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 Newly opened in the quaint area of Baluwatar (100 meters on the left towards Maharajgunj from Shivapuri School), the Delish Opera Restro & Banquet is one of the biggest properties in the area. With ample seating space in the restaurant area for more than 100 guests at a time, Opera also has separate family or meeting rooms and a banquet hall that can host 500 people. The dedicated park­ing lot right next to the restaurant is also relieving considering Kathmandu’s parking problems. Opera offers a multi-cuisine menu including Continental, Indian, Thai and Nepali dishes, as well as a wide collection of alcoholic and non-alco­holic beverages. The restaurant opens its doors for lunch, drinks and dinners as well as private parties ranging from small get-togethers to corporate meet­ings and even weddings. The place to organize Teej celebrations this season?

Photos by Pritam Chhetri

 ShareSansar.com, Nepal’s pio­neer stock market portal cater­ing to share investors, this week launched the “SS Pro” with first-of-its-kind features. SS Pro includes features like Portfolio Tracker, Live Chart Analysis, Watch list, Invest­ment Worth Calculator and Market Confidence Meter.

“The software is targeted at inves­tors big and small to help them make informed investment decisions,” says Sandeep Bikram Rana, man­aging director at ShareSansar. “We have digitalized financial reports of every company of every sector, and included in-depth market analysis tools, broker analysis tools, com­prehensive mutual funds analyt­ics, Nepal’s first Market Confidence Meter and many other investment tools in SS Pro.” This will help inves­tors and traders gauge the market condition and come up with sound investment strategies on their own, he added.

The stock market depends on many variables including the com­pany’s financials, the country’s econ­omy, and daily market price actions. Keeping track of all the variables will be difficult for an investor, for which SS Pro offers a comprehensively-built Market Confidence Meter. The Con­fidence Meter in SS Pro measures the current market sentiment by simplifying all the random variables and showing the market’s current confidence on a 0-100 scale.

A comprehensive portfolio tracker is also included inside the SS Pro package itself. Further, SS Pro dis­plays alerts and notifications of all the companies users have in their portfolio—thereby helping them make quick judgements and tweak their investment plans

If you want to feel yourself right in the lap of the Himalayas, with stunning views all around, you should definitely go to Kakani. You get there after navigating serpentine mountain roads for 2-3 hours from Kathmandu. The majestic mountain range and the abundance of rhododendron flow­ers will instantly enchant you. If you can, spend a night there and witness the beautiful vista open up in early morning.

The Bungmati and Kokhana Village tour is one of the easiest and yet one of the most exciting. From the culturally rich Bugmati valley to the naturally beautiful Kokhana, this tour has a lot to offer. Bungmati is home to the famous Rato Machindranath and Karya Binayak temples. Kokhana for its part is famous for the green rice fields carpeted across the Newari village. Take a public bus or a private vehicle from Kathmandu and you should be at Bungmati after 45 minutes. Go to the Rato Machindranath temple, a huge shikhara-style chariot. During the annual month-long Rato Machindranath parade, the idol there is taken around Patan. You then move past the main courtyard and reach the Karya Binayak Temple.

In the outskirts of Pokhara, there is a Tibetan village mostly made up of Tibetan refugees. To get there, you can walk up to the camp or take a bus or a taxi from anywhere in Pokhara. The refugees living there mainly sell handmade goods, carvings and carpets for income. These handicrafts are cheap too. The camp also has a small Buddhist monastery. If you are interested in Tibetan lifestyle and culture, do not forget to visit the camp next time you are in Pokhara.  

A man accused of raping a 16-year-old girl of Beldangi rural municipality has been arrested. The man had been absconding since the incident took place last Friday. 

Janak Khadka of the same locality was arrested from the Beldangi area on Sunday evening, according to DSP at the district police office, Kanchanpur Krishna Raj Ojha. Janak along with another man had abducted the girl from a pooja in her home and took her away on a motorcycle to later rape her. 

Prior to this, local resident Man Bahadur Bista was arrested for the same henious act. A case has been filed while further investigation continues over the incident, police said. RSS

 That the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sec­toral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) has been unable to come up with a governing charter in over two decades of its existence is no coincidence. The member coun­tries—initially Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand, which were later joined by Bhutan and Nepal—seemingly wanted to build a vibrant economic bridge between South Asia and Southeast Asia, two of the fastest growing regions in the world. But for most of its existence BIMSTEC was badly neglected.

Then there was SAARC. As things stand, SAARC is the least integrated region in the world, with inter-country trade within SAARC accounting for less than six percent of the total foreign trade of the eight-member states. The concept of South Asian Free Trade Area, though much discussed, could never be implemented, as India and Pakistan continued to lock horns over even seemingly inconsequential issues. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at some point seems to have concluded that it is futile to expect a more connected South Asia via SAARC, so long as Pakistan is a part of it.

And so the moribund BIMSTEC was revived in 2014, the year it held its third heads-of-state summit, and the year its secretariat was finally established in Dhaka. If SAARC could not unite South Asia, perhaps a forum like BIMSTEC, minus Pakistan, and minus SAARC’s ‘unanimous decision’ provision, was better placed to enhance regional trade and connectivity. But this is a gamble.

As the fourth BIMSTEC summit ends in Kathmandu, the seven-member states have agreed to enhance trade through land and water ways, to collectively fight ter­rorism, to draft the long-delayed charter, to establish a regional fund and to boost customs cooperation. The charter, when ready, will add clarity about BIMSTEC’s purpose. More than that, if the forum can for instance facilitate the extension of India-Myanmar-Thailand highway all the way to Nepal, it could herald a sea of change in Nepal’s development. But will the securi­ty-minded India be ready to open up its territories for such an undertaking? What will greater anti-terrorism cooperation entail? And what happens to SAARC now? Even though India is uncommitted, other countries in South Asia still set great store by SAARC. The fourth summit brought some clarity on BIMSTEC and on regional cooperation. But perhaps not enough.

World Cup winner Ronaldo has reached a deal to buy 51 per cent of La Liga club Valladolid a regional daily reported on Saturday, citing "sources close to the operation." 

El Norte de Castilla, which is based in Valladolid said Ronaldo was paying 30 million euros ($34.8 million) and would complete the deal next week. 

"The Brazilian star reached an agreement with Carlos Suarez, owner of more than 60 per cent of the shares of the company, on Thursday evening," the newspaper wrote. 
Ronaldo's press secretary, David Espinar, told AFP by email that he was not prepared to comment on the story. 
The Spanish media have been reporting the former Real Madrid and Barcelona striker's interest in Valladolid round the time the club won promotion back to the Spanish first division in May. 

The newspaper said Ronaldo was attracted by the way the club is being run and that the takeover would not "lead to great changes in the club structure" and that Suarez, who has run the club for 17 years, would continue as president and Sergio Gonzalez would remain head coach. 

"Ronaldo does not want to be the visible head and prefers to stay in the background," the newspaper wrote. 
The report said the two sides had tried to negotiate as discretely as possible to avoid having an impact on the club's dealings in the summer transfer window, which closed on Friday. 

Ronaldo, who is 41, was the tournament's top scorer as Brazil won the World Cup in 2002 and was also part of the winning squad in 1994. His long list of individual honours include winning the FIFA player of the year three times and the Ballon D'Or twice. "Il Fenomeno" retired in 2011. AFP