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In Hinduism, red vermillion is a sign of valor, energy, and prosperity and is commonly used in worshiping gods, festivals, marriage ceremonies. The red vermillion mainly contains highly toxic Mercury sulfide (HgS) and sometimes Lead tetraoxide, which can cause carcinogenesis, leukoderma and multiple organ failures. Even though HgS is non-poisonous and can be stored and transported without any problems, it can release pure mercury in presence of heat and oxygen. In addition, after ingestion, the HgS is converted to toxic methylmercury by the intestinal microbiota such as bacteria and algae, which accumulates in the body leading to toxic levels. To provide red color to vermillion, red lead (Pb3O4) used in the powder has toxic effects on nervous, hematological, renal, and reproductive systems, which results in anemia, encephalopathy, kidney impairments and other nervous symptoms. 

A majority of Hindu people offer flowers and worship statues of gods and goddesses with red vermillion to appease deities. It is a common ritual in almost all Hindu temples of Nepal. However, the health, safety and potential toxicity of this commonly used vermillion to temple pigeons has not been explored yet. Despite having done little research on the toxicity of vermilion, its effect on temple pigeons has not been studied yet. 

A few reports  of temple pigeons falling ill and dying have been reported in some temples of Nepal such as Maisthan temple, Ilam, Barahakshetra Temple, Sunsari and Bhimeshwar  temple, Dolakha. Some local people and priests of temples have observed some pigeons falling ill and dying after consuming red vermillion mixed rice grains (Akshata) that is sprayed while worshiping gods and goddesses. 

Thus, it is important to explore the potential causes of death and identify an underlying specific cause. The practice of spraying mixed rice grains and red vermillion is common in the temples of Nepal, which increases the risk of metal toxicity such as mercury and lead. This spraying of mixed vermillion and rice grains on the temple contaminates the soil, drinking water, and surrounding air. This contamination may lead to health problems in temple pigeons from eating contaminated foodstuffs and contaminated drinking water. Furthermore, mercury and lead may accumulate on feathers and other vital body organs such as kidney, liver, spleen, brain and bone tissues. Apart from these temple pigeons, people who visit the temples are also at high risk of heavy metal poisoning due to the inhalation of dust particles contaminated with heavy metals. 

Thus, it is high time to explore what percentage of pigeons that consume Akshata died of either mercury or lead poisoning or if it is just a correlation between Akshata feeding and pigeon mortality. It has been observed that a low level of mercury and lead does not cause instant deaths; however, continuous accumulation of these compounds in the body leads to serious health issues associated with damage to the brain, liver, lungs, kidneys and ultimately death. 

This concern of ill health and mortality of pigeons and public health consequences of such heavy metals is a grave concern. 

The current practices of using red vermillion while worshiping gods and goddesses need reconsideration and we need changes in cultural practices to promote animal and human health. This change in cultural practices needs an innovative transformative approach involving the question of why to change, how to change, and change to other less toxic alternatives to red vermillion.The government of Nepal has an opportunity to change its cultural attitude. For this, awareness programs may be developed targeting religious groups and religious leaders, who can effectively impart that knowledge and awareness to the general public. 

The author is a veterinary officer at the Department of Livestock Services

On Feb 10, Russia observes a professional holiday—Diplomatic Worker’s Day. This date in 1549 marks the earliest documented mention of the Posolsky Prikaz (Ambassadorial Office) which became the prototype of the modern Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.

Russia due to its unique geographical location has always had a proactive foreign policy often being at the center of major political processes both in Europe and Asia.

Suffice it to mention that it was the Soviet Union that defeated Nazi Germany in the Second World War and paid the ultimate price for the Victory – over 30 million of Soviet citizens killed in battles with Nazi Germans across the USSR, during liberation operations in Eastern Europe and in Germany itself. No country in the world could ever pretend it contributed as much to the Nazis’ defeat. 

