (and, in some cases this has already been seen), India’s concerns over water resourc-es in its geo-political relations with Nepal are clearly understandable. Even on the global scale, it is expected that major conflicts will rise over the control of fresh water.

It is estimated that annually India may lose about 1.7 percent of its GDP because of climate change, and there could be natu-ral disasters like floods as seen inUttara-khand in 2013. Such disasters would seri-ously disrupt the supply of food and other commodities. If this happens, Nepal will certainly not get food and other commodi-ties from India.

Double whammyWhile climate change and associated disas-ters could disrupt imports, it could also reduce food production within the country. So, Nepal faces a double whammy due to cli-mate change—its own production will decline and it will not be able to import food when it is most needed.

As climate change will have major impact on the production of rice, the staple food of the country, it will have greater consequenc-es on food security. Its production will stag-ger from climate change impacts like chang-es in the reliability of stream flow, a more intense and potentially erratic monsoon rainfall and flooding. Approximately, 64 per-

cent of the cultivated areas in Nepal are heavily dependent on monsoon rainfall and changes in the time and duration of rainfall could significantly affect the overall agri-cultural production. In higher altitude areas, the population entirely relies on agri-culture for their subsistence and thus, extreme climatic conditions will put these areas in economic stress. The development and spread of crop diseases, pests and weeds will also have an adverse impact on agriculture.

The need for greater self-dependence on food production is also imperative due to a possible reduction in foreign employment opportunities and consequent decline in remittances. At present, Nepal gets almost Rs600 billion a year from remittances. This is the main source of income to import food and other essentials. The changes in the economy of the countries in the Middle-East, saturation in construction of infra-structures, their interest to get more work-ers from Africa, and fall in the prices of petroleum products are expected to cause a decline in the demand for Nepali workers. Consequently, there will possibly be a reduction in remittance in-flow.

Time to changeIt is true that not all countries produce enough food for their needs. For example, Singapore totally depends on imported food. But such countries have maintained a guar-anteed supply. Moreover, their ability to maintain supplies from different sources is not restricted. But for Nepal, dependence on imported food is risky and unwise.

What is more distressing is that this sorry state of affairs in terms of food pro-duction does not have to be so. Nepal has the potential to produce sufficient food. But past policies of both the government and donor agencies certainly undermined this sector. A policy correction to increase food production in the country and social recog-nition of farming profession are urgently needed to reduce dependence on imported food. Otherwise, we might be experiencing food shortages and crises more frequently.

Adhikari is a social scientist

Food for thoughtThe value of agricultural import now exceeds that of petroleum products

JAGANNATH ADHIKARI

C M v K

RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN

Who among us hasn’t wanted to let go of anxiety or forget about fear? Phobias, panic attacks and disorders like post-traumatic stress are

extremely common: 29 percent of American adults will suffer from anxiety at some point in their lives.

Sitting at the heart of much anxiety and fear is emotional memory—all the associations that you have between various stimuli and experiences and your emotional response to them. Whether it’s the fear of being embarrassed while talking to strangers (typical of social phobia) or the dread of being attacked while walking down a dark street after you’ve been assaulted (a symptom of PTSD), you have learned that a previ-ously harmless situation predicts something dangerous.

It has been an article of faith in neu-roscience and psychiatry that, once formed, emotional memories are per-manent. Afraid of heights or spiders? The best we could do was to get you to tolerate them, but we could never real-ly rid you of your initial fear. Or so the thinking has gone.

The current standard of treatment for such phobias revolves around expo-sure therapy. This involves repeatedly presenting the feared object or fright-ening memory in a safe setting, so that the patient acquires a new safe memo-ry that resides in his brain alongside the bad memory. As long as the new memory has the upper hand, his fear is suppressed. But if he is re-traumatized or re-exposed with sufficient intensity to the original experience, his old fear will awaken with a vengeance.

This is one of the limitations of exposure therapy, along with the fact that it generally works in only about half of the PTSD patients who try it. Many also find it upsetting or intolera-ble to relive memories of assaults and other traumatizing experiences.

We urgently need more effective treatments for anxiety disorders. What if we could do better than creating a new safe memory—and actually get rid of emotions attached to the old bad one?

New research suggests that it may be possible not just to change certain types of emotional memories, but even to erase them. We’ve learned that memories are uniquely vulnerable to alteration at two points: when we first lay them down, and later, when we retrieve them.

Merel Kindt, a professor of psychol-ogy at the University of Amsterdam, and her colleagues have seemingly erased the emotional fear response in healthy people with arachnophobia. For a study published last month in the journal Biological Psychiatry, she compared three groups made up of 45 subjects in total. One group was exposed to a tarantula in a glass jar for two minutes, and then given a beta-blocker called propranolol that is commonly prescribed to patients for performance anxiety; one was exposed to the tarantula and given a placebo; and one was just given propranolol without being shown the spider, to rule out the possibility that propranolol by itself could decrease spider fear.

Kindt assessed the subjects’ anxiety when they were shown the spider the first time, then again three months later, and finally after a year. What she found was remarkable. Those who got the propranolol alone and those who got the placebo had no improvement in their anxiety. But the arachnophobes who were exposed to the spider and given the drug were able to touch the tarantula within days and, by three months, many felt comfortable holding the spider with their bare hands. Their fear did not return even at the end of one year.

How does this work? Well, proprano-lol blocks the effects of norepineph-rine in the brain. This chemical, which is similar to adrenaline, enhances learning, so blocking it disrupts the way a memory is put back in storage after it is retrieved—a process called reconsolidation.

Arachnophobes have an emotional memory that involves an association between spiders and a dreaded out-come, like a spider bite. This “fear memory” is the source of their pho-bia—even if (as is often the case) it never actually happened. The basic

idea is that when Kindt briefly exposed the sub-jects to the spider, she reactivated their fear, which made the fear memory susceptible to the influence of propranolol.

Reconsolidation is a bit like pulling up a file on your computer, rewriting the same material in a bigger, bolder font and saving it again. Disrupting reconsolidation with propranolol or another drug is akin to retrieving this document, erasing some or all of the text and then writing something new in its place.

Kindt is not the first to demonstrate that disrupting reconsolidation can weaken or erase emotional memories. Several studies of rats done in 2000 showed that a drug called anisomycin, which blocks the synthesis of proteins in the brain, could reduce fear associa-tions. In one, researchers taught rats to fear a sound by pairing it with a shock. After the animals were fear-condi-tioned, they were presented with the sound and then immediately given the drug. When the animals were exposed to the sound again, they no longer appeared afraid; they had forgotten their original fear.

Curiously, there is a very narrow time window after retrieving a fear memory when you can disrupt that memory—hours, in the animal stud-ies—before it closes and the drug has no effect.

These studies suggest that someday, a single dose of a drug, combined with exposure to your fear at the right moment, could free you of that fear forever. But there’s a flip side to this story about how to undo emotional learning: how to strengthen it. We can do that with drugs as well, and may have been doing it for some time.

Anxiety enhances emotional memo-ry. We all know that—it’s why you can easily forget where you put your wal-let, but will never forget being attacked. This is the case because anxiety leads to the release of norepinephrine in the brain, which, again, strengthens emo-tional learning. It is also why we should think twice about casually pre-scribing stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall for young people who really don’t need them. Stimulants also cause the release of norepinephrine and may enhance fear learning. So it is possible that taking stimulants could increase one’s risk of developing PTSD when exposed to trauma. Indeed, a study that will be published next month found that the escalating use of stimulants by the military in active duty soldiers, including those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, was strongly correlated with an increase in the rates of PTSD, even when controlling for other fac-tors, like the rate of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The study examined the use of prescription stim-ulants, like Ritalin and Adderall, and the rates of PTSD in nearly 26,000 mil-itary service members between 2001 and 2008, and found that the incidence of PTSD increased along with the pre-scriptions. By blocking the effect of norepinephrine and disrupting memo-

ry reconsolidation, we could perhaps reverse this process. The clear implica-tion of these studies is that emotional memory is not permanent after all.

Before you rush off into a panic about the dystopian possibility of mind control or memory deletion, it’s important to recognize that the proce-dure in Kindt’s study only weakened the subjects’ fear memory and avoid-ant behavior. Although the procedure is able to alter or perhaps delete the fear memory (something exposure therapy cannot do), it does nothing to the factual, or biographical, memory, which remains intact.

This is not “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” the movie in which a dysfunctional couple decides to erase their memories of each other and start their lives all over again. To the contra-ry, you still remember your biography, but your fear would be stripped of its force. The subjects knew perfectly well after the study that they previously feared spiders and that they now—strangely—felt little to no anxiety around them.

If this new approach is effective in other anxiety disorders, like PTSD, you would expect someone who was assaulted in his home to remember the attack perfectly well, but no longer feel afraid of being at home. What’s so bad about that?

Some may view any attempt to tam-per with human memory as disturbing because it seems at odds with what we ought to do as a culture with the dark-er aspects of our history: Never alter the facts, even if we have divergent interpretations of them. And it is crit-ical not to destroy places where crimes of humanity and collective trauma took place, like the concentration camps, so we never forget what we have done and remain capable of doing. Fair enough. But I see no reason not to help frightened individuals sof-ten their painful emotional memories.

Some may also argue that it’s a mis-take to tinker with our fear responses because they’re natural—they evolved this way for a reason. Like most other animals, we come hard-wired with a flight or fight response along with its associated anxiety and fear. Without this warning system to protect us from predators and other dangers, we’d have been dinner long ago on the savanna.

