Report Suggests Nepal Terrorism Threat

Even though Nepal is not a safe haven for international terrorists, the United States has cautioned India that Nepal could pose a threat.
A report from the US State Department was made public last week warning India that members of extremist groups could transit from Nepal. The report claimed that Muhammad Omar Madni, a member of the terrorist group Lashkar-e Tayyiba (LT), traveled through Nepal en route to New Delhi in June of last year.

It Works! (Nepal police claim….)

After Maoists rebels laid down their arms to join the Nepalese peace process in 2006, no fewer than 109 separate armed outfits–gangs and rebel groups–sprang up to replace them in the southern plain of Terai, which sits on the border with India.
People ages 16- 35 joined these gangs and were involved in killing, abduction, extortion and even attacks on police posts in some places.
The criminal activity got so bad that, a year ago, businessmen throughout the country–tired and frightened after several kidnaps, murders and ransoms–demanded the government do something, and even the UN described the area as “a tinderbox that could spiral out of control.”
Now, according to the Nepal Police, the Special Security Plan that was implemented has worked.

Nepal Prime Minister resigns

Nepalese Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal submitted his resignation to President Ram Baran Yadav on Wednesday evening. His resignation comes after 13 months in office.

“It is already too late to table the annual policies, program and budget in the Legislature-Parliament,” the 57-year-old prime minister said. “Despite having a clear majority in the House, I decided to tender my resignation, with the hope that peace process and constituent making process will be completed, as it would not be right to keep the nation at indecision and confusion in situation like this.”

Who’s Running Nepal?

It’s two weeks now since Nepal’s political leaders swore that they’d have some kind of consensus to run the country after they missed the May 28th deadline to finish the new constitution. They promised Nepalis that they’d have one done in another year. Meanwhile, they would come up with a plan.

But the plan they came up with includes two tricky parts: first, the integration and rehabilitation of Maoists militants; second, the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal.

 Sources say there was an understanding between the parties that if Maoists agreed to start integration process, then the prime minister would resign within five days. And that is the problem. Maoists are saying that the prime minister should resign first, while the ruling parties are saying that Maoists should integrate first.

Video Journalism in the context of Nepal

´Video journalist´ is a journalist who shoots, reports and edits his/her news stories using a laptop in the field or in the newsroom. And this solo journalism is called ´video journalism´. This method is comparatively cheaper than the conventional journalism in use, as video journalist will handle the work of cameraman, visual editor and producer. Michael Rosenblum, a pioneer in video journalism says cost can reduce up to 70 percent.

Video journalist will be able to get closer to the content, avoiding the impersonality that may come with larger crewing. A farmer will be more at ease if a video journalist approaches him rather than a big television crew. Even when one is reporting about drug addicts, a video journalist can uncover in-depth personal story.

Security alert

It has been more than a month that a thief broke into my house at midnight and stole money, mobile and some of my belongings.I knew the incident at about 2 o’clock. I was scared as such incidents hadn’t occurred in my life. I always take life normally and had kept myself open to the people around me. I never thought that thieves will take advantage of the open window at night.

I called the local inspector, hoping that he would come to my home and search the place. But to my surprise, he asked me to file the complaint in the morning. I lost all the hope from the police when he didn’t care to know about the details of the incident and didn’t bother to search the place.

This is just a case related with me; there are many other cases in which people have lost their hope from police and the state. Police are losing public trust. It has been more than a month that three simultaneous bomb attacks were made in the valley killing three and injuring six people. The incident took place at a time when we are moving towards the constituent assembly.

Again its bandh…

Kathmandu: Admits my busy schedule, I am taking out my time to write this blog. I wish I could devote more time to blogging. But I couldn’t because of my job and my ongoing exams. And I will be writing occasionally until I finish my exams.
Today is Nepal bandh. This is the second valley bandh within a week. Teachers have called of valley bandh five days ago. Today’s bandh is called by Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities to observe June 1 as ‘Black Day’ in memory of a ruling by the Supreme Court nine years ago to ban the use of local language as formal language in local bodies.
I had to go to my office today as well after preparing for my exams. I thought why not walk on the road and experience the bandh.
The roads were empty. I could see ambulances, tourist vehicles, police and media vehicles plying. People were in hurry to reach their destination.
I could see small groups of people at the side of the road checking the cards of the vehicles that were plying.
As I come to the office I was shocked that to hear the news that my colleague Baburaja was mistreated by the bandh organizers. He is the visual editor of Kantipur Television Network.