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Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC), the state-owned monopoly, hiked the prices of petroleum products on Thursday.

The NOC has decided to increase Rs 3 per litre each in petrol, diesel and kerosene.

As per the new revised rate, the petrol will now cost Rs 145 per litre and diesel and kerosene will cost Rs 128 per litre.

The NOC, however, has not increased the price of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG).

The decision will come into effect from today midnight.

WWF Nepal in 2021 ended its USAID-funded Hariyo Ban Program after 10 years. In this period, the program achieved several conservation milestones.

Nepal is on track to achieving the global goal of doubling its tiger numbers as it has recorded tigers at altitudes of 2,500 meters in the west and 3,200 meters in the east.

Similarly, the one-horned rhino count has hit a historic high with 752 counted last year (694 in Chitwan, 38 in Bardiya, 17 in Shuklaphanta and three in Parsa), in what was a 16.5 percent increase from 2015. Nepal also collared two additional snow leopards in Shey Phoksundo National Park.

When covid pandemic led to illegal logging, forest product harvest and wildlife crimes, the program in partnership with government, local communities and stakeholder renewed its efforts to protect forests and wildlife. WWF Nepal alone contributed to the protection of 161,813 hectares of forests by strengthening Forest Conservation Areas (FCA). Also, the authorities concerned maintained guard posts, fire lines, revised policy assistance, and held transboundary meetings with the Indian side to develop a cross-border sharing mechanism.

Efforts were also initiated to reduce fuelwood as the primary source of energy, as it hampers the environment along with the health and safety of communities.

Climate change was another field where the Hariyo Ban Program was active. Climate change has affected multiple small communities in the form of climate-induced disasters such as flooding and riverbank erosion.

To address these problems,  the Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (CCSAP) for each province of Nepal is currently being prepared to localize the National Climate Change Policy that aims to make a transition to 100 percent renewable energy.

Overfishing, proliferation of aquatic invasive species, unmanaged sand and gravel mining, pollution, encroachment, siltation, unplanned infrastructure development and ground water extraction continue to threaten freshwater ecosystems. To cope with these challenges, seven artificial wetlands were constructed and restored in the western Tarai. These wetlands are expected to retain around 200 million liters of underground water.

There has also been work on strengthening indigenous people and local communities’ access to natural resources and ensuring equitable benefit sharing mechanisms by creating transparent, participatory, inclusive governance mechanisms for sustainable management of natural resources.

Leave it to Elon Musk to stir up controversy without saying - or tweeting - a word.

In November, according to a regulatory filling, the Tesla CEO donated to charity about 5 million shares of company stock, worth $5.7 billion. Since the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission was made public Monday, Tesla hasn't responded to a request for comment. Nor has Musk mentioned the donation on Twitter, his favorite communications forum, Associated Press reported.

Yet that hasn't quelled debates in and out of philanthropy, about transparency, tax deductions and congressional legislation, along with speculation about where exactly the money was donated. Some experts say Musk likely donated his shares to his donor-advised fund, or DAF for short. DAFs are essentially charitable investment accounts in which donors can claim a tax deduction upfront but aren't legally required to distribute the money.

Experts say that would be the most advantageous strategy for Musk, currently the world's richest man with an approximate net worth of more than $220 billion. A DAF donation would allow him to claim a tax deduction of as much as 30% of his 2021 adjusted gross income, instead of 20% if he had donated it instead to his foundation. Musk could also deduct the fair market value of the stock, instead of its original value.

"He can do whatever he wants with his money - anyone can," said John Arnold, a billionaire philanthropist who co-founded the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and Arnold Ventures with his wife, Laura. "But if he's getting a subsidy from society through this tax deduction, then there's a responsibility that goes with it."

Whether or not Musk donated his Tesla shares to a DAF, Arnold said, the possibility that he did highlights a questionable tax loophole for many wealthy Americans.

"Society is giving them this tax deduction, this subsidy to encourage more resources to get to communities," Arnold said. "But the way that the tax law is structured today, it doesn't necessitate that that happens. You can get the tax deduction today, and there's no requirement for that money ever to get to the community. You can give money to a donor advised fund and keep it in a tax-free investment account forever."

Arnold and others who want to address that loophole have formed a coalition, the Initiative to Accelerate Charitable Giving, that seeks to tighten requirements for DAFs and other financial vehicles used by the wealthy.

This month, a bipartisan group of lawmakers proposed a bill in the House of Representatives that would limit how long donations can remain in a DAF untaxed. Similar bipartisan legislation was introduced last year in the U.S. Senate.

Many DAF proponents oppose the changes, arguing that DAFs, with an average payout rate of around 20%, are distributing money faster and more robustly than many private foundations, whose average distribution is generally only slightly above the 5% annually required by law, according to the Stanford Law School Policy Lab on Donor Advised Funds.

If Musk did place Tesla shares in a DAF, the tax law's intent backfired, Arnold said. The community received neither the tax revenue generated by Musk's income on the shares or the philanthropic benefit that the tax deduction was meant to create.

DAFs also allow for anonymity. Benjamin Soskis, a historian of philanthropy and a senior researcher at the Urban Institute, suggested that Musk's donation shows norms may be tipping towards a lack of disclosure about where large gifts are landing.

"When you're giving away that much money, it is by definition a matter of public interest where it's going to," Soskis said.

