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Airbnb to help displaced residents and relief workers affected by flood in Nepal

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Reliefweb — AirBNB is Seeking hosts to house temporarily displaced residents and disaster relief workers; letting displaced residents and relief workers know about the Open Homes program.

Airbnb has activated its Open Homes Program to help displaced residents and relief workers deployed to the regions impacted by flooding in Nepal.

The Open Homes Program recruits hosts who are willing and able to provide free housing to displaced residents and disaster relief workers in the activation area.

Airbnb Hosts within the affected areas have the ability to opt into listing their homes offering accommodation free of charge to those in need by visiting www.airbnb.com/nepalfloods19.

Airbnb’s Regional Policy Director for Asia Pacific Brent Thomas said the goal of the Open Homes Program was to ensure that those able to open their homes, as well as anyone who is affected and in need of temporary accommodation, know that this option exists, Kathmandu Tribune reported.

“Airbnb’s Open Homes Program connects those people in need or relief workers deployed to the region with temporary accommodation offered by local hosts who are opening their homes free of charge. We encourage hosts in the region who are able to consider opening their homes to those in need of temporary accommodation,” Mr. Thomas said.

The Open Homes Program is currently available to 4 August 2019. As a public service, Airbnb asks that media outlets consider sharing the following link: www.airbnb.com/nepalfloods19.

https://www.airbnb.ca/welcome/evacuees?s=51 

Mumbai Attacks Mastermind Hafiz Saeed Arrested in Pakistan, Sent to Judicial Custody: Report

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Mumbai attacks mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed has been arrested and sent to judicial custody, news agency ANI reported quoting Pakistan media.

Early this month, Pakistan’s counter-terrorism department said it had launched 23 cases against Saeed and 12 aides for using five trusts to collect funds and donations for LeT, blamed by India and the United States for the attacks in Mumbai that killed 166 people.

Two banned LeT-linked charities, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), were also targeted, the department said in a statement. “All the assets of these organisations and individuals will be frozen and taken over by the state,” said a counter-terrorism senior official on condition of anonymity. The counter-terrorism department said the action was in accordance with UN sanctions against the individuals and entities.

Pakistan’s move follows pressure from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which last year placed Pakistan on its “grey list” of countries with inadequate controls over money laundering and terrorism financing.

The international watchdog gave Pakistan an October deadline last month to improve its efforts against terrorism financing. The FATF has said Pakistan could end up on the black list when it reviews progress in a meeting later this year.

The arrest also comes ahead of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on July 22.

Saeed, designated a global terrorist by both the UN and the US, is one of the founders of LeT. The US, which has pressured Pakistan to crack down on militant groups, has offered a $10 million reward for evidence leading to his conviction.

The LeT has been banned in Pakistan since 2002 and the charities since last year. Saeed, who denies involvement in violence or funding militants, has been freed by Pakistani courts after being detained at his home several times in the past.

Pakistan has long faced international pressure to shut off financing to militant groups operating from its soil and has repeatedly pledged action but results have been patchy and have failed to satisfy critics.

Babies in Nepal get quarter of calories from junk food, study finds

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By : Sarah Boseley
Children under the age of two in Nepal are getting a quarter of their calories from junk food, according to groundbreaking research that warns their diet is linked to stunting and undernutrition, The Guardian reports. 

Biscuits, crisps, instant noodles and sugary drinks appear to be displacing foods with the vitamins, minerals and other vital nutrients babies need to grow well, say the researchers. The work, published in the Journal of Nutrition, illustrates that the 21st-century junk food diet spreading around the globe is linked not just to obesity but also to poor growth in children.

The study was carried out in the Kathmandu Valley among the families of 745 children aged between 12 and 23 months. It is among the first to look at the nutritional effects of snack foods given to small children in a low-income country. The researchers work for Helen Keller International, a global health organisation.

They found that all the children in the study ate junk food, some more than others. Those who got half their calories from high-sugar, high-salt and high-fat

snacks were shorter than others of their age who ate less of them. They were more likely to have inadequate levels of the nutrients that are vital for growth and development, including protein, calcium, iron, vitamin A and zinc.

We hope these findings sound the alarm for researchers and policymakers alike – there is a need for continued research on the role of snack food products in the health and development of nutritionally vulnerable children,” said Dr Alissa Pries, the principal investigator of the Assessment and Research on Child Feedingproject.

“Packaged snack food products – typically high in sugar and salt and low in micronutrients – are increasingly available across the globe. There is already growing global concern in the health community over the role of junk foods or ultra-processed foods in the obesity epidemic, but for young children in contexts where access to nutritious food is limited, this study signals that these foods may also be contributing to undernutrition.”

Snack foods, some processed and packaged locally and some of them international, were common all over Nepal, even in remote places, she said. “They are available on the shelves. There is marketing that is occurring. Mothers and fathers choose these products, as in the US and UK, because they are convenient – and the child gets a preference for these sugary snacks.

A lot of the caregivers reported that the foods were not good for young children – they used the English words ‘junk food’ – but they said the driving force was convenience. They are easy to prepare and easy to feed. Children can hold them and eat them.”

Pries said she was disturbed by the findings. “Knowing that a quarter of all the calories that these babies were consuming were coming from unhealthy food and beverages – to me that was shocking,” she told the Guardian. “The prevalence of consumption of these foods is growing. We are seeing it globally.”

The study was observational, so could not prove cause and effect, but the authors are calling for more research into the potentially damaging developmental effects of junk food on small children.

