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Professor Dr Govinda KC has issued yet another ultimatum to the government as part of his struggle for reforms in the medical education sector. 

Dr KC put forth his demands by organizing a press conference in the Capital on Monday, threatening to launch a hunger strike from August 14 if the government fails to meet his demands.

He demanded the withdrawal of CTEVT’s ‘illegal move’ regarding seat allocation and student admission in nursing, pharmacy and health assistant studies, dismissal of officials behind the move, formation of a recommendation committee for the appointment of the vice-chair of the Medical Education Commission within a week and completion of the selection process before the expiry of the current Vice-chair Dr Shree Krishna Giri’s term (in August). 

Dr KC also demanded that the CTEVT’s decision to hike tuition fees for health assistant, pharmacy and nursing studies be revoked along with the vested interests’ bid to interfere in the CTEVT’s seat allocation and selection process. On its part, CTEVT has put its fee hike move on hold in the wake of protests.

He took the occasion to reiterate his demands, including the establishment and operation of government medical colleges or institutes in all provinces, enactment of a law outlining criteria for appointment of Integrated Health (Science) Education and Academy officials, arrangements for the transformation of medical education into a not-for-profit sector, legal arrangements to prevent conflicts of interest in medical education institutes, appointment of permanent medical staff in government hospitals on the basis of number of available beds and a strict implementation of legal provisions on free medication and treatment from government health institutions.

He has also asked the government to implement agreements reached with him on Sept 24, 2022. 

“While our repeated protests led to various reforms, the government has yet to implement many important agreements. At this point, efforts are on to reverse the reform process in the interest of medical mafia,” Dr KC said.

He maintained that organized efforts were underway to destroy the Medical Education Commission, the regulatory body of medical education, by removing provisions of the Medical Education Act.

Attempts to reverse the achievements of the decade-long struggle for reforms in medical education are reproachable, Dr KC said: Our repeated calls to the government to do a course correction have gone unheard. Instead of starting the process for new appointments at the Medical Education Commission, the government is trying to throw a spanner in the commission’s works by making it leaderless. 

The Minister for Education is protecting party workers instead of stopping them from interfering in seat allocation and admission process in CTEVT affiliates,  Dr KC said, adding: This has given rise to suspicion that the minister may have been working in the interest of the medical mafia.

A senior IFC official is on a three-day visit to Nepal to renew IFC's commitment to support private sector to help meet country’s development goals while discussing investment opportunities.

During her visit, IFC's Vice President for Economics and Private Sector Development, Susan M. Lund, is scheduled to meet senior government officials and private sector leaders.

Nepal is a priority country for IFC, and its first investment dates back to 1975. Since July 2018, IFC has committed over USD 560 million in long-term financing in the country.

Based in Washington DC, Lund leads a large staff of economists who provide economic analysis to support IFC investments, including macroeconomic outlooks, country risk assessments, and country private sector diagnostics.

Prior to joining IFC, Ms. Lund spent over 20 years as a partner at McKinsey & Company and the leader of the McKinsey Global Institute.

At least 35 people have been killed after a powerful bomb ripped through a political rally in northwestern Pakistan, local officials said, Aljazeera reported.

The blast took place on Sunday at a gathering of the conservative Jamiat Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) party on the outskirts of Khar in Pakistan’s northwestern Bajur district, which borders Afghanistan.

Azam Khan, head of the emergency room at Khar’s main hospital, said 35 bodies were brought to the hospital and more than 100 others were wounded.

Government administrator Mohibullah Khan Yousufzai confirmed the toll, adding that some of the wounded were being airlifted to the provincial capital, Peshawar.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but local authorities said the explosion was caused by a suicide bomb.

Senior police officer Nazir Khan said the JUI-F’s workers’ convention was under way when the explosion took place.

Akhtar Hayat Gandapur, the inspector-general of police for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said senior party leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman was not at the event when the explosion took place.

Political meetings such as the one organised by the JUI-F party on Sunday are being held across the country to mobilise supporters for the coming elections, due to be held by October.

Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif strongly condemned the incident and extended his condolences to the families of the victims, including that of JUI-F leader Ziaullah Jan, who was confirmed killed in the attack, Radio Pakistan reported.

Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari “expressed deep sorrow over the loss of precious lives”, his Pakistan People’s Party said in a statement.

It added that the “the terrorists, their facilitators and planners need to be eliminated so that peace is established in the country.”

Interior Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said on Twitter, recently rebranded as X, that the the “religion of terrorists is only terrorism.” “Ending terrorism is very important for the survival and integrity of Pakistan,” she added.

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said there were fears that the armed group Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, may be responsible for the blast.

“The Tehrik-e Taliban have declared against the security forces and against the government and Maulana Fazlur Rehman is an ally of the government,” Hyder said.

