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Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has expressed his hope that the Third Nepal-Japan Friendship Summit-2025 would help further enhancing the bilateral relations between the two countries.

During his meeting with the Japanese delegation that has been here to attend the Summit and Nepali coordinators, at his official residence in Baluwatar today, the Prime Minister said the government-to-government and the people-to-people relations between Nepal and Japan are being expanded to export-import ties as well.

"Nepali have reached Japan for employment. Nepal's buckwheat is available in Japanese market and Nepal imports Golden Trout from Japan. Our friendship is deeper. We have nothing than friendship. Our friendship has blossomed like Sakura. Time demands to take these ties and partnership to a new height with the help of information technology." "Japan has proved that war ends with destruction and the peace leads to development," the Prime Minister said, adding that he wished for global peace.

The Summit (February 26-28) was jointly organised by the Lead Ex Nepal under the Idea Studio Nepal and the Fourth Valley Concierge Corporation. 

The Mahakali Highway has been obstructed due to a landslide at Kimtadi, Mahakali Municipality-5.

Chief District Officer Yagya Raj Joshi said that vehicular movement has been halted since this morning following the occurrence of the landslide.

Vehicles heading to the district headquarters from the Tarai and those exiting the district to various destinations have been stranded, said Lawaraj Awasthi, a staff with the Mahakali Counter Darchula.

A landslide had occurred at the same place in January also.

Traffic resumed after repairing the road. 

How is the state of air pollution in our federal capital? Those who breathe in the city air day in, day out know all too well. It will be no wonder if our relevant state organs at local, provincial and federal levels too know about air pollution in the city as it is a small world and those at the helm of those organs also take in the same air.

Recent data from IQAir, whose website claims that it operates the world’s largest free real-time air quality monitoring platform—empowering individuals, researchers and governments to monitor, understand and act to protect the health of populations around the globe—show how unhealthy, how polluted, how unbreathable air is becoming worldwide. 

For example, live AQI (air quality index) City Ranking of around 4 pm, February 27 has a faraway Dakar, the capital city of Senegal in Africa, as the city with the worst air quality ranking (235). Then come a series of cities in our immediate neighborhood, including Beijing, which stands third in terms of worst air quality with an AQI (air quality index) score of 188, Mumbai, which stands fourth with a score of 177, Kolkata (fifth) with a score of 167, Shanghai (sixth) with a score of 165 and Dhaka (seventh) with a score of 162. Per IQAir data, our federal capital is not lagging much far behind these mega cities as it figures as the ninth worst city in terms of air quality with a score of 153 as second-place Hanoi (196) and eighth-place Istanbul (155) give it some breathing space.

Per the website, AQI 0-50 is good, 51-100 moderate, 101-150 unhealthy for sensitive groups, 151-200 unhealthy, 201-300 very unhealthy and 301+ hazardous.   

Also on the list of most polluted countries, which is based on annual average PM 2.5 concentration (μg/m³), Nepal does not lag much behind, though it is not a country with a robust industrial base. Based on the data of the year 2023, Nepal stood eighth with a score of 42.4 on the list that featured Bangladesh on top with a score of (79.9), followed by Pakistan (73.7), India (54.4), Tajikistan (49), Burkina Faso (46.6), Iraq (43.8) and the UAE (43).

Let’s hope against hope that these unmasked data will prompt our competent authorities to take some serious measures to make the air breathable. 

An earthquake measuring 6. 1 on the Richter scale struck Sindhupalchowk in the wee hours of Friday, with its epicenter at Bhairab Kunda of the district.

According to the National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Center, the quake was recorded at 2. 51 am.

The tremor was also felt in Kathmandu Valley.

No immediate reports of damage or casualties have been received.

A strong tremor was felt in Kathmandu at 2. 52 am on Friday.

Magnitude and epicenter are immediately unknown.

The Office of the Attorney General is going to organize the International Conference on Crimes of the Digital Age: Anticipation and Response.

Organizing a news conference on Tuesday, Attorney General Ramesh Badal said the two-day-long event will start on February 27 and is expected to unite experts to explore the growing intersection of AI, digital economic crime, and cyber-enabled crimes.

It is said that the event will focus on innovative strategies for investigating, prosecuting, and preventing technology-driven crimes.

The conference is expected to address the rapidly evolving challenges posed by crimes enabled by advanced technologies, with a focus on technology-facilitated sexual violence and abuse (TFSVA), cyber security crimes, cryptocurrency and related digital economic crime and AI-enabled crimes.

More than 90 government attorneys, legal experts, judges and representatives from legal fraternities will attend from 13 nations including Nepal, the UK, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the Maldives, South Korea, Azerbaijan, India, China, Sri Lanka, Norway and Russia.

From Nepal, the representatives from the Supreme Court, Nepal Rastra Bank, different ministries and other bodies will attend the conference where 16 working papers will be presented in various sessions.

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli is scheduled to inaugurate the conference. 

The E-Governance Board under the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers (OPMCM) today unveiled the 'E-Governance Blueprint' aiming to achieve transformative changes in the existing government affairs through a digital technology, making public services paperless.

The draft of the Blueprint that was prepared on January 27 was released today, according to Board's Chief Executive Officer Dipesh Bista.

Prior to this, the Board held discussions and interactions with multi stakeholders to receive their submissions regarding the draft of the Blueprint.

The document cites the government's commitment to making the government services achievable, prompt, transparent, accountable and effective with the support of digital technology by discouraging physical presence in service delivering facilities.

