Kathmandu, Mar. 4: His Royal Highness Crown Prince Dipendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev graced the Feu-de-joie held at the Royal Nepal Army pavilion, Tundikhel by the Royal Nepal army today on the occasion of Mahashivaratri and Army Day.

Hrh the Crown Prince is Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Nepal Army.

On the occasion a 2l-gun salute was presented to hrh the Crown Prince.

At the function, hrh the Crown Prince presented the King’s banner to company commander major Taradhoj Pande of Sri Indradhoj Company which won first place in the company Level King’s Banner Competition Of 2055 Bikram year.

Hrh the Crown Prince also decorated officers and other ranks who were conferred various orders, decorations and medals on the occasion of the auspicious 55th birthday of His Majesty the King.

Hrh the Crown Prince presented prizes to the pair of Indian military attache major Alok Kacker who won first  place in the guest item and to the pair of colonel Esnar of Israel who won second place.

Hrh the Crown Prince likewise awarded prizes to major Tek Bahadur Singh who was first in the free fall para jump and Subedar Tul Bahadur Dura who placed second.

Prime Minister and Defence Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai was present on the occasion.

Also present were the Chief Justice, the Speaker, the chairman of the National Assembly, the chairman of the Raj Parishad Standing Committee, the Deputy Prime Minister, Ministers, MPs, heads of constitutional bodies, officials from diplomatic missions, and other high ranking officials and distinguished individuals.

During the function the Indradhoj Company put on a drill display while the first rifle battalion opened successive, salvo and individual fire.

Various martial arts were also displayed.

People thronged Tundikhel to see the hour and half long programme.

Kathmandu, Mar 3 : United States Information Center and Artistes Society organised an interaction programme on the measures to be adopted for implementation of the Copyrights Act in accordance with national and international norms and values.

On the occasion, the artistes stressed the need for the government to formulate stringent laws and implement it to cheek unauthorised sales of their songs and cassettes within and outside the country.

Advisor of the U.S. Patent and Trademark office Prof. Davis E. Long said that acts relating to copyright and trademark rights have been formulated and implemented in majority of the countries throughout the world.

He suggested that the copyrights and trademark acts should be formulated and implemented for the welfare of the country.

Lalitpur, Mar 3 : Minister for Agriculture Chakra Prasad Bastola has said that the time has come to evaluate the impact seen on agricultural output and the number of farmers benefiting from enforcement of the 20-year Agricultural Plan.

Mr. Bastola, who was distributing certificates to the participants of a week long seminar on soil management organised by the Department of Agriculture, Soil Test and Service Division the other day, said that timely assessment and review of a given project would help dispose of the rest of the work on that project.

Farmers should be informed about the balanced use of bio-and chemical fertiliser to increase the fertility of the soil at a time when wide discrepancy between population growth and agricultural out put is posing a challenge, he said adding there should be work on soil management.

Chief of the division Sadananda Jaisi said that farmers should be encouraged to use bio-fertiliser as unbalanced use of fertilisers has led to diminished fertility of the soil. The function was presided over by director-general of the Department of Agriculture Asheshwar Jha.

Meanwhile in Bhadrapur, a follow-up seminar on employment promotion training organised by the Employment Promotion Committee of His Majesty’s Government opened here on Thursday.

National Planning Commission (NPC) member Jagdish Chandra Pokharel inaugurated the training .

The seminar is expected to make an evaluation of the implementation aspect of various employment generation trainings conducted by different government authorities, assess the practical implications of the training to employment, workout ways for the coordination of training and employment and to identify the means and ways of relating the training to the job market and the development of the district.

Twenty four persons took part in the day-long seminar presided over by DDC chairman Arjun Rai.

