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When Investment Board Nepal (IBN) in March 2022, approved the investment proposal of Suryatara Cement Industry for setting up a cement factory in Surkhet, it was supposed to be the first cement plant in Karnali Province. However, even after 15 months of approval, Suryatara Cement has not shown any signs of going ahead with a Rs 14.27bn project. A few months ago, there was also a plan to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the company and the IBN. However, the IBN officials said the company has not come in contact with the board. It has been almost 15 months since the investment was approved. However, the industry has not come in contact, said a senior official at the IBN. The company on 31 March 2022, had received approval for investing Rs 14.27bn from the IBN. According to the IBN, after signing a MoU, the IBN, and Suryatara will have to sign the project implementation agreement. For this purpose, the company has to complete the financial closure. As per the rules, the company is required to sign the project implementation agreement with the board within two years of the approval of the investment. After selling stakes in Samrat Cement to Binod Chaudhary, Mukunda Timilsina, the main promoter of Suryatara Cement, planned for establishing a cement plant in Panchpuri Municipality of Surkhet, which was going to be the single largest investment in industry in Karnali Province. The company has aimed to bring the plant into operation within two years of starting the construction of infrastructure. Promoter Timilsina acknowledged that they are not in contact with the board. “Since the government did not guarantee the access road and electricity supply to the project site, we have not taken the project ahead,” said Timilsina. According to Timilsina, the then Finance Minister Janardan Sharma had promised to provide electricity and an access road for the project. “That commitment has not been honored by the government,” he said. It has been estimated that about 20 MW of electricity will be required to run the plant; for which a 26-kilometer-long 132 KV transmission line needs to be built from Lamki Chuha in Kailali. Suryatara received approval for investment from IBN to operate a cement plant in Surkhet as a domestic investment. According to the company, Nepali banks have already committed to invest in the project and loans will be sought at the ratio of 80 percent of the total investment. The production capacity of the proposed cement plant has been estimated at 3,000 tons (60,000 sacks) daily. The company has planned to supply the cement to districts in Karnali and Sudurpaschim provinces. Suryatara has already purchased nearly 40 bighas of land to set up the cement plant. Similarly, it has been confirmed that limestone will be brought to Barahtal of Surkhet for the processing of the raw material.

At a time when domestic demand is falling due to the economic recession, the surge in cement and clinker exports to India has given some respite to domestic cement manufacturers. As the country’s construction sector goes through a slump due to economic slowdown, the production and consumption of cement and clinker have been badly affected in the current fiscal year. The growth in cement exports to the southern neighbor, according to cement manufacturers, has been a saving grace for them. While Nepal has also been exporting cement to its southern neighbor since the last fiscal year, the exports have picked up in this fiscal year. The government announcement of providing an eight percent export subsidy on eight products including cement has helped the exports to grow in the current fiscal year. The latest data from the Department of Customs shows Nepal has exported cement and clinker worth Rs 677.65m in the first 11 months of the current fiscal year, an increment of 120 percent. The country had exported cement and clinker worth Rs 307.03m in the first 11 months of the last fiscal year. Of the total exports in FY 2022/23, Portland cement was Rs 313.64m, and clinker was Rs 364.01m. In FY 2021/22, Nepal exported Portland cement worth Rs 135.09m and clinker worth Rs 171.52m. Industrialist Pashupati Murarka said that the surge in cement exports in the current economic slowdown has given some relief to domestic cement industries. “The domestic market has been hard hit by the falling demand for construction materials this year. The export growth has provided us a breathing space,” said Murarka. The government in the current fiscal year budget had announced cash incentives of up to eight percent for products like clinker, cement, steel, footwear, and processed water along with IT-related services and BPO business. Following the government announcement, Nepali cement industries started to export to India. Currently, four cement companies—Ghorahi, Balaji, Tansen, and Arghakanchi - have been exporting their products to their southern neighbor. It was Tansen Cement that officially started exporting cement to India for the first time from Nepal. The company began exporting on 8 July 2022. According to Murarka, the demand for Nepali cement is increasing especially in the bordering Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The main raw material for producing cement is limestone which is not available in the bordering Indian states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Uttarakhand. Limestone has to be brought from other states such as Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh which are far away from states in India bordering Nepal. “Hence, the export of cement makes sense as the transportation cost to India can be economical,” said Murarka. Balaji Cement Industries Pvt Ltd is the latest Nepali cement manufacturer that has started exporting its products to India. After receiving the ISI quality mark from the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) of the Indian government, Balaji Cement started exporting two of its brands—Bahubali and Shrishti—to India from 12 June 2023. “We had established the industry with an objective of export to India,” said Sandeep Kumar Gadia of Balaji Cement. “The government export subsidy scheme helped us to realize our goal.” As cement exports increase, the country has seen a decline in imports of cement and clinker. The import of cement and clinker has decreased by 55 percent in the first 11 months of the current fiscal year. Nepal has imported cement and clinker worth Rs 288.46m in this fiscal compared to Rs 652.61m in the last fiscal.