JUI-F is part of the Pakistan Democratic Alliance, a political coalition affiliated with the government in which Rehman plays a leading role.

Security analyst Zeeshan Salahuddin told Al Jazeera the TTP has “dramatically escalated” the string of attacks since a ceasefire with the government broke down last year.

“All indications point to the fact that this terror group has regained quite a lot of the momentum it had lost between 2014 and 2018, when Pakistan conducted extensive military operations against the group,” Salahuddin said.

The TTP pledges allegiance to, but is not directly a part of, Afghanistan’s Taliban which surged back to power in 2021.

Salahuddin added that the TTP was receiving support from Afghanistan and increasing its capabilities as well as its internal cohesion.

The group has been waging a rebellion against the state of Pakistan for more than a decade, demanding the imposition of Islamic law, the release of key members arrested by the government and a reversal of the merger of Pakistan’s tribal areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to Aljazeera.

In January, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a mosque inside a police compound in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing more than 80 officers.

The attacks have been focused on regions bordering Afghanistan, including Bajur, one of seven remote districts where armed groups have been emboldened by the return of the Afghan Taliban.

Nepal has signed diplomatic ties with Nauru on Thursday. The Permanent Representative of Nepal to the United Nations in New York, Amrit Rai, and the Permanent Representative of Nauru Ambassador Margo Deiye signed a joint communique in New York, establishing the diplomatic relations between the two countries, according to Nepal's Mission to the UN in New York. With this, the number of countries having diplomatic ties with Nepal reached 179. The ambassadors of both the countries have shared this information to the UN Secretary-General, it has been learnt. The ambassadors of the two countries have expressed their commitment to enhancing cooperation in international forums, work in development aspirations and deepen people to people ties. Nauru is a country in the northeast of Australia near the Pacific Ocean and had gotten the status of an independent nation in 1968.  

A 42-year-old man died of Bharatpur-10 on Saturday due to complications from Covid-19 in Chitwan. According to Durga Chapagain, Chief at the Chitwan Health Office, he was under medical treatment for pneumonia and was found infected with COVID-19 on April 13. There are 10 active cases of COVID-19 in the district at present.  