Kathmandu, March 3: Nepal Tourism Board has won the prestigious PATA Gold Award in CD-ROM category at the 2000 PATA Gold Awards. NTB’s entry “Mt Everest & More., Experience it in Nepal” in the CD-ROM category was adjudged the best by a panel of judges consisting of tourism experts. Gold Award winners represent the best in their respective fields and recognition in this contest is a strong measure of excellence and accomplishment. NTB will receive the Award at the 49th Annual Conference of PATA in Hong Kong on May 1, 2000, this was disclosed by the NTB press release today.

The Interactive CD-ROM “Mt. Everest and More” produced by the Nepal Tourism Board has received rave reviews all over the world and this award only reafirms its excellence both in tennis of technical quality and information database.

“Mt Everest and More” is a cross platform interactive multimedia CD-ROM that contains over 560 MB of data incorporated over 600 pages of text. 30 video clips and over 500 high resolution images including maps. The content covers all aspects of tourism related materials and is divided into 10 main chapters. It also features a special presentation slide show accompanied by an interesting fusion of roadern sound effects and traditional Nepali music.

The CD-ROM title has an extremely user-friendly graphical interface through which one can navigate intuitively through its entire contents. It also incorporates a trouble free printing facility so that the user can easily primary of the topics with a click of a button. Mr. Khusbo Sarkar Shrestha created the CD ROM for NTB.

The prestigious PATA Gold Award has added one more feather in NTB’s cap. Last year, NTB was awarded the “Overall Winner of Greening of Business Tourism Awards 1999” by the European Incentive and Business Travel Meeting (EIBTM) in Geneva, Switzerland. The award honors Nepal’s effort towards sustainable tourism development through environmentally friendly ways and strong promotion of eco-tourism. The NTB was awarded the “TTF Award of Excellence in Group Participation” at TTF 99, Calcutta, India. And more recently, NTB was also won the Group Participation Award-Scroll of Honour at TTF Mumbai 2000.

These awards stand as testimony  to NTB’s   firm commitment towards aggressive destination promotion in the international arena.

Kathmandu, March 3: In the ongoing Mangaladevi National Women Soccer League Morang Tarun Club beat Makawanpur Pashupati Youth Club 2-0, Friday. Tarun Club’s Ganga Gurung and Pramila Shakya scored a goal each in the 44th and 89th minutes respectively.

In the second match, Mahendra Police Club (MPC) edged past Kailali Youth Sports Club 1-0. Sukra Rai of MPC scored a good in the 76th minute.

Kailali, Jhapa, Banke and MPC had already entered into semi-finals. The semi final games will start from Sunday.

Kathmandu, March 3: Laxman Agrawal entered the final round of the All Nepal Carlsberg Snooker Championship, following his straight forward 4-0 win over Bhagirath Tulsiyan in the preliminary final here today at the Club, Bhat Bhateni.

The final, 42nd one to be held so far under the tournament organised by Gorkha Brewary Ltd in association with Billiards, Snooker and Pool Association of Nepal saw Tulsiyan begin the game with error after pathetic error and was never into it. That released pressure off Agrawal and he barely looked back thereafter registering the first cake walk win so far in the tournament.

The award of Rs. 2,000 for the highest break at the venue went to Pankaj Baraida, who had scored a 21-point break there in the quarterfinals.

Meanwhile, Hom Bahadur Nepal, Deepak Bishwokarma and Ngudup set up the summit class at Club de Pokhara, following their win in best of nine frame semifinals.

Nepali, who was trailing by 22 points to his rival Nabin Pun in the first frame. But demonstrating the precision and poise, he quickly shrugged off that deficit and went on to take that frame at 60-48.

Pun fared below his mark in the second and third, failing to match Nepali’s perfection on the table and handed out an easy win to Nepali. he completed the match in style, winning the last four frames with the score of 57-15, 68-26, 45-36, 57-19.

To join Nepali in the final, the rising young cueist Deepak Bishwokarma overpowered his much experienced opposition Lokman Gurung by 5-3.

After conceding the first two frames to Bishwokarma, 23-62, 21-55, Gurung came up strongly, executing some outstanding pocketing on the table to take charge of the game in the middle when he won three frame in succession, 64-22, 54-26 and 61-46 to for a 3-2 lead.

