RENEWED DRIVE TO PREPARE DIGITALIZED ELECTION ROLL

Kathmandu, 28 Jan.: A renewed drive has been initiated by the National Election Commission to prepare a digitalized election roll with photographs and finger prints.
Teams are being to sent to all 4,000 VDCs, the Commission said.
Arrangements have been made by the Commission to collect at the district election offices details of persons from municipalities and VDCs if names weren’t included in a previous drive.
There was opposition and obstruction to the first drive last year, especially in the terai.
The Commission hopes a new election roll will ensure free and fair elections by minimizing vote tampering.
National parliamentary election should be held after a constitution is promulgated to replace the interim constitution.
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FIVE HOURS SET ASIDE TO FILE NOMINATIONS

Kathmandu, 28 Jan.: Five hours have been allocated for candidates to file their nominations for elections for prime minister 2 February.
Candidates have to file nominations from 11 in the morning to four in the afternoon.
Final list of candidates will be announced after four in the afternoon the same day.
First round of three phase voting will be held 3 February.
The Big Three have staked claims to lead a government.
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DHARAN MUNICIPALTY CELEBRATES 5OTH YEAR OF ESTABLISHMENT
Kathmandu, 28 Jan.: Speaker Subash Nemwang will Friday will launch celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Dharan municipality.
Dharan is a hill town in the eastern region.
Nemwag hails from Ilam.
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9.23% TRANSPORT FARE HIKE RECOMMENDED

Kathmandu, 28 Jan.: A 9.23 percent transport fare hike is being imposed by the government at an unspecified date.
The Department of Transport Management forwarded the suggestion to the ministry of labour and transport Wednesday.
Transport entrepreneurs had been demanding a 13 percent increase.
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TWO NEPALI CHILDREN BURIED ALIVE

Kathmandu, 28 Jan.: Two Nepali children were buried alive when they were digging for sand in India across the border in Darchula district in the far-West.
Radio Nepal reported their deaths Thursday night.
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CALL TO SLASH PUBLIC HOLIDAYS





Kathmandu, 28 Jan.: An Administration Restructuring Commission (ARC) has recommended reduction in the number of public holidays.
A report was delivered to Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal Thursday.
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ANOTHER SPLIT IN RASHTRIYA JANAMORCHA

Kathmandu, 28 Jan.: Min Nath Devkota, Bagmati Chief of Rashtriya Janamorcha Nepal (RJN) disassociated himself from the mother party led by Chitra Bahadur KC Thursday in the capital.
Devkota also announced the formation of Nepal Communist Party 9Marxist-Lennist) with a team of 31 central members.
A group led by Dil Ram Acharya defected from the party last June.
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BIRGUNJ TERRORIZED

Kathmandu, 28 Jan.: Birgunj residents were terrorized Wednesday when a group planted a socket bomb in a class room of Alpine Secondary School at Shripur.
The school was shut the whole day Thursday.
Management of schools have called for a closure of all schools in the district Friday to protest the incident.
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SPORTS

ENGLISH COACH FOR NEPALI SOCCER TEAM

Kathmandu, 28 Jan. 28: England’s Graham Roberts, 51, has been appointed coach of Nepal’s national soccer team by All Nepal Football Association (ANFA).
Roberts arrives in the capital Friday.
Nepal is preparing for April’s AFC Challenge group matches in Kathmandu.
The former English national player was coaching the Pakistani national team.
Roberts has played for Tottenham, Chelsea and Scottish Club Rangers of the English Premier League.
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MEDIA GOOGLE

‘The country has been reeling under a state indecision as the lawmakers have tried to keep their political supremacy forgetting their main responsibility. There will be multi-dimensional conflict in the country if new constitution is not promulgate on time.”

(Rights activist Krishna Pahadi, Republica, 28 Jan.)

‘He [prime minister] flouted a proposal in haste without an internal consultation. Our party has never taken such a decision [to let Maoists lead a government’

(UML leader KP Sharma Oli, The Kathmandu Post, 28 Jan.)
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INFORMAL TASK FORCE FOR MAOIST FIGHTER INTEGRATION

Kathmandu, 28 Jan. The Big Three have formed an informal task force of senior party leaders to prepare a concept for the integration of former Maoist fighters, Nagarik reports.
The task force will work quietly without much fanfare.
Maoists, NC and UML formed the task at a meeting in a hotel Thursday.
Barshaman Pun and Krishna Bahadur Mahara from Maoists, Ram Sharan Mahat and Krishna Sitaula of NC and Ishwar Pokhrel and Bhim Rawal represent UML in the body, according to Republica.
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ASIAN TIGER RESERVES HAVE GREATER POTENTIAL