But what was once adaptive millions of years ago isn’t always so helpful today. People who suffer panic attacks hyperventilate and have an intense desire to flee in situations where there is rarely actual danger. Evolutionary design has left us a few million years out of date; we are hard-wired for a Paleolithic world, but have to live in a modern one. The irrational fear of anxiety disorders was once probably useful and lifesaving. No longer. But maybe that modern world can help. I see nothing wrong with doing all we can to rid ourselves of pathological anxiety, including using drugs to alter our painful emotional memories.

—©2016 The New York Times

A drug to cure fearthekathmandu post op-ed07 Friday, January 29, 2016

The country’s top leaders were pas-sionately engaged in appointing the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) for nine months, but they have not been as enthusi-

astic about doing the actual work of rebuilding. Earthquake victims are suffering from cold and rising prices of essential goods due to an unofficial Indian blockade. Schools are performing below standard and children are forced to attend classes in classrooms damaged by the tremors. Civil servants are not keen on joining the NRA, and there is a danger that management issues might overshadow its assigned task.

Unfortunately, the fate of the earth-quake victims is linked to that of the NRA. It is necessary to keep the institu-tion away from political manoeuvring so that it can deliver quality work by recruiting a quality workforce through a competitive selection process. The first meeting of the advisory commit-tee held in Baluwatar might have been a bad experience for the NRA’s CEO Sushil Gyawali due to the very strong opposing voices. The only way to quiet-en them is to deliver quality work. Moving forward with reconstruction is key to bringing the pledged aid money from various development partners. A number of countries and development partners such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank prom-ised more than $4.4 billion for recon-struction and rehabilitation at the International Conference on Nepal’s Reconstruction 2015. Politicising the institution can lead to the hiring of a low quality workforce from the parties’ cadre base and underperformance, which might result in a reduced flow of aid money.

Long-term impactThe failure of the NRA will not be just another failure in the series of failures of institutions. The failure to recon-struct the infrastructure destroyed by the killer quake will have long-term effects on the nation’s economy and human capital development. More than 30,000 classrooms have been destroyed, affecting the education of hundreds of thousands of students besides creating psychological terror among the chil-dren. The agricultural cycle has been

affected and the economic growth rate has shrunk as a result. The NRA’s failure and delayed reconstruction will be a grievous blow to the people who are already reeling under the cycle of poverty.

The NRA can kill two birds with one stone by, one, being an example of a sound and efficient institution and even setting the trend for existing insti-tutions; and, two, carrying out the reconstruction work at full speed and helping to accelerate the rate of eco-nomic growth. In order to do that, it should pursue an uncompromising attitude with regard to recruiting a quality workforce that will travel the extra mile to achieve the goal. Putting together a team of professionals will not only bring efficiency in the task of rebuilding, but also show the develop-ment partners that their money is being well spent. The NRA can form a panel of professionals from diverse sectors such as economists, engineers and others to select the required staff so that there will be no political manipulation.

Carefully navigating through the interests of various sectors and man-aging the resources that come in the name of the victims are challenging tasks. The NRA has begun to outsource the work of surveying and monitoring earthquake damage to non-governmen-tal organisations (NGOs) which has drawn public criticism. NGOs should be allowed to work in reconstruction and rehabilitation, but the NRA should not be involved in their business. The authority has been assigned to perform a bigger task of bringing the pledged money from development partners, directing it to the right places and ensuring the quality of reconstruction projects. It should be more involved in mobilising the government mechanism and getting professionals to fill in the gaps. Bringing NGOs on board to carry out the task of reconstruction goes against the government’s appeal to development partners to channel aid money only through its mechanism.

The NRA does not have a favourable work environment. There are challeng-es even beyond the nation’s undisci-plined bureaucracy and political tur-moil. India’s disappointment with

Nepal’s ruling elite, inflated impor-tance given to the China-India rivalry in Nepal and the indifference of the international community are also impediments for the NRA. But these factors are what make this institution so important. The level of success will be determined by the quality of the human resources it can put together. For the government no task is as important as providing relief to the earthquake survivors. Improving gov-ernance, tackling corruption and implementing the newly promulgated constitution are all secondary com-pared to the task of reconstruction and rehabilitation. The NRA is the institu-tion through which the government has to carry out this most important task. Hence, the relationship between the government and the NRA is symbi-otic. The government should help the NRA to work as professionally as possi-ble to make a name in history.

Get to workThere is no guarantee that the pledged aid money will arrive. If the NRA fails to make progress, it may not come at all. And this will make the political parties very unhappy since they have expended so much effort to get their people appointed as its head because so much money is at stake. The economic benefits that the political parties saw in having their man at the NRA’s helm might not materialise if they prevent him from steering the institution professionally. An energy deficit, fuel crisis, shortage of construction materials, rising inflation, unfavoura-ble political environment and other daunting challenges hinder the imple-mentation of the reconstruction project. The NRA should be prepared to address these challenges. The very idea behind the formation of this new institution is to carry out recon-struction amid the difficulties the country is presently facing.

The emergency assistance pro-grammes designed by Nepal’s develop-ment partners have been in limbo due to the absence of an institution to coordinate with them. The NRA believes that it will be effective in facil-itating the projects and programmes without delays and bureaucratic has-sles. The earthquake victims are the ones most anxious to see the recon-struction work being implemented speedily. The NRA should not let these people down. The social and economic costs of a malfunctioning authority will be severe in the country that has already suffered so much.

Poudel is an economist associated with ThinkIN China

BHOJ RAJ POUDEL

All eyes on the NRAThe Reconstruction Authority has slid back into oblivion after the

CEO’s appointment

EGOISTIC POLITICSIt has been almost four months since the Nepali people have been suffering due to the Madhes unrest and unoffi-cial Indian trade embargo. However, it was encouraging to read the news report that the PM is hopeful the blockade will end soon (‘PM hopeful of blockade ending in 2-3 days’, January 20, Page 1). But PM Oli has been repeatedly asserting, since he ascended to the highest political posi-tion three months ago, that the situa-tion will stabilise. Yet, things have not changed even after three months and still he seems optimistic. It has become difficult for the public to digest such false promises. So far, he has become a laughingstock after he publicly announced ridiculous plans such as supplying cooking gas to every household through pipelines,

ending loadshedding in one year and starting a metro electric rail, while the quake-victims are suffering with-out proper food, warm clothes and appropriate shelter during this freez-ing weather.

The recent amendments to the new constitution have failed to satisfy the United Democratic Madhes Front (UDMF) that is intensifying its ongo-ing protests (‘SLMM mulling ‘mega alliance to up the ante’, January 26, Page 1). What were the intentions of the so-called ‘big three’ parties to amend the constitution if it was not intended to fulfil the demands of dis-gruntled forces? Why couldn’t they have a consensus with the UDMF on politics- and constitution-related con-tentious issues and agree on a package deal rather than amending it on a piece-meal basis? The ball still seems to be on the ruling parties’ court.

However, UDMF is also equally responsible for this national crisis. The general public, especially the Madhesi people, have suffered a lot because of its protests. Blockading the Nepal-India border points for such a long period has a been blunder on its part. The time has come for them to consider alternative forms of protests rather than continuing their blockade at the border points. Definitely, egois-tic and self-centered political behav-iour of some of the senior leaders of

the ‘big three’ had triggered a confron-tational political environment. However, we hope that PM Oli will ful-fil his promises made to the people and relieve the nation and its people of this horrible crisis.

Rai Biren BangdelMaharajgunj

DECADENT NATIONCorruption in the security forces hap-

pens to be only the tip of the iceberg (‘Corrupt cops’, January 26, Page 7). Just about every single sector in the country remains marred by cor-ruption, because the nation’s poli-tics—characterised by the lack of fit of the Westminster model in a chroni-cally feudal context—itself is corrupt to the core. As an anthropologist, I do get invited to speak in political gather-ings that include MPs and senior poli-ticians. When I conclude that due to Nepal’s social order remaining feudal-istic in character, a successful politi-cian in Nepal remains a corrupt man necessarily, there is usually a chorus of laughter suggesting concurrence. Nobody objects. When the masses of politicians themselves agree that they are corrupt, it is time that the form of nation’s polity changed. While trans-parency and accountability remain the lifeblood of sound democracy and good governance, Nepal has been able to assure them in at least forestry and child and maternal health through the devolution of authority to the forest user groups and mothers’ groups in the communities that have earned

international applause for Nepal. Therefore, it is time that an esteemed paper like yours battled for changes in polity instead of merely pointing out incidences of corruption that have clearly failed to embarrass even the perpetrators themselves.

Bihari Krishna Shresthavia email

A SUGGESTION I must say that I have not come across such a sincere write-up on Nepal-India relations of late, with a beautiful beginning and candid conclusion as well (‘Communication gap’, January 27, Page 6). I would only wish that India does not miss the opportunity to host our very frank prime minister as early as practicable by helping develop the right atmos-phere, if necessary, with the help of our statesman-politician and all-season-comrade-in-need Madhav Nepal.