Generally, Musk's approach to donations has differed from that of many other wealthy donors, who are often accused of publicizing their gifts as a way to burnish their reputations.

About a month before donating his stock, the notoriously provocative Musk engaged in a Twitter fight with the head of the United Nations World Food Programme, who had urged billionaires to donate $6 billion on a "one time basis" to help end starvation.

Musk said he would sell $6 billion of Tesla stock and donate the proceeds to the agency if it could show how the money would solve world hunger. David Beasley, the organization's executive director, said this week that it had yet to receive a donation from the Tesla CEO.

Soskis, of the Urban Institute, has suggested that there's room for Musk to be more transparent about his gifts while still signaling his "contempt" for "elite public opinion," as the Tesla CEO frequently does.

At times, Musk does provide transparency about his donations. Last year, he gave $50 million to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. He also donated about $30 million to a variety of public schools and nonprofits in south Texas, where SpaceX builds its rockets.

His private foundation's latest IRS filing shows he donated 11,000 Tesla shares to the charity in 2019. From July that year to June 2020, the foundation distributed $23.6 million in grants. Some of that went directly to working charities, but a large chunk - $20.7 million - went to Fidelity Charitable, a grantmaker that sponsors DAFs.

Some who have worked with Musk explain his style of philanthropy by saying he isn't focused on looking good.

Marcius Extavour, vice president of climate and energy at XPrize, which manages Musk's $100 million prize for carbon removal, says Musk wanted the project to be focused on finding impactful solutions and didn't want it to use his image everywhere. That's in contrast to some other donors, who, Extavour asserts, seem more concerned about invitations to speaking engagements and other events.

"It's been pretty nice to work with the Musk Foundation as a donor who is not.. nitpicking on how we describe this or how we describe that," Extavour said. "Or making sure they get the shine or the limelight."

Steve Greanias, general manager of fundraising solutions for the fundraising platform GiveSmart, says that like most people working in philanthropy, he is curious about where Musk's money went and how it was or will be used. Yet he doesn't think it's necessarily everyone's business to know. His own platform, which serves about 8,000 nonprofits and has processed about $800 million in donations, accepts anonymous donations.

"If you have this kind of money and you want to do good with it and you don't feel the need to be recognized for it, that's OK," Greanias said. "That's between you and the organization. As long as your relationship's OK with them, it shouldn't matter if the world wants to know where money came from."

Lam Foon, 98, sits propped up and swaddled in soggy woollen blankets in a hospital bed just outside the entrance to Hong Kong’s Caritas Medical Centre, waiting for tests to confirm her preliminary positive result for Covid-19, Reuters reported.

“I don’t feel so good,” she told Reuters through a surgical mask, next to a similarly wrapped patient wearing a mask and face shield.

Lam was one of dozens of patients lying in the parking lot of Caritas on Thursday, after there was no more room inside the hospital that serves 400,000 people in the working-class district of Cheung Sha Wan on the Kowloon peninsula. Temperatures dipped to 15 degrees Celsius (59 Fahrenheit) amid some rain.

Medical staff were unable to say how long Lam would have to wait. People who test preliminarily positive for Covid have to take further tests before treatment.

This and similar scenes across the global financial hub are signs of a public healthcare system under severe strain as Covid-19 cases surge, with more than 95 percent of all hospital beds full.

Once largely insulated from the coronavirus pandemic, Hong Kong is facing a citywide outbreak, with businesses buckling and some losing patience with the government’s “zero Covid” policies.

In the cluster of working-class districts in nearby Sham Shui Po, some residential blocks and public housing estates have been sealed off, crowds in malls and street markets have thinned, and once teeming diners known as dai pai dongs and stalls selling knick-knacks are quieter after dark.

Trevor Chung, 29, a medic at Caritas, blamed the government in part for inadequate planning, a shortage of beds and other medical equipment, and chronic manpower shortages.

“The government underestimated the situation,” said Chung, clad in a full-face visor and blue hazmat suit. “I expect things to get a lot worse ... There are many elderly people in this district, and many aren’t vaccinated.”

Hong Kong authorities on Thursday apologised for the dire situation at hospitals serving the city of 7.4 million.

The city’s zero-Covid policy has meant even asymptomatic people and those with mild conditions have been sent to hospitals or quarantine centres, although the government is now adjusting its strategy as the healthcare system is overwhelmed.

Lam under pressure

The outbreak has piled further pressure on Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, whose five-year term is due to end in June.

While Lam says surrendering to the virus “is not an option” and Chinese President Xi Jinping has said the “overriding mission” for Hong Kong is to rein in the virus, some are skeptical.

“You can see I’m wearing two masks. I need to protect myself because the government won’t protect me,” said Lo Kai-wai, a 59-year-old logistics worker queuing at a mobile testing centre that had already reached its daily quota of 3,000 people.

“I don’t want to see her (Lam) get a second term.”

Some business owners impacted by government-imposed restrictions also question the sustainability of current policies.

“The government needs to find a better balance to both control the virus, but also to allow people to better get on with their lives,” said Timothy Poon, 23, the manager of a cafe close to the hospital, whose business has dropped by up to 60 percent amid the outbreak.

“The zero-Covid policy is a mission impossible.”

Others, however, are more upbeat.

“If everyone is willing to get vaccinated, the situation will improve,” said Lung Mei-chu, 78, at a testing centre in another district.