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Manoj Basnet, General Manager of the Annapurna Media Network, Nepal’s prestigious media group, will be awarded with the ‘Media Leader of the Year’ Award for his contribution made to the Nepali media industry.

Bystreams LLC, the prestigious American company, has announced that Basnet will be honored with this year's 'Media Leader of the Year' Award.

Bystreams Chairman Adrian Pokharel had announced to honor Basnet with the award.

The announcement was made public on the company's official Facebook page and the Namaste America program.

“He set exemplary standards not only in the Nepali media sector, but also while becoming an international media leader,” Chairman Pokharel said, adding, “He has given a leadership perspective to the new generation by embracing the core values of truth, innovation, and public service in journalism. He has become a source of inspiration not only for Nepali journalism, but also for global journalism.”

More than 122,700 tourists visited the Gorkha Durbar Museum in Gorkha district in a year. 

Chief of the Gorkha Durbar Museum, Jayanarayan Karki, said that the number of visitors here reached 122,000 including 84,257 domestic tourists in the fiscal year 2024/25, adding that the visitors come here for study and observation purposes.

He said that the number of the visitors has gradually increased as the visitors were 119,187 in the fiscal year 2023/24. 

According to Karki, a total of 36,298 students visited the Gorkha Durbar Museum for their academic excursion while 2,003 people from the third countries visited the museum. 

The Gorkha Durbar Museum was opened to the public in 2008.

The museum mostly displays the life of King Prithvi Narayan Shah, the unifier of modern Nepal, the weapons used during that time, costumes of different ethnic communities and bands.

The Department of National Identity Card and Civil Registration stated that the services related to the national identity card have been partially disrupted.

Information Officer of the Department, Shivaraj Sedhain, shared that the services of the Department were partly disrupted as the technical teams were working for regular maintenance and capacity enhancement of the Management Information System.  

According to Sedhain, online registration, national ID card distribution service, correction of the information, online registration and renewal of the social security allowance recipients and some other services integrated into the MIS were affected. The services were affected from Sunday.

Issuing a public notice, the Department said that entire services would resume immediately after the completion of the maintenance works and capacity enhancement of the MIS.

The Department has urged the service recipients of the national ID card to submit their details and collect the cards offline too.

At least 67 Palestinians were killed while waiting for UN aid trucks in northern Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The UN World Food Programme said its convoy was met by large crowds of hungry civilians who came under gunfire shortly after crossing into the territory.

The Israeli military claimed it fired warning shots to prevent a perceived threat and disputed the reported death toll. Gaza’s civil defence later said 93 people were killed across the Strip on Sunday, including 80 in the north, according to BBC.

Hospitals remain overwhelmed, with doctors warning of growing famine. One woman told BBC Arabic that people are surviving on “only water and salt”, and children are dying from hunger.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s ruling coalition has lost its majority in Japan’s 248-seat upper house, according to Firstpost.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner Komeito secured only 46 of the 50 seats needed to reach a majority, with two results pending. It follows their earlier lower house defeat, leaving the coalition in the minority in both chambers for the first time since the LDP’s founding in 1955.

Ishiba has vowed to remain in office and address key issues, but now faces mounting pressure to step down or form new alliances, Firstpost reported.

Jake Larson, a US Army veteran of World War II and beloved TikTok storyteller known as “Papa Jake,” has died at the age of 102, BBC reported.

Larson served in the D-Day invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, later gaining a large following by sharing his wartime memories on social media. He passed away peacefully on July 17, his granddaughter McKaela Larson confirmed, saying he was joking until the end.

Just weeks before his passing, Larson received an Emmy alongside journalist Christiane Amanpour for a D-Day anniversary interview, according to BBC.

Studies show one in five people are chronic procrastinators. We’ve done it at least once—putting off homework thinking there is sufficient time till the due date. This act of delaying work is called procrastination. While it might just feel like laziness, the science behind it is far more complicated.

Procrastination actually is a tug-of-war between two parts of the brain—the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. The limbic system is the brain’s emotional center, responsible for immediate pleasure and avoiding discomfort. On the other hand, the prefrontal cortex handles planning, self-control, and logical thinking. In the game of tug-of-war which happens in our brain, the limbic system, which craves quick rewards, often wins out over the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for long term thinking. This is the reason why we end up binge-watching a show instead of studying for an exam despite knowing we’ll regret it later.

Physiologists explain that procrastination often occurs when the task feels boring or difficult. This gives rise to feelings of stress and self-doubt which we try to escape by avoiding the task itself. This is called emotional regulation failure, where we put off the task not because we can’t do it, but because we want to avoid the negative feelings associated with it. But, the longer we delay, the more anxious we become due to the guilt of avoiding the task. Stress makes this worse by weakening the prefrontal cortex which makes us likely to seek short-term relief rather than pushing ourselves through discomfort.