J K Tatervia email

VOICE OF THE PEOPLEKantipur Publications Pvt. Ltd., Kantipur Complex, Subidhanagar P. B. No. 8559, Kathmandu; Nepal

Phone: 5135000, Fax: 977-1-5135057, e-mail: kpost@kmg.com.np

C M v K

Improving governance, tackling corruption and implementing the

constitution are all secondary compared to the task of

reconstruction and rehabilitation

C M Y K

PG 08 | FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 2016 kathmandupost.ekantipur.com

Forms of dumplingsWonton or Chinese dumplings are eaten on the 5th day of the New Year in China for prosperity. In Chinese, wonton means ‘swallowing clouds’. Dumplings are eaten in various forms around the world: Chinese wonton, Italian ravioli, Jewish kreplach and Polish pierogi are all types of dumplings filled with meat, cheese, or vegetables.

Fun facts about pugsPugs are widely known as the oldest breed of dogs. They may have been around since 400 BC. It is believed that the pug’s signature wrinkles were valued because the extra flaps of skin formed the shapes of Chinese charac-ters. Due to their short legs and trouble with breathing, they are not good swimmers.

kathmandupostthe

classroomSlithery snakesThere are more than 3,000 species of snakes in the world and there is at least one type of snake on every continent except Antarctica. The world’s smallest snake, according to National Geographic, is the thread snake, which grows to only about 3.9 inches long. It looks much like an earthworm.

N O T I C E

Send your poems, essays, travelogues, memories, articles and artworks along with your photo to the following address. All the students are requested to add their class and school name.

schoolpost@kmg.com.np

Media is the ultimate medium of information and awareness that has become a prime need. It carries a lot of importance because it is like a weapon for the people with which they can

become aware of different issues surrounding them.

Media, on one hand, undoubtedly, has lots of significance and it affects a lot of people. On the other hand, it has disadvantages as well. Internet, the most crucial electronic media, has become a popular type of media. Internet is a worldwide service which provides knowledge to users about a wide range of things. It compromises of social networking sites which are

the most famous of all. Due to the large number of users of social net-working sites, Internet has become a different world—a virtual world. Reality is suppressed and the virtual life goes on. Due to this virtual world, this once useful media has become dreadful. People make fake IDs on networking sites and post videos which contain matters which are not suitable for the society. Hacking IDs, posting vulgar videos has become a big issue in the virtual world.

Not just virtual media, but media has drawbacks in other sectors like print media as well. This media too can impact a lot of people. Let’s take an example of the Second World War.

When Germany was compelled to sign the Versailles treaty, Germany had to face a lot of humiliation. Germany had maintained a feeling of revenge. The then government of Germany was preparing for revenge and even the people were influenced to have a feeling of revenge. It was done with the help of newspapers. The German newspapers used to exaggerate the real condition and would try and create feelings of jin-goism in the people. Like this, anger was being cultivated in the people and this soon broke into a war. This was totally wrong and we all know about the effects of this unnecessary influence.

The aforementioned points show that media has several drawbacks. But let us be clear that media itself is not bad, but rather the way in which it is being used. Media has a lot of significance. It gives us knowledge, makes us aware and also makes us more social. If it is used properly it can be turned into a blessing but due to its misuse it has turned into an evil curse. Everything has good as well as bad aspects but the bad aspects can always be minimised. Similarly, if media is used properly the pros can be increased and the cons can be diminished. Media is a weapon which should be used for the good and not for just attacks.

Nirdeshika Dhungel Class 10Himalaya Vidya Mandir, Siphal

BEING A POETPoems are not just created

In lines or verses so few,It is created by the deep feelings

That makes everything around so newCause some things can be expressed

Only through literary expressionThis leads to the assemblyAnd the poem’s creation

I don’t claim to be A poet very renounced,But the thing I state is

I am just dreaming aroundPeople might get baffled

How dreams and poets are related,But it is not that simple to explain

How poets and eternal minds are connected

So always feel freeTo express your feelings hidden deep

Cause poems are the canvasWhere colours you can reap

Because remember poems are not only createdBy the poets that are known

But are composed by the poetsJust beginning to grow

Ojaswee BaniyaClass 10

LRI School

THROWING AWAY THE MASK

“You can’t,” says he,“You can’t”, says she

Still locked in this cageI’m not free

Still unseen in this haze,It’s the broken me

Crushed like pieces of paperBuried by the world and the haters,

“Will I be free?” I ask theeCan I be free, I ask for the key

Tired by the judgements and hatersFallen like the dry useless maples.

“Where are you?” I ask“How long do I have to cover myself with a mask?”

Then comes a hand that picks me

I look and see its theeNow I’ve conquered all my fears,Now I’ve wiped away my tears,Following the shadow of thee,

I break the wall,

Following the shadow of theeI get up when I fall,

I get up and throw the mask away,I get up to follow the heaven’s way,

“You can’t”, says he,“I know you can”, whispers thee.

Meeyong LamaClass 10

St Joseph’s Convent, Kalimpong

n Art by Anjeela Adhikari, Class 5, Little Angels’ School

Once upon a time there were two friends who were very true to each other. But one was rich and the other was poor. Their names were Ram

and Hari. They studied in the same school and both of them were very talented. Once they had finished their school and college, they decided to go to abroad to study.

Hari was poor and he couldn’t go abroad to study, so Ram went alone. Ram told Hari many times to come abroad and study, but Hari didn’t have money and he just kept telling Ram that he would come soon.

Ram had studied MBBS and had paid all the fees and

became a doctor. Ram had called Hari’s mother and ask why he had not come abroad. Hari’s mother had told him that they didn’t have money.

Although poor, Hari had always been more talented than Ram.

Ram was very sad to know about this incident. One day Ram’s parents were killed in an accident in Nepal and he came to Nepal for the funeral as he was the only son. After the funeral he went back. It had only been a month that his parents had passed away that Ram committed suicide. When Hari heard the news, he was devastated.

A week after Ram died, Hari was called by the college where Ram studied.

The college said that Ram had written a letter to them saying that if he died, his friend Hari would study in his place. Hari would not believe his ears. He had no words to say at that situation. After he settled all his affairs, he left the country.

After reaching Ram’s hostel, Hari found a letter addressed to him. It read, “Hari, this is for you. After I lost my parents, I felt all alone in this world. I have no reason to keep on living. Instead of living this lifeless life, I am committing suicide. I found that you had no money to study to become a doctor, which has always been your aim. I hope I will

be able to help you do that. I hope that you will become a good doctor and help others.”

After five years, Hari became a doctor, came back to Nepal and helped many people. He always thought about his friend Ram who had helped him become a doctor. Hari opened a hospital named Ram Memorial Hospital and also built Ram’s statue inside the hospital. He also named his son Ram in memory of his best friend. This is the true friendship of Ram and Hari and it will be remembered for a long time to come.

Subodh Acharya Class 7St Xavier’s School

n Art by Jems Jaiswal, Class 8, GEMSTrue friendship

It has a lot of significance. It gives us knowledge, makes us aware and also makes us more social

USES AND ABUSES OF MEDIA

life&stylekathmandu postthe

PG 09 | FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 2016 kathmandupost.ekantipur.com

Cate to make Broadway debutActress Cate Blanchett is set to make her Broadway debut in her husband Andrew Upton’s The Present—an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s play Platonov. The Sydney Theatre Company production will come to Broadway for a limited run in early winter 2016. It is directed by John Crowley.

BORN TODAYAmerican TV host Oprah Winfrey is 62

American singer Adam Lambert is 34

Spanish basketball player Marc Gasol is 31

British actress Giovanna Fletcher is 31

American actor Tom Selleck is 71

Hirani and Khan to revisit 3 Idiots Aamir Khan and Rajkumar Hirani have confirmed plans to revisit the 3 Idiots story for a sequel. The 2009 movie was a huge hit at the box office and there has been some buzz about a possible sequel for some time. “Raju has given me a hint. The film will happen if and whenever he will write the script. Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” Aamir said.

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The Three Vignettes on displayPOST REPORTKATHMANDU, JAN 28

An art exhibition, titled Three Vignettes, which will have on display photographs and paintings by local artists, is scheduled to launch today at the Taragaon Museum, Tusal, Bouddha. The

exhibition has been organised by Taragaon Museum, in collaboration with Park Gallery.

The exhibition has on display a collection of paintings and photo-graphs by three Kathmandu-based artists: Bijaya Maharjan, Dhwoj Gurung and Neera Joshi Pradhan.

Among the exhibit’s highlights is a collection of photographs by Bijaya Maharjan—titled The Living Vestiges: Past & Present. The photo-graphs, shot during the artist’s visit to Mustang, and textured with a vibrant use of colours, expose the

lifestyle of the residents of this northern Himalayan Nepali district.

Dhwoj Gurung’s paintings, with his typical plain-air watercolour and acrylic landscapes and scenes, showcase the technique of balancing visual drama with academic paintings.

Likewise, Neera Joshi Pradhan’s oeuvre on display—paintings that expose the soul of flowers on canvas—boast a surreal quality in them, manifesting the spiritual aspect of creativity and the symbolic representation of feminine sweetness, beauty and delicacy.

The exhibition will run through February 8.

Drinking for a causePOST REPORTKATHMANDU, JAN 28

For the tea-loving deni-zen of Kathmandu, who just needs another excuse to sip on their favourite brew, the Jhamsikhel-based BG

Tea Bar—the Capital’s first tea bar—will be hosting an event, titled Drink for a Cause, today at 5pm.

Musician Rohit John Chettri will be performing an acoustic set at the event.

BG Tea Bar serves over 20 different blends of organic teas from Kanchanjangha Tea Estate (KTE), which employs over 600 farmers.

