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Four police personnel and at least 88 militants have been killed in clashes in two Afghan provinces, authorities said Thursday. 

In eastern Paktia province, 51 Taliban militants were killed and several others wounded during a clash and ensuing airstrike in Band-e-Michalgho area of Ahmad Abad district at wee hours of Thursday, provincial police spokesman, Sardar Wali Tabasam told Xinhua. 

The clashes occurred after dozens of militants stormed security checkpoints in the area and four policemen were also killed and six others wounded during the clashes. 

In northern Jawzjan province, 28 Islamic State (IS) militants and nine militants of Taliban group were killed and 16 IS militants and 11 Taliban wounded after the two groups of militants clashed in Darzab district on Wednesday, the Afghan Defense Ministry said in a statement. 

The two rival armed groups often fight over expanding territory in parts of the conflict-hit Afghanistan. Xinhua

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The district of Bhaktapur in Kathmandu valley is one of the most concentrated human settlements in South Asia, packing in over 12,000 residents every square kilometer. And the population continues to swell, as the area absorbs more and more people lured by land prices that are comparably cheaper to what they would have to fork out inside the ring road. More people means more buildings and less open space. With the building codes lax, the human set­tlements in Bhaktapur had been getting progressively closer to the catchment areas of its three main rivers: Hanumante, Khasyangkhusung and Manohara. As a result, whenever there is a heavy rainfall, at least some areas in Bhaktapur are badly inundated by overflow­ing rivers. But the flooding on July 12 was the worst in years. Three members of the same family perished in Changu­narayan municipality when their tin hut was swept away in floods following 12 hours of non-stop rainfall. Temporary camps of earthquake victims at Jagati and Barahisthan were submerged; the landless squatters’ settlement at Jadibuti completely inundated. Similarly, settlements at Radhe Radhe and the Kamerotar land pooling project in Madhyapur Thimi were under water. Thousands of people were trapped inside their own watery homes.

This monsoon has already taken a heavy toll. Nearly 300 people have died in floods and landslides in the past three months, according to Home Ministry. “We have been unable to reduce damages despite our many programs to reduce the risk of natural disasters,” says Kedar Neupane, the chief of the ministry’s disaster management unit.

It is not clear better forecasting could have prevented the latest Bhaktapur inundation either. There was no cloudburst, nor was one predicted. Nor were there any blockades in the three main rivers, which are otherwise fast turning into dumping grounds. The culprit rather was the sheer volume of water that fell.

The only way to mitigate future damages will be to keep the settlements at a safe distance from the main water arteries. But any such effort will be met with tough resistance, espe­cially by the squatters and those displaced by recent earth­quakes. There are in fact no easy fixes. More effective would be progressive tightening of the building codes, building resettlement homes for the landless—the Dhurmus-Suntali foundation has already shown the way on cheap mass-scale housing—and greater awareness on the ever-present dangers of living so close to the unruly rivers.

The idea of men studying nurs­ing is not new to Nepal, even though the concept may now appear alien. Back in 1986, the Institute of Maharajgunj decided to begin enrolling male students in its nurs­ing programs and in the four batches produced around 80 male nurses. It then stopped taking male students.

Nepali patients at the time were skeptical. They started complaining that male nurses were unable to give the quality of service that female nurses could. The idea that male nurses would be ready to go and serve in remote areas of the coun­try also proved premature. Most male nurses wanted comfortable urban postings.

Now the nursing campuses in Nepal are again starting to enroll male students starting this year. The society is changing and so are traditional gender roles. Moreover, with lucrative salaries on offer for those who want to go serve in rural areas, more male nurses will take that route. Male nurses will also be able to do more manual bits of the profession.

That, at least, is the thinking. But will the students come and will the nursing campuses be able to fill their 15 percent male seats?

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 China has cracked down on online football gambling during the World Cup, arresting more than 540 suspected of participating in schemes involving more than $1.5 billion, state media said. 

The suspects were "associated with more than 20 gangs", and their servers, computers, mobile phones and bank cards were confiscated, police in China's southern province of Guangdong told the official Xinhua news agency. 

Some 70 mobile apps and websites as well as 250 online chat groups have also been shuttered, Xinhua said Wednesday without providing further detail. In May, police honed in on an online gambling platform which accepted bitcoin and had grown to 330,000 members in just eight months. 

Authorities arrested six of its key organizers, froze assets of over 5 million yuan ($750,000), and confiscated virtual currency worth over $1.5 million, Xinhua said, without giving specific dates of the raid. 
Although all gambling is technically illegal in China, it is permitted in the country's hundreds of thousands of "lottery shops". 

These are run by China's Sports Administration, with part of the proceeds ploughed back into sport ranging from financing stadiums to training the next generation of Chinese athletes. 

However, the government remains vigilant and dozens of unauthorised "lottery ticket" apps, which enable punters to place a bet with a single click, were closed down in the first week of the World Cup. AFP

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