NEPAL: Labour Demands Say in Reforms

Workers - 1, World Bank - 0. The Bank has long urged Nepal's governments to amend the country's labour laws in order to cut the cost of doing business and boost investment, a move that would also weaken workers' status, argue trade union officials.

NEPAL: Drought Prompts First Ever Emergency Food Op

The United Nations World Food Programme is planning its first ever emergency food operation in Nepal to counter a severe drought in the country's northwestern hills and mountains.

NEPAL: Downsizing the Monarchy

With Maoist rebels breathing down their necks, Nepal's parliamentarians prepared Thursday to downsize the monarchy and strip the king of his traditional role as army chief.

RIGHTS-NEPAL: Under Democracy, Activists Want More From UN

Justice will be done for those killed and injured in April's revolution, pledged Nepal's new government last Friday, taking a radical step towards ending the impunity that has long cloaked human rights abusers in this violence-wracked nation.

RIGHTS-NEPAL: Revolution’s Speed Bumps

On the eve of Prime Minister Girija Koirala's refusal to be sworn in by the royal council, Crown Prince Paras was returning from a round of golf in the capital when a car in his speeding motorcade clipped a vehicle in a wedding party. It was the wedding party that was hauled away to a local police station.

NEPAL: King’s Retreat May Not Save Crown

Even after Nepal's King Gyanendra reinstated parliament Monday night, paving the way for the election of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, anger on the streets remains high, making it unlikely that a new constitution would accommodate the monarchy.

NEPAL: King Bows to the People

Nepal's capital was light-hearted again Tuesday. From the hundreds of thousands who marched, danced and sang on the roads, to the store-keepers idly chatting before open shops, to the pedestrians speaking on mobile phones nimbly side-stepping potholes, relief and normality were in the air hours after the king bowed to ‘people power' rather than face a protest headed for the palace gates.

NEPAL: People Power Brakes Int’l Community

Hours after King Gyanendra said Friday he would hand power back to his citizens, state-run Nepal TV, for the first time in months, displayed the flags of many world powers that it seemed to be indicating were now onside, including India, the United States, Britain and the European Union.

NEPAL: ‘Human Tsunami’ Swamps King

"There it is - that's our human tsunami," Communist party leader Madhav Kumar Nepal said Friday, watching more than 100,000 people flow past his house in the capital's outskirts.

NEPAL: UN Monitors Barred as Protesters Are Shot

United Nations human rights monitors were kept off the streets of Nepal's capital Thursday, as security forces opened fire on protesters defying a curfew, killing three and injuring over 100.

NEPAL: Behind-the-Scene Battles

On one side are hundreds of protesters, most of them college-age men in T-shirts, some waving party flags, some pumping fists in the air. "Down with the king!" they chant. Facing them are rows of armed police in blue camouflage and body padding. Most carry metre-long canes ('lathis') and wear helmets; some tote plexiglas shields, rifles or thicker teargas guns.

NEPAL: Revolution Denied

Local news reports described a playful but determined crowd of thousands of Nepalis who sat down to occupy a road for five hours, singing, reciting poetry and, most importantly, stopping riot police and soldiers from entering their community.

NEPAL: Bullets Fire Up Opposition to King’s Rule

The shooting deaths of three protesters in two days appears to have finally sparked mass support for the opposition movement against the direct rule of King Gyanendra.

NEPAL: Protests Punctuate General Strike

A general strike smothered life in Nepal on Friday, where riot police seized dozens more protesters who torched a post office and vehicles and pelted stones one day before scheduled nation-wide rallies against King Gyanendra's rule.

POLITICS-NEPAL: Lights Return but Spark Missing

Authorities have ended nightly power cuts in Nepal's capital so they can smother an opposition general strike next week that movement leaders insist could trigger an end to palace rule if it was buttressed with more international pressure.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Nepalis Take Two-pronged Approach

Expect to see Nepal's unique two-pronged flag fluttering often at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Karachi until Tuesday. Groups based here that are attending the meet say they will both lead and hop aboard protests against King Gyanendra's rule as well as push their own unique social agendas.

RIGHTS: Nepal Tribes to Raise Own Flag in Geneva

The world will be watching from this week as the United Nation's human rights body evaluates Nepal's unelected palace government but many of this nation's indigenous people will have one eye focused on a separate meeting.

NEPAL: Spring Blooms Early, Democracy Dormant

Spring has come a month early to Nepal's capital, according to locals eyeing the blooms in their gardens, but more than a year after King Gyanendra seized power, a democratic thaw seems unlikely.

NEPAL: Don’t Forget the Economy

The owner of the small 'Camera Mart' in Kathmandu's Thamel tourist area, Aakash Shrestha has seen business plummet about 60 percent in the last nine years. "I didn't sell a camera yesterday and I probably won't sell one today," the young man said early one recent evening. "Maybe tomorrow," he added with a smile and a slight shrug that signalled 'what else can I do?'.

RIGHTS-NEPAL: ‘You Are Being Watched’, Warns UN Official

Nepal's government should know that the country's human rights performance is being watched especially closely prior to the March meeting of the United Nations human rights body, said its representative in the South Asian country on Friday.

NEPAL: 13,000 Dead, Plus One

Thirteen thousand - plus Asmina Chapagain. The former is the estimated number of Nepalis killed since Maoist rebels hurled their first homemade bombs at the state, 10 years ago, this week. Chapagain was one of the latest innocents caught in the crossfire.