Nepalinews

LONDON:  From $7 for a Rohingya refugee to $750 for a North Korean “slave wife”, human rights activists have voiced concerns that it is becoming increasingly easy to enslave another human being as the cost plummets. The average modern-day slave is sold for $90-100 compared to the equivalent of $40,000 some 200 years ago, said Kevin Bales, Professor of Contemporary Slavery at Britain’s University of Nottingham.“There has been a collapse in the price of slaves over the last 50 years,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual Trust Conference in London, which focuses on women’s empowerment and modern slavery. Pointing to a photo of boys hauling rocks in Nepal “like beasts of burden”, he said their parents would have sold them for $5-$10. Children are so cheap that if they get injured or fall in a ravine their slave master abandons them, Bales said. “They understand it’s less expensive to acquire a new child than to call a doctor,” he added. Bales attributed the fall in

        SEOUL:  North Korea said on Saturday that US President Donald Trump’s first trip to Asia showed he was a “destroyer” and he had begged for war on the Korean peninsula, in a statement carried by the state news agency. “Trump made his conceived attempt yet again to alienate our people from the government,” the foreign ministry spokesman said.

SYDNEY:  A car crashed into a Sydney school classroom on Tuesday, killing two eight-year-old boys and seriously injuring three children, Australian police said. Police believe it was an accident, not a deliberate attack. A sports utility vehicle smashed through the wooden wall of the school in Sydney’s west, where 24 primary-age children were in class with their teacher, police said in a statement. Three girls, two aged eight and another aged nine, were in a serious or stable condition in hospital. Another 17 children and their teacher were treated for minor injuries. Police said the driver, a 52-year-old woman who was not hurt, was taken to hospital for blood and urine tests and later charged with two counts of dangerous driving. TV images showed the car punched through the wall and stop completely inside the classroom, which was adorned with children’s drawings and pictures. “Obviously it was a scene of carnage,” New South Wales state Ambulance Superintendent Step

WASHINGTON:  A visa program aimed at diversifying the US immigrant population came under attack from President Donald Trump on Wednesday after he learned that the man accused of killing eight people in New York City on Tuesday used it to enter the country. Sayfullo Saipov, who was charged in Tuesday’s truck attack, immigrated to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2010 after winning a lottery enabling him to obtain a so-called “diversity visa,” two government officials confirmed to Reuters. The program, established by Congress and coordinated by the State Department, has its roots in efforts to bring more Irish and Italian immigrants into the United States. Citizens of countries that send relatively few immigrants to the United States can enter a lottery that grants winners permanent US residency. Applicants must have at least a high school education or its equivalent, or relevant work experience. Just under 11.4 million applicants entered the 2016 lottery for 50,000 s

NEW YORK:  Islamic State has claimed responsibility, without providing proof, for a truck attack earlier this week that killed eight people in the deadliest assault on New York City since Sept. 11, 2001. The militant group on Thursday described accused attacker Sayfullo Saipov, 29, as “one of the caliphate soldiers” in a weekly issue of its Al-Naba newspaper. The Uzbek immigrant was charged in federal court on Wednesday with acting in support of Islamic State by plowing a rented pickup truck down a popular riverside bike trail, crushing pedestrians and cyclists and injuring a dozen people in addition to those killed. According to the criminal complaint against him, Saipov told investigators he was inspired by watching Islamic State propaganda videos on his cellphone, felt good about what he had done, and asked for permission to display the group’s flag in his room at Bellevue Hospital. Saipov was taken to Bellevue after being shot in the abdomen by a police officer befo

DUBAI:  Saudi Arabia will allow women into sports stadiums as of next year, the kingdom’s latest step toward easing rules on gender segregation — but they will be seated in the so-called family section, an area separate from the male-only crowd. Still, the decision, announced on Sunday, marks another incremental step toward greater women’s rights in the kingdom.The General Sports Authority described the decision as one that will allow “families” into the stadiums — a term authorities use to refer to the public spaces that accommodate women. These “family” sections are for women who are out on their own or who are accompanied by a male relative. Many restaurants and cafes, which often also have separate entrances for women, have similarly segregated seating arrangements. The authority said the three major sports stadiums in the capital, Riyadh, and the cities of Jiddah and Dammam will undergo renovations to accommodate families. The decision comes after the public appeared t

A federal judge in Washington on Monday blocked President Donald Trump from banning transgender people from serving in the US military, handing a victory to transgender service members who accused the president of violating their constitutional rights. Trump announced in July that he would ban transgender people from the military in a move that would reverse Democratic former President Barack Obama’s policy of accepting them and halt years of efforts to eliminate barriers to military service based on sexual orientation or gender identity.The transgender service members sued in August to try to block the ban, which had not yet gone into effect, and US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted them an injunction halting enforcement of it until their case is resolved. The service members asserted that Trump’s policy violated their rights to due process and equal protection under the law under the US Constitution. Kollar-Kotelly said the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in the

