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Sunday,April 17, 2016 (o5-o1-2073)
N E PA L’ S L A R G E S T S E L L I N G E N G L I S H D A I LY
Vol XXIV No 59 | 12+4 Pages
page 7
page 9
page 10
money
Winners of Smart Dampati
Facebook contest
announced
Pope takes back Syrian
migrants to Vatican
Bista brace sends
APF into semis
TIA sees rise in freight
movement
Life & style
world
sports
tarai crisis
As talks fail to resume,
blame game continues
PM, his party’s calls to return to negotiating table cut no ice with Morcha
ROSHAN SEDHAI
KATHMANDU, APRIL 16
n
Nepali batsman Sharad Vesawkar plays a shot during a match against Namibia at TU cricket ground in Kirtipur on Saturday.
post photo
Nepal earn maiden victory
n Beat Namibia by five wickets n Climb to the sixth spot in standings
POST REPORT
KATHMANDU, APRIL 16
Nepal defeated Namibia by
five wickets for their maiden
victory in the ICC World
Cricket
League
Championship (WCLC) on
Saturday. For the Nepali
cricketers, it was a double
delight, as they achieved the
feat in front of a home crowd
at TU cricket ground in
Kirtipur.
In an eight-team tournament that offers 2018 ICC
World Cup Qualifiers spot to
the top four teams, the first
victory lifted Nepal to the
sixth position from eighth on
net run-rate after being tied
on two points with Namibia
and the United Arab
Emirates (UAE).
Nepal will take on
Namibia once again on
Monday where another victory can push them to the
fifth position.
Nepal had lost all their
previous four matches—two
each against Scotland and
Papua New Guinea (PNG)—
that had brought them down
to bottom.
On
Saturday,
Nepal
restricted Namibia to 195-9
in 50 overs before replying
with 197-5 in 47.1 overs.
Scores trapped
as Japan quakes
toll hits 35
KUMAMOTO (JAPAN): Scores of
people were feared buried
alive on Saturday after two
powerful quakes hit southern
Japan a day apart, killing at
least 35 people. Homes, roads
and railway lines were swept
away when huge hillsides collapsed as thousands of tonnes
of mud was dislodged by the
thunderous seismic tremors.
Buildings were reduced to
rubble, including a university
dormitory and apartment
complexes, with dozens of
people unaccounted for over a
wide area. (Details on Pg9)
Oh, the times!
By Abin
Factional politics? No way...! You
may as well enquire with those in
my faction!
world cricket league championship
[
It’s good to register our first victory in the
tournament. Such is the format of the WCLC
that we have to play two matches in every two
or three months where we cannot afford to
make mistakes
Pa r a s K h a d k a , S K I P P E R , N epa l
After opting to bat,
Namibia’s top five could not
capitalise on their starts, as
captain Stephan Baard (18)
fell in the third over followed
by his opening partner Zane
Green (14) in the seventh
over. Basant Regmi’s quick
strikes in the middle overs
triggered a collapse and
Namibia lost three wickets
for seven runs and were faltering at 109 for 6. Riding on
Sarel Burger’s 77-ball 38
Namibia crossed 150. But
Regmi came back in the end
overs to remove Burger. A
lower-order cameo from JJ
Smit (26 off 22) helped
Namibia post 195 for 9 in 50
overs.
In reply, Nepal made a
promising start with a 42-run
opening stand, but openers
Gyanendra
Malla
and
Naresh Budayair fell in suc-
]
cessive overs. In 32.4 overs,
Nepal were in a precarious
position at 113-5, but Sharad
Vesawkar
and
Binod
Bhandari put on an unbroken match-winning partnership of 84 runs from 87 balls.
Vesawkar held the innings
with a composed 50 off 99
balls, while Bhandari was
unbeaten on 40 from 49 balls.
Skipper Paras Khadka hit
two fours and a six in his 21
before he was bowled by
Burger.
When Rajesh Pulami was
dismissed, Nepal needed 82
with five wickets in hand.
But Namibia were denied by
the
Vesawkar-Binod
Bhandari’s unbeaten 84-run
stand that saw them home
with 17 balls to spare.
Nepal skipper Khadka
said he wanted his side to
maintain
the
winning
momentum. “It’s good to register our first victory in the
tournament. Such is the format of the WCLC that we
have to play two matches in
every two or three months
where we cannot afford to
make mistakes,” said skipper Khadka. “We now need to
make sure this winning
momentum
continues
because
the
upcoming
results will determine the
future of Nepali cricket.”
The WCLC is a two-year
50-over home and away tournaments for the top eight
non-Test playing ICC teams
who face each other twice
under the round-robin
league format.
After the match against
Namibia, Nepal will travel to
the Netherlands, who lead
the table with 10 points from
six matches, in the fourth
round fixtures. Nepal are
also hosting Kenya and will
play an away match against
Hong Kong, while their
match against the UAE will
be held at a neutral venue.
Behind the Netherlands
are Hong Kong (nine),
Scotland (seven), Kenya (six)
and PNG (four).
In four days, the Constitution
of Nepal will be six months
old. But there is no solution in
sight to the Tarai crisis, an
outcome of this very charter
that was promulgated on
September 20.
