BHAKTAPUR : Bird flu has been detected in a poultry farm in Bhaktapur district.

Following the discovery at the Utkrista Multipurpose Agriculture Farm at Tarkhagal of Dadhikot in Suryabinayak municipality, 2,985 chickens and 150 kilograms poultry feeds were destroyed in the presence of the police, said vet Dr. Chandra Dhakal of the Livestock Service Expert Centre.

District administration office has urged the farmers not to resort to such activities while urging the local people to remain alert.

KATHMANDU: President Bidya Devi Bhandari will inaugurate the Eighth National Games on April 18 in Nepalgunj.

President Bhandari is scheduled to inaugurate the National Games taking place in State -5 from April 5-24, at the Nepalgunj Stadium, according to the National Sports Council.

Prime Minister KP Oli is scheduled to conclude the National Games.

Meanwhile, the date and venue for the Ninth National Games would be announced on the concluding ceremony.

However, the games of championship would begin from April 10 where a total of 5,211 athletes would compete for 1,307 medals.

KATHMANDU: If you travel the under-construction Chabahil-Sankhu road section, you will witness dust, smoke and heaps of garbage strewn everywhere along the road. The locals are bearing the brunt of wretched road condition. The hardest-hit are the traffic police due to sorry state of affairs of the road.

“There is traffic mess as the raw materials including gravel meant for road construction are piled up in the middle part of the road. There is no alternative to whistle-blowing to remove traffic congestion. We need to get unmasked for blowing whistle every time risking our health”,Samir Dahal, a traffic police said.

Hridayesh Sapkota, traffic police chief at Metropolitan City Police Circle Bouddha, said, “We are on road from dawn to dusk. Traffic police even go beyond recognition due to dust. We are prone to common cold, cough, allergy and lungs related complications because of high exposure to dust”.

A total of 42 traffic police personnel are on daily duty in Bouddha area, informed Sapkota. Particularly, the traffic police deputed in the area of Sankhu and Bouddha are more vulnerable to dust. The road widening drive here has been put in place since a long time back but it seems to be time-consuming.

Traffic police are performing their duty on the road section for 20 hours a day which has put them at higher risks, said traffic police head constable Bal Krishna Pant.

It is still uncertain when the road will come to a smooth shape and the people and traffic police get liberation from the troubled road, though the Kathmandu Valley Road Widening Project said it would complete the construction soon.

The road section has seen all-pervasive chaos with scattered and uncoordinated works on drainage construction, road expansion and gravel placement.The road structure has not come to a smooth shape in the long interval of time.

KATHMANDU: Nepal Police has arrested as many 540 leaders and cadres of Nepal Communist Party (NCP) led by Netra Bikram Chand alias ‘Biplav’ so far.

Police arrested them for their involvement in criminal activities  in the last one year from across the country.

Materials including letter pads for fund raising, flyers, postcards and other documents were also seized during the arrest, said police spokesperson Uttam Raj Subedi.

Biplav leaders and cadres went underground after the government banned its activities following the bomb explosion at Ncell headquarters in Bhainsepati and its towers based across the country.

KATHMANDU: As many as 2,000 houses were destroyed in the deadly clone that hit Bara and Parsa districts in Province 2 on last Sunday, according to a preliminary report.

According to a preliminary report on the storm destruction submitted by the Ministry of Home Affairs, a total of 1, 895 houses were badly damages and 955 houses sustained partial damages in Bara district alone.

The freak windstorm destroyed three brick industries and one heath post in the district. Similarly, 437 houses were destroyed in Parsa district.

However, the detailed report on the destruction is yet to be made public.

SYANGJA: In a bid to relieve woes being faced by female students, Fedikhola Rural Municipality has launched a mensuration sanitary management  campaign at a school by installing a automatic machine to distribute sanitary pads.

A menstruating student can get a sanitary pad by inserting a ATM card into the machine. As many as 20 pads can be withdrawn at a time which is monitored by a class teacher  and the respective monitor.

“A menstruating student can obtain sanitary pads once she switches on the bottom after inserting an ATM card into the machine,” said Ghanashyam Subedi, chief of Fedikhola Rural Municipality.

