TWO NEPALIS N DEATH ROW IN UAE Kathmandu, 13 April: Two Nepalis are on death row in UAE, Rajdhani Writes quoting officials of the Nepal embassy in the Gulf emirates. Forty-two other Nepalis are in prison serving sentences for various crimes. Altogether 132 Nepalis workers have been sent bac k home. Nnnn GULMI FIRE FINALLY CONTAINED; OTHER DETAILS Kathmandu, 13 April: : The wildfires in Resunga jungles of Gulmi, which had been raging in over 800 hectares of the area, threatening the local settlements have finally been put out after some 48 hours. Some 500 people from the security forces—Nepal Police, Armed Police Force and Nepal Army—and hundreds of locals had reached the jungle with pitchers and cans of water to contain the fires, Janardhan Ghimere writes in The Himalayan Times from Gulmi . The newspaper adds from Tamaghas/ Nawalparasi: A massive wildfire raging in the Resunga Forest of Gulmi for three days has so far destroyed almost 800 hectares of forest area, posing a threat to the adjoining human settlements. Earlier, the forest had caught fire from a cliff nearby Dubichaur village on Wednesday. Hundreds of police and army personnel deployed to fight the fire had doused the blaze after three days of strenuous efforts with the help of locals, but barely two hours after the blaze was doused today afternoon, fire broke out again. According to the district forest authorities, the fire had broken out from three different areas of the forest: Nunmare, Dhago Badhne Danda and Tarneta of Paralmi. With the wind causing it to spread, the adjoining Tama and Chhapa villages in Paralmi VDC are under threat. The District Forest Office said dousing the fire has been a daunting task owing to the difficult landform and dry forest bed. FNCCI Gulmi chapter today shut the Tamghas bazaar till noon and hundreds of locals had rushed with water in cans and jars to lend support to the firefighting team. The Resunga Forest is spread over 3,000 hectares and 18 communities live in the adjoining settlements. Elsewhere, wildfires in eight different places of Nawalparasi are yet to be tamed. Six community forests — Jagriti, Naba Durga, Madhyabindu and Hariyali in Nayan Belhani and Prasauni and two national forests in Danda and Prasauni — have been raging, said a forest official. Forest land over 20 hectares has been gutted already, he added. Meanwhile, similar blazes have also been reported in Ramechhap, where according to the authorities, community forests based in Bhalubajor and Ramechhap VDCs have been heavily damaged. nnnn UML DISTRICT LEADER OPPOSES OBSERVER STATUS FOR EU DURING ELECTIONS Kathmandu, 13 April:: Representatives of the European Union today arrived in Sindhuli to get the first hand election feel in the district. Even as the Election Commission is yet to declare the date for Constituent Assembly election, the EU delegation is seeking the observer role during the polls, The Himalayan Times reports from Sindhulimadi. Soon after their arrival, the EU representatives led by Dr Michel Golbek held discussion with journalists, Election Commission and political parties on the forthcoming polls in the district. They had inquired whether or not monitoring and observation was needed during the polls. Dr Golbek said the EU will play the observer role in Sindhuli and Dhanusha districts after the EC announces the date for the Constituent Assembly polls. He was accompanied by a six-member delegation. According to him, the delegation had informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before arriving in Sindhuli. The European Union delegation was keen to know about the possible booth capturing during the election and misuse of media by the political parties. At the discussion, CPN-UML central member Keshav Devkota had objected to the EU delegation’s visit saying that team had an ill motive in visiting the district. “To ask for an observer’s role during the polls is unacceptable. It will be fatal to give such a role to any EU nation,” he added. Nnnn FIRST WOMB TRANSPLANT WOMAN PREGNANT Kathmandu, 13 April::: The first woman ever to receive a uterus from a deceased donor, is two-weeks pregnant following a successful embryo transplant, her doctors said today[ Friday., AFP reports from Istanbul. . The 22-year-old Derya Sert was revealed to be almost two-weeks pregnant in preliminary results after in vitro fertilisation at Akdeniz University Hospital in Turkey’s southern province of Antalya, her doctor Mustafa Unal said in a written statement. “She is doing just fine at the moment,” Unal said. Sert was described as a ‘medical miracle’ when she became the first woman in the world to have a successful womb transplant from a dead donor in August 2011 at the same Antalya hospital. The groundbreaking news of her pregnancy will rekindle hopes for thousands of childless women across the world who are unable to bear their own babies. Sert was born without a uterus, like one in every 5,000 women around the world, and her doctors waited 18 months before implanting the embryo to make sure the foreign organ was still functioning. Hers was the second womb transplant to be performed in the world, the first being in Saudi Arabia in 2000 from a living donor, which failed after 99 days due to heavy clotting. Doctors had to remove the organ. The baby is expected to be delivered via C-section and the uterus to be removed from Sert in the months following the birth to avoid further complications and the risk of rejection. The woman had started to menstruate after the transplant, which her doctors had said was an important signal that the womb was functional. nnnn