There is growing evidence that children are consuming unhealthy snack products at a shocking rate,” said Dr Atul Upadhyay, a co-author on the paper. “More attention and efforts need to focus on increasing consumption of nutrient‐rich, locally available foods and developing strategies to limit the consumption of unhealthy snack products among young children.” From: The Guardian

Climate scientists in Nepal as the forth most vulnerable country from climate change hit by floods

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IANS, Kathmandu — Amid devastating floods caused by torrential rain that have killed 78 people in Nepal, over 260 climate scientists gathered in Kathmandu to discuss the impact of climate change on the Himalayan nation and assess vulnerability and adaptation measures, the media reported on Tuesday.

The scientists and bureau members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from more than 60 countries are in Kathmandu for the Second Lead Authors Meeting of IPCC Working Group (II) for deliberations as part of their preparation for the Sixth Assessment Report which is scheduled to be out in 2022, the Kathmandu Post reported.

“Meeting here in Kathmandu reminds us, in a very direct way, of the strong interdependence of human and natural systems, and how both are threatened by climate change,” said Working Group II co-chair Debra Roberts.

Nepal is considered one of the most vulnerable countries in the world for climate change effects.

The latest landmark study in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, which covers 3,500 km across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan, has projected an alarming future for poor and geographically challenged countries like Nepal.

The study by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) has concluded that the region would lose one-third of the region’s glaciers by the end of the century.

Inaugurating the four-day event, Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli said Nepal was already experiencing the effects of climate change despite its nominal role in the global crisis, the Kathmandu Post reported.

“The country is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change although our contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is negligible,” Oli said. “Rising temperature, retreating glaciers and erratic rainfall extreme weather events are causing damages to our people and economy.”

At the meet, Oli also emphasised how climate change has unequal impacts.

“Some countries are well prepared to deal with them, but countries like Nepal are most vulnerable,” he added.

Afghanistan: how to widen access to justice

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By – Ali Wardak, University of South Wales

Getting justice in Afghanistan is a complicated business. Two main justice systems – state laws based on the civil law tradition and Islamic jurisprudence – combine with non-state institutions, such as traditional village jirgas (circles) or shuras (councils), to resolve local disputes and deal with offences.

Since the collapse of the Taliban regime, the US alone has spent well over a billion dollarsrebuilding and reforming Afghanistan’s state justice sector, influenced by the Western system of retributive justice. But the failure to engage with the Afghanistan’s own tradition of restorative justice and to understand its multiplicity of justice providers has undermined true reform.

It has instead resulted in a justice system that doesn’t have the full capacity to address the complex needs of all the Afghan people. And it has allowed others, including the Taliban judiciary – who have a select and narrow interpretation of Sharia – to step into the vacuum. This can lead to situations where people’s rights – especially women – are unprotected or infringed.

A “hybrid model” that instead forges links between state and non-state providers could provide justice that is more accessible, affordable and inclusive – and one with better oversight of those involved, and which would reduce human rights violations.

In 2007, out of research and a report for the UN Development Programme (UNDP), I developed such a model. The idea was to create complementary links between the existing state justice system, various non-state justice providers, and women’s/human rights units, each acting as a check and balance on the others.

Although vested interest of powerful Afghan politicians delayed the translation of this hybrid model into practice, it has now partially resulted in a draft law – the Law on Conciliatory Jirga’s in Civil Disputes – which is currently waiting to be approved by the new Afghan parliament.

Women’s rights

Research has shown that non-state justice providers (especially jirgas and shuras) are perceived as more accessible, trusted, less corrupt and speedier in resolving disputes than the state courts. But these male-only institutions exclude women, are sometimes influenced by warlords, and their decisions are not officially recorded. Most of these non-state justice institutions also variously violate human rights, for example in their use of baad, a centuries-old practice in which an offender’s female relative is given in marriage to a male family member of a victim.

A hybrid framework not only creates a collaborative dialogue between various state and non-state justice providers, but also empowers women through raising awareness of their rights and supporting spaces for contestation. Human rights units can provide disputants with help and advice in selecting the right institution for their case and can also check justice decisions are consistent with women’s and human rights principles. These units can also be empowered to examine issues relating to domestic violence, past human rights abuses and war crimes.

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) units would handle minor criminal offences and any civil cases. Their decisions would be checked by the closest state justice institution to ensure that decisions didn’t violate Afghanistan’s law and/or the fundamental principles of Islamic Sharia. Decisions that failed to be endorsed on either human rights grounds or by a concerned state court, would be revised or referred to the state justice system for adjudication. But all serious criminal cases would fall exclusively under the remit of the state justice system.

A challenging time

It took more than a decade to get the idea of a hybrid model of justice accepted in Afghanistan. Senior judges saw it as a threat to their exclusive authority over all cases and disputes within the state judicial system. They also saw the 2007 UNDP report recommendations as a possible diversion of international aid to non-state justice providers. The report was initially banned by Afghanistan’s Supreme Court.

But strong support from international organisations including the US Institute of Peace, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and some national and international institutions in Afghanistan led to the implementation of programmes that trained traditional local mediators, promoted legal awareness and women’s rights and resulted in more coordination between non-state actors and the state justice system.

Success of these programmes induced Afghanistan’s Ministry of Justice to revisit the hybrid model and these programmes may be the reason behind the increasing rejection of the practise of baad in Afghanistan. The UNDP report suggested that 28% of people saw baad was “always” or “sometimes” an outcome of jirga/shura decision making in 2007, recent research reveals that this practice now rarely happens.

I have now also been working with Conciliation Resources, an international peace organisation, to see how the hybrid model can be used to engage traditional and religious institutions using their established practical experience of resolving local conflict to contribute to peacemaking in Afghanistan.

