NO ALTERNATIVE TO STREET PROTEST SAY NC, UML Kathmandu, 12 Jan.: A meeting of top leaders of the opposition Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN-UML concluded that there is no any alternative to street protest blaming UCPN-Maoist of being effortful to elongate stay in power, RSS reports. The meeting also reiterated the NC and UML stance to firmly support NC President Sushil Koirala as a candidate to lead the new government. However, the UML leaders also urged the NC leaders to find out other alternatives, if any, to end the present deadlock. The leaders of both parties shared a common view that elections to the constituent assembly (CA) by mid-May were not possible if the parties missed the President’s deadline. UML Vice-chairman Bamdev Gautam said that they were firm in favor of NC President Koirala as the NC, UML and other opposition parties have already announced Koirala's candidacy to lead the next government. "We have floated a proposal to hold discussions in other alternatives too. But, we are firm in favor of Koirala," Vice-chairman Gautam said. Saying that the opposition parties rejected the UCPN-Maoist proposal for forming a new government under the leadership of an independent figure, Gautam added the NC and UML have decided to hold another round of talks to give an outlet to the present deadlock. NC leader Minendra Rijal said that elections by mid-May were not likely if the parties failed to forged consensus within the deadline given by the President. He added that peace, democracy and path to progress cannot move ahead until the opposition parties take the streets strongly against the coalition partners. Rijal said the ruling parties have floated some proposals but were not serious in any of them and were trying to prolong their stay in power. Rijal added that the opposition parties have no alternative to announcing stern agitation against the coalition parties by visiting the doorsteps of locals. Nnnn CPN MAOIST ATTEMPTING TO CAPTURE STATE POWER SAYS SURYA B. THAPA Kathmandu, 12 Jan.: Chairman of the Rastriya Janashakti Party Surya Bahadur Thapa has said that the ruling UCPN-Maoist was trying to capture state authority, so the Prime Minister was sticking to power, RSS reports from Dhankuta.. At a press meet organised by the District Chapter of the Federation of Nepali Journalists here today, Chairman Thapa claimed that sticking to power despite criticisms from all sectors was to harbor the strategy of capturing the state authority. The former Prime Minister Thapa said that the views of Prime Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai on the arrest of the accused ones on journalist Dekendra Thapa's murder was the most irresponsible and shameful act to protect the party criminals. He demanded stringent action on the murderers of journalist Dekendra Thapa. On another note, Chairman Thapa said the President now should take step in a new way so that country would get political outlet. Similarly, he said that the political parties, especially the big ones, need to be flexible on their stand otherwise witness chaos for long. However, he said if the political parties forged consensus on time, election was possible on April/May. Nnnn LARGEST KNOWN STRUCTURE IN UNIVRSE DISCOVERED Kathmandu, 12 Jan.: Astronomers have discovered the largest known structure in the universe - a group of quasars so large it would take 4 billion years to cross it while traveling at speed of light, Reuters reports. The immense scale also challenges Albert Einstein's Cosmological Principle, the assumption that the universe looks the same from every point of view, researchers said. The findings by academics from Britain's University of Central Lancashire were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and reported on the society's website on Friday. Quasars are believed to be the brightest objects in the universe, with light emanating from the nuclei of galaxies from the early days of the universe and visible billions of light-years away. "Since 1982 it has been known that quasars tend to group together in clumps or 'structures' of surprisingly large sizes, forming large quasar groups or LQGs," the society said. This newly discovered large quasar group has a dimension of 500 megaparsecs, each megaparsec measuring 3.3 million light-years. Because the LQG is elongated, its longest dimension is 1,200 megaparsecs, or 4 billion light-years, the society said. That size is 1,600 times larger than the distance from Earth's Milky Way to the nearest galaxy, the Andromeda. "While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe," Roger Clowes, leader of the research team, said in a statement. "This is hugely exciting - not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the scale of the universe." Clowes said the team would continue to investigate the phenomenon with particular interest in the challenge to the Cosmological Principle, which has been widely accepted since Einstein, whose work still forms the basis for much of modern cosmology. nnnn