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Police have arrested a 43-year-old man for his alleged involvement in raping a 13-year-old girl in Syangja.

The arrestee has been identified as Yam Bahadur Kunwar.

Rajendra Prasad Adhikari, spokesperson at the District Police Office, Syangja, said that they apprehended Kunwar based on a complaint filed by the victim's family.

Police said that they are looking into the case.

The 55th executive meeting of Pokhara Metropolitan City recently decided to reduce the areas of ‘building exclusion zone’ around its lakes. 

As per the decision, property developers will now have to maintain a 30-meter buffer to construct buildings and other structures around Phewa Tal, the country’s second largest lake. Earlier, the limit was set at 65 meters from the lakeshore.

Likewise, the exclusion zone for Begnas Tal and Rupa Tal has been set at 55 meters from the previous 100 meters. For Lekhnath, Dipang, Gude, Maidi, Nyurini and Kostey lakes, the limit has been set at 20 meters.

The city’s decision has offered a respite to many lakefront landowners who were unable to build on their properties. They had long been complaining that the old restrictions were unfair.

Conservationists have a different take on the new regulation. They say the decision, which comes ahead of the local elections, could have a deleterious impact on Pokhara’s lakes. Human encroachment and construction activities, they worry, could pollute and shrink the lakes.

Bharatraj Poudel, information officer at Pokhara city office, disagrees. He says the decision was taken after studying the lakes and their surroundings.

“The boundary for Phewa Tal was set at 30 meters based on the directive of the lake delimitation and mapping committee, the Supreme Court’s order and the study report,” he says.

In 2007, Kaski district council had decided not to allow any construction within 65 meters of the lakefront. In April 2018, the apex court had also ordered all three tiers of government to conserve Phewa Tal from encroachment. It directed the Office of Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers to demarcate the boundary of the lake and coordinate with the provincial and local governments to strictly set a building exclusion zone.

Poudel says the new set of guidelines was issued based on the recommendations of a study committee.

A task force, led by Tirtharaj Adhikari, the ward chair of Pokhara-17, was formed to set the latest building guidelines around the lakes after the study committee submitted its report last year.

“The guidelines are based on the recommendation of the task force,” says Poudel.

People who own property around Phewa Tal say while they welcome the official decision, not everyone’s concerns have been addressed.

“There are still those people who own small plots of land near the lakeshore. The city has failed to address their concerns,” says Nabin Baral, who represents a stakeholders’ committee of landowners. 

Toyota Motor (7203.T) unit Woven Planet has joined Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) in trying to advance self-driving technology without expensive sensors such as lidars, Reuters reported.

Woven Planet told Reuters it is able to use low-cost cameras to collect data and effectively train its self-driving system, a “breakthrough” that it hopes will help drive down costs and scale up the technology.

Gathering diverse driving data using a massive fleet of cars is critical to developing a robust self-driving car system, but it is costly and not scalable to test autonomous vehicles with expensive sensors, it said.

Tesla has been betting on cameras to collect data from over 1 million vehicles on the road to develop its automated driving technology, while Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Waymo and other self-driving car firms added expensive sensors like lidars to a small number of vehicles.

“We need a lot of data. And it’s not sufficient to just have a small amount of data that can be collected from a small fleet of very expensive autonomous vehicles,” Michael Benisch, vice president of Engineering at Woven Planet, said in an interview with Reuters.

“Rather, we’re trying to demonstrate that we can unlock the advantage that Toyota and a large automaker would have, which is access to a huge corpus of data, but with a much lower fidelity,” said Benisch, a former engineering director at Lyft’s (LYFT.O) self-driving division, which Toyota acquired last year, according to Reuters.

Woven Planet uses cameras that are 90% cheaper than sensors that it used before and can be easily installed in fleets of passenger cars.

It said using a majority of data coming from low-cost cameras increased its system’s performance to a level similar to when the system was trained exclusively on high-cost sensor data.

He said, however, Toyota would still use multiple sensors such as lidars and radars for robotaxis and other autonomous vehicles to be deployed on the road, as this currently seemed to be the best, safest approach to developing robotaxis.

“But in many, many years, it’s entirely possible that camera type technology can catch up and overtake some of the more advanced sensors,” he said.

“The question may be more about when and how long it will take to reach a level of safety and reliability. I don’t believe we know that yet.”

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk said it can achieve full autonomy with cameras this year after missing his previous targets several times, Reuters reported.

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba inaugurated the typhoid vaccination campaign amidst a function organised at the Durbar High School, Ranipokhari on Thursday. 

The vaccination campaign is to be rolled out throughout the country from tomorrow till May 1. The typhoid vaccination programme will also be included in the regular national immunization programme.

Under the programme children between the ages of one year three months to 15 years would be administered the vaccines against typhoid.  

On the occasion, Prime Minister Deuba expressed the confidence that like in controlling COVID-19 infection, the country will become successful in typhoid control programme as well. He said around 7.5 million children between the age of one year three months to 15 years would be administered the vaccines against typhoid as part of the campaign. 

PM Deuba urged the local bodies to work towards producing gas and electricity from waste by setting up waste treatment plants for the long-term solution of the problem related to waste management in the urban areas, including the capital.

“Energy has been generated by setting up waste treatment plants in several cities, including Dharan. Vehicles have been run by using this gas generated from these plants. The government will also provide the necessary support if the local levels adopt such technology that can be possible through own investment,” he suggested. 

The Prime Minister called for paying attention to waste management as the problem of unmanaged waste will spoil the environment and the beauty of the city as well as increase the risk of several types of infections. 

Minister for Health and Population Birodh Khatiwada said Nepal has achieved exemplary success in the whole world in the prevention and control of COVID-19 infection and it was the first country to launch the typhoid vaccination campaign in the whole of South Asia. 

Stating that so far 16 various types of vaccines have been produced in the world so far and only a few countries have been able to avail many of these vaccines, the Health Minister said Nepal has used 13 types of these vaccines. 

Bagmati Province Health Minister Neema Lama expressed commitment to make the typhoid vaccination campaign a success. He said the Bagmati province had attained the first success in the COVID-19 vaccination programme. 

Dr Ramparth Bichha, health advisor to PM Deuba, expressed his confidence that the vaccine against typhoid brought into use after 10 years of research would be highly effective.

Secretary at the Ministry of Health and Population Dr Rajesh Kharel said that the anti-typhoid vaccine was free, safe and effective. According to him, it would be provided to children from 15 months to 15 years and appealed to all the sides concerned for their cooperation for the same. 

Kathmandu Metropolitan City mayor Bidhya Sundar Shakya informed that around 600 vaccination centres were designated in the Kathmandu district including in schools to make sure no children are deprived of the vaccine. 

Efforts were also coordinated with the local level and women community health volunteers to make the vaccination campaign a success, according to him.

On a different note, the mayor urged the government for necessary coordination as he shared that the garbage in Kathmandu was not picked up for some days. 

Present at the event were representatives from the World Health Organization, and UNICEF among others. 

The national vaccination campaign is considered the first priority of the government and it has been a successful public health programme. Effective implementation of regular vaccination campaigns is expected to significantly reduce the cases of childhood illness, disability, and infant and child mortality among others.

Nepal is still at high risk of typhoid which is highly contagious. It has been one of the top five reasons for hospitalization in Nepal. The vaccine against typhoid will be provided to children from 15 months to 15 years during this campaign and later will be provided regularly for children of 15 months, it was shared. RSS