A 100-bed Ayurveda Hospital is to be constructed at Amarpur in Shuklaphanta Municipality-11 of Kanchanpur. The hospital is being constructed in line with the government's decision two years back of building an Ayurveda Hospital each in all seven provinces. The Sudurpaschim Province Ayurveda Hospital will be constructed on a three bigha area, said Surya Upadhyay, Officiating Director at the Ayurveda Directorate. "The Department of Ayurveda has allotted Rs 30 million for this purpose. The construction would be started once the land acquisition process is over," he said. A 50-bed Ayurveda Hospital is currently being run in Dhangadhi. The Ayurveda Hospital to be constructed at Amarpur would be the first 100-bed ayurveda hospital in the province. Mayor of Shuklaphanta Municipality Rana Bahadur Mahara said that the land for building the Provincial Ayurveda Hospital has already been identified and the process for acquisition of that land would be expedited. The Department plans to operate the Ayurveda Hospital as an institute. It is said that the hospital will have 100 employees including 30 doctors. Medicinal herbs would be grown, processed and research would be conducted within the hospital premises itself.  

The price of gold has increased by Rs 500 per tola in the domestic market on Sunday. According to the Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers’ Association, the precious yellow metal is being traded at Rs 110, 100 per tola today. It was traded at Rs 109, 600 per tola on Friday. Meanwhile, tejabi gold is being traded at Rs 109, 550 per tola. It was traded at Rs 109, 100 per tola. Similarly, the price of silver has increased by Rs 10 and is being traded at Rs 1,370 per tola today.

A tense atmosphere lingered in Nanterre on Saturday following the funeral of a French teenager who was fatally shot by police in the Paris suburb earlier this week, CNN reported.

Arrests continued to mount with more than 1,300 people detained Friday overnight into Saturday and another 121 people arrested Saturday during the fifth night of nationwide protests in France after the 17-year-old’s death, according to the French Interior Ministry.

Family and friends gathered Saturday afternoon local time for the funeral service at a mosque in Nanterre. The funeral was solemn and quiet, according to CNN’s team on the ground, with people waiting in silence for his coffin to leave the mosque and be taken for burial. The teenager has been buried in the Mont Valérien cemetery in Nanterre, CNN’s team reported.

A heavy security presence was in place around the mosque.

The boy’s mother, Mounia, told television station France 5 on Friday that she blamed only the officer who shot her son, Nahel Merzouk, for his death. Nonetheless, the killing has sparked widespread destructive unrest and questions over whether race was a factor in his death.

Protests continued into the early hours of Saturday in defiance of a ban announced a day earlier on all “large-scale events” in the country, with rioting breaking out in several cities, CNN affiliate BFMTV reported.

France’s Interior Ministry said Saturday that 1,311 people had been detained following the fourth night of violence, an update on its previous figure. It said 2,560 fires had been reported on public roads, with 1,350 cars burned, and that there had been 234 incidents of damage or fire in buildings, according to CNN.

France activated 45,000 police and gendarmes across the country Saturday night, according to the country’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin.