Research shows that procrastination may have once served as an evolutionary purpose. Our ancestors couldn’t have survived if they had prioritized long-term planning rather than immediate needs like finding food. But today, this completely backfires. Studies also reveal that chronic procrastinators often have less activity in the prefrontal cortex, making it harder to avoid distractions.

The good news is that we can overcome procrastination with the help of some simple science-based techniques. One effective strategy is using the “five-minute rule”—committing to a work for the five minutes—which helps to break the initial resistance that makes you procrastinate. Another approach is by making the task more rewarding—for example, imagining the relief after you finish the work. But these techniques can be difficult due to distractions. You can try turning off notifications or making your device’s screen black and white which will lower your temptations preventing you from getting distracted.

In conclusion, procrastination isn’t just poor time management—it’s a battle between emotions and reasoning. We can be more self-aware and prevent procrastinating by understating the science behind it. By recognizing why we delay and experimenting with science-based techniques, we can take control of our time and prevent last-minute stress.

Divya Prakash Sah

Kathmandu Model College, Bagbazar

Growing up, I thought “agriculture” meant two things: mud on your slippers and the smell of fresh cow dung. The word alone evoked green fields, earthy scents, and the image of a farmer wiping sweat with pride under the sun. We were told it’s our culture, our dignity, our roots. But no one ever said it could be our career. Our future. Our innovation. Our enterprise.

And if we keep treating it as a sentimental artifact instead of a strategic powerhouse, we’ll keep losing both crops and common sense. When I tell people I study agriculture, I often get two reactions. One: “Oh... so you didn’t get into MBBS?” Two: “Who studies agriculture for four years just to become a full time dung manager?”

I smile politely. But let’s be honest, it’s frustrating. See, if someone wants to be a doctor, they study medicine. You want to be a bank manager? You take finance. A food technologist? You go to food tech. But agriculture? Somehow, that’s everyone’s Plan B. The backup of all backup plans. The “If nothing works I’ll just do farming” mindset. And the very thing we depend on every single day, for our food, economy, and festivals is the one thing we prepare for the least.

And young people, they’re running away from it like it’s contagious. Every year, thousands migrate abroad chasing jobs, because they see no future in farming. Not because agriculture is broken but because we’ve failed to make it aspirational. We've told them farming is for those who had “no better option,” not those with big ideas. So instead of staying to transform it, they leave. And the fields they leave behind grow emptier with crops, hope, and innovation all drying up together. We still frame agriculture as a poor man’s job. Something to escape from. We don’t encourage curiosity, creativity, or ambition in this field.

When we say “agriculture is our culture,” it often becomes an excuse to keep things traditionally stuck in time, manually driven, and underfunded. I’ve seen farmers invest years of hard labor, only to watch their harvest rot in the sun for lack of cold storage. I’ve watched relatives plant the same crop season after season because “that’s what we’ve always done” even as market prices crash. No data. No diversification. No business model. Because no one told them farming also needs a strategy.

Meanwhile, other countries are turning agriculture into high-performing industries powered by data, AI, satellite imaging, and precision irrigation. They’re building vertical farms, investing in cold chains, weather forecasting, and market access. Look at Israel, a desert nation, or the Netherlands, a country with limited land; both have transformed their agricultural sectors into export powerhouses through strategic investment and innovation.

We forget that agriculture isn’t just soil and seeds. It’s a multi-layered game of politics, economics, science, and survival. And sadly, we’re still playing it barefoot while the rest of the world shows up in boots, drones, and data dashboards. Agriculture employs around 60 percent of Nepal’s population, yet contributes only 25 percent to our GDP. You see the mismatch? It’s like sending the whole village to build a bridge without giving them a blueprint or tools. Everyone’s working, sweating, committed… but the bridge still collapses.

We’re working hard but not necessarily smart. Think of agriculture not as a field to work on, but as a battlefield of ideas, innovation, and policy. Countries that treat agri as strategy are building food independence, export empires, and tech-driven supply chains. Meanwhile, countries that treat it like folklore are even importing garlic. And one more thing, climate change doesn’t care about your culture. Neither do pests, nor market volatility.

They respond to strategy. If your strategy is tradition alone, you’re not farming. You’re gambling. Agriculture is culture, yes. But that’s only half the story. The other half is power. Food is power. Land is power. And whoever controls it not just physically but strategically writes the next chapter of national development. It’s time to shift our mindset from sentiment to strategy, from preservation to progress. It’s a call to policymakers, educators, and young change makers to see our fields not as fading traditions, but as the foundation of a new future.

Culture makes us proud. Strategy makes us unstoppable. And between pride and progress, I’d like to have both, please with a side of sustainability.

Reetu Shrestha

BSc Agriculture Student, IAAS Lamjung, TU