The proceeds from the event will go towards a scholarship fund which currently provides free education to 96 children in nine different schools in eastern Nepal, including Naya Namuna Madhyamik

Vidyalaya, Kalika Madhyamik Vidhyalaya, Arniko Boarding School

among others. The KTE scholarship programme, which was initiated in

2002, has provided scholarships to over 2300 students.

Ai closes Denmark exhibit in protest BBCCOPENHAGEN, JAN 28

The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has closed an exhibition in Denmark in protest at plans to confiscate asylum seekers’ valuables to pay for their upkeep.

Staff at the Faurschou Foundation in Copenhagen con-firmed the exhibition closed on Wednesday.

Danish police will be able to seize valuables worth more than 10,000 kroner (1,340 euros; £1,000) from ref-ugees to cover housing and food costs. The proposal was backed by the country’s parliament on Tuesday.

MPs also approved plans to delay family reunions for asylum seekers. Ai also said he was protesting against this.

His Ruptures exhibition has been running since March 2015 and was expected to end in April 2016.

The gallery’s owner, Jens Faurschou, said he backed the art-ist’s decision and expressed his own disappointment at the government’s decision. He said: “It’s making a

picture of Denmark and the Danes as a terrible country. As a Danish, which I always have been happy to be, I am not happy today.”

Faurschou said Ai was “shocked” when he called him on Wednesday morning from Lesbos after spending the night reading the news.

“When he lived in China, he pointed to the problems there. Now he lives in Europe, he points to the problems here. He has a global voice,” he said.

Earlier this month, Ai opened a studio on the Greek island of Lesbos, saying he wants to raise conscious-ness about the plight of refugees through art.

The studio, staffed by his students from China and Germany, will pro-duce several projects with themes related to the refugee crisis.

Denmark received more than 21,000 asylum seekers in 2015 and is not the first European country to demand the assets of asylum seek-ers. Earlier this month, Switzerland was criticised by a refugee group for seizing assets from some 100 people in 2015.

Black or White?

JILL SERJEANTLOS ANGELES, JAN 28

British actor Joseph Fiennes has been cast as iconic African-American pop star Michael Jackson in an upcoming TV comedy, provoking scorn on social media and fueling

controversy in the entertainment industry over opportunities for black artists.

Fiennes, who is white, will play the late “King of Pop” in an apparently real-life story for Britain’s satellite TV channel Sky Arts.

Sky Arts said in a statement that the 30-minute comedy, called Elizabeth, Michael and Marlon, is “part of a series of comedies about unlikely stories from arts and cultur-al history.”

Jackson, who had the medical con-

dition vitiligo that lightened the col-our of his skin, died in June 2009 at the age of 50 after an overdose of the sedative propofol.

News of the casting decision came two weeks after the omission of any actors of colour from the 2016 Oscar nominations for a second year that led Will Smith and Spike Lee to shun the Oscar ceremony in February and Oscar organisers to bring more women and people of colour into their ranks.

Stereo Williams, an entertainment writer, said the casting of Fiennes

was a “symptom of Hollywood’s deep-seated race problem.”

“They seriously couldn’t find a black actor to play Michael Jackson?” tweeted US civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson, a member of the Black Lives Matter movement.

So-called “whitewashing” has become a contentious issue in the movie and TV industry, highlight-ed by the casting of Emma Stone as a character of Hawaiian and Asian heritage in the 2015 film Aloha, and the choice of white British actor Charlie Hunnam to play a Mexican-American drug lord in an upcoming Hollywood movie.

Elizabeth, Michael and Marlon, will also star Stockard Channing as Jackson’s late, close friend Taylor, and Brian Cox as Brando. It is expected to be broadcast sometime in 2016. (REUTERS)

ABOUT TOWN

On MicIrish Pub

Friday, Jan 29On Mic: Monkey Temple

Time: 8pm onwardsLocation: Lazimpat

Contact: 01-4416027nn

MokshFriday, Jan 29

On Mic: Le Piro Ft. YankeyTime: 7:30pm onwardsLocation: JhamsikhelContact: 01-5528362

nn

Reggae Cafe and BarFriday, Jan 29

On Mic: CobwebTime: 7:30 onwards

Location: Thamel Contact: 01-4700654

nn

Ai La LoungeFriday, Jan 29

On Mic: Intro BandTime: 6:30pm onwards

Location: KumaripatiContact: 01-5008681

nn

Wicked SpoonFriday, Jan 29

On Mic: Square CircleTime: 7pm onwards

Location: JhamsikhelContact: 01-5522968

nn

The Last FridayFriday, Jan 29

On Mic: Artha BandTime: 7pm onwardsLocation: Lazimpat

Contact: 01-4002170nn

Reef Restaurant and Lounge BarFriday, Jan 29

On Mic: Prayas BandTime: 7:30 onwards

Location: ThamelContact: 01- 4411523.

nn

TrisaraFriday, Jan 29

On Mic: Dexterous BandTime: 7pm onwardsLocation: Lazimpat

Contact: 01-4410200nn

The LOFT LoungeFriday, Jan 29

On Mic: Samaya Band Time: 7pm onwards

Location: New BaneshworContact: 9741439233

nn

House of MusicFriday, Jan 29

On Mic: Brea Robertson and AC/DC trib-ute by The Midnight Riders

Time: 7pm onwardsLocation: Thamel

Contact: 985-1075172nn

GG MachanFriday, Jan 29

On Mic: Innov8Time: 7pm onwards

Location: JhamsikhelContact: 01-5554291

An exhibit of paintings and photographs opens at Taragaon Museum

Works by three Kathmandu-based artists—Bijaya Maharjan, Dhwoj

Gurung and Neera Joshi Pradhan—are on display

Eye brows raised as actor Fiennes is cast to play singer Michael Jackson

Stereo Williams, an entertainment writer, says the casting of Fiennes

was a ‘symptom of Hollywood’s deep-seated race problem’

thekathmandu postvariety 10Friday, January 29, 2016

C M Y K

YESTERDAY’S SOLUTION

RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOTDILBERT

PEARLS BEFORE SWINE

GARFIELD

GRAFFITI WORD GAME

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A police officer attempts to stop a car for speeding and the guy gradually increases his speed until he’s topping 100 mph. The man eventually realises he can’t escape and finally pulls over. The cop approaches the car and says, “It’s been a long day and my shift is almost over, so if you can give me a good excuse for your behavior, I’ll let you go.” The guy thinks for a few seconds and then says, “My wife ran away with a cop about a week ago. I thought you might be that officer trying to give her back!”

nnnA bank robber pulls out gun points it at the teller, and says, “Give me all the money or you’re geography!” The puzzled teller replies, “Did you mean to say ‘or you’re history?’” The robber says, “Don’t change the subject!”

KANTIPURTV

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ARIES (March 21-April 19)****A former romantic partner might be reappearing on the scene soon, and the feelings they stir up won’t be the ones you were expecting to feel. They’ve taken the initiative to get back into your life, and for that give them some of your time, but not all of your time.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)****Call a spade a spade, today—people will respect your honesty and they will give you more responsibilities because of it. You can be an empowering force today, if you choose to be. So don’t be afraid to throw your weight around.

GEMINI (May 21-June 21)***Whether or not you have a good day is totally dependent on your attitude this morning. If you’re feeling up for a challenge, then you are going to be pleased with how the day unfolds. But if you’re feeling restless, it’s going to take you a while to get started.

CANCER (June 22-July 22)**Be wary of extravagant gifts from co workers or casual acquaintanc-es—they could be giving you something with the expectation that they will be getting something in return. Even if they claim there are no strings attached to this present, you have to be careful.

LEO (July 23-August 22) *****If you are always pushing away the people and things that frustrate you, how are you ever going to figure out how to overcome them? Keep a stiff upper lip today and use your supreme inner strength to face a fear—and conquer it!

VIRGO (August 23-September 22)***Your growing confidence is helping you impress all the right people right now, but too much action might cause you to get overwhelmed all over again. You do need to be aware that if you push yourself too hard for too long, you will run out of steam.

LIBRA (September 23-October 22)****When it comes to making new friends, you’re going to be absolutely unstoppable today—everyone wants to be on your team, and they won’t be shy about letting you know it! Watch out for folks who promise the Moon—they won’t be able to deliver.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21)****Your ego is growing, and that is nothing but a good thing! Now might be the right time to take that risk you’ve been intimidated by for so long. Learning more about the world around you will always make you feel better about yourself.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21)*****This is a day you can spin to your advantage, if you just treat every situation with a smile. That grouchy person who tries to steal your parking space, the overbearing boss, the uncivilized roommate—whoever it is, today, you should try to kill them with kindness.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19)***You’ll be getting a lot of attention in a social situation right about now, and be warned: someone else may feel more deserving of it. Watch out for that someone who might try to grab the spotlight in a clumsy or even rude way.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18)*****This day is going to unfold in some unpredictable directions, but not knowing exactly what is going to happen next might actually be a very good thing for you right now. Look for it to spark your creativity by the afternoon and help you get started on a new path.

PISCES (February 19-March 20)***Someone you care deeply about has been living in a bit of a fantasy-land, lately, and today it’s going to be up to you to give them the reali-ty check they need. It’s never fun to burst someone’s bubble, but you have to do it for this person who is close to you.