The Palestine connection

The hybrid model could also work in other places where multiple state and non-state justice institutions exist. Hebron University’s Mutaz Qafisheh and I recently found that the state alone cannot provide effective justice for all Palestinian children. As in Afghanistan, many people see the justice provided by key non-state providers as more speedy and accessible.

But, as we also found in Afghanistan, these are also often male-dominated providers that prioritise community over individual rights. For example, it is makhateer (traditional male mediators/community leaders) and mosleheen (male conciliators) who often decide what is good for the community, and whose judgments sometimes violate the rights of young offenders or victims, and especially girls.

As a result of this work, Swiss children’s charity Terre des hommes – which provides professional support to the Palestinian state juvenile justice system and legal/social support for children in conflict with law – is now using our idea of a hybrid model in its juvenile justice policy in the Palestinian Territories.

Justice is especially complex in countries where multiple providers exist – and whether official or unofficial, many of these are here to stay. Rather than impose one top-down retributive system, it is prudent to harness the many positive aspects of local traditional, religious and other existing non-state justice providers and link them to the state justice system in meaningful ways. This form of hybridity helps to prevent human rights violation, and promises to provide more accessible, affordable, effective and restorative justice for all. From the Conversation .

Over 100 people killed by landslides, floods in South Asia , Nepal is affected badly

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AP, KATHMANDU, Nepal — The death toll mounted Monday from flooding and landslides caused by torrential weekend rains in India and Nepal, as rescuers carried out desperate searches for survivors and as officials in nearby Bangladesh braced for the floodwaters to move downstream.

The hardest-hit country appeared to be Nepal, where police said Monday that 67 people had died as a result of the monsoon rains that began Thursday night and set off widespread flooding, particularly in the country’s southern plains along the Indian border. Officials said 30 others are missing, either swept away by swollen rivers or buried by mudslides.

Officials said at least 68 others had been injured in landslides and flooding.

Nine major highways in Nepal had been blocked by floods and mudslides, 3,366 people had been rescued and 16,520 households had been temporarily displaced as of Monday, the National Emergency Operation Center said. No estimates on property or infrastructure damage were available.

Three rivers overflowed in northern India and submerged parts of Bihar state, leaving at least 14 people dead, officials said Monday. Farther east, 17 others were killed by flooding in Assam and other states in India’s remote northeast.

Pratata Amrit, a government official, said about 200,000 people left their flooded village homes in Bihar, with 50,000 taking shelter in 152 state-run relief camps.

More than 2 million were affected by the flooding and mudslides in Assam and elsewhere in the far northeast in the past four days, officials said.

Nearly 80% of Assam’s Kaziranga National Park, home to the endangered one-horn rhinoceros, has been flooded by the Brahmaputra River, which flows along the sanctuary, forest officer Jutika Borah said.

Six deer trying to move to higher ground were killed by speeding vehicles on a highway crossing the park, Borah said. Forest guards have been posted on the highway to provide a corridor for the animals.

In the northern Indian town of Solan, which lies in a hilly border region hit by heavy rains, 13 soldiers and one civilian died after a three-story building collapsed, officials told The Associated Press on Monday. They said 31 people had been rescued, and that the soldiers had been having a party in the building’s ground-floor restaurant when the collapse occurred.

In Bangladesh, 14 deaths have been recorded as a result of flooding in low-lying areas of the country since July 9, and 60,000 families in those areas were still “marooned in their home or community shelters” as of Sunday, the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society said in a report. Officials said several farmers were killed by lightning.

Bangladesh, with 160 million people and more than 130 rivers, is prone to monsoon floods because of overflowing rivers and the heavy onrush of water from upstream India.

Monsoon rains hit the region in June-September. The rains are crucial for rain-fed crops planted during the season.

There are vast inequalities across countries, and among the poorer segments of societies: UN report

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UN — The 2019 global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) from the UN Development Programme (UNDP), shows that, in the 101 countries studied – 31 low income, 68 middle income and 2 high income – 1.3 billion people are “multidimensionally poor”(which means that poverty is defined not simply by income, but by a number of indicators, including poor health, poor quality of work and the threat of violence).

Poverty is everywhere, inequality within countries is ‘massive’

“Action against poverty is needed in all developing regions”, the report states, noting that Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are home to the largest proportion of poor people, some 84.5 per cent.

Within these regions, the level of inequality is described as “massive”: in Sub-Saharan Africa it ranges from 6.3 per cent in South Africa to 91.9 per cent in South Sudan. The disparity in South Asia is from 0.8 per cent in the Maldives, to 55.9 per cent in Afghanistan.

Many of the countries studied in the report show “extensive” internal levels of inequality: in Uganda, for example, the incidence of multidimensional poverty in the different provinces, ranges from six per cent in Kampala, to 96.3 per cent in Karamoja.

Children bear the greatest burden

Over half of the 1.3 billion people identified as poor, some 663 million, are children under the age of 18, and around a third (some 428 million) are under the age of 10.

The vast majority of these children, around 85 per cent, live in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, split roughly equally between the two regions. The picture is particularly dire in Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Niger and South Sudan, where 90 per cent or more of children under the age of 10, are considered to be multidimensionally poor.

Signs of progress towards poverty reduction

One section of the report evaluates the progress that is being made in reaching Goal 1 of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, namely ending poverty “in all its forms, everywhere”.

(the report) gives a more comprehensive picture of poverty, and gives an indication of where to target policies Pedro Conceição, Director, Human Development Report Office, UNDP

The report identifies 10 countries, with a combined population of around 2 billion people, to illustrate the level of poverty reduction, and all of them have shown statistically significant progress towards achieving Goal 1. The fastest reductions were seen in India, Cambodia and Bangladesh.