Kathmandu, 28 Jan.: - The tiger reserves of Asia could support more than 10,000 wild tigers – three times the current number – if they are managed as large-scale landscapes that allow for connectivity between core breeding sites, a new paper from some of the world’s leading conservation scientists finds, according to The Rising Nepal. This was stated in a press release issued by the WWF Thursday.
The study, co-authored by WWF scientists, is the first assessment of the political commitment made by all 13 tiger range countries during the historic tiger summit of November 2010 to double the tiger population across Asia by 2022.
"A Landscape-Based Conservation Strategy to Double the Wild Tiger Population" in the current issue of Conservation Letters, finds that the commitment to double tiger numbers is not only possible, but can be exceeded. However, it will take a global effort to ensure that core breeding reserves are maintained and connected via habitat corridors.
"In the midst of a crisis, it’s tempting to circle the wagons and only protect a limited number of core protected areas, but we can and should do better," said Dr. Eric Dinerstein, Chief Scientist at WWF and a co-author of the study.
Wild tiger numbers have declined from about 100,000 in the early 1900s to as few as 3,200 today due to poaching of tigers and their prey, habitat destruction and human/tiger conflict. Most of the remaining tigers are scattered in small, isolated pockets across their range in 13 Asian countries.
"Tiger conservation is the face of biodiversity conservation and competent sustainable land-use management at the landscape level," said study co-author Dr. John Seidensticker of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. "By saving the tiger we save all the plants and animals that live under the tiger’s umbrella."
The authors found that the 20 prioritised tiger conservation landscapes with the highest probability of long-term tiger survival could support more than 10,500 tigers, including about 3,400 breeding females. They also looked at historical examples to prove that a doubling or tripling is possible using large landscapes.
In the jungles of lowland Nepal, tiger numbers crashed during civil conflict from 2002 to 2006. However, tigers did not disappear because Nepal and India’s tiger reserves are linked by forest corridors, which allowed for replenishment from India.
In the Russian Far East tigers, almost disappeared in the 1940s but the region was re-populated by tigers moving in from northeastern China. Recently designated habitat corridors across the Sino-Russia border are helping tigers re-establish themselves in China’s Changbaishan mountains, where they had disappeared in the 1990s.
In India’s Nagarahole National Park, tiger

numbers are "healthy and resilient" because the park is connected to other reserves in the region. Tigers number almost 300 in this large landscape of connected parks and reserves.
In contrast, the authors point to two of India’s premier tiger reserves to show how lack of connectivity can preclude tiger population recovery. Tigers disappeared from Sariska and Panna tiger reserves in 2005 and 2009 due to poaching and were not able to re-colonize because these reserves were not connected to other reserves through habitat corridors. Consequently, wild tigers had to be translocated into these reserves to attempt to re-establish populations.
Besides poaching and habitat loss, the $7.5 trillion in infrastructure projects like roads, dams and mines that will be invested in Asia over the next decade threatens tiger landscapes. A focus only on core sites and protected areas like reserves, instead of larger landscapes, could be seen by developers and politicians as a green light to move forward with harmful infrastructure projects outside of core sites.
"Without strong countervailing pressures, short-term economic gains will inevitably trump protection of the critical ecosystems necessary for sustainable development," said Keshav Varma, Program Director of the Global Tiger Initiative at the World Bank.
The authors insist that conservationists and governments must be involved in helping design infrastructure projects to mitigate their impacts on tigers both inside core sites and in current and potential forest corridors. A recently built oil depot in India’s Terai Arc, for example, severed a vital elephant and tiger corridor. Conservationists are now in litigation to remove the depot. Early intervention could have avoided this.
"Following the St. Petersburg Declaration, Nepal has committed to the goal of doubling wild tiger numbers across our country by 2022," said Deepak Bohara, Nepal’s Minister for Forests and Soil Conservation. "This analysis shows that it can be done, not just in Nepal, but, if done right with careful study and planning, across the entire tiger range."

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POLICE DATA BANK TO FIGHT CRIME
Kathmandu, 28 Jan.: Metropolitan Police will soon set up a 'central data bank' in an effort to strengthen intelligence-led policing in the crime-ridden Valley, The Kathmandu Post reports.
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner's Office (MPCO) is preparing to establish a central data bank that will maintain records of the people visiting the Capital, passport numbers, telephone numbers and driving licences to keep vigil of suspects. In view of the tourists' involvement in crime, including smuggling of contraband drugs and counterfeit currency, the MPCO plans to keep detailed records of outgoing and incoming tourists.
Deputy Inspector General of Police Surendra Bahadur Shah at the MPCO said the establishment of the central data bank was essential as the police did not have easy access to the information maintained by other authorities. "It is one of the basic components of intelligence-led policing without which the police cannot identify suspects among millions of people. Metropolitan police in the developed world have been practising this," Shah said. The MPCO will ask departments of Immigration and Transport Management as well as travel and tourism entrepreneurs, among others, for records. It will seek support of the ministries of Home Affairs and Finance in building infrastructure required for the data bank. "Implementing the plan will cost a lot of money. An efficient network between police and other authorities needs to be established for sharing the record," Shah said.
As instructed by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Arjun Jung Shahi, DIG Shah, who is considered knowledgeable about security policy-making and planning, is actively involved in making the plan a success.
Police said the data bank will strengthen intelligence-led policing that gained momentum the world over following the 9/11 terrorist attack in the US.
A robbery at the Jawalakhel branch of Standard Chartered Bank, coupled with the security agencies' inability to nab criminals on the run, compelled the police to review their plan. The police are said to have consulted with financial institutions, entrepreneurs and representatives of diplomatic missions before formulating the plan.
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