TODAY’SHOROSCOPE

PASHUPATI PRASADQFX Civil Mall 9:00 AM/12:15 PM/2:00 PM/6:30 PM

QFX Jai Nepal 9:00 AM/3:00 PM/6:15 PM QFX Kumari 12:00 PM/6:30 PM

AIRLIFTQFX Civil Mall 11:15 AM/3:30 PM/5:00 PM

QFX Jai Nepal 12:00 PM

MASTIZAADEQFX Kumari 8:45 AM/11:45 AM

QFX Civil Mall 11:30 AM/4:45 PM/7:45 PM

SAALA KHADOOSQFX Civil Mall 8:45 AM/2:15 PM/7:15 PM

QFX Kumari 9:00 AM/3:15 PM

REFUGEEQFX Civil Mall 8:30 AM QFX Kumari 3:00 PM

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Revolution Cafe, AmritMarg, Thamel, away from busy crowed street, offers great music, fast wi-fi and wide menu with rea-sonable prices. Operation hours: 7 am to 10 pm, contact: 4433630

Every Friday Evening from 7:00 pm onwards at Shambala Garden Café, Hotel Shangri~La only @ Rs.2000 Nett per per-son and live performance by Ciney Gurung. For more details and Reservation: 4412999

Escape, relax and get in shape @ Hyatt Regency. Embark on a personal well-being at Club Oasis. Remember us for Tennis, sauna, Jacuzzi, swimming, fitness centre and Beauty Salon. Contact: 4491234

Learn cardio, gym, aerobics, zumba, spa, boxing, kick-boxing, b-boying, bollywood dance at Oyster Spa and Fitness Club, Sinamangal. Time: Sunday to Friday from 5 am to 8 pm. Contact: 4110554

Jasmine Fitness Club and Spa, Fully equipped gym and spa; Zumba, aerobics and cardio classes; therapeutic massage; beauty parlour and men’s salon. Tripureshwor; Contact: 4117120

Women Skill Development Resource Centre: Join free training for Straw Art, Sewing and Skill Development (for 2 hours, 4 hours and 7days), Suryabinayak, contact 9849426628

Yoga detox and Ayurveda treatments and retreats every day at Himalayan Peace & Wellness Centre, Park Village Hotel. Get 10% discount on all Ayurvedic treatments. Contact: 980106661

Krishnarpan—a specialty Nepali Restaurant at Dwarika’s, 6 courses to 22 courses Nepali meal served. Opening Time: 6 pm-11 pm. Prior reservations required, contact: 4479448

The Italian restaurant serves authentic Italian cuisines in an elegant ambi-ence for both lunch and dinner. Timings: Lunch: 1230-1445 hrs, Dinner: 1900-2245 hrs, Contact: 427399, at Soaltee Crowne Plaza

Savour the cardamom and saffron spice, slow-cooked kebabs and kormas at Indian restaurant serving Awadhi cuisine. contact: 427399, at Soaltee Crowne Plaza

China Garden offers delectable dishes from across Asia, including Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese. Timings: Lunch: 1230-1445 hrs, Dinner: 1900-2245 hrs, contact: 427399 at Soaltee Crowne Plaza

Garden Terrace offers an authentic world cuisine, providing diners with the unique experience of observing their selected dish-es being prepared by chefs. Contact: 427399 at Soaltee Crowne Plaza

Kaiser Cafe Restaurant & Bar at The Garden of Dreams, opening time: 9 am till 9 pm, offers an international cafe menu serv-ing breakfast, lunch, dinner, specialty tea’s, coffees and pastries, contact: 4425341

Embers Bar, Pulchowk, in all its sophistica-tion and glory is happy to announce Happy Hours every 6-7pm. It will be hosting a Barbeque night every Friday from 6:30-9:30pm

Mako’s offers traditional Japanese food served. Don’t miss out on Mako’s special Tempuras, and green tea ice cream, Time: 11: 30-14:30 & 19:00-22:00, contact: 4479448

Manny’s Eatery and bar introduces a spe-

cial lunch package that is affordable, tasty, nutritious and quick enough to fit your lunch break, Jawalakhel, Shaligram complex, 5536919

The Toran, an ideal location for all day loung-ing and informal dining offers multi-cuisines. Contact: Dwarika’s Hotel, 4479488

Weekends brunch @ Hyatt Regency—treat yourself with a lavish buffet lunch, splash by the swimming pool or laze around outdoor, Jacuzzi, all for just Rs 2300 plus taxes per person. Contact: 4491234

Special Saturday Brunch at The Café & Garden, The Everest Hotel 1200-1600 hrs; Ph 4780100

We serve nothing but the finest Arabica coffees at great value prices at Barista Lavazza Coffee Restaurant, Lazimpat, Contact: 4005123/4005124

Bourbon Room, Lal Durbar Marg is open for

lunch from 12 noon. Enjoy affordable and deli-cious meals starting from Rs 99! We are cur-rently offering Indian & chinese combos along with momos. Call: 4441703

Enjoy a Barbecue Buffet at the Radisson Hotel, wide selection of mixed fresh grills and vegetables together with a choice of salads and a delicious dessert buffet at a rate of Rs. 1,350 plus taxes per person. Contact: 4411818

Latin—Gypsy Jazz at The Corner Bar, Radisson Hotel, Kathmandu with Hari Maharjan feat Monsif Mzibiri, 7 pm onwards, Wednesdays & Fridays. Contact: 4411818

Sandwich and Crepes: Taste the sandwich-es and crepes at The Lounge from 11 am to 6 pm everyday. For further details call Hyatt Regency at 4491234.

Rosemary Kitchen and Coffee shop, Thamel, opening hours: 7:00 am to 10:00 pm offers an International cuisine in reason-able prices. Contact 01-4267554

Out-of-Africa Lunch amid rural splendor: Sat & Sun from 1130 to 1630 hours at The Watering Hole, Indrawati River Valley. For prior reservation contact: indrawatire-sort@gmail.com

Tibetan Gyakok for Lunch & Dinner every day at The Mandarin, The Everest Hotel ph: 4780100 ext: 7811

Make your weekend more exciting with family and friends with sumptuous Satey, Dimsums, Mangolian Barbecue and Pasta at The Cafe from 12:30 noon to 4:00 pm. Call: Hyatt Regency, at 4491234

The most delightfully awesome chicken momos & yummy rich chocolate cake on this part of the planet @ Just Baked Bakery & Cafe, Battisputali, offering much more spe-cialties at affordable price.

Daily Buffet with a complimentary glass of house wine at The Café, The Everest Hotel, Lunch: 12 to 3 pm and dinner: 6:30 to 10:30 pm. Ph: 4780100

Enjoy snacks and drinks from 4:00 pm to 11:00 pm every day and nightly live music from “The Corner Band” except Tuesday and Saturday from 7 pm to 11:00 pm at Corner Bar, Radisson Hotel. Contact: 4411818

Every Friday BBQ from 7:00 pm at Fusion Bar & Pool side at Dwarika’s Hotel with live band “Dinesh Rai and Sound of Mind”. Price Rs 1600/ includes BBQ dinner and a can of beer or a soft drink. Contact: 4479448

Hotel Narayani Complex, Pulchowk, Lalitpur presents Shabnam & Cannabiz Band every Wednesday and Rashmi & Kitcha Band every Friday, 7:30 PM onwards @ Absolute bar P Ltd; Contact: 5521408

Starry Night BBQ—every Friday Evening from 7:00 pm at Shambala Garden Café, Hotel, Shangri~La only @ Rs 1799 net per person and live performance by Ciney Gurung. Contact: 4412999

Enjoy live DJ nights, on every Sunday chill out/ ambient, Wednesday tech/ funk house & Friday psy/ proggy/ full on from 6:00 pm to 10 pm at garden and 7:00 pm onwards at club at Funky Buddha Resturant & Bar, contact: 4700091

Set within the historic Garden of Dreams, the Kaiser Cafe Restaurant and Bar, Thamel, offers a continental menu and serves as an atmospheric venue for anything from a quiet coffee or intimate meal. Contact: 442534

Trisara offers food and drinks along with good music and great times. Sunday- Live Music by Barbeque Night, Monday, Wednesday-by Positive vibes, Tuesday, Saturday-By Jyovan Bhuju, Friday-Live Music by Dexterous

Experience The Last Resort, the perfect place for family fun adventure and relaxation. Special packages for residents. Contact: 4700525/ 4701247 or mail us at info@thelastresort.com.np

Asia World Travel Pvt Ltd presents fascinat-ing luxury escapades to amazing destinations: Prague, Ladakh, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Mount Kailash and Panchpokhari in North East Nepal. Contact: 6222604

Jungle Safari Lodge, Sauraha Chitwan offers 2 Nights 3 Days package only for Rs 6500 per person. Suman 9851008399

Much needed getaway—1 night/2 day package @ Hyatt Regency. Enjoy luxury stay of a five star hotel for a couple with breakfast and access to spa facilities for just Rs 9999 plus taxes per person only. Contact: 4491234

Experience the Gyakok @ Shambala Garden, Hotel Shangri~la only @ Nrs.1700 Nett per person and Nrs.3000 Nett for cou-ple. For more details and reservation: 4412999

sportskathmandu postthe

Friday, January 29, 2016PG 11 kathmandupost.ekantipur.com

Pato arrives for Chelsea medicalFormer AC Milan striker Alexandre Pato arrived for a medical at Chelsea on Wednesday with the Brazilian international expected to sign a loan deal until the end of the season. Pato helped AC Milan to the 2011 Italian league title as part of an attacking trident alongside Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Robinho.

