India‚ Pakistan intensify cross-border firing‚ ties sour

The latest firing has forced 1,000 border residents to flee to safer locations, a senior Jammu and Kashmir bureaucrat said. "Our contingency plans are in place to provide all possible relief to people who might move out of their villages if tensions escalate," said Shantmanu, divisional commissioner of Jammu district. Pakistani media reported on Sunday that three people were killed and 11 injured in "unprovoked firing" by Indian troops. BSF says Pakistani troops are firing to give cover to the militants for infiltration into Indian territory. A senior Indian army officer said that they have foiled 15 infiltration attempts this month in which 10 militants and two Indian soldiers were killed. Sharma said two people were killed on Saturday and four were injured, including a BSF man. "We gave them befitting reply causing equal casualties on their side," he said. The Pakistan army's press office did not reply to calls seeking comment. But Pakistani military sources said on Saturday night that in July and August BSF had committed 23 ceasefire violations by resorting to unprovoked firing. Giving ammunition to hawks on both the sides against resuming talks, firing across the border has picked up. According to India's Defence Ministry, there have been 70 ceasefire violations by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir since Modi took over. "Pakistani troops violated ceasefire again today and restored to heavy firing targeting 22 Border Security Force (BSF) posts," BSF Inspector General for Jammu frontier, Rakesh Sharma, told Reuters. The cancellation dashed any hopes of near-term peace deliberations, chances of which had risen after Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attended the inauguration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about three months ago. The Himalayan region of Kashmir has been a bone of contention between India and Pakistan since both countries became independent in 1947. They have fought three wars and came close to a fourth in 2001 and there have been regular clashes on the Line of Control that divides Indian- and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.Indian and Pakistani troops intensified firing across the border over the weekend killing at least four, an Indian official said on Sunday, straining ties between the arch rivals who recently called off top-level diplomatic talks. Last week India said its foreign secretary would not meet with her Pakistani counterpart as scheduled on Monday because of plans by Pakistan to consult separatists from the border state of Jammu and Kashmir ahead of the meeting.

The Fault in Our Stars

But to stop being flippant for a moment, this film is rather more than just “good” mainly because it deals with the real substance of being that young. Most young people this age feel immortal; teenage is all about thinking that one is an adult, being omniscient, and living forever. Rarely has a mainstream film dealt with that kind of material with such delicacy. It also very possible that the film only really attains such depths due to the talent of Shailene Woodley– a young actress with a brain and an enormous heart. There is a reason to send your teenagers to watch this film (if the girls haven’t already sped into the theater armed with boxes of tissues, ready for catharsis). All too rarely are there good films that deal intelligently with teenage. For those of us who survived those angst ridden years relatively unscathed, we are grateful to see a normalised version of good decent kids who don’t run around being mean to each other and talking in some sort of horrifying teenage speak. Apparently not all teenagers type texts with unspeakable abbreviations,some even have grasp on punctuation (after all one must learn how to spell when one reaches college). The Fault in Our Stars is a beloved “young adults” novel written by John Green. Optioned by 20th Century Fox, the film version started shooting in 2013 and was just released to great acclaim and astonishing success – it has made $238 million to date, that with the modest budget of $12 million. Thankfully, The Fault in Our Stars although unabashedly a love story, is more The Hunger Games than Twilight. Shailene Woodley, a very talented and immensely likeable young woman plays the smart, witty Hazel Grace Lancaster – a teenager possibly dying of cancer. As often happens in romantic comedies, our lovely heroine meets a charming young man named Augustus Waters (Ansel Algert). Augustus (or Gus) is also a cancer survivor; the two meet at an infuriatingly banal cancer help group, and so begins a story that will break even the hardest of hearts.The more beloved the book, the scarier it is to attempt a film adaptation. Perhaps the only way, for dedicated readers and lovers of cinema to reconcile themselves to this now inevitable trajectory is to both read the book and see the film keeping in mind that, yes, while the individual imagination will inevitably trump the cinematic version, the book and the film are two very different forms and must therefore not be measured, pardon the pun, via the same lens.