SEOUL:  South Korea and China will push to normalize their ties badly strained over the deployment of a contentious US missile defense system in the South, both countries announced Tuesday, with Seoul saying their leaders are set to hold summit talks next week. South Korea allowed the United States to install the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system on its soil this year, triggering angry rhetoric and economic retaliation from China which views THAAD’s powerful radar as a threat to its own security. South Korea and the United States have repeatedly said the system is only aimed at defending against North Korea’s advancing nuclear threats, rather than peering into Chinese territory.On Tuesday, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said there was recently diplomatic communication between the two countries, during which they agreed to put bilateral exchange and cooperation back on a normal track soon and boost cooperation for a peaceful, diplomatic resolution of the North Korean nuclear is

MUMBAI:  A flagship government program to modernise India’s sanitation has failed to tackle the practice of low caste women clearing faeces by hand, and has even exacerbated the problem by building toilets not connected to water supplies, campaigners say. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or Clean India Mission, with much fanfare after he took office in 2014, sweeping a Delhi street with a broom. Since then, thousands of toilets have been built across the country.But Dalit communities, especially women, are still forced to be manual scavengers, a euphemism for clearing faeces from dry toilets and open drains by hand, despite laws to end the practice. The workers have it harder now, activists said. “Swachh Bharat has diverted attention from ending manual scavenging, and makes it seem like the whole country is cleaning. But if that’s the case, then why are people still dying in septic tanks,” said activist Bezwada Wilson. “There is also no discuss

MADRID/BARCELONA:  Catalonia’s police force told its officers to remain neutral in the struggle over the region’s fight for independence on Saturday, a step towards averting possible conflict as the Madrid government starts to impose direct control. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy dismissed the Catalan government, took over the administration and called a new election after the regional parliament made a unilateral declaration of independence on Friday, aggravating Spain’s worst political crisis in four decades.The declaration of Catalonia as a separate nation was almost immediately rendered futile by Rajoy’s actions, while other European countries, the United States and Mexico also rejected it and expressed support for Spain’s prime minister. But emotions are running high and the next few days will be tricky for Madrid as it embarks on enforcing direct rule. Rajoy designated Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz Santamaria to oversee the process. The regional parliament’s

WASHINGTON:  President Donald  Trump  said on Wednesday that Russia  was  hurting  US  efforts  to rid  North  Korea  of  nuclear  weapons while China had been helpful. In an interview with Fox B us iness Network,  Trump  said it would be easier to resolve the  North  Korea  nuclear  issue  if the United States had a better relationship with  Russia . “China is helping  us  and maybe  Russia ‘s going through the other way and hurting  what we’re getting,”  Trump  said of the  North  Korea  situation. A series of weapons tests by  North  Korea  and a string of increasingly bellicose exchanges between  Trump  and  North  Korea n leader Kim Jong Un have ratcheted up tensions. Trump  has pressed China to help rein in  North  Korea ‘s  nuclear  program. China,  North  Korea ‘s sole major ally, accounts for more than 90 percent of trade with the isolated country. Trump  said in a tweet that he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday and the conversation include

BRASILIA:  Brazilian lawmakers rejected  corruption  charges  against President Michel Temer Brazilian on Wednesday evening, shelving a case that had threatened to oust a center-right leader who investors hope will bring  Brazil’s  budget deficit under control. The  corruption  case, involving the payment of bribes by meatpacker JBS SA, had paralysed Temer’s reform agenda for six months and weakened his government.The lower house of  Brazil’s  Congress , which has the authority to decide whether a president should stand trial by the Supreme Court, voted 251-233 to throw out  charges  of obstruction of justice and organized crime filed by federal prosecutors. The vote means that Temer is safe from prosecution while he remains president. But he is still subject to investigation and possible trial by lower courts after his term ends in late 2018. While Temer’s opponents were far from the 342 votes – or two-thirds of the seats – needed to put him on trial, he got 12 votes less th

GENEVA:  US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson doubled down Thursday on Washington’s call for Syrian President Bashar Assad to leave power, looking past recent battlefield gains by his Russian-backed forces to insist that “the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end.” Tillerson made the comments after what he called a “fruitful” meeting with UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, who later announced plans to resume UN-mediated peace Syrian talks on Nov. 28. It will be the eighth such round under his mediation in Geneva since early 2016. They come despite the fact that Assad’s forces have just in the past year recaptured Syria’s second-largest city and reached the key eastern city of Deir el-Zour, long under siege from IS fighters. The top US diplomat used the occasion to reiterate Washington’s longstanding, hardline position against Assad, which has been overshadowed of late by the Trump administration’s focus more on defeating the Islamic State group than on ousting the

BEIJING:  China’s ruling Communist Party enshrined President Xi Jinping’s political thought into its constitution on Tuesday, putting him in the same company as the founder of modern China, Mao Zedong, and cementing his power ahead of a new top leadership line-up. The party unanimously passed the amendment to include “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” as one of its guiding principles at the end of its week-long congress.The party will announce its new Standing Committee, the apex of power in China, around midday (0400 GMT) on Wednesday, culminating a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle. The current committee is made up of seven people. Also included in the amended constitution was the party’s “absolute” leadership over the military, that the fight against corruption will continue, Xi’s “Belt and Road” development initiative, supply-side reforms, and giving play to the “decisive role” of market forces in resource allocation. “The congr