“I think everyone understands that the government won’t back down,” Darmanin said.

He added the French government will heavily reinforce security forces in Lyon and Marseille, where violent clashes took place Friday night.

Many of those detained since the unrest began on Tuesday are minors. The average age of the more than 2000 detainees is 17 years old, Darmanin said.

Seventy-nine police and gendarmes were injured over the course of Friday night and there were 58 attacks on police and gendarme stations, according to the Interior Ministry.

Two police officers suffered gunshot wounds in Vaulx-en-Velin, a suburb of Lyon, the office said, one to the nose and the other to the thigh.

Social media videos of scenes in Lyon, geolocated by CNN, showed rapid gunfire from an automatic rifle at night, fireworks being released at a protest and demonstrators next to burning fires.

The Interior Ministry said it would send its elite unit of riot police, CRS 8, to Lyon on Saturday night as it seeks to clamp down on the violence, CNN reported.

More than 700 businesses across France have been damaged since the start of the protests, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said at a news conference Saturday. The businesses, which include shopping centers and bank branches, have been attacked, looted or in some cases, burned to the ground, he said.

Pappu Construction operator Hari Narayan Rauniyar has been arrested on Friday. A team deployed from the Metropolitan Police Circle, Baneshwor nabbed Rauniyar, also the former lawmaker, from Chhetrapati area this afternoon. A fraud case was filed against him in Banke. Earlier, Banke police had sent a letter to the Metropolitan Police Circle, Baneshwor asking the latter to apprehend Rauniyar. Preparations are underway to take him to Banke, police said.

The Supreme Court has issued a show-cause notice on the habeas corpus writ filed by three accused arrested in the Lalita Niwas land grab case. A single bench of Justice Kumar Chudal has asked a reason for keeping Min Bahadur Gurung, Sudhir Kumar Sah and Dharma Prasad Gautam in custody. Former election commissioner Sah, Bhatbhateni Supermarket Chairman Gurung and the then chief of Dillibazaar Land Revenue Office on Thursday filed a habeas corpus writ at the Supreme Court claiming that they were arrested in an illegal way. The Home Minister has been made a defendant in the writ. They have demanded that they be released without a condition. Seven persons including former election commissioner Sah was apprehended on June 27 in connection with the Lalita Niwas land grab case. Among the arrestees, Kaladhar Deuja, Surendra Man Kapali and Hupendr Mani KC were released on the same day as they obtained a stay order from the court. The court has given seven days to the police to carry out an investigation.  

Same-sex couples in Nepal said on Friday they were preparing to register their marriages after the Supreme Court issued a temporary order clearing the way for gay marriage for the first time in the largely conservative country, Reuters reported.

The Supreme Court has been considering a petition on the issue filed by gay right activists and on Wednesday it issued an interim order allowing for same-sex couples to register their marriages pending a final verdict.

"This is a very big and historic decision," said Pinky Gurung, chairperson of the Blue Diamond Society gay rights organisation.

Gurung said about 200 same-sex couples were expected "to come out openly and register their marriages".

Majority-Hindu Nepal has become increasingly progressive since a decade-long Maoist rebellion ended in 2006. Two years later, political parties voted to abolish the 239-year-old Hindu monarchy, a key demand of the Maoists.

In Asia, Taiwan is the only place that recognises gay marriage, though pressure is building for reform in Japan, Thailand and South Korea.

In 2007, Nepal's Supreme Court ordered the government to end discrimination against LGBT people and put in place measures to guarantee equal rights.

Since then, some same-sex couples have held unofficial weddings and gay pride parades have been held in the capital, Kathmandu.

But activists say there is still no clear legislation and people can face abuse from their families and communities and discrimination in education, government offices and hospitals, according to Reuters.

Maya Gurung, another member of the LGBT community, said that being able to officially register a marriage would help overcome a range of difficulties.

"We will now approach the authorities to formally register our marriage," Gurung said, referring to her partner of nearly a decade, Surendra Pandey.

"It may take some time for this, though.”