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Nepal Police on Wednesday arrested two persons on the charge of making unfounded statements and assassinating character through YouTube channel. 

The cyber bureau has arrested Hari Pariyar of Nagarjuna Municipality-8, Bhimdhunga and Nishan Chiluwal, 27, of, Rainas Municipality, of Lamjung, currently living in Tarkeshwor Sheshmati, for spreading fake news through YouTube.

Bureau spokesperson, Senior Superintendent of Police Navind Aryal said that Pariyar and Chiluwal had spread fake news through their respective YouTube channel ‘Nepal Media’ and ‘Bishal Nepal’. 

They have been charged with doing so with the purpose of influencing the ongoing criminal investigation over a serious case.

Spokesperson Aryal said that they were arrested for committing a crime under the Electronic Transaction Act, 2063 BS. 

According to the bureau, the two have been remanded to judicial custody for seven days following permission by the district court. RSS

Nepal logged 112 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday. 

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 6,801 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 77 returned positive. Likewise, 2,527 people underwent antigen tests, of which 35 tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died due to the virus today also.

The Ministry said that 429 infected people recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours.

As of today, there are 5, 340 active cases in the country.

The first person in the world to get a heart transplant from a genetically-modified pig has died, BBC reported.

David Bennett, who had terminal heart disease, survived for two months following the surgery in the US.

But his condition began to deteriorate several days ago, his doctors in Baltimore said, and the 57-year-old died on 8 March.

Mr Bennett knew the risks attached to the surgery, acknowledging before the procedure it was “a shot in the dark”.

Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center were granted a special dispensation by the US medical regulator to carry out the procedure, on the basis that Mr Bennett – who was ineligible for a human transplant – would otherwise have died, according to BBC.

He had already been bedridden for six weeks leading up to the surgery, attached to a machine which was keeping him alive.

Mr Bennett underwent the surgery on 7 January, and doctors say in the weeks afterwards he spent time with his family, watched the Super Bowl and spoke about wanting to get home to his dog, Lucky.

But his condition deteriorated, leaving doctors “devastated”.

“He proved to be a brave and noble patient who fought all the way to the end,” surgeon Bartley Griffith, who performed the transplant, said in a statement released by the hospital.

But Mr Bennett’s son, David Jr, said he hoped his father’s transplant would “be the beginning of hope and not the end”, according to news agency AP.

“We are grateful for every innovative moment, every crazy dream, every sleepless night that went into this historic effort,” he added, BBC reported.

Dr Griffith said previously the surgery would bring the world “one step closer to solving the organ shortage crisis”. Currently 17 people die every day in the US waiting for a transplant, with more than 100,000 reportedly on the waiting list.

The possibility of using animal organs for so-called xenotransplantation to meet the demand has long been considered, and using pig heart valves is already common.

In October 2021, surgeons in New York announced that they had successfully transplanted a pig’s kidney into a person. At the time, the operation was the most advanced experiment in the field so far. However, the recipient on that occasion was brain dead with no hope of recovery, BBC reported.

The first pig-heart transplant was a landmark moment in medicine.

The biggest barrier to using organs from another species is “hyperacute rejection”. The body sees the tissue as so foreign that it starts to kill the donated organ within minutes.

The hope was the 10 genetic modifications made to the pig meant its organs would be acceptable to the human body.

It was a nervous moment when the heart went in, but there was no hyperacute rejection and that monumental barrier had been cleared, according to BBC.

Swastika Thami was only 16 when she got married. She was in the fifth grade. After the marriage, she stopped going to school. Hers is not a unique case in the locality.

Many girls and boys from the Thami community living in Doramba Shailung and Khadadevi rural municipalities of Ramechhap district marry in their early teens. When they are married, they invariably drop out of school.

“I wanted to study but there was no way I could go back to school after marrying,” says Swastika. She is 18 now and lives with her husband and his family in Daduwa village of Doramba Shailung.

Rime Thami says child marriage is continues to be prevalent in his community because most of its families are dirt poor.

“They do not have the financial wherewithal to raise and educate their children,” he says. “Girls are married off early and boys are sent away to work.”

Dek Thami, a young Thami man, says poverty barred him from pursuing higher education.

“Your quest for education is meaningless when you are oppressed by poverty and deprivation,” he says.

There are around 350 Thami families in Shailung Doramba and Khadadevi rural municipalities. They live in tight-knit groups, largely uninfluenced by the outside world.

Nearly 600 Thami children go to various primary schools in their villages.

“The majority of them do not make it beyond grade seven,” says Tara Bahadur Moktan of Daduwa. “Until a couple of years ago, the Thami community didn’t even send their daughters to school.”

Dhandhwoj Lama, education department chief of Shailung Doramba Rural Municipality, says hardly 10 percent of the Thami children clear tenth grade.

Thami children are quitting school not just because they marry early. Jit Bahadur Thami says they also leave school because they have to support their families.

Many Thami families in Ramechhap are involved in farming, but the crops they grow hardly last for three months. So parents send their children to work in cities.

“Some parents see the children of their neighbors bringing money from cities and they are also encouraged to send their school-going sons and daughters to work,” says Purna Bahadur Thami.