Nepal

Kathmandu, May 22

The Narcotics Control Bureau nowadays raided a house in fresh Bus Park, Kathmandu Metropolitan City, and arrested a woman for allegedly running a drug-peddling racket.

Senior Supermeanent of Cop Basanta Kumar Lama, NCB deputy in-charge, said 1,791 ampules of injectable drugs, including diazepam, buprenorphine and phenergan, and Rs 141,000 in cash that she had gathered from the sale of psychoactive substance were also confiscated from Sabitri Shrestha, 50.

According to the narco-police, she was long involved in smuggling prescription drugs to Kathmandu from the Nepal-India border through racketeers and selling them to drug addicts, mainly teenagers and youths, from her own house. She used to large crowd of peopleilise her two sons, aged between 25 to 29, to search for drug users.

NCB officials said the duo also used drugs and had track marks on their body parts.

Shresthahouse compound had been kept under CCTV surveillance to endegree that persons other than drug users didn&t enter. NCB said further investigation into her organization with other drug racketeers were under way.

Organised trade of such drugs, which can only be sold against a doctorprescription, is on the rise despite police crackdown. According to NCB, teenagers account for the largest section of end users of pharmaceutical drugs, which are in high demand due to their availability and affordability in the illegal market. The controlled drugs costing around Rs 23 per ‘dose& across the Indian border is sold for up to Rs 1,500 when brought into Kathmandu, said police investigators.

As per a survey report ‘Current Hard Drug employrs in Nepal, 2013& published by the Ministry of Home Affairs, most drug abusers were young men and women, and many died of overdose and excessive abuse.

While there were altogether 46,309 drug abusers in 2007, the number approachly doubled to 91,534 in 2013, marking a roughly 98 per cent increase in six years.

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Kathmandu, May 22

Construction of the new main building of Paropakar Maternity and WomenHospital (Prasuti Griha) at Thapathali and one building of Bir Hospital in Kathmandu have reached final stage. Both buildings were built by National Reconstruction Authority.

One of the main buildings of Paropakar Hospital, which had suffered damages in 2015 soiltremble, was dismantled to erect a new and sophisticated building at the same location. Both the hospital administrations have said that the buildings shall come into operation within a few months.

&The NRA has handed over the building to us, now we are managing hospital amenities with the aim of inaugurating the hospital within one month,& said Jageshwor Gautam, director of Paropakar Hospital.

Similar commitment was expressed by Kedar Prasad Century Director of Bir Hospital. &We shall soon inaugurate the hospital after completing hospital requirements very soon,& Century said.

The new building of Prashuti Griha consists of 192 beds, with the facility of emergency delivery room, birthing centre, post-operation ward and other facilities. The new building of Bir Hospital has 94 beds, cardiology ward, gastroenterology ward, nephrology ward and others.

The reconstruction was undertaken under the Ministry of Health and Population with the support of the Japanese government.

Sushil Gyanwali, Chief Executive Director of NRA, after examineing the new building, said to media that the NRA with the motto of ‘Build Back Better& is working vigorously to restore hospitals destroyed in the soiltremble.

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Kathmandu, May 22

The main opposition Nepali Congress has said it shall much allow the Media Council Bill, which sought to curtail press freedom, to be endorsed from the Parliament.

Speaking in a assembly of the Home of Representatives, NC Whip Shovepa Bhusal said the bill was against the freedom of expression and the government should withdraw and amend it.

Stating that journalism was a strong pillar of democracy, Bhusal said the government was trying to build up all powers and punish journalists who wrote against the government. &The government has introduced an undemocratic bill just because journalists are writing against corruption,& she said.

Bhusal stressed the proposed Media Council should be an independent and autonomous body. She said the council should be a body that would play the role of coordinator to settle any controversy, and much a mechanism that imposed fine or slapped punishment.

She also said her party would much accept the National Human Corrects Commission Bill. Meanwhile, the HoR nowadays approved clause-wide discussion of six bills. The bills are Revenue Leakage Investigation and Control Bill, Nepal Cop Adjustment Bill, Industrial Enterprise Development Institute Bill, Industrial Enterprise Bill, Senior Citizens Bill, Advertisement Regulation Bill.

replying lawmakers& questions on Advertisement Regulation Bill, Minister of Communications and Information Technology Gokul Baskota said the bill was prepared keeping in intellect the laws in place in the biggest advertisement markets such as the US and China, and Nepali society and culture.

He said the bill had provisions such as advertisers should take prior permission from authorities concerned for placing hoarding board. In case of semi-nude pictures in advertisements, the advertisers should take permission from local-level bodies.

The bill also bars placing advertisements approach schools and advertisements that promote secessionism and terrorismism.

The bill also provisions clean feed for foreign TV channels broadcasting in Nepal, which would boost the domestic advertisement market.

Baskota said publishers should publish advertisement free of cost during emergency situation such as during natural calamities.

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• Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency shall facilitate live broadcast of the event

Kathmandu, May 21

The date for deployment of the countryfirst satellite, NepaliSat-1 into space from International Space Station is set for June-17. The satellite shall start revolving around the soil instantly after deployment.

A commercial cargo spacecraft carrying NepaliSat-1, had reached the International Space Station travelling for 72 hours on April-21. It has remained inside the cargo ship at the ISS since then.

The spacecraft was launched into space by Antares rocket from NASAWallops Flight Facility in the United States. The satellite after deployment shall start revolving around the soil, gathering geographical information of the country.

Nepal Academy of Science and Technology confirming the deployment date of the satellite, said they would have a grand celebration on the day, broadcasting live video of the satellite being deployed in space.

Rabindra Dhakal, chief of Faculty of Technology at NAST, said Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency shall facilitate live broadcast of the satellite deployment. &JAXA has confirmed they shall dispatch two envoys to NAST to facilitate a live broadcast of the event.& Similarly, NAST also informed that Sunil Babu Shrestha Vice-chancellor of NAST, and Minister of Education Science and Technology Giriraj Mani Pokhrel are scheduled to travel to JAXA to witness live deployment of the satellite.

Two Nepali scientists -msprint; Aabhas Maskey and Hariram Shrestha -msprint; who are studying at JapanKyushu Institute of Technology -msprint; developed the satellite in collaboration with NAST.

NepaliSat-1 is a dice satellite that weighs 1.3 kilograms. Once released into orbit, the satellite shall revolve around the soil every 90 minutes. The orbit lies around 400 kilometres absent from the soil. The satellite is expected to take pictures of Nepal for six to 10 minutes during each revolution.

NAST has claimed that they shall build a ground station for it before the satellite is deployed into space. &We are in the final stage of installing an antenna and other required technologies to get data sent from the satellite. We are confident that the ground station shall be fully functional before NepaliSat-1 starts dispatching data,& Dhakal said.

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