Speaking ahead of the launch, Pedro Conceição, Director of the Human Development Report Office at UNDP, told UN News that the report “gives a more comprehensive picture of poverty, and gives an indication of where to target policies that may address the dimensions in which people are deprived, whether it’s education, health, or other aspects that could enable people to be lifted out of poverty if these investments are made.”

However, the report notes that no single measure is a sufficient guide to both inequality and multidimensional poverty, and that studies such as the MPI, Human Development Index, and Gini coefficient (which measures countries’ wealth income distribution), can each contribute important and distinctive information

The level of inbound telephone fraud to the UK was similar to that of Tunisia, Somalia and Cuba

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Residents across the UK have become major targets for telephone fraudsters who trick people into calling back fake numbers.

The scale of global telecoms fraud is unknown but 170m fraudulent calls were blocked across the world in 2018 to hundreds of destinations, a report by BICS, a subsidiary of Proximus, the Belgian telecoms company showed. The UK accounted for 25m, or 15 per cent, of those scam calls which is by far the highest number for a country in the G20 group of large economies, Financial time reported.

The level of inbound telephone fraud to the UK was similar to that of Tunisia, Somalia and Cuba, the study based on information provided by 900 telecoms companies found. The industry estimates that globally telecoms fraud costs it $17bn a year.

The crime in the UK relates largely to the regulation and ownership of premium rate numbers in the 070 range, according to BICS, a wholesale business that provides international links between branded telecoms companies. The numbers are used to divert one number to another to maintain a user’s privacy, for instance when selling a car online, but the owner of the number can also set the price people have to pay to make the call.

This has been abused by scammers who entice users to unwittingly return a “missed call” to an 070 number that looks to be from a normal mobile number in the UK, which start with the 07 prefix. Consumers who fall for the scam have regularly incurred huge costs after returning the dubious call.

Katia Gonzalez, head of fraud prevention at BICS, said: “The UK is a long-suffering target of telecoms fraud, both in terms of its phone numbers being used to collect fraudulent traffic and its subscribers being targeted.”

An Ofcom spokesperson said: “We identified concerns about scammers using 070 numbers to defraud people. So we’ve stepped in to help protect callers, reducing the amount phone companies can charge for connecting these calls and, with it, the incentive to use them fraudulently.”

Ms Gonzalez was confident that the move could finally reduce the UK’s appeal to telecoms scammers.

“We anticipate Ofcom’s price cap will result in a reduction of fraud traffic terminated in the UK. We will be carefully monitoring fraudulent traffic levels following the end of the implementation period in October, to see if the regulator’s actions have had the desired effect,” she said. From Financial time.

How to stop nuisance phone calls

If you are receiving unwanted phone calls you can report it to various organisations.

Your phone operator is a good place to start, from there you can also get in touch with the Telephone Preferences Service (TPS) as well as Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Registering with the TPS will help you record your preferences to not receive such calls.

Your phone provider can also provide you with ways to block them.

The ICO can also fine companies up to £500,000 for such calls and text messages.

 

South Asian Cultural Performance in Edinburgh

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London– More than 800 carnival performers from across the globe took over Edinburgh’s city center during the weekend.

The Edinburgh Festival Carnival 2019 was celebrated on Sunday with a range of flamboyant outfits and music from around the world.

The free event on 14th of July, ran from 2 pm, was organised as part of the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

Among those performing were Meninos Do Morumbi from Brazil, Circo Fantastico from Costa Rica, Goa Dance Association of India, J-Flag from Jamaica and Nepal Scotland Association (NSA).

Amid spectacular performance from Indian and other South Asian community, Pasha Pucha Guthi UK performed a typical ethnic,  Nepali cultural performance. Besides  Naumati musical instruments, symbolic presentation of Indra Jatra, Dhime Jyapu musical instrument, Lakhe dance and Bhairav dance were the main attraction of the event.

Nepali flag, banner and Visit Nepal 2020 flyers were displayed during the show.  “As a local resident of Scotland, it was our pleasure to be a part of the multicultural society and demonstrate our ethnic and cultural identity during the show, “ said Bhola Khanal, Director of Everest Inn Perth and an Advisor of Nepal Scotland Association. “We wanted people to understand our diverse and unique Nepali culture and encourage people to Visit Nepal” Ojesh Singh , President of Pasha Pucha Guthi & Youth Coordinator of Visit Nepal 2020 campaign said.

Similarly , General Secretary of Pasha Pucha Guthi, UK, Sushil Prajapati, expressed his pleasure for the opportunity to demonstrate Nepali/Newari cultural attire and performances at the event.  President of Nepal Scotland Association, Vijay Dangol, thanked all participants for active participation and support to the initiative aimed at promoting Nepali art and culture.  Nepalese cultural parade was  Supported by Namaste kathmandu restaurant , Everest inn, perth,  Namatay Simala Palace Restaurant, NRNA Scotland chairman and organised by Nepal Scotland Association,  PACH PUCHA GUTHI SCOTLAND UK, NAUMATI BAJA and the  Nepali community of Scotland.

As part of the festival, Ross Bandstand performed at the Princes Street Gardens while circus, street arts and a special kids area were other attractions of the festival..

Photo : Sushil Prajapati

Son Of Venezuelan Leader Maduro In Nepal To Build Solidarity With Ruling Nepal Communist Party

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Kathmandu — Since the United States Government imposed santion on the Venezuelan president’s son Nicolas “Nicolasito” Ernesto Maduro Guerra Maduro Guerra has been making to broaden its alliance globally against the United States.