Today just like a century ago Russia is fighting Nazism often referred to as “the brown plague”, only this time—in the neighboring Ukraine. After the coup d’état instigated in Kiev by the West in 2014, the new Ukrainian authorities under the guidance of their Western sponsors started, against its own Constitution, to ban the Russian language, spoken by the population of the Eastern part of the-then Ukraine as mother tongue.

They denied their children education in Russian and in the end launched a military campaign against their own citizens who did not accept the neo-Nazi policies of Zelensky regime.  After eight years of daily shelling by the Ukrainian armed forces of civilians in the Donbass region and negotiations clearly undermined by the Ukrainian side, Russia was left with no choice but to force the Kiev regime to stop terrorizing the population of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions – recognizing their independence, accepting their petition to join the Russian Federation and commencing the special military operation aimed at defending the population of Donbass, demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine as well as ensuring Russia’s security.

The collective West, of course, did not like that move as it aspired to make the territory of Ukraine a platform for possible future operations against Russia de facto bringing the world to the brink of a III World War. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, even today we are facing “a total hybrid war”.

“The collective West has prepared for a new crusade in the East. This time, it is using Ukrainian neo-Nazis, the successors of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich, as their advance party. The collective West, namely Americans, the EU and NATO (that the US has completely subdued) are no longer concealing their goals. They want not only to defeat us strategically on the battlefield but also to wreck the Russian economy, and weaken or even destroy Russia’s centuries-long statehood. These are not figures of speech but the goals set by Western strategists. They are talking about them on the record”.

Let us be clear on this topic. History shows that the West sees the world as its backyard where it goes for natural and human resources. First, it was the colonization of peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Then, after these countries gained independence (often with the help of the Soviet Union), the collective West in order to control their ex-colonies created the Bretton-Woods system that benefits only the developed countries who impose their policies on the developing nations who want to receive funding from international financial institutions. And after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western countries did not even care about the international law and violated it by waging wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq. 

That is to say, Russia being the biggest country of the world, rich in natural resources, able to conduct its own foreign policy has always been perceived by the West as a threat to their dominance.

In our view, this is one of the main reasons why the US, the EU and their allies do everything in their power to try to weaken Russia by creating chaos on its borders, nurturing the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, supplying it with arms and putting an unimaginable amount of pressure on developing countries around the world to make them support the criminal Kiev regime that was exterminating its own citizens from 2014 until 2022 in Donbass. 

Fortunately, a lot of our foreign partners realize all of this and stick to their own vision of the processes taking place around the world. As President Putin put it, Russia managed not only to thwart the plans of the collective West to isolate the country, but also to step up cooperation with the majority of members of the international community in Eurasia, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America. 

As before, Russia considers its absolute priorities to be protecting the lawful rights of Russian citizens and supporting compatriots abroad, waging an uncompromising struggle against neo-Nazism and ethnic discrimination in all its forms. As for Russian diplomacy, it will continue supporting the trend towards the formation of a multipolar, truly democratic world order based on equality of states (regardless of their size and form of rule), mutual respect and observance of the generally recognized norms of international law.

The author is Minister Counsellor, DCM, Embassy of Russia in Nepal 

Middle age is not the best time to start learning about modern things such as programming languages (python, JavaScript, Kotlin, Ruby, PHP etc), artificial intelligence, the internet of things, machine learning and cybersecurity. In the relay race of life, it is perhaps time to at least think about passing on the baton to the next generation after completing your stretch. 

But what if you have not arrived, as yet? What if you want to continue to dig deeper into your mind and see if you can solve some of the problems that are cakewalk for prodigies. You see, your mind is programmed to solve problems, whether it’s young or old. The idea is to keep your mind young and healthy because this thing with infinite potential does not rust as long as you keep using it.    

So, you keep going, against all odds, mustering every ounce of your energy. As they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.  