The development of infrastructure, policy and legal structures required for the implementation of digital system, institutional capacity enhancement and operation of and facilitation for digital governance-related governance innovation, research and development endevours have been highlighted as the objectives of the document.

The blueprint has identified seven strategic pillars for digital transformation and they are: a clear governance framework for digital governance; legal and regulatory frameworks, and continued development of digital promoters; digital literacy and skills development; digital standards; formulation and implementation of guidelines; strengthened regional and international cooperation; and innovation, and research and development. The document has assimilated the spirit of ICT Policy of Nepal - 2072 BS, Government Enterprise Architecture Directive-2076 BS and Digital Nepal Framework-2076 BS.

Amidst increasing IT advancement and its growing attraction, the Blueprint is expected to be useful in strengthening inter-agency coordination though exchanges of data, creating pressure for making the public service delivery further transparent and effective.

E-governance blueprint was prepared in view of the arrangement of global compact, government stack as well as other international established model, as a national strategic document was necessary.

Development, strengthen and use of common infrastructures and standards, innovation and procedural simplicity in public service delivery, guarantee of safety and privacy from plan formulation, guarantee of easy accessible of services provided through digital medium, transparency and promotion of e-governance based on development were mentioned in the blueprint.

Similarly, low role of board on policy-level issue to maintain digital good governance, functional problem, problems related to management framework for e-governance, lack of citizen service centre to facilitate public service delivery have been taken as the challenges in the blueprint.

Likewise, there is challenge in formulation of digital guideline and directives and implementation, problem in strengthening regional and international cooperation, and to make the issue of public procurement further transparent and competitive.

Various activities have also been determined for next three years--preparing draft of e-governance act, restructuring of Department of Information Technology, establishment of Data Protection Authority and establishment of data exchange platform. After receiving the final draft of blueprint prepared by International consultants with the technical support of United Nations Development Programme on April 29, 2024, it was again internalized from the prospective of Nepal.

The final draft of the blueprint was received on September 30, 2024 from Nepali consultants and final shape was given to it on January 27, 2025.

The fifth meeting of E-Governance Board held under chairmanship of Chief Secretary on January 28 had decided to send the blueprint draft to concerned body for opinion.

Lawmakers have asked for the government's response in the aftermath of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)'s putting Nepal in the grey list.

Speaking in the Special Hour of the House of Representatives meeting today, Udaya Shumsher JBR demanded to know what the government was doing to remove Nepal from the FATF's grey list.

"Nepal has been placed in the FATF's grey list mainly due to weak regulation of the cooperative sector. What is Nepal's plan to increase the regulation of cooperatives and get out of the grey list soon? Let this be informed to the Parliament," he said.

He said Nepal should benefit from the 'double B minus' in the credit rating and it is better than most south Asian countries.

He also drew the government's attention to the delay in the reconstruction of Kanti Highway to speed up the construction of the BP highway damaged due to floods and landslide triggered by incessant rains towards September-end last year.

The lawmaker raised the issues of delay in the construction of various road sections and the risk of floods and landslides due to indiscriminate digging of roads.

He urged the government to assess the damage caused by the floods and landslides in September last year and expedite the reconstruction work in those places.

Corruption a shameful topic Nepal Communist Party (UML) lawmaker Thakur Prasad Gaire has said that the flourishing corruption in the country is a matter of shame. "Corruption, bribery and commission mongering trend is on the rise. Let's present it in parliament backed with facts and figures. Let's create conditions for action against this,” he said.

Lawmaker Gaire stressed the need of fulfilling the responsibilities of building a society with good governance and social justice.

Stating that the ordinance has opened the way for development, he said the UML was moving ahead to take the country towards socialism by ending instability and anarchy.

Lawmaker Gaire said, "We have to move forward in a stronger way to control corruption.” Nepal Communist Party (Maoist Centre) lawmaker Rekha Sharma said that it is natural to reprimand and criticize the wrongdoers in democracy and parliamentary system.

She accused the government of bulldozing the parliament by introducing the ordinances. She also alleged that the ministers amended the bills passed by the parliamentary committees.

Lawmaker Basudev Ghimire said the State should pay attention to the promotion of religious tourism as it would contribute to the country's economic growth. "Religious tourism can be promoted by showing tourists many places including Lumbini, Muktinath, Pathibhara, Pashupatinath and Manakamana in Nepal. For this, the development of physical infrastructure is necessary.” Mangal Prasad Gupta called for prevention of flood risk at Krishnanagar Municipality-12 in Kapilbastu district.

Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) lawmaker Anisha Nepali has demanded that the national electricity transmission line be extended to Salyan.

Call for timely completion of physical infrastructure-related works Likewise, lawmakers have called on the government to carry out the works related to construction of physical infrastructures on time.

They drew the attention of the government to this topic, citing the people were facing inconveniences due to this. Lawmakers Bhagawati Chaudhary, Bhanubhakta Joshi, Man Bahadur Gurung, Bijula Rayamajhi, Manish Jha, Mahesh Basnet, Madhav Sapkota, Mukta Kumari Yadav, Menaka Kumari Pokharel, Metmani Chaudhary, Raghuji Panta, Rama Koirala Poudel, Ram Kumar Rai and Rukmani Rana voiced this issue in the Zero Hour of the HoR session today.

Likewise, Maina Karki, Rana Kumari Balampaki Magar, Ranendra Baraili, Ranju Kumari Jha, Rajendra Kumar KC, Ram Krishna Yadav, Ram Shankar Yadav, Rupa Sosi (Chaudhary), Laxmi Tiwari and Lal Prasad Sanwa Limbu, among other lawmakers called the government's attention on a host of issues of public importance.