Boycotted all over the world, Nicolasito” Ernesto Maduro Guerra has established relations with top gun of ruling communist party. With a mission to pursue Nepalese communist leaders to oppose U.S. sanctions and show solidarity with his father’s regime, Nicolás Maduro is now in Nepal, the Spotlight Nepal reported.

It is reported that Nicolas is seeking support for solidarity to fight U.S imperialism.

Arrived Nepal on Saturday, he has already held meeting with NCP spokesperson Narayan Kazi Shrestha, Bam Dev Gautam and former prime minister Jhalnath Khanal. Visiting Nepal under an invitation from NCP’s youth association, they will leave Nepal on Tuesday. and is meeting prominent leaders. Guerra has brought three other ministers with him. He’s staying in Nepal till Tuesday and will be meeting leaders from Nepal Communist Party. Guerra and his team came to Nepal upon invitation from NCP’s youth association.

Although government ministers have already declined to see him, Nicolas is meeting NCP leaders.

Whether the team will meet Prime Minister (PM) KP Sharma Oli and CPN Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has yet to be decided. “They are taking initiative. But whether they will meet the chairman duo has yet to be finalized,” he revealed.

CPN lawmaker in the National Assembly Balaram Baskota said the team including Maduro’s son welcomed the CPN’s electoral victory in Nepal. “They met lawmakers Monday morning,” Baskota, who has visited Venezuela, stated. “They are victim of an imperialist country like America like we are from Indian interventions. It was also seen recently in the episode of pesticide testing.”, Setopati reported.

CPN Chairman Dahal’s press statement on the political developments of Venezuela had created a storm at the start of year.

“Communist Party of Nepal issues this statement in support of the people of Venezuela, the sovereignty of the state and the recognition of democratically elected constitutional President of Nicholas Maduro,” the press statement issued in the name of Chairman Dahal on January 25 read, “Communist Party of Nepal also strongly denounces the US and its allies intervention in the internal affairs of Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela with the intention of increasing the violence by diving the people and challenging democracy, sovereignty and peace.”
In the press release, Dahal accused the US of trying to create chaos and violence in Venezuela by putting inhuman economic sanctions and threatening military intervention. “It’s a serious challenge to the UN Charter and Principle of peaceful co-existence. Therefore, we call the US and other countries to respect the principle of noninterference, national sovereignty and peaceful co-existence.”

It is reported that Maduro relies on his son Nicolasito and others close to his authoritarian regime to maintain a stranglehold on the economy and suppress the people of Venezuela.

Nicolasito, 29, is a member of the National Constituent Assembly, considered “illegitimate” by the United States, and was designated by his father to be director of the Inspectors Corps of the Presidency.

U.S accused Maduro’s regime saying that it was built on fraudulent elections, and his inner circle lives in luxury off the proceeds of corruption while the Venezuelan people suffer.”

This decision freezes all the assets Nicolasito has under United States jurisdiction and bans all US organizations and companies from doing business with him.

Venezuela is going through its worst political tension since last January when Maduro was sworn in for another six-year term as chief executive, which was not accepted by the opposition nor by much of the international community. In response, opposition leader and National Assembly Speaker Juan Guaido proclaimed himself interim president of the nation.

The United States was the first country to recognize Guaido as interim head of state, and was later joined by some 50 other countries, most of them in Latin America.

China’s ultimate strategy will be to govern the world with a vision of Pax- Sinica’

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■ Dr. Shirley Ze Yu
A former news anchor at the Chinese national television (CCTV), DR SHIRLEY ZE YU, is a Senior Visiting Fellowat the London School of Politics and Economics (LSE). She is also a Fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School. An expert on China’s economy and geopolitics, she spoke to BHAGIRATH YOGI and JAGAN KARKI of thewww.southasiatime.com on current global and regional issues.  Excerpts of the interview:

First of all, BRI. What do you think may have led Chinese President Xi Jinping to come up with such an ambitious project  called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)?

There are domestic and international reasons for the initiation of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013. Post 2008 Global Financial Crisis, China swiftly launched a 4 trillion RMB stimulus package. This stimulus package was extremely effective not only in sustaining the speed of China’s economic growth, but also in contributing to stabilize the global economic crisis. However, this 4 trillion RMB stimulus package also created excess manufacturing capacity in many natural resources and industrial manufacturing sectors, including steel production. By 2013, the issues of excess production capacity in China’s industrial sectors became more acute. A natural economic rationale for China was to export its excess production capacity to regional countries to help build these countries’ infrastructure. Therefore, it alleviates the pain of shutting down steel mills and factories, and rising unemployment inside China. 

In 2013, Xi Jinping became China’s new president. President Xi abandoned the previous four decades of Chinese foreign policy doctrine of “ hide your brightness and bide your time”. China did what a nation who believed itself to be exceptional naturally would do, to seek its legitimate place in the world that pairs up with its economic status as the world’s second largest economy, and in a decade, projected to be the world’s largest economy. The Belt and Road Initiative was named the top national strategy of China, or what I equate to the US Grand Strategy. The BRI aims to exert China’s comprehensive economic, geopolitical, and strategic power across continental Eurasia and maritime Pacific. 

Many see the BRI as a Chinese effort to regain its place in history. Do you agree?

I agree. The US and China are the only two modern sovereign nations in the world who each claims a national dream and a global destiny. Chinese Dream is anchored on the Century of national humiliation in the 19-20th century filled with foreign invasions. According to Mr. Xi’s Two 100-year Plans, the Chinese dream is  by the centennial anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China around 2050, for China to become among the greatest nations in the world, or basically to assume a type of global leadership.