Amid speculations about the composition of the new government, senior officials from the Prime Minister’s Office and Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) are busy briefing a delegation of the Asia-Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) about progress made by Nepal in its anti-money laundering (AML) regime. The delegation of APG, a regional inter-governmental body with 41 member states, is currently in Kathmandu for a field study as part of the mutual evaluation of Nepal. In the last two weeks, the team has met stakeholders ranging from the judiciary, central bank, revenue administration, police administration, to the Office of the Company Registrar. The assessment is carried out to see how the member country has introduced AML laws and regulations, developed institutional mechanisms, and taken action accordingly. According to government officials, the APG delegation began a field study on Dec 5 by starting consultations with Nepali stakeholders on the legislative issues of AML, and they are now holding consultations regarding Nepal’s performance in the areas of implementation of AML laws. This is the third time that the APG has been conducting Nepal’s mutual evaluation. Earlier, such evaluations were done in 2005 and 2010. As the nearly one and half-year-long mutual evaluation of Nepal's compliance with anti-money laundering and combating terrorist financing (AML/CFT) regimes come to an end, all eyes are on the report that APG will present next July. The finding will be crucial for Nepal, say government officials. According to them, the current evaluation is different from the earlier ones, as APG is now seeking institutional outcomes and effectiveness. The APG report will determine whether Nepal will be under the International Co-operation Review Group (ICRG) monitoring of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global inter-governmental anti-money laundering body. The report will be first discussed in the APG plenary that is going to take place in July next year. “A good score by APG will put Nepal in a comfort zone. If not, the plenary could decide to put us under ICRG monitoring. If Nepal is included in the ICRG monitoring, global AML bodies could call our authorities for periodic discussions and ask for improvements,” say officials. “If our efforts fail to satisfy the FATF, we could be on the ‘grey’ list.” In order to avoid the ICRG monitoring, Nepal must show the significant progress it made in its AML regime. Nepal remained on the ‘grey list’ of FATF from 2008-2014. After a series of progress made on the AML regime that includes amendment of Anti-Money Laundering Act 2008, and the enactment of other laws, FATF finally removed Nepal from its ‘grey list’ in 2014. "The mutual evaluation of Nepal by APG is currently going on. Nepal has made efforts to make progress in its AML regime. While those efforts may not be sufficient if we compare them with international best practices, we should strive to be at par with international best practices," said Maha Prasad Adhikari, Governor of NRB. According to government officials who are engaged with the APG team, progress made after Dec 16 will not be included in the APG’s Mutual Evaluation Report to be published in the middle of next year. “We must complete the remaining tasks to improve our compliance in the next few days,” says one official. While the country has put laws and rules on AML in place, officials say the biggest weakness has been the enforcement of those laws. In order to address the legal loopholes, a Bill on Amending a Few Nepal Acts was registered in the House of Representatives. Part of the amendment included in the amendment bill was to amend the existing Money Laundering Prevention Act 2008. As the parliament became inactive, it could not endorse the amendment bill. So, the government submitted an ordinance with the same provision to the President for authentication last month. The bill is yet to get the presidential stamp. “If the ordinance is authenticated before Dec 16, it will be a big help to keep the country out of the potential grey list,” says a ministry at the Ministry of Finance “We will be able to show our strength at least in the legislation if not in enforcement.” The government’s weak performance in the areas of enforcement could put Nepal under the scanner of global anti-money laundering bodies. According to an official at NRB, when it comes to enforcement, big offenders have not been prosecuted which will reduce Nepal’s score in the areas of enforcement. The prosecuting agencies such as the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), the Department of Money Laundering Investigation, and the Department of Revenue Investigations are facing criticisms for not being able to prosecute ‘big fishes’. Most of the cases in which CIAA filed corruption cases at the Special Court are related to small sting operations in recent years. After the Supreme Court in April 2021, barred the anti-graft body from conducting sting operations, saying that such acts go against the constitutional and legal provisions and the principle of criminal justice, both prosecution and conviction rates have slumped sharply. On the other hand, the Department of Money Laundering Investigation is yet to conclude its investigation into former CIAA Chief Commissioner Deep Basnyat. The government’s own report - National Risks Assessment Report 2020 - a self-assessed progress report on Nepal’s compliance with AML/CFT, acknowledged weaknesses related to effective supervision of reporting entities, developing strong law enforcement relations with foreign counterparts with regards to capital flights, border management, implementation of forfeiture laws, independence of agencies and integrity of related officials. Nepal’s other weakness is its failure to ensure that all the reporting entities make timely reporting about suspicious transactions and reporting about transactions over certain thresholds. According to the Strategic Analysis Report 2022 published by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the NRB, financial institutions are the main reporting entities while Designated Non-Financial Businesses and Professions (DNFBPs) are in a nascent stage of reporting. According to FIU’s annual report 2021-22, the share of suspicious transactions reporting and suspicious activities reporting reported by commercial banks ranges from over two third to 85 percent in the last six years. However, the number of reports from other entities is rather fluctuating. Some institutions such as cooperatives, and insurance companies, for example, have quite low reporting in comparison to their size in the overall financial system. As per the report, commercial banks alone comprise almost 90 percent of threshold transaction reporting (TTR). What’s new in the bill?  The government has broadened the scope of terrorism stating that any terrorist activities are carried out as defined by the existing laws. The Bill has provisions to criminalize the acts that facilitate the terrorists. It has criminalized the financial investment to people and entities that build weapons and mass destruction and proliferate them. The reporting entities such as banks and financial institutions, insurance companies, and others are required to take necessary measures against possible financing to create weapons and mass destruction as per the provision of the Bill. Those who are responsible for preventing money laundering and terrorist financing will be punished if they deliberately helped such acts. The Bill also has provisions that reporting entities are required to report suspicious transactions instantly instead of the existing provision which calls for reporting as soon as possible.

