KATHMANDU, JUN 05 - Prime Minister Sushil Koirala left for China this morning heading a 33-member delegation to the second China South Asia Trade Fair going to be held at Kunming city of Yunnan province.

PM Koirala is attending the Fair as the guest of honour at the official invitation of the Government of the People's Republic of China.

PM Koirala flew to the northern neighbour on a special aircraft. Representatives of various political parties, lawmakers, PM's advisors, high ranking government officials and the Nepali Ambassador to China are part of the delegation.

During his stay in China, the prime minister is scheduled to meet Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang and his counterparts from different countries, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The fair from June 6 to 10 will be attended by political leaders from South Asia and South East Asia.

Prime Minister Koirala will address the fair as a 'special guest' and will inaugurate the Nepali pavilion at the fair venue. The pavilion will showcase 80 stalls of Nepali products and relating to Nepali culture and tourism. The Nepali team will present a cultural programme at the fair.

A Nepali delegation headed by Minister for Commerce and Supplies Sunil Thapa is already in China to take part in the festival. Minister Thapa left Kathmandu last night.

Similarly, the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry will head a separate delegation of Nepali business leaders to the fair as Nepal is a member of 9th China-South Asia Trade Forum, it is learnt.

A total of 46 countries of South Asia and South East Asia are participating in the fair organised jointly by the Yunnan's provincial government and Ministry of Commerce of China.

Prime Minister Koirala is scheduled to return home on Friday evening. RSS

Search planes flying deep into the southern Indian Ocean found nothing Friday that could be from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, Australia´s acting prime minister said.

The planes are part of an international effort to solve the nearly 2-week-old mystery of what happened to Flight 370 and the 239 people on board. They are looking for two large floating objects detected by a satellite off the southwest coast of Australia, about halfway to the desolate islands of the Antarctic.
Truss told reporters that two Chinese aircraft are expected to arrive in Perth on Saturday to join the search, and two Japanese aircraft will be arriving Sunday. A small flotilla of ships coming to Australia from China was still several days away.

“We are doing all that we can, devoting all the resources we can and we will not give up until all of the options have been exhausted,” Truss said. “We can´t be certain that the sightings are in fact debris from the aircraft (but) it is about the only lead that is around at the present time.”

The search area in the southern Indian Ocean is so remote it takes aircraft four hours to fly there and four hours back, leaving them only enough fuel to search for about two hours.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said search conditions improved Friday, with much better visibility than the previous day, but that the search “has concluded for today without any sightings.”

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters that “This is going to be a long haul.”

“The focus has always been to find the airplane, and the focus is to reduce the area of search and possible rescue,” he said.

Hishammuddin said he would be speaking to U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel later Friday “to request further specialist assets to help with the search and rescue efforts, including remotely operated vehicles for deep ocean salvage.”

John Young, manager of the maritime safety authority´s emergency response division, said the aircraft will head back on Saturday to the search zone, 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles) from western Australia, but the area will change slightly depending on water movements overnight.

Abbott spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he described as “devastated.” Of the 227 passengers on the missing flight, 154 were from China.

“It´s about the most inaccessible spot that you could imagine on the face of the Earth, but if there is anything down there we will find it. We owe it to the families of those people to do no less,” Abbott said.

The satellite discovery raised new hopes of finding the jet and sent another emotional jolt to the families of the people on board. The anguished relatives have been critical of Malaysian officials for delays in releasing information.

In Beijing, relatives met Friday with Malaysian officials at a hotel where most have been staying awaiting the latest news. Attendees said they had a two-hour briefing about the search but that nothing new was said.

One of the floating objects detected by the satellite was 24 meters (almost 80 feet) long and the other was 5 meters (15 feet).

The Norwegian cargo vessel Hoegh St. Petersburg is also in the area helping with the search. The ship, which transports cars, was on its way from South Africa to Australia. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said another commercial ship and an Australian navy vessel were en route.

“The last report I have is that nothing of particular significance has been identified in the search today but the work will continue,” said Warren Truss, who is acting prime minister while Tony Abbott is in Papua New Guinea.

Truss said the search was difficult due to testing weather conditions and because the satellite imagery was five days old. “So something that was floating on the sea that long ago may no longer be floating — it may have slipped to the bottom. It´s also certain that any debris or other material would have moved a significant distance over that time, potentially hundreds of kilometers.”

Three Chinese naval ships were heading to the area, along with the icebreaker Snow Dragon, Chinese state television reported. The icebreaker was already in Perth following a voyage to the Antarctica in January.

The hunt has had several false leads. Oil slicks that were seen did not contain jet fuel. A yellow object thought to be from the plane turned out to be sea trash. Chinese satellite images showed possible debris, but nothing was found.

Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanation for what happened to the jet, but have said the evidence so far suggests it was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next.

Police are considering the possibility of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or anyone else on board.

As Flight MH370 left Malaysian airspace, controllers in Kuala Lumpur were expecting a simple handover to their Vietnamese counterparts.

But the switch never happened and experts believe this was the crucial moment when hijackers or the pilots could have struck and changed the Boeing 777’s course.

A newly-released transcript has pinpointed the exact moment the jet flew into the “dead space” between the two air traffic control zones – where it is not being monitored from the ground.

Investigators are still probing today’s claims the Malaysian Airlines jet could have flown for seven hours before crashing into the sea off the coast of Australia after the crew and passengers became ­incapacitated by an onboard emergency.

And the missing plane was carrying highly flammable lithium batteries, the chief executive of Malaysian Airlines admitted today. Four days ago Ahmad Jauhari denied the dangerous cargo was onboard the plane.

Lithium-ion batteries have caused 140 mid-air incidents in last 20 years and are classed as dangerous by The International Civil Aviation Organisation. Some experts believe Flight MH370 could have been brought down by a catastrophic onboard fire.

And as the search for pieces of debris spotted in the southern Indian Ocean continued, the transcript showing the plane’s final communications threw the hijacking theory back into the fold.

At 1:19 am, co-pilot, Fariq Hamid, told Malaysian air traffic controllers: “All right, good night.”

He should have then handed over to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. But two minutes later the jet’s transponder, which gives off radar signals, was disabled.

The plane went dark on civilian radar, and then made a turn westwards back toward Malaysia. Investigators believe someone could have reprogrammed the plane’s flight management system to turn away from its original flight plan.

Former British Airways pilot Stephen Buzdygan said: “If I was going to steal the aeroplane, that would be the point I would do it.

“There might be a bit of dead space between the air traffic controllers. It was the only time during the flight they would maybe not have been able to be seen from the ground.”

BA’s former air safety chief John Lindsay added: “This would have been the ideal time to take over the aircraft because it would give a period of time when no one was aware of what it was doing.

“It seems to be more than just a strong coincidence that the loss of contact with the aircraft happened at the point of handover.”

Mr Lindsay