Townsend joins NewcastleEngland winger Andros Townsend completed a switch from Tottenham Hotspur to fellow English Premier League outfit Newcastle United on Wednesday. The 24-year-old, with 10 England caps and three England goals, had been linked with the move for some time. Press reports suggested a fee of £12million had been agreed.

Warner wins Allan Border medalDavid Warner was named Australia’s Test player of the year Wednesday, beating captain Steve Smith for the Allan Border Medal. Warner won Australian crick-et’s highest individual prize -- judged on perfor-mances in Tests and one-dayers over the season--with 240 votes, 21 ahead of Smith and 57 more than Mitchell Starc.

sPorts diGestBastia sack coach PrintantBASTIA: Ghislain Printant was on Thursday sacked as coach of Bastia, with the Ligue 1 side moving quickly to appoint his assistant Francois Ciccolini as his replace-ment on an interim basis. Printant leaves with the Corsican outfit hovering three points above the relegation zone following last weekend’s 1-0 loss to Guingamp, their 11th defeat of the campaign. (AFP)

Cole signs for GalaxyLOS ANGELES: Ashley Cole, a long-time England international and standout leftback at Premier League side Chelsea and Arsenal, signed with Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy on Wednesday. The 35-year-old will join the US side after two seasons with Roma of the Italian League. Cole, whose Roma deal was terminat-ed last week, earned 107 caps for England from 2001 through 2014, mak-ing him the most capped fullback in English histo-ry, and appeared in three World Cups. (AFP)

Grassi makes Napoli switchMILAN: Serie A leaders Napoli on Wednesday announced the signing of Atalanta midfielder Alberto Grassi on a four-and-a-half-year deal. Grassi, who has made 13 appearances for league strugglers Atalanta this season, put pen to paper on a contract that could see the 20-year-old remain at the San Paolo until 2020. Napolisit top of the league with a two-point cushion on champi-ons Juventus. (AFP)

C M Y K

selfie with PM

n Nepali national team footballers Biraj Maharjan (left) takes a selfie with Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli at a felicitation programme at PM’s residence in Baluwatar on Thursday. PM Oli honoured the team that won the Bangabandhu Gold Cup in Bangladesh on January 22. PosT PhoTo

Rijal leads Nepal to upset win

Post RePoRtKathmandu, Jan 28

Nepal pulled off the first upset of the ICC U-19 World Cup with a 32-run win over

New Zealand during their Group ‘D’ match at

the Khan Shaheb Osman Ali Stadium in Fatullah, Bangladesh on Thursday.

In a replay of the 2006 Plate Championship Final, Nepal scored 238-7 in 50 overs, their best ever total in seven U-19 World Cup outings. Nepal’s previous best score was 234

runs, which they made against Ireland during the 2006 tournament in Sri Lanka. In reply, the junior team from the Test-playing nation were all out for 206 runs in 47.1 overs.

Nepal coach Jagat Tamatta said that his side fell 10-15 runs short but still pulled off a huge win. “Our boys excelled in all three depart-ments: batting, bowling and fielding,” said Tamatta add-ing that he had been harbour-ing hopes of upsetting the Kiwis after seeing them struggle for runs in practice

matches. Skipper Raju Rijal held together the Nepali innings with an elegant 48 runs, while opener Sandeep Sunar (39), Aarif Sheikh (39), Kushal Bhurtel (35 not out) and Rajbir Singh (24) all con-tributed invaluable runs to

the total. Openers Sunar and Sunil

Dhamala (15) gave a decent start with a 39-run stand but Nepal lost two wickets in the space of 11 runs to be 50-2 by the 12th over. Sunar hit three fours and a six in his patient

60-ball innings. After Sunar lost his wicket, Rijal and Aarif Sheikh steadied the Nepali ship putting on a cru-cial 61-run stand for the fourth wicket. Rijal fell two runs short of his half centu-ry after hitting six fours in his composed 65-ball knock. Aarif took the baton from his skipper to add another 47 runs with Rajbir Singh.

Both Sheikh and Singh lost their wickets in quick succes-sion as Nepal were down to 180-6 but a quick-fire 40-run partnership between Bhurtel and Dipendra Airee (16) ensured Nepal put on a decent total. Bhurtel struck five fours in his 23-ball unbeaten cameo. Nathan Smith was the pick of the New Zealand bowlers with 3-58 off 10 overs.

New Zealand’s run chase was jolted by the loss of two early wickets of Rachin Ravindra (4) and Finn Allen (11) but Glenn Phillips (52) and skipper Josh Finnie (37) appeared to bring their team back into the game. However, a disciplined Nepali bowling combined with a sharp field-ing, which yielded three run outs, saw New Zealand innings fold of 206 runs.

Dale Phillips (41) briefly threatened to take his side across the finish line but his run out in the first ball of the 48th over ended their hopes. Phillips hit three fours in his fluent 50-ball knock. Airee polished off the New Zealand tail taking the last three wick-ets. Prem Tamang also grabbed two, while Dhamala and Sandeep Lamichhane claimed one each for Nepal.

“We have a lot to improve, especially by batsmen in the top order,” said Tamatta. “They are getting starts but are unable to convert those into big scores. Our target is to qualify for quarter-finals.”

Defeat Test-nation New Zealand by 32 runs after posting 238-7; Play Ireland in next Group ‘D’ match on Saturday

n Nepal skipper Raju Rijal (left) with man-of-the-match trophy after their ICC U-19 World Cup match win over New Zealand in Fatullah, Bangladesh on Thursday. Nepali team celebrate their upset win. PhoTos CoURTEsY: ICC/CAN

SummaryNepal 238-7 in 50 overs (R Rijal 48, A Sheikh 39, K Bhurtel 35; N Smith 3-58, A Parikh 1-21) defeat New Zealand 206 all out in 47.1 overs (G Phillips 52, D Phillips 41; D Airee 3-24, P Tamang 2-38) by 32 runs

MMC rout Jhapa to meet Army in finalBhim GhimiRePoKhara, Jan 28

Manang Marshyangdi Club (MMC) underlined their title credentials with a crushing 4-0 victory over Jhapa XI to enter the final of the 14th Aaha-Rara Gold Cup here on Thursday.

African recruit Oladipo Olawale Afeez struck a hat-trick and Sujal Shrestha added another in MMC’s con-vincing victory over a modest Jhapa side, who had come into the semi-finals with a 4-1 drubbing of Gazirchat Sporting Club of Bangladesh. MMC, a 1-0 loser to Three Star in the final of last edition, will now take on Tribhuvan Army Club in the title match on Saturday.

Afeez, who was instrumen-tal in Three Star’s National League triumph but decided to leave the club, struck early in the 16th minute converting a cross from Bishwas

Shrestha. Jhapa were still in the game and Buddha Chemjong created their first chance in the 26th minute, feeding Karna Limbu inside the area but the forward’s attempt was denied by a clear-

ance from Sisoko.MMC headed into the sec-

ond half with a 1-0 cushion and they took the late stages of the game by a storm. Afeez brought his second goal in the 71st minute, rounding up

Jhapa goalkeeper to score with an ease in what was an empty post. Shrestha made it 3-0 four minutes later slam-ming home a cross from skip-per Anil Gurung.

Gurung was once again the

provider setting up Afeez for his hat-trick in the seventh minute of added-on time. Afeez was named the man-of-the-match.

MMC are one of the most successful teams in the tour-nament, winning three titles and finishing runners-up on four occasions. MMC had defeated Gurkha Brigade of India 2-0 in the quarter-finals. MMC coach Tshering Lopsang Gurung said a weak defence allowed them to score freely.

“Jhapa were not looking good both in the attack and defence and that gave us an opportunity to have a go at their post. We are playing against a physically strong Army side and we have to play extremely well,” said Gurung.

Jhapa coach Bhagirath Ale said his side was not able to learn the opponents’ strategy. “We were not expecting a defeat with a big margin. We failed to understand their game,” said Ale.

hETAUdA INT’l Gold CUP kICks off oN fEB 13Post RePoRtKathmandu, Jan 28

Suman Bhomjan Memorial Sports Foundation of Makwanpur is organising the Hetauda International Gold Cup football tournament on February 13-20.

A total of eight teams will participate in the tournament organised in the memory of sports journalist Bhomjan, who lost his life in the devas-tating April 25 Great Quake. Bhomjan’s body was found under the rubbles at his rent-ed house in Mahabouddha, Kathmandu eight days after the earthquake had hit Nepal.

Tribhuvan Army Club, Kanchanjunga of India, BRC of Bhutan and local side Hetauda XI are the four teams confirmed so far, informed Bhesh Khadgi, chairman of the foundation. “The presence of top-tier teams like Nepal Armed Police Force Club, Three Star, Manang Marshyangdi Club and Jhapa XI depends on their domestic schedule. They have agreed to play if the tournament doesn’t collide with their schedule,” said Khadgi.

All the matches of the tour-nament will be played at the Institute of Forestry grounds in Hetauda. Out of the esti-mated budget of four million rupees, the champions will get Rs 300,000 and the runners-up take home Rs 150,000. The best player, highest scorer, goal-keeper, defender and midfield-er will get Rs 10,000 apiece.

During a press conference in the capital on Thursday, the organisers also signed a spon-sorship agreement with Colors Mobile. Colors will pro-vide Rs 400,000 cash apart from pouring in an additional half a million rupees for the tournament promotion.