This is facility is available to the female students from class six to 10. School bears the expenses for the cost of the pads,  not the students, said Subedi.

PARSA: Around 195 people, injured in the devastating storm last Sunday, returned home after treatment from the hospitals of Birgunj.

The Parsa District Administration Office stated that the injured returned home after noticeable improvement in their health condition.

A total of 409 persons were undergoing treatment in various hospitals in Birgunj till Tuesday. Currently, some 212 injured are still in the hospitals receiving treatment, Netra Prasad Sharma, Assistant Chief District Officer informed.

On Sunday evening, a total of 122 houses were completely damaged while 387 houses were partially destroyed in the storm in Bara and Parsa.

KATHMANDU: Goods Transport Association of Nepal has announced to delivered the relief materials freely to the storm-hit districts of Bara and Parsa. Shyam Kumar Dangol, chairman of the association, urged all helping hands including the associations, individuals and donor agencies to coordinate with the Association for supplying the relief materials to the affected people. The coordination among all sides would ensure the supply from Kathmandu to Bara and Parsa in an effective manner, he added. The Association has also urged the people from various walks of life to assist from their respective side to the needy people.

SOLUKHUMBU: Chief Minister of State 1, Sherdhan Rai, has inaugurated the road linking Selleri to Khumbu Pasanglhamu-1 via Mapyadudhkoshi rural municipality.

Khumbu in Solukhumbu district is the gateway to Mt Everest.

Chief Minister Rai said the state government would make necessary arrangements of the required budget for the expansion of road from Khumbu Pasanglhamu rural municipality to Chaurikharka rural municipality.

Chief Minister Rai said the construction of the road would help promote tourism in the region.

On the occasion, he said the state government would declare the Khumbu Pasanglhamu rural municipality as ‘Tourism rural municipality’.

The rural municipality has been bringing in around 50,000 domestic and foreign tourists every year.

KATHMANDU: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has estimated Nepal’s economy to grow at 6.2 percent in fiscal year 2019, and 6.3 percent in FY 2020.

In a statement today, the ADB Country Director for Nepal Mukhtor Khamudkhanov said that the outlook is for a stable growth on the back of strong domestic demand, fueled by a larger budget allocation to subnational governments and accelerated post-earthquake reconstruction.

The statement said that the agriculture sector is likely grow from 2.8 percent in FY2018 to 4.5 percent in FY2019, owing to a good monsoon that is expected to boost paddy production to 5.5 million tons, a rise of 8.4 percent from the previous year.

Similarly, the industry sector is expected to expand by 7.1 percent in FY2019 buoyed by improved power supply and efforts to improve the investment climate, according to the statement.

The services sector, the ADB statement said, will likely grow by 6.4 percent in FY2019 with the expansion of wholesale and retail trade, hotels and restaurants, and financial intermediation.

The update said the inflation is projected to rise to 4.4 percent in FY2019 from 4.2 percent in FY2018, partly reflecting somewhat higher inflation expected in India, stable oil prices, and higher government expenditures under the new federal structure.

Likewise, revenue collection, according to the statement, has primarily increased on higher import growth and an improvement of the tax system. The budget as of mid-January 2019 is in surplus by NRs173.3 billion owing to strong revenue growth and a marginal slowdown in recurrent expenses, it said.

Though capital expenditure has surged in the fiscal year through mid-February, its execution stands at only 22.5 percent, the ADB statement said.

This could again lead to a spending spree in the last month of the fiscal year, undermining the quality of capital projects, says the update.

With rising trade and current account deficit, Nepal increasingly faces the risk of external sector instability. Data to mid-February 2019 show that trade deficit has surpassed net invisible earnings, widening the current account deficit to $1.5 billion, marginally up from a deficit of $1.4 billion in the year earlier period. The current account deficit is projected to widen further to 9.3 percent of gross domestic product in FY2019, up from 8.2 percent a year earlier on increased imports of capital and consumer goods and services, notwithstanding a healthy growth of remittances and stable oil prices, according to the update.

“Challenges to smooth implementation of fiscal federalism and maintaining fiscal discipline at large could pose potential risks to the outlook. Nepal has the potential to achieve and sustain higher growth rate over a long period of time if these challenges are addressed,” Khamudkhanov said.