Ram Kumar, a 30-year-old who sells vegetables on the roadside, has been living in fear ever since Balen Shah restricted street vendors from setting up shop on the streets. The fear of losing the only business that sustains his family leaves him restless. “Moving away from the main street has cost me a lot of customers. Now I fear I might even lose my cart,” he says. Kathmandu gave him home, he says, but with this problem looming large, he fears he has to go back to Bihar and start from scratch. “After all these years of struggle, I don’t want to go back to the same situation I was in 18 years ago,” he says. Before coming to Kathmandu, Kumar had left for Mumbai (Bombay as he calls it) with his friend. He was promised a job of InRs 2,000, but he was only given InRs 700. Disappointed, Kumar came back to Bihar and decided to move to Kathmandu. He came to Kathmandu from Bihar in 2004. He was studying in fifth grade but had to discontinue his education as his family could not afford it. “I wanted to study, but circumstances weren’t on my side,” he says. He was just 12. He mentions Kathmandu’s language and culture were difficult to learn and adapt to. He never thought he would be able to speak in Nepali. It’s still quite difficult to communicate, he says. Kathmandu was a new place for him and he didn’t know how he would survive. But his brother was already in the city and that at least put aside his lodging worries for a little while. He had a little money with him, but that only sustained him for a week or so. To make a living on his own, he desperately needed a job. “Luckily, I got to borrow a cycle from one of my brother’s friends,” he says. He used that to travel around and sell ice cubes. “Back then, I believed that was how I would be able to start a new life in Kathmandu,” he adds. Unfortunately, the business did not go as planned. But his determination to make it didn’t wane and he switched to selling chatpate on the streets. The standard cost for one plate of chatpate back then was five rupees. “There wasn’t much profit and it was difficult to make ends meet,” he says. “So I thought maybe selling chaat instead would be a better option.” He took a cart for rent, for which he had to pay a certain amount of money everyday. Sometimes, the profit would just cover that month’s rent. He had some regulars who visited quite often. But not all customers were easy on him. One of his customers, who was in her 60s, started ordering in Hindi immediately after she heard Ram Kumar’s accent. He replied in Nepali but she didn’t stop. She looked at him and giggled. He recalls how uncomfortable that made him. “I faced a lot of dicrimination because of how I spoke. It was very frustrating and humiliating,” he says. Jumping from one job to another had always been difficult for him. It brought about a lot of uncertainty, and now he had a family of five to feed. Not to mention the school fees of his two children. “My wife helped me out with the business but making a profit was also not up to her,” he says. His struggle isn’t just limited to life in Kathmandu. He is dealing with a property dispute back in Bihar. “My siblings and I had decided to invest some money to build a house there. Now there are some monetary issues,” he says. This isn’t the only betrayal he has faced. Back when he was selling chaat, he lent Rs 4,000 to one of his friends to start his life in Kathmandu. “I really hoped he would work and build a good life but he left for Bihar and never paid me back,” he says. He sometimes thinks things would have turned out a little better had his father still been alive. “I would at least have a support system. I never had it,” he says. But despite life’s cruelties, Kumar is happy with what he has. He is proud of the life he made for himself and his family. Now he works as a vegetable vendor. With the little amount he had saved from his past jobs, he was able to afford his own cart. “At least I don’t have to pay rent on it now,” he says. But he says he is still concerned about whether he will ever be able to give his family more than just the basics. He feels things would be different if he had studied. “My friends from school days have become doctors and engineers. Maybe I could have too,” he says. But he does not dwell on it for long. Instead, he hopes to send his children to good schools. But he fears, with the mayor imposing so many restrictions on street vendors, without giving them any alternative to earn a decent living, that dream might never materialize. “But I’m a religious person, and I believe God is looking after everyone,” he says. “Maybe he will look after me and my family too.”

Most of the child care homes in Nepal have been running without a proper implementation of existing laws that ensure safety of children, a research has found. It further states that most children's homes do not have any paperwork on the admitted children, and there is a huge gap when it comes to authorities monitoring these institutions. The research was conducted by Center for Legal Research and Resource Development (CeLRRd), in collaboration with National Child Rights' Council, ECPAT Luxembourg, and Shakti Samuha, and its findings were presented by lead researcher Kapil Aryal at an event in Kathmandu on Nov 2. The research was conducted in several child care homes (CCH) based in Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, Lalitpur, Chitwan, Kavre, Makwanpur, Dhading, Rasuwa, Pokhara, Gorkha, and Surkhet. According to the findings, there are many child care homes (CCH) that do not have proper documentation of where the children came from. Aryal says 10.4 percent of the care homes admitted to not having any filing system of the admitted children. But this data does have its limitations. According to Aryal, the researchers did not have the jurisdiction to ask for proof of documentation with the remaining 89.4 percent of the child care homes. He and his team suspect that a significant number of children's homes are operating without proper documentation. Furthermore, these institutes also lack proper staff to take care of children living there. “In one of the CCH, we had one person who cooked, cleaned, looked after the children, and is also running the institute,” says Aryal, ensuring no proper care for those children. Some of these orphanages were on the same building as a guest house, exposing many children to exploitation and sexual abuse. “They were also reluctant to let us visit,” he says. The findings also show that most of these institutions lack budget security, good food, and good health services. It does raise a question on how the government has been monitoring these institutions. Aryal says that there is a huge gap in communication between local, provincial and federal government which is why people running these institutions have gone unnoticed. “This lack of competence from the government exposes children to trafficking, sexual exploitations and pedophiles,” he adds. Also, the study says that most of these children are brought to the orphanages despite having a guardian, which can be considered as “orphanage trafficking”. One of the reasons being an excuse for asking for additional funding by showing the increasing number of children living in the institutions. Secondly, according to UNICEF’s report, more than 85 percent of child care homes are located in tourist destinations of Nepal. “This is a way of attracting tourist volunteers, when voluntourism is already illegal in Nepal for the ones holding a tourist visa, and additional fundings,” says Aryal, exposing these children to potential pedophiles. One of the conclusions that came out from this presentation is that there is a huge gap that needs to be filled between to child protection and human trafficking. Nepal still does not recognize ‘orphanage trafficking’ as a form of human trafficking but only as human transportation. “Not being able to address this has left many children we encountered vulnerable,” adds Aryal.