In the last one week, the
Madhes-based parties have
been urged twice to return to
the negotiating table—once by
Prime Minister KP Sharma
Oli during his address to the
nation on Tuesday and again
on Friday by PM Oli’s party,
the CPN-UML. The calls to
“return to talks table” have
come amid the preparations
of the Samyukta Loktantrik
Madhesi Morcha (SLMM) to
take to the streets from Aprilend, and this time the Morcha
is saying its protests will be
Kathmandu-centric.
What is hampering the progress to find a solution to the
crisis is trust deficit.
The Morcha has ruled out
possibilities of “talks in
immediate future under cur-
Charter promulgation and thereafter
6: Months since the adoption of
the constitution which sparked
protests in the Tarai
n5: Months of protests in the Tarai
by Madhes-based parties
n1: Amendment to the charter ‘to
address’ agitating parties’
concerns
n
rent circumstances”. Ashok
Rai, a senior leader of the
Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum
Nepal, a constituent of the
SLMM, says it was the government that ended the talks
despite Morcha’s readiness to
adopt flexibility.
“We are still ready to compromise if they [ruling parties] really want to end this
crisis,” says Rai. “But it would
be useless to come to the negotiating table just for the sake
of resuming talks.”
PM Oli’s Chief Political
Adviser Bishnu Rimal says
the government is committed
to redrawing the boundaries.
“But the government cannot
assure them that there will be
36: Rounds of talks the Madhesbased parties and major parties
held till February 18
nOver 50: Deaths in the Tarai
plains during the protests
nAlmost 0: Progress so far when
it comes to addressing demands,
according to the Morcha
n
two provinces along the
plains.” A government-formed
mechanism to address the
issues related to Morcha’s
demands has been sitting idle
since it was formed on
February 18. The Morcha has
refused to be part of the political mechanism, seeking the
statutory status for the mechanism and an unequivocal
assurance that one more province will be carved out along
the plains.
The Morcha and the ruling
parties had even formed taskforces to iron out the differences, but the efforts failed to
yield results, thanks to, again,
trust deficit.
Efforts to find a solution to
the crisis came to an abrupt
end after 36 rounds of talks.
The parties have not sat for
talks since February 18 when
the government formed the
political mechanism.
The Madhes-based parties
have accused the government
of forming the mechanism
without taking them on board,
and it has also questioned its
“legitimacy and jurisdiction”.
Since then, it is all blamegame and no talks.
“Work on state demarcation
can start only when the
Morcha sends its representatives to the political mechanism,” says Rimal. “We haven’t been able to give full
shape to the mechanism due
to non-cooperation from the
Morcha.” On January 23,
Parliament voted to amend
the constitution in a bid to
address Morcha’s demands,
but the move did little to
appease the Morcha. The
amendment did not address
the agitating parties’ demand
that the provincial boundaries be redrawn.
>> Continued on page 3
Zika has ‘significantly
changed’ since 1947
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESS
MIAMI, APRIL 16
The mosquito-borne Zika
virus
has
significantly
evolved since it was first discovered in 1947, and researchers have said these genetic
changes could shed light on
why it has the power to cause
birth defects.
The research in the journal
Cell Host and Microbe was led
by scientists at the University
of California, Los Angeles
and the Chinese Academy of
Medical Sciences and Peking
Union Medical College in
Beijing. Researchers looked
for individual differences
between more than 40 strains
of Zika virus—30 of which
came from people, 10 from
mosquitoes, and one from a
monkey.
They found big differences
between the Asian and
African lineages of the virus,
and “significant changes in
both amino acid and nucleotide sequences during the past
half-century,” said the study.
Zika strains found in
humans are more genetically
similar to a strain identified
in Malaysia in 1966 than that
found in Nigeria in 1968, “suggesting the strains in the
Research findings
Zika strains found in humans are
more genetically similar to a strain
identified in Malaysia in 1966 than
that found in Nigeria in 1968, suggesting the strains in the recent
human outbreak evolved from the
Asian lineage
nAll of the human strains identified
in the 2015-2016 outbreaks appear
most closely related to the virus
identified in 2013 in French
Polynesia
n
recent human outbreak
evolved from the Asian lineage,” it said.
All of the human strains
identified in the 2015-2016 outbreaks appear most closely
related to the virus identified
in 2013 in French Polynesia.
The team also found that a
certain protein, called the
pre-membrane precursor or
prM, was quite different
between the Asian human
and the African mosquito
subtypes.
“We believe these changes
may, at least partially, explain
why the virus has demonstrated the capacity to spread exponentially in the human population in the Americas,” said
senior study author Genhong
Cheng, a professor at the
University of California, Los
Angeles’s department of
microbiology, immunology
and molecular genetics.
“These changes could enable the virus to replicate more
efficiently, invade new tissues
that provide protective niches
for viral propagation, or evade
the immune system, leading
to viral persistence.”
Never before has a mosquito-borne virus shown the
potential to cause a condition
known as microcephaly in
babies born to mothers infected while pregnant, leaving the
infants with small heads and
deformed brains.
A vaccine against the virus,
which can also be sexually
transmitted, is years away, US
health authorities say.
C M Y K
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