Police in riot gear fired tear gas yesterday to disperse pro-democracy activists who defied a ban on rallies in the capital and protested King Gyandenra's seizure of absolute power last year. At least 200 people were arrested and 50 injured.
Hundreds of protesters played cat-and-mouse with police, throwing stones and running away in and around Durbar Square in the historic center of Kathmandu.
Dozens of political leaders and student activists were also arrested yesterday in different parts of Nepal as they protested the arrest of their top leaders in Kathmandu on Thursday and Friday.
The arrests yesterday came as political activists belonging to seven parties opposed to King Gyanendra's direct rule called general strikes in the east Nepal township of Biratnagar and the west Nepal hill town of Surkhet.
Dozens of police carried firearms, in place of their usual bamboo batons.
Some 200 demonstrators were rounded up and taken away in police vans, according to journalists at the scene and other eyewitnesses. The activists chanted pro-democracy slogans as they were taken away.
The square was the planned venue for a pro-democracy protest but there was no sign of a mass rally, with small groups of people sporadically trickling into the square, which was littered with stones and half-bricks.
Citing the threat of Maoist rebel violence, the government on Friday banned street protests, cut mobile telephone services, imposed a daytime curfew and arrested hundreds of activists.
A number of political party leaders including former prime minister G.P. Koirala were placed under house arrest.
Activists from a seven-party alliance sacked by the king in February last year when he seized total power called the rally to protest municipal elections due to be held Feb. 8 as part of the king's road map to restore democracy.
Political parties have denounced the elections as a sham.
The government imposed an 8am to 6pm curfew in Kathmandu on Friday to prevent a proposed anti-king protest. The proposed rally, did not take place because of the curfew.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
RSS