Nagakoti pips Shrestha for leadPost RePoRtPoKhara, Jan 28

Bhuwan Nagarkoti carded two-under 68 to take the sec-ond round lead in the Surya Nepal Western Open golf tournament at the par-70 Himalayan Golf Course in Pokhara on Thursday.

The Gokarna Golf Club pro goes into the third round one stroke ahead of overnight leader and Nepal No 1 Shivaram Shrestha of Royal Nepal Golf Course (RNGC), who shot a disappointing three-over 73 for a total of two-under 138. Shrestha had carded five-under 65 in the first round on Wednesday. Army Club pros Dhana Bahadur Thapa (72) and Sanjay Lama (68) were joint third at one-under 139 in the fourth event under the Surya Nepal Golf Tour 2015-16.

Surya Prasad Sharma was alone at fifth at three-over 143 after playing even-par 70. Three pros Bhu Bahadur Gurung (72), Rabi Khadka (71) and Pashupati Sharma (75) were tied for sixth at 146. Rame Magar, who played five-over 75, is ninth at nine-over 149, while Deepak Thapa Magar (75) was at 151. Jayaram Shrestha, Pradeep Kumar Lama and Sanjeev Bahadur Nepali share the 11th position at 153. Prabhat Kumar Rajbahak, Bikash Adhikari, Dinesh Prajapati, Sabin Sapkota, Ramesh Nagarkoti, Ramesh Adhikari, Gopal Nagarkoti and Chuda Bahadur Bhandari are the other pros who survived the cut.

Nagarkoti carded one-over 36 in his front nine but

improved on his second nine with three-under 32. He dropped shots on the second and sixth holes but earned a shot with a birdie on the ninth. On the back nine, Nagarkoti sank birdies on the 10th, 16th and 17th holes.

The RNGC pro Shrestha shot one-under 35 on the front nine but faltered to four-over 39 on back nine. Shrestha opened the day with a birdie and added another shot on the sixth against a bogey on the fifth hole. On the back nine, the top-ranked golfer suffered a double bogey on the par-4 12th. He dropped another shot on the 18th against a lone birdie on the 11th. Army Club pro Thapa carded two-over 38 on the front nine and one-un-der 34 on the back nine, while his clubmate Lama carded one-over 36 on the front nine and three-under 32 on the back nine.

The cut was applied at 24-over 164 and 21 pros made it to the final round. Ten ama-teur golfers also survived the cut. Tanka Bahadur Karki carded one-under 69 to move top of the amateur category with a total card of 11-over 151. Karki was a stroke ahead of Kamal Tamang.

surya nepal western open

ILAM: Durgapur Steel Football Club of Kolkata defeated hosts Mai Valley Football Club 2-0 in the opening match of the Mai Valley Gold Cup here on Thursday. African recruit Eric scored both goals for the visitors to guide his side into the quarter-finals. A total of 10 teams are participat-ing in the knockout tour-nament that carries a cash purse of Rs 350,000 for the champions. The runners-up will get Rs 175,000. (PR)

durgapur win

Baluwatar in semisJanak nePalnePalgunJ, Jan 28

A five-wicket haul from Bijay Gautam saw Baluwatar Cricket Club cruise into the semi-finals of the Kohalpur City Twenty20 cricket tourna-ment with an eight-wicket win over Maharjan Maxo Sports Club in KOhalpur on Thursday.

Electing to bat first, Maharjan Maxo caved in for a lowly 46 runs ni 13.1 overs thanks to Gautam’s fierly spell. Pinku Gupta’s 12 runs was the top score in a hapless Maxo batting display as none of their bats-men were able to reach a dou-ble digit. In fact, their total was boosted by 14 sundries conceded by Baluwatar.

Gautam finished with fig-ures of 5-13 from four overs, while Indar Kamal Manandhar claimed three wickets in seven balls he delivered.

Baluwatar lost openers cheaply to be 10-2 by the second over but Subash Khakurel and Rabin Joshi put on an unbroken 37-run third wicket stand to help overcome the meagre total.

Khakurel scored run-a-ball 23 and Joshi made seven.Udesh Sahani and Bikram KC bagged one wicket each for Maxo.

Baluwatar will take on Royal Sports Club, while Kohalpur Youth Club will meet Taratal Cricket Club in semi-finals on Friday.

n Oladipo Olawale Afeez (right) of MMC vies for the ball with Jhapa XI players during their Aaha-Rara Gold Cup semi-final match at the Pokhara Stadium on Thursday. PhoTo CoURTEsY: sUdARshAN RANjIT

n Bhuwan Nagarkoti

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thekathmandu postsports 12Friday, January 29, 2016

sports digestNZ-Pakistan 2nd ODI abandonedNAPIER: Rain washed out the second one-day inter-national (ODI) between New Zealand and Pakistan in Napier on Thursday. Umpires Bruce Oxenford and Billy Bowden waited more than four hours for the weather to clear. But when the rain finally stopped there was no sun to dry the waterlogged outfield and the match was abandoned. New Zealand won the first ODI on Monday by 70 runs with the third and final match set for Auckland on Sunday. (AFP)

Sunderland sign defender KoneSUNDERLAND: Relegation-threatened Sunderland on Wednesday signed Ivory Coast defender Lamine Kone from French side Lorient for an undisclosed fee, the Premier League club said. The 26-year-old French-born centre-back signed a deal which will keep him at the Stadium of Light until the end of 2020 season. Kone repre-sented France at youth level before making his full international debut for the Ivory Coast in 2014. (AFP)

Villa release SenderosLONDON: Former Arsenal defender and Swiss International Philippe Senderos has been released by Premier League club Aston Villa. The 30-year-old cen-tre-back played just nine times for Villa, after join-ing from Valencia in June 2014. Senderos played at both the 2006 and 2014 World Cups and at Euro 2008 for Switzer-land, with whom he won over 50 caps. Senderos won the 2004 league title with Arsenal, and was on the bench two years later as Arsenal lost 2-1 to Barca in the Champions League final. (AFP)

(C.R.P.D.) - 3/052/053

Indo-AsIAn news servIceMELboURNE, JAN 28

On a high after a dominating the show in the first Twenty20 International, India will aim to hold on to their current form and seal the three-match series when they face Australia in the second match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) here on Friday.

Having lost the one-day interna-tional (ODI) 4-1, the visitors came back strongly in the first match of the shortest format of the game to win it by 37 runs and take a 1-0 lead. Both the batsman and the bowlers delivered when it mattered most to give India the much needed win in the important series before the World T20 in March-April. Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s men will aim to take the series on Friday and try to exper-iment with their squad in the third match in Sydney on Sunday.

Virat Kohli who is rightly the most successful batsman so far in the series Down Under will once again look to exploit the home side bowlers after his quickfire unbeaten 90 in the first match which helped India post a challenging score on the board. The vice-captain shared a 134-run stand for the third wicket with Suresh Raina, who was playing his first match after missing out on the ODI squad.

Another player, who will be in focus is Yuvraj Singh, who didn’t get to bat in the first ODI. The veteran southpaw turned out for India after more than 18 months out and he will look to make the most of the opportunity before the World T20 at home in March. Yuvraj and Raina will add more firepower to the in-form trio Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan and Kohli.

The change in format worked well for the Indian pace bowlers after

they got hammered in the ODIs. Experienced Ashish Nehra, young Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya bowled well to defend a challenging total. The trio was well supported by

spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. With all the players delivering in the first game, Dhoni is likely to go ahead with the same squad and will aim to bag the series.

India can claim the top spot in the International Cricket Council (ICC) T20 rankings if they make a clean sweep of the series, which could serve as an added motivation for the Dhoni-led side. On the other hand, Australia, after a successful ODI campaign, went short of fuel in the opening game. Both bowlers and batsmen failed to make an impact in a batting friendly Adelaide wicket.

The home side will be without star batsmen David Warner and Steve Smith, who are being rested ahead of the New Zealand tour next month. But hard-hitting batsman Glenn Maxwell, who missed the opener, is most likely to return to fill in the middle order gap. His presence will give the hosts an added boost.

India look to wrap up series win in Melbourne aust ra l i a- i n d i a t 20 s e r i es

AssocIAted PressMELboURNE, JAN 28

Like Serena Williams before him, Novak Djokovic moved into another Australian Open championship decider with a relatively untroubled semi-fi-nal win.

Top-ranked Djokovic had a 6-1, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 victory over No 3 Roger Federer. Hours earlier on Rod Laver Arena, Williams advanced to within one win of another Grand Slam mile-stone, beating Agnieszka Radwanska 6-0, 6-4 in a semi-fi-nal on Thursday that was almost a non-contest between the players who’ll be Nos 1 and 3 in the next women’s rankings.

If six-time champion Williams wins Saturday’s final against No 7-seeded Angelique Kerber, she’ll equal Steffi Graf ’s record of 22 Grand Slam singles titles, a record in the Open era, and the second-most in history behind Margaret Court’s 24.

The signs were ominous from the beginning for 17-time Grand Slam champion and No 3-ranked Federer. Djokovic, now into his sixth Australian final--he’s won all five previ-ous--held his first service game at love and broke Federer in the second. After four minutes, Federer was two games down.

The first set was over with-in 22 minutes. Spectators were firmly behind him, applaud-ing Djokovic’s service faults and giving Federer a standing ovation when he broke to go ahead 4-2 in the third set.