But his game deteriorated considerably thereafter, especially during crunch situations and Bishwokarma won the next three at 53-32, 64-45 and 50-47 to set up Saturday’s final with Hom Bahadur Nepali.

Narayangarh,  March 3: Manang Marshyangdi, Mahendra Police, Three Stars, RCT , Sunsari, Friends Club, Tribhuwan Club and Sankata  have made their way into the second round of the Khukuri Gold Cup soccer tournament to be held in Kathmandu from next week.

In matches played Narayangarh today, Friends Club and Sunsari beat their rivals to enter the second rounds.  In the final games of group C, Friends Club emerged victorious beating Jhapa through the golden goal. In a closely fought match, Friends’ Bill Tamang hit home the golden goal in the 10th minute of the extra-time that sealed the fate of the rival Jhapa.

In another closely fought battle, Sunsari’s Shyam Manandhar hit the lone decider in the 26th minute of the second half ensure his team’s place in the second phase of the tournament in Kathmandu. Both Sunsari and Parsa played a goal-less draw in the first half.

Meanwhile, in the final game of the first phase played in Nepalganj, Tribhuwan Club of Royal Nepal Army booked a berth in the second round by beating Kathmandu Club 4-1. However it was the Kathmandu Club that took the lead through Amrit Bajracharya’s 12th minute strike. After having conceded a goal, the armymen took control over the game but they had to wait until 36th minute when Adarsha Malla hit home the equaliser for them.

After being locked to 1-1 till the lemon break, the armymen regrouped and made easy outings in the rivals’ area. Ashok Thapa Magar gave his team lead in the 60th minute by scoring from a Saila Maharjan pass outside the penalty area. Darkash Thapa added the third one from a long-range shot while the final goal came from Saila Maharjan just before the final whistle of the referee.

In the group C fixture today, Sankata Boys defeated Kaski 8-7 after the penlaty shoot-out.

Kathmandu, Mar. 3: The 15-day grand book exhibition organised at the Bhrikuti Mandap by the Sajha Prakashan in connection with the golden jubilee of National Democracy Day and the education day  concluded today.

At the exhibition more than 100,000 readers bought books worth  Rs. 2,500,000.

It was found that there is a great interest among the readers in reading books, according to chief of the Sajha Prakashan Sales Promotion Department and Coordinator of the Book Exhibition Ram Krishna Bhandari.

At the exhibition which had more than 3000 titles in various genres including linguistics, science, arts and culture. “Munamadan”   written by Mahakavi Laxmi Prasad Devkota was the bestseller.

Similarly, among the religious books, the ‘Ved Ma Ke Chha’ and ‘Srimad Bhagawat Mahapuran’ and in literature, the stories and novels of  B. P. Koirala, ‘Ghumne Mechmathi Andho Manchhe’ of Bhupi Sherchan and the ‘Freudko Manobisleshan’ were other works purchased by the readers.

The Sajha Prakashan had provided a discount   of  8 to 75 per cent on the books sold through the 27 sales centres of the Sajha Prakashan all over the Kingdom besides book exhibition in Kathmandu.

This kind of book exhibition  will be held every year from now onwards in view of the increasing interest shown by the readers as against the practice of organising the book exhibition once in two years.

Kathmandu, Mar. 3:Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai has congratulated Mr Ivan Kostov, Prime Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria on the occasion of the national day of Bulgaria.

In a message of congratulations, Prime Minister Bhattarai has wished for Mr Kostov’s good health and happiness as well as for the progress and prosperity of the people of Bulgaria.

Kathmandu, Mar. 3: His Majesty the King has felicitated Mr Peter Stoyanov. President of the Republic of Bulgaria on the occasion of the national day of Bulgaria.

In a message of felicitations, His Majesty has extended best wishes for the president’s personal health and happiness and for the progress and prosperity of the people of Bulgaria.