For those caught in a pass, Martin Luther King Jr offers his nugget of wisdom: “If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

These are very interesting times to grow up. Technologies are evolving rapidly and it is becoming quite difficult to keep pace with them, even for young and energetic minds, leave alone the graying ones.   

This is a quantum leap from the times when we used to wait for our turn to use those cranky desktop computers for about 30 minutes at one go at those hole-in-the-wall cyber cafes in our neighborhoods. 

Many young children of this day and age, especially in our society, do not seem quite aware of this rapidly changing technological ecosystem and challenges it poses to them. A cursory observation shows many young minds around us are hooked to electronic devices like mobile phones, laptops, palmtops and television sets as users/consumers. Many of them remain awake till late at night, watching the soap, chatting online or playing games, often exposing themselves to cybersecurity threats unknowingly. 

Is the cybersecurity system of a country, which ranks 109th out of 160 countries on the National Cyber Security Index, 94th on the Global Cybersecurity Index and a lowly 140th on the ICT Development Index, aware of this threat? Even if it is, is it doing anything tangible to minimize the threat?

Virtual activities have become a way of life for the new generation in the midst of their formative years, taking a huge toll on their physical and mental development, as they hardly socialize and rarely engage in physical activities. 

School curricula, an integral part of the education system, should be revised to tackle this challenge and make schools, schoolchildren and guardians better prepared for dealing with cybersecurity threats facing these children. Our education system should also cater to young minds, who want to embrace evolving technologies big time by becoming coders, programmers, AI experts or cybersecurity experts, etc.

On their part, our enthusiastic minds should wake up to exciting opportunities available online. Google offers free online courses, so do freecodecamp.org, w3schools.com, Cisco and several other sites. Basic  courses are free whereas specialized courses with certifications cost quite a bit. 

As they say, if you have a will, there is a way. 

As for inspiration, there is no dearth of geeks. Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are some of the names that come to mind. 

You don’t relate with them because they do not represent your generation? 

Then think of Antonio Garcia Vicente, a 15-year-old from Spain, who is well-versed in at least four programming languages and has worked on over a hundred programming projects, including video games and mobile applications that involve robotics and artificial intelligence. 

Isn’t that like a prodigy? 

What about Tanmay Bakshi, an 18-year-old Canadian, who wears many hats. He is a TED and global keynote speaker, Google developer expert for ML, advisory software engineer at IBM, visiting professor at iUniversity in Tokyo, bestselling author, media personality and YouTuber. Bakshi dreams of empowering at least 100,000 people in his lifetime with the technology they need to change the world.

An impressive bio, isn’t it?

Young students can also channelize their energies by finding loopholes in cybersecurity systems and plugging them for the greater good of their countries as well as international cybersecurity systems. 

Though the word hacker does not go very well with large sections of our society, several countries have been using hackers to find holes in their cybersecurity systems and correct them for the greater good of their populations by paying them handsomely. 

Rojan Rijal, a security analyst originally from Nepal and now based in the US, hogged the limelight in 2019 by hacking the Pentagon as part of efforts to bolster the United States’ cybersecurity. 

Cybersecurity has become a very important part of national security these days and our geeks can play an important role in improving our cybersecurity. The idea is to catch them young, train them adequately and prevent the misuse of their geniuses by utilizing them for national defense and security. 

All this will not be possible without cooperation from our prodigies-to-be. First and foremost, they should focus on becoming problem-solvers, developers, programmers and coders, not just avid users of technologies.  

Together, families and our governments at federal, provincial and local levels should tap this country’s latent geek potential in the national interest by making sure that they do not fall into wrong hands. 

The fear of failure should not deter any of the stakeholders, including our young minds. 

Let these wise words from Malcolm X (no relation with X, formerly known as Twitter!) inspire us all as this enthusiast remains stuck on some python problems at ww3schools.com and a freecodecamp.org course on developing a demo app for a cafe, and as young minds struggle to switch to the problem-solving mode:  

“Stumbling is not falling. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time. Without education, you’re not going anywhere in this world.”