The end came quickly in the fourth. Djokovic broke Federer in the eighth game to go up 5-3 - not even a stunning down-the-line shot after he

earlier chased down a lob on the same point could save the Swiss star. Djokovic held three match points in the next game and he clinched it in 2 hours, 19 minutes when Federer netted a backhand. Djokovic, who won three Grand Slam titles last year, took a 23-22 edge in his 45 meetings with Federer.

“Definitely I’ve played unbelievable the first two sets but that’s what is necessary against Roger,” Djokovic said. “He’s been playing on a very high level at this tournament and he dropped only one set. I came up with the right inten-sity, great concentration.”

Federer said he wasn’t sur-prised by the early blitz. “I’ve seen Novak play this well before,” he said. “It’s tough when it’s from the start because obviously you got to try to stop the bleeding at

some point. He can get one or two sets all of a sudden... and it’s tough to get back into it.” In Sunday’s final, Djokovic will face the winner of Friday’s semi-final between No 2-ranked Andy Murray and Milos Raonic.

Williams is the overwhelm-ing favourite in her final against Kerber, and not just based on recent form. She continued her perfect streak in Australian Open semi-fi-nals, and she has won all six finals she’s contested at Melbourne Park. Now she’s looking for seven wins in seven finals on the same court. “I definitely block it out,” Williams replied to a question about equaling Graf ’s mark. “I was one off last year, too! If I don’t win on Saturday, I’ll still be one off.”

Despite all her success, it is a loss that is inspiring

Williams in this tournament. She was two matches away from a calendar-year Grand Slam in 2015 when she lost to Roberta Vinci in the US Open semi-finals. Kerber ended Sydney-born British player Johanna Konta’s surprising run with a 7-5, 6-2 semi-final win to reach her first Grand Slam final. Konta was the first British woman since 1983 to reach a major semifinal.

Williams’ win over fourth-seeded Radwanska provided yet another remind-er of her dominance in the women’s game. She has won 39 of her last 40 Grand Slam matches across six major tournaments. Williams hasn’t played a left-hander so far this tournament and said that, combined with Kerber’s quar-terfinal win over two-time champion Victoria Azarenka, were making her wary.

n The top-ranked Serbian sees off great rival Federern The American sets up title showdown with Kerber

resultsWomen’s singles semi-finalsSerena Williams (USA x1) bt Agnieszka Radwanska (POL x4) 6-0, 6-4; Angelique Kerber (GER x7) bt Johanna Konta (GBR) 7-5, 6-2

nnnMen’s singles semi-finalsNovak Djokovic (SRB x1) bt Roger Federer (SUI x3) 6-1, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3

n Novak Djokovic of Serbia celebrates after defeating Roger Federer of Switzerland in their semi-final match of the Australian Open tennis championships in Melbourne on Thursday. AP

Barca sink Bilbao as Atletico crash out

Agence FrAnce-PresseMADRID, JAN 28

Copa del Rey holders Barcelona had to weather a first-half storm from Athletic Bilbao before progressing to the semi-finals for the seventh consecutive season with a 3-1 win to seal a 5-2 aggregate victory.

Atletico Madrid failed to make the last four, though, as they conceded three goals for the first time in a year to lose 3-2 on the night and on aggre-gate to Celta Vigo.

Inaki Williams’s early strike for the visitors at the Nou Camp gave Athletic hope of exacting revenge for defeat in last season’s final to Barca. However, the Basques failed to take a series of chances before half-time and Barca respond-ed in the second period thanks to goals from Luis Suarez, Gerard Pique and Neymar.

Williams signed a new long-term deal last week and showed more signs of his bur-geoning talent with a cool fin-ish from Aritz Aduriz’s through ball to record his 11th goal of the season. Bilbao should have then gone in front on aggregate when Javier

Eraso turned Williams’s cross wide before Markel Susaeta also failed to hit the target from Aduriz’s knockdown.

Those misses were to prove crucial as Barca upped their game after the break as the star front three of Lionel Messi, Suarez and Neymar came alive. Messi created the equaliser when he latched onto Sergi Roberto’s ball over the top and his low cross was slotted home by Suarez for his 30th goal of the season. Pique killed the tie off nine minutes from time when he rose to power home Dani Alves’s cross from the right.

And Neymar skipped past Mikel San Jose before firing into the corner. Barca meet Atletico in a top of the table clash in La Liga on Saturday, but there is no chance of the sides meeting in Friday’s semi-final draw as Celta pro-

duced an upset at the Vicente Calderon thanks to Pablo Hernandez’s brace either side of former Manchester City and Celtic striker John Guidetti’s sensational strike.

“To come to such a great stadium and club and play such an all-round game with bravery and character, play-ing our style of football, I am proud to coach these players,” said Celta boss Eduardo Berizzo, who hailed the result as his best in charge of the Galicians. “We didn’t play badly. We created plenty of chances, but it is true we made mistakes in the small details of the game and they took advantage of it,” said Atletico coach Diego Simeone.

Following a 0-0 draw in the first-leg last week, Hernandez handed Celta the vital away goal when he headed home the opener midway through the first-half. Antoine Griezmann gave the 10-time Cup winners hope with an equaliser before half-time. But Guidetti’s stun-ning hit into the top corner from 25 yards and another Hernandez header sealed the Galicians a place in the semi-finals before Angel Correa’s late consolation.

n Barcelona forward Neymar (left) vies for the ball with Athletic Bilbao defender Aymeric Laporte during their Copa del Rey quarter-finals second leg match at Nou Camp in Barcelona on Wednesday. AFP/RSS

City set Liverpool showdownAgence FrAnce-PresseMANCHESTER, JAN 28

Kevin De Bruyne met with controversy, glory and injury as Manchester City defeated Everton 3-1 on Wednesday to set up a League Cup final showdown with Liverpool.

Everton extended their 2-1 advantage from the first leg when Ross Barkley scored a fine individual goal in the 18th minute, but Fernandinho quickly equalised before sub-stitute De Bruyne levelled and then set up Sergio Aguero to complete a 4-3 aggregate victo-ry in the 76th minute. Replays, however, suggested that Raheem Sterling had taken the ball beyond the byline before cutting it back for De Bruyne to score and the wing-er finished the match on a stretcher after his knee buck-led in a late challenge with Ramiro Funes Mori.

City’s win deprived Everton of a meeting with Liverpool--who overcame Stoke City on penalties on Tuesday--in what would have been the first all-Merseyside major final since the 1988-89 FA Cup and the first League Cup final to feature the Goodison Park club since 1984.

Pellegrini’s side had to come from 3-1 down on aggre-gate at the Etihad Stadium after Barkley swelled Everton’s advantage with a goal that demonstrated both his own brilliance and City’s defensive porousness. The Everton No 20 evaded the slid-ing Nicolas Otamendi and foxed Fabian Delph with a stylish feint before steering a low shot into City goalkeeper Willy Caballero’s bottom-right corner. Barkley’s strike left City needing two goals to stay in the tie, but after Sterling

had tested Joel Robles and Yaya Toure had curled over, they halved the aggregate deficit in the 24th minute.

Aguero’s shot was blocked by returning Everton skipper Phil Jagielka, but Fernandinho followed in with a right-foot drive that clipped Leighton Baines’s heel and left Robles clutching at thin air. City almost levelled the tie

nine minutes before the inter-val, Aguero thumping a shot against the right-hand upright from outside the box and Sterling seeing his follow-up swatted behind by Robles.

Barkley created a chance for Gerard Deulofeu early in the second half, the Spaniard drawing a save from Caballero with a side-foot shot, but with Jesus Navas on in place of Delph, City had a new outlet on the right flank and they began to bang on the door. Aguero miscued, uncharac-teristically, from a Navas cross, David Silva headed a Pablo Zabaleta cross against the post and Tom Cleverley had to produce a sliding block to thwart Sterling.

Manuel Pellegrini respond-ed in the 66th minute replac-ing Toure with De Bruyne and four minutes the 24-year-old levelled the tie. Sterling had moved to the left following Navas’s entrance and he showed John Stones a clean pair of heels before pulling the ball back for De Bruyne, who side-footed home.

To the fury of Evertonians on social media, replays showed that the ball had just crossed the line before Sterling played it into the box.

copa del reyresults

Atletico 2-3 Celta (Celta win 3-2 on agg)

Barca 3-1 Bilbao (Barca win 5-2 on agg)

OOSthuizen ShAReS FiRSt ROund leAdAgence FrAnce-PresseDoHA, JAN 28

Louis Oosthuizen, who has won four of his previous five season-opening tournaments, posted a first round 65 at the Qatar Masters for a share of the lead on Wednesday.

Thriving in overcast and blustery conditions, the South African carded a bogey-free round, which included two birdies at his first two holes, after teeing off at the tenth. The 2010 British Open cham-pion was joined at the top of the leaderboard by Spain’s Pablo Larrazabal, who posted four birdies in his first nine holes. Belgium’s Nicolas Colsaerts, England’s Andrew Johnston and Sweden’s Bjorn Akesson formed a trio one shot further back.

Defending champion Branden Grace, seeking to become the first player in the Qatar Masters 17-year history to win back-to-back titles, carded a two under 70. The first person to win in Qatar, Scotland’s Paul Lawrie, fared better with a round of five-under 67.

n Indian batsman Shikhar Dhawan during a training session in Melbourne, Australia on Thursday.

league Cup results

Man City 3-1 Everton (Man City win 4-3 on agg)

n Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero (right) vies with Everton’s Leighton Baines during the League Cup in Manchester on Wednesday. ReuteRS

Djokovic, Williams cruise into final

n Serena Williams