The BRI is China’s transitory grand strategy between 2013 when the idea first arose to around the mid point of the Century, at the conclusion of the second One Hundred Plan. If BRI is successfully carried out, China’s ultimate grand strategy after 2050 will be to govern the world with a vision of a Chinese order, i.e. Pax- Sinica.

At a time when the US seems to be pushing its Indo-Pacific Strategy vigorously, do you think China would be able to resist the US pressure with BRI alone?

When (Dr Henry) Kissinger talked about China’s BRI, he pointed out that despite all the South China Sea island spats, the South China Sea, or to a larger extent, the Into-Pacific (Asia Pacific) will remain largely peaceful. The US has indisputable maritime military dominance. China is a second, and a rising second. China knows fully well that by a potential challenge to the US’s maritime dominance, it is not likely to bring about a change in that leadership. China, under normal circumstances, would remain defensive and constrained in its actions.

Asian countries along the maritime route, however, do face an ongoing dilemma of recognizing a tale of two Asias. China is the leader of an economic Asia, and the US, the leader of a security Asia. It would take political wisdom of leaders in the region to balance the two powers, and from which, to maximize its own interest, alliances and security. 

However, the game changer is likely to happen along BRI’s continental route along Eurasia. Continental Eurasia is a region the US has failed to dominate with neither of its hard power nor soft power, neither during the Cold War or after the Cold War. China’s infrastructure development could fundamentally pivot the balance of power along the Eurasian continent. 

Many Asian countries seem to be worried that they might fall into debt trap if they sign up to the BRI? What do you think could be the win-win for both sides?

Sustainability of the debt model in infrastructure financing poses a real systemic risk, not only to the recipient countries, but also to China. 50 recipient countries of China’s debt finance, on average, has received the amount of Chinese debt equivalent to 17% of its country’s GDP, according to the Economist. These are shocking figures. However, so much has been talked about of the debt trap, very little has been talked about of China’s strategic vulnerability in lending to these regimes, many of which are illiberal, some autocratic, and some semi-democratic. If these regimes incurred a military coup, a leadership change, or a revolution, China’s debt to these countries could be forfeited and projects savaged by the coming leadership. Political accountability or financial recourse were nowhere to be found. The risks lie on both sides. Financial transparency and sound financial governance of these infrastructure projects, and ultimately the financial health and feasibility of the recipient country in taking on the amount of debt must be paramount considerations. 

What do you see the future of the BRI in the wake of the US-China trade war and Brexit, among others? 

The sustainability of the BRI will be contingent on the sustainability of China’s economic growth. If Chinese economy incurred a hard landing due to US-China trade war, the BRI will no longer be financially feasible. The BRI is also continent upon China’s ability to articulate its soft power to the region.  Countries will engage with other countries purely on economic basis. But in order for China to achieve its strategic objective of forming a  “community of common destiny” with the 66 countries along the BRI, hard economic power is not enough. China will need to have the soft power, a set of ideational values on what a China-posited common destiny is,  that are inspiring enough for the countries to follow, so that China’s strategic leadership to the region becomes possible. 

How do you think countries like Nepal could benefit from the BRI at a time when their immediate neighbour, India, hasn’t signed up to it?

Nepal signed up in 2017 to the BRI. What is imminently exciting is the China-Nepal railway extended from Tibet through Mount Everest to Nepal border Rasuwa district by 2020. The same Railway will be further extended to Kathmandu by 2022. This will bring much needed trade between Nepal and China,and increase Nepalese tourism revenue by bringing Chinese tourists. China is also encouraging Nepali students to study in the Chinese universities. 

The difficulties of the project are in its financing and engineering. The opportunity is the increase in goods and services trade across the border.
The  preliminary estimate of the construction cost to bring the Chinese railway to the Nepal’s boarder is around US$5.5 Billion.
This equals to Nepal’s entire revenue of 2018. Nepal has been trying to secure a construction grant from China, which seems to be the only way possible for Nepal to finance it.
This railway is also one of the hardest railways to construct based on the area’s typography, hydrology, weather, and tectonics, according to a local news report. Once completed, it will certainly be a great railway engineering feat.
The railway connectivity will hopefully help address Nepal’s trade deficit with China, as Nepal’s inbound tourism revenue is expected to increase with influx of Chinese tourists.

Dr Shirley tweets at @shirleyzeyu 

Nepali authorities give a clean chit to a leading NRN Businessman

Posted on by SAT News Desk

London – Nepali authorities haven’t received any complaints against a leading NRN businessman on charges of money laundering, a newspaper report said.

Nepal’s central bank, Nepal Rastra Bank, Department of Money Laundering Investigation (DMLI) and Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police—all three government agencies have given clean chit to Dr Niraj Govinda Shrestha, state-owned The Rising Nepal (TRN) daily reported.

Jiban Prakash Sitaula, Director General of the DMLI, said, “There is no case against Mr Shresetha in connection with money laundering charges.”

Chintamani Shivakoti, Deputy Governor of the NRB, said,” We have nopt received any complaint against Mr Shrestha in the past as well.”

Likewise, CIB of Nepal Police has also given clean chit to Dr Shrestha, the daily reported.

Earlier, Dr Niraj Govinda Shrestha, a Non-Resident Nepali businessman based in Minsk, Belarus, had refuted media reports linking him in the so-called money laundering activities.

In a press statement issued last week, Dr Shrestha said the Kathmandu-based Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) published a news feature entitled “An expose of money laundering in the name of Foreign Direct Investment.

