Two years ago, the former national-level volleyball player was shoved from a moving train by thieves when she reportedly attempted to fight them off as they tried to stealing her purse. — Youtube video grab

KATHMANDU: An Indian woman who lost her leg after she was thrown from a moving train two years ago has become the first female amputee to climb Everest, expedition organisers said Wednesday.

Arunima Sinha, 26, from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, reached the peak on Tuesday morning after a slow climb from Everest Base Camp.

“She left high camp at 6pm on Monday evening and arrived at the summit at 10:55 am (local time) on Tuesday,” Ang Tshering Sherpa, founder of Asian Trekking, the company that organised the expedition, told AFP.

Sinha’s guides were concerned about her slow pace until the team reached an 8,750-metre  junction that climbers pass through on their way to the top of the mountain, Sherpa said.

“But once she got to that point, she gained energy and confidence and started moving really quickly,” Sherpa said.

Two years ago, the former national-level volleyball player was shoved from a moving train by thieves when she reportedly attempted to fight them off as they tried to stealing her purse.

A passing train crushed her left leg, forcing doctors to amputate below the knee to save her life.

“At that time everyone was worried for me. I then realised I had to do something in my life so that people stop looking at me with pity,” Sinha told Indian TV before leaving for the climb.

The Tata Steel Adventure Foundation, which sponsored Sinha’s climb, contacted Sherpa’s Asian Trekking company in 2012 about providing training and guiding for the expedition.

“We knew her story, we knew she recovered well from the amputation because she’s a very active athlete,” Sherpa said, adding that the company trained her on Nepal’s Island Peak during the 2012 spring climbing season.

Hundreds of climbers have thronged the world’s highest peak during a window of good weather. May is considered the best time for climbing in the Nepalese Himalayas because of mild weather and some 300 people have reached the 8,848-metre high Everest so far this year.

The mountain has become a popular symbolic pilgrimage site for record-setting, awareness-raising, and pledge drives for charities, which have increased crowds on the peak.

Tom Whittaker, a British mountaineer, became the first person with a disability to summit the peak in 1998 after a car crash almost two decades earlier had forced him to have his foot amputated.

Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai (4th L) with the leader of four major political parties join hands in front of the media after signing an agreement to form a government led by chief justice Khilraj Regmi in Kathmandu March 13, 2013. — Photo by Reuters.

KATHMANDU, Nepal: The chief judge of Nepal’s Supreme Court will be sworn in on Thursday to lead an interim government that would hold elections in three months, ending an impasse since the last parliament term expired almost a year ago.  

Deputy Prime Minister Narayankaji Shrestha said leaders of the four largest political parties signed the final agreement to appoint Khilraj Regmi as head of the government. Regmi is scheduled to be sworn in on Thursday morning by President Ram Baran Yadav.

The agreement reached late Wednesday night.  The new Cabinet would have 11 members and elections would have to be held by June 21 — the new government’s main task.

The vote would choose a new Constituent Assembly to write a constitution and double as the country’s parliament.

The assembly elected in May 2008 expired last year after failing to complete the charter because of disagreements among the political parties.

The feuding politicians agreed to appoint Regmi as the head of the government because they could not agree on a choice among themselves.

Since the last assembly tenure ended in May 2012, Baburam Bhattarai, of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), has remained the head of caretaker administration.

Elections set for November 2012 were canceled because of the squabbling.

Regmi, 63, has remained free of controversy in his two years as chief justice, until now.

The Nepal Bar Association and some of the smaller parties have criticized the arrangement as inappropriately mixing law and politics. Some of the opponents have threatened to organize street protests.

Maoist rebels in Nepal fought government troops between 1996 and 2006 until they gave up their armed revolt and joined a peace process that evolved after the Himalayan nation abolished its longstanding monarchy. They emerged as the largest political party in the 2008 Constituent Assembly, but no party got a clear majority.

Four different prime ministers assumed power in the next four years.

Differences among the political parties have been blamed for the delays in the peace process and in the writing of a new constitution for Nepal.

This September 12, 2007 file photo shows Nepali transgender people, dressed in ethnic costumes, prior to a performance at the close of their meeting in Kathmandu. —AFP Photo

KATHMANDU: Transgender citizens in Nepal will no longer have to describe themselves as male or female on their national identity cards under a new government regulation, an official said on Wednesday.

Bhola Siwakoti, a senior official in the home ministry, said that its offices across the country had been instructed to allow people to register as “a third gender” when completing their citizenship certificates.

“We have sent circulars to our district administrative offices in all 75 districts to implement this new regulation. From now on, anyone who wants such an identity can apply for one,” Siwakoti told AFP.