Relief, rehab, recovery

After his wife passed away last year, Dorji is even more determined to continue the work. He says: “I think of Shikharpur as my daughter and wife’s home.” Says Dorji: “More than infrastructure development, our biggest achievement has been the change our work has brought in the mindset of the villagers who now seem positive and hopeful about the future.” Dorji is already planning ahead. He thinks a homestay program can bring tourists to the area and boost local income.Now, farm produce from the area can be taken to market. “Our bananas, cucumber, mango and pineapple won’t go to waste anymore,” says farmer Prem Bahadur Ghale. One of his Japanese friends helped build a health clinic in nearby Shikhapur in memory of his wife, which means local villagers do not have to make a two-hour ride to Phaparbari to see a doctor. Some money also went to reviving the local school, which was on the verge of being shut down. In consultation with local villagers and with help from local CA member Indra Baniya, the Foundation has just finished construction of a 6 km road connecting Bastipur with Hattisunde where locals were ecstatic when the first jeep arrived recently. But there was a lot more to be done. Dorji got in touch with families of other victims and set up the Sky Memorial Foundation, named after three young victims: Sarah, Kendra Fallon (US), and Yuki Hayashi (Japan). The foundation now manages the development work in Bastipur and its surroundings. Dorji says that his 30-year career in aviation has earned him a lot of friends, who have contributed in fundraising. They decided to start with the nearby Bakiya Thakur Primary School, which the plane narrowly missed. The school was in a dilapidated state, enrollment was falling, and few children studied beyond Grade 5 since the middle school was a 45-minute walk away. The couple renovated the school building, and started working on upgrading it to a middle school, hiring teachers and paying for their salaries. The school now has 100 per cent enrollment and students have scholarships, and get free stationery and uniforms.Her parents, aviation entrepreneur Dorji Tsering Sherpa and Anju Sherpa made it to Bastipur a few months later and burst into tears when they saw the crater where the Dornier fell to the ground. Seeing the couple in such a state of grief, locals who had gathered around also started weeping. The Sherpas were so touched by their emotion, they decided to spend the money from her daughter’s insurance and wedding budget on the development of Bastipur village.an Agni Air flight bound for Lukla was returning to Kathmandu in poor weather with a technical malfunction. It crashed 30km south of Kathmandu in the town of Bastipur in Makwanpur district. Fourteen people on board were killed, including flight attendant Sarah Sherpa.

Nepali steps in Norway

“We are very happy and feel wonderful to work in Norway,” said Nima Nuru Sherpa after the ceremony, “it’s fantastic to work in the nature of Norway, it feels like working at home in But by the time of the ceremony, the clouds parted at the 1,883 m summit and the Nepali team that built the steps donned traditional Sherpa attire and sang the Nepali trekking anthem, “Resham Phiri” with people enthusiastically applauding the fantastic work they had done.Nepal.”several hundred people filled the fog-shrouded slope just below the summit of Gaustadtoppen in Norway for the inauguration of steps repaired by Nepalis

Kathmandu's newest museum documents its recent past

Apart from the three buildings that make up the permanent museum collection, there is the Bodhisattva Gallery with Newari art, the Pathivara Gallery displaying thangka paintings and a contemporary art gallery. “There is no other place that has three core galleries—all in one place—with such diversity”, says Mishra. The museum also has a café and bar with free wi-fi.Curated by the prolific architectural historian Niels Gutschow, the collection is much more than a compendium of drawings. It tells a story of the history of documentation and representation of the valley by foreign eyes, suggesting that expatriates had an important role to play in the early documentation of Nepal. The museum has the digitised version of one of the very first modern city maps of the Valley by Erwin Schneider. The museum focuses primarily on conserving and documenting the research undertaken by the wave of expatriate artists, architects, photographers, and scholars who have taken to Nepal since the late 1960s. The result is a remarkably rich collection that may surprise many, since most of the drawings and photographs on display are little known, and were formerly either stored abroad or in private collections. “External influence of concrete architecture started to dominate new developments in the Kathmandu valley,” says Pruscha, who worked with the National Planning Commission in the 1970s, “so it was my concern to remember that brick was and could further be the principle building material for the valley.” The museum focuses primarily on conserving and documenting the research undertaken by the wave of Says manager Roshan Mishra: “The first standout quality of the museum is the architecture and its distinct ambience.” And one gets a sense of authentic Nepali architecture from the exterior, which deliberately uses red bricks and no cement plaster, yet the large windows and drum-like roofing are unmistakably modern. Much of the former hotel has been tastefully adapted as a museum after extensive restoration, which included replacing small wooden windows with big steel-framed ones, changing the brick flooring, and fixing major leak problems. Arun Saraf, of The Saraf Foundation and owner of the property supported the museum’s concept to document Nepali architecture since the 1960s, after Kathmandu opened up to the outside world. Pruscha was involved in the design of the annexe to the museum, and he was helped by his compatriot, Thomas Schrom who is currently involved in the restoration of the Patan Darbar. The Taragaon complex includes seven unique arch vaulted brick buildings separated by brick-paved quadrangles. Before it was turned into the hotel, the complex served primarily as a hostel for foreign visitors, scientists and artists who were interested in the cultural wealth of the country and wanted to stay longer in the valley. Located within the Hyatt Regency Hotel premises, the building was originally the Taragaon Hotel until it closed in the 1990s. It was designed 45 years ago by Austrian architect Carl Pruscha, who was also involved in Kathmandu’s urban planning. The newly opened Taragaon Museum tries to correct that, and is devoted to the display and documentation of the valley’s 19th and 20th century architectural heritage. The museum is itself housed in a restored modernist building built in the 1970s.Home to an ancient urban culture and an extraordinary concentration of elaborate monuments and temples, Kathmandu Valley’s unique Malla-era architecture is a world heritage. But while most attention is rightly devoted to this, more recent buildings often escape the notice of preservationists.