“My name was implicated in the said news without any basis or verification and without contacting me. Other leading Nepali media also carried the same story without contacting me. I published a statement refuting those allegations.  But even now few media outlets are publishing stories implicating my name,” he added.

Some businessmen have faced serious problems due to recent news published by the Center for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) Nepal entitled 55 Nepalese invested in offshore companies, the TRN report said.

Some of them have experienced difficulties even with their businesses abroad. They have complained that such news stories could discourage foreign investment in Nepal as well. The CIJ Nepal had published story in January this year based upon the global investigation carried out by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the news report added.

Dr Shrestha has various businesses over various countries across the globe. As one of the businessmen named in the story published by the CIJ, he has submitted a formal petition at the Nepal Press Council clarifying that the published news story was baseless and resulted in severe personal, social and business loss to him.

Dr Shrestha said that because of the media reports his daughter and son-in-law, who run their onw business in the United Kingdom (UK), have also faced financial losses due to unfounded allegations against him.

The CIJ Nepal has now published Shrestha’s comments along with the news in their website following an instruction by the Nepal Press Council.

60 people killed, 26 in missing Nepal due to monsoon havoc ; India and Bangladesh also affected badly

Posted on by SAT News Desk

AP, KATHMANDU: Flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rainfall have killed at least 60 people in Nepal in the past few days, with more deaths reported across the border in India and Bangladesh, officials said Sunday.

At least 30 other people were missing in Nepal, either swept away by swollen rivers or buried by mudslides since monsoon rains began pounding the region on Friday, Nepal’s National Emergency Operation Center said.

The center said nine key highways remained blocked by floods and mudslides, and attempts were underway to open them up for traffic. Among them is the East-West Highway, which connects Nepal’s southern districts.

Other roads were being cleared by thousands of police and soldiers. Continuing bad weather has grounded helicopter rescue flights. Workers were also repairing fallen communication towers to restore phone lines.

Thirty people have been treated for injuries and more than 1,100 others rescued from flooded areas. More than 10,000 are estimated to have been displaced.

Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology warned of more troubles ahead for the southern region near the main rivers, urging people to keep watch on rising water levels and move to higher ground when needed.

Rain-triggered floods, mudslides and lightning have left a trail of destruction in other parts of South Asia.

In Bangladesh, at least a dozen people, mostly farmers in rural areas, have been killed by lightning since Saturday as monsoon rains continue to batter parts of the low-lying country, according to officials and news reports.

Water Development Board official Rabiul Islam said about 40,000 people have been affected, mostly due to their homes being submerged underwater.

Bangladesh, a low-lying delta nation of 160 million people with more than 130 rivers, is prone to monsoon floods because of overflowing rivers and the heavy onrush of water from upstream India.

Officials in northeastern India said at least 14 people were killed and over a million affected by flooding, state official Kumar Sanjay Krishna said. Six deaths were reported in neighboring Arunachal state.

Assam’s Kaziranga National Park, home to the endangered one-horn rhinoceros, has been flooded.

Floods and mudslides have also hit some other northeast Indian states, including Meghalaya, Sikkim and Mizoram. In Mizoram, floods have submerged about 400 homes in the small town of Tlabung, police said.

Fears of cities running out of water have become very real in several parts of the world, most recently in South Asia

Posted on by SAT News Desk

By : Marianne Kjellén, Senior Water Advisor, UNDP

Fears of cities running out of water have become very real in several parts of the world, most recently in South Asia in places such as Karachi, Islamabad, Chennai, and Delhi. These crises reveal severe underlying problems with water resource management and distribution.

Urban areas occupy only a small percentage of the Earth’s surface. Yet, they are home to well over half of the world’s population. The traditional response to their growing water needs has been to bring  supplies from increasingly distant places. These can be impressive feats of engineering, but they often fail to serve everybody, as distribution can be faulty, even in normal times. To keep up with growing urban economies and populations, cities need to be much smarter about how they govern their water.

Here are four ways that can happen:

Catchment management: Encourage land use and agricultural methods that reduce evaporation and help rainwater infiltration, which is necessary for groundwater to recharge. This also helps reduce seasonal variation and the risk of flooding. Watershed management also involves preserving water quality, which can reduce the cost of treatment. This is best seen in New York City, which has the largest unfiltered water supply in the world – careful protection of the catchment has avoided the cost of a US$10 billion filtration plant.

Water reuse: Global water flows are cyclical, but traditionally engineered urban water systems are linear, with limited reuse. Housing a growing share of world’s population in a limited space requires a near revolutionary tightening of the urban water cycle which means better water use efficiency and recycling. This requires greater attention to water quality management and ending water pollution. Nature-based solutions have a lot to offer to ensure cost-effectiveness and long-term sustainability.

Infrastructure management: Managers of many piped systems across the world need to increase service coverage and reduce physical losses.

Excluding large parts of the population from piped water produces paradoxes of low-income urban dwellers paying dearly for a comparatively lower service. Such inequalities may even provoke deliberate break-ins to pipes. Exclusionary distribution and water rationing – where water pipes are mostly empty, or without pressure – both contribute to deliberate or inadvertent network damage and increased leakage.

Leaking pipes are a direct consequence of poor maintenance. While much of the ‘non-revenue’ or ‘unaccounted-for’ water may be put to beneficial use or even groundwater recharge; it is a symptom of poor management. Skillful pressure management is needed to preserve both the quantity and quality of piped water.

Communication with users: Urban water users need to agree on a common vision for the whole system, which in turn needs to be underpinned by adequate rules and incentives. While there may be rules about clean production or effluent treatment; these will only be followed if there is a general agreement about the importance of clean, reusable water. Water pricing is an important tool to encourage good behaviour. Progressive household water tariffs can be designed to promote cost recovery, universal coverage, equity of supply, and reduced waste.

The crises that follow dry spells and declining water storage not only reveal weaknesses in management, they also expose long-standing contradictions and inequities. In Cape Townqueuing at public taps was a panic-inducing threat to some, while to others it had been the reality for years. The conflict, panic and worries which some face only during exceptional water scarcity may be part of others’ everyday struggle.

Climate change is not the cause of the global urban water crisis. Rather, its extremes reveal existing underlying threats to urban water security.

Just as cholera in its time was dubbed ‘the best of all sanitary reformers’; let’s make climate change  the trigger that gets urban governments to stem inequalities and stop wasteful use

Accelerating disaster risk reduction in South Asia to keep up with development

Posted on by SAT News Desk

UNDRR, GANDHINAGAR, 12 July 2019 – Countries in South Asia have made remarkable progress in social and economic development. As the world’s fastest growing region, most countries are now classified middle-income countries and enjoy improving social indicators. Between 1990-2017, the average human development index in the region increased by 45.3 percent, making it the region with the fastest growth in human development globally.

The region is also one of the most disaster-prone in the world, facing a diverse set of hazards due to its ecological and geographic diversity. Moreover, as it is home to a quarter of the world’s population, who are increasingly living in dense urban areas, the region hosts one-third of the global number of people affected by disasters.

In light of these challenges and to safeguard development and protect lives, countries in the region have made good progress in switching from simply responding to disasters, to actively seeking to prepare for disasters and reduce their risks.

“A combination of rapid economic growth and rising disaster risk poses grave obstacles to the development trajectory of the countries in the region. For development to outpace disaster risk, a transformational change in the way we address disasters needs to take place – with a primary focus on risk prevention and building resilience,” said Dr. Animesh Kumar, Deputy Chief of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) in Asia-Pacific.

To make a strong case for risk prevention, the interim unit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Disaster Management Centre (SDMC-IU) and UNDRR co-organized a regional workshop for all eight SAARC Member States to accelerate their disaster risk management efforts. Participants were drawn from the national disaster risk management agencies and ministries responsible for planning and finance. The workshop was supported by the UNDRR Global Education and Training Institute and the International Recovery Platform Secretariat.

Highlighting the importance of the workshop to the SAARC countries, Mr. P. K. Taneja, Director of the SDMC-IU, said: “risks faced by SAARC member states are not individual but always shared, therefore we need mechanisms to address common challenges. Risk knowledge should be at the forefront of all our planning and development decisions.”

The ambitious three-day workshop covered a number of interconnected issues that all countries must address to build their disaster resilience and ensure their development investments are risk-informed. This starts by ensuring overall coherence in the government’s approach to development, climate action and disaster risk reduction. Participants shared good practices in implementation of their DRR strategies and identified institutional and financial barriers to risk prevention.

“In the Maldives, development used to be ad-hoc. As a result, large-scale land reclamation projects increased our vulnerability to disasters. However, we have now realized how important it is to assess our risk and to adopt an integrated risk management approach,” said Ms. Zeeniya Riyaz from the Maldives Ministry of Planning and Infrastructure, who spoke about the process her country was adopting in developing its first national development plan.

Building on the common challenges and shared risks among the SAARC Member States, the workshop will result in a roadmap to revise the regional SAARC Disaster Risk Management Framework to align it with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The workshop also benefited from technical support and advice by the Asian Development Bank, Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, World Food Programme, UNICEF, Japan International Cooperation Agency and SEEDS-India, who all shared their insights during special sessions on financing, building back better, housing reconstruction, and partnerships.

SAARC participants also benefited from hearing about the experiences of other Asian regional intergovernmental organisations in the development of their regional DRR strategies, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Pacific Island Forum Secretariat (PIFS).

British Punjabi organisation founder withdraws from British Indian Awards

Posted on by SAT News Desk

CtoI News Desk– Three hundred British Indians have been shortlisted as finalists for the Seventh British Indian Awards 2019, but not all of them are happy about it.

British Punjabi mental health not-for-profit Taraki founder, Shuranjeet Singh Takhar stirred up a minor controversy when he declined the nomination in the Influencer of the Year category, objecting to the term ‘influencer’ and the categorisation of the awards as ‘British Indian’.

Takhar posted a statement on Twitter explaining that he was “withdrawing Taraki from this opportunity”.

“I do not feel comfortable identifying myself or Taraki as an ‘influencer’ or a movement identified as ‘British Indian’,” he stated.

Jaspreet Singh, a Sikh student at Birmingham University who had been shortlisted in the Young Achiever category, also withdrew from the awards.

The awards recognise a wide range of achievements across the worlds of business, charity, sports, arts, culture, education and medicine. Categories encompass Rising Star, Young Achiever of the Year and Best in Sport among many others.

The awards will be held at the Birmingham Conference and Events Centre at the Holiday Inn in the Birmingham City Centre on July 26.

The British Indian Awards 2019 are organised by ethnic awards company Oceanic Consulting. They showcase the strength of the British Indian community, the impact they have on British culture and their progression over the last year, an official statement read.

Ocean Consulting CEO Irfan Younis said, “All finalists should be proud to represent British Indians, highlighting all the wonderful achievements of this diverse and brilliant community. The awards provide a platform to thank those who do what they know best, thrive in their fields and provide future generations with inspirational role-models.”

The full list of nominees is available here.