The move comes more than five years after Nepal’s Supreme Court ordered the government to enact laws to guarantee the rights of transgender, gay, lesbian and bisexual people.

The government-issued citizenship certificates, which serve as national ID cards, are required to open bank accounts, sell and buy property, apply for a job and to get a passport.

Sunil Babu Pant, director of Blue Diamond Society, a gay rights group, welcomed the government decision.

“This decision has made it easier for those who don’t identify themselves as male or female and want a category broadly called ‘third gender’,” Pant told AFP.

“We have won half of our battle. It has paved the way for our struggle in other areas,” Pant added.

In this photograph taken on December 4, 2009 Mount Everest is seen from The Kalapattar Plateau some 140 kms (87 miles) northeast of Kathmandu. American space agency NASA December 13, 2012 has provoked indignation in Nepal after claiming a picture it posted of an Indian mountain was Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak and a source of national pride. AFP (File Photo)

KATHMANDU, Dec 13, 2012 - The world’s highest mountain should not be hard to spot but American space agency NASA has admitted it mistook a summit in India for Mount Everest, which straddles the border of Nepal and China.

The agency said on its website that Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko’s snap from the International Space Station, 230 miles (370 kilometres) above Earth, showed Everest lightly dusted with snow.

The picture spread rapidly via Twitter and was picked up by media around the world, including the US-based magazine The Atlantic, astronomy website Space.com and US cable news channel MSNBC. But Nepalis smelt a rat and voiced their suspicions on social media.

Journalist Kunda Dixit, an authority on the Himalayas, tweeted: “Sorry guys, but the tall peak with the shadow in the middle is not Mt Everest.”NASA confirmed on Thursday that it had made a mistake and removed the picture from its website.

“It is not Everest. It is Saser Muztagh, in the Karakoram Range of the Kashmir region of India,” a spokesman admitted in an email to AFP.

“The view is in mid-afternoon light looking northeastward.”He did not explain how the picture from the space station, a joint project of the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe, had been wrongly identified.

Everest, which is 8,848 metres (29,028 feet) high, is an sought-after photographic target for astronauts in orbit but is tricky to capture, according to astronaut Ron Garan, who lived on the International Space Station last year.

“No time is allotted in our work day normally for Earth pictures. So if we want to capture a specific point on the ground we have to first know exactly when we will fly over that spot,” he told The Atlantic.

At least 86 people have set themselves on fire since 2009. Along with the World Human Rights Day, Tibetans also mark Dec. 10 as the Nobel Peace Prize Day, the day the Dalai Lama received the Nobel peace prize in 1989.

A cinema hall is pictured in Kathmandu. Kaushal Raj Sapkota. The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist last week imposed a 10-day stoppage on cinemas across the country showing Indian Bollywood movies, in a move that the splinter group says is to protect the local cinema industry. File photo by AFP

KATHMANDU: Kaushal Raj Sapkota, a Nepalese fan of Bollywood films, had his weekend cinema plans ruined by a Maoist intimidation campaign that has stoked fears about the country’s post-war stability.

The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) last week demanded that cinemas across the country stop showing Bollywood movies for 10 days, in protest over what it sees as India’s growing influence in the tiny Himalayan nation.

The hardline party, which was formed in June and includes rebel fighters from the decade-long civil war that ended in 2006, has recently used similar threats of violence to stop Indian-registered vehicles crossing the border into Nepal.

Members of the splinter group have also torched school buses and smashed computers in a Kathmandu college in the latest sign of tension over Nepal’s lack of progress since the Maoists and the state signed a peace deal to end the war.

“This is a violation of my individual rights. At the weekend, I would have watched my favourite Hindi movies. But the ban has ruined my plans,” Sapkota, a 20-year-old information technology student at Kathmandu University, told AFP.

“They are investing their energy in a useless campaign. We all watch Hindi movies. This will only force us to watch pirated movies.” Bowing to the demands of the CPN-M, most of Nepal’s 100 cinema halls have refused to screen the popular Bollywood films that pull in their biggest audiences.

The party, a breakaway faction that split from the ruling Maoists, believes that the mainstream Maoists have abandoned their principles and that the sacrifices made by rebels during the bloody civil war have been forgotten.

Pampha Bhusal, a party spokeswoman, said the anti-Bollywood campaign was seeking a fairer relationship with India, Nepal’s influential neighbour.

“We are fighting for equal treatment. Be it small or big, both Nepal and India are sovereign countries,” she told AFP.

Bollywood movies spread “hatred against Nepal. They portray Nepalese as lowly security guards and helpers. Such portrayals humiliate us. They hurt our sentiments”, she said.

The Maoists won post-war elections in 2008 and last year Baburam Bhattarai became the second leader of the former rebels to form a government. He was sworn in as Nepal’s fourth prime minister in as many years.

Narayan Wagle, a veteran political commentator, said radical Maoists see an opportunity opening up due to national politics being in a dire stalemate after endless squabbling among parties.

“The war is over but peace has not prevailed yet. People are still fearful. And, Maoists have always stoked fear among people,” Wagle told AFP.

“In a poor country like Nepal, fear psychology can be very effective.

That’s what the Maoists proved during the war. The hardline faction is trying to create an environment of fear so that they will have an upper hand,” he said.

Wagle said that the CPN-M were also tapping into disenchantment among former rebel fighters who criticise their war-time leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal – better known as Prachanda – for being seduced by power since the war ended.

The party last week halted Indian-registered vehicles from crossing into Nepal, arguing that it would reduce dependency on India.

Nepal’s Maoists have traditionally resented India, viewing it as interfering in the country’s internal affairs.

But India provides a lifeline to its landlocked neighbour as its sole supplier of fuel and the two Hindu-majority countries share close links.

According to Madhab Basnet, a political writer at current affairs magazine Nepal Weekly, the hardliners’ protests are likely to increase.

“After the split, they are very keen to establish themselves as a force to reckon with. Their actions can be interpreted as tools to garner visibility,” Basnet said.

“Secondly, the causes of the war – poverty, unemployment – are still here. So, they have popular agendas with them.” Nepal’s interim parliament, known as the Constituent Assembly, which was set up following the war, collapsed in May after it repeatedly failed to agree on a new constitution.

Since then, the impoverished country has been run by a caretaker Maoist government, which announced elections for parliament on November 22.

But the election commission has said it lacked a legal framework to hold the polls, plunging the country further into uncertainty.

Onlookers and rescuers are seen near the wreckage of an Sita Air Dornier plane crash site in Manohara, on the outskirts of Kathmandu on September 28, 2012. — Photo by AFP

KATHMANDU: A passenger jet carrying 19 people, mainly foreigners, towards an airport in the shadow of Mount Everest crashed on Friday on the outskirts of the Nepalese capital, police said, killing everyone on board.

The Sita Air craft had just taken off from Kathmandu airport and was headed to the small town of Lukla, a gateway to Everest, when it plunged towards a river on the outskirts of the city.

“All 19 passengers of the Sita Air plane have died. The accident site is less than one kilometre (half a mile) from the airport,” said Nepal Police spokesman Binod Singh.

“The pilots seem to have tried to land it safely on the banks of the river but unfortunately the plane caught fire.” Singh said the plane, carrying mainly foreigners and three local crew, plunged into the banks of the Manohara River early in the morning.

“There are four Nepalis among the dead, apart from the crew. The majority of the dead are foreigners from Western countries,” he said.

Dozens of army personnel had arrived at the crash site, said Nepalese army spokesman Ramindra Chhetri, and were battling to bring the blaze under control.

“I was just walking and saw a plane landing. It was caught in fire and I even heard people inside the plane screaming,” a witness told Kantipur Television.

Another witness said he saw half burned bodies near the crash site, a slum settlement.

Nepal has a poor road network and large numbers of tourists, pilgrims and professional climbers often rely on the country’s 16 domestic airlines and 49 airports to reach remote areas.

The latest fatal crash in Nepal — the sixth in less than two years — could potentially lead to new scrutiny of the country’s numerous small airlines, which provide vital links to remote parts of the country.

Aircraft and pilots often have to contend with bad weather and difficult landing strips in the Himalayan nation.

In another recent accident in Nepal, a small Agni Air plane taking tourists to a treacherous high-altitude airport near the Annapurna mountain region ploughed into the ground, killing 15 people on board.

In September last year a small plane taking tourists on a sightseeing trip around Everest crashed into a hillside near the Nepalese Kathmandu, also killing all 19 people on board.

The Buddha Air Beechcraft plane, carrying 10 Indians, two Americans, one Japanese citizen and three local passengers, came down in heavy rain and fog at Godavari, about 10 kilometres from the capital.

Five climbers were rescued. Police inspector Basant Mishra said the bodies of a German climber and a Nepali guide were recovered from the snow on the 8,163-metre (26,781-foot) Mount Manaslu, about 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Kathmandu.

Survivors said the scene resembled a war zone, with the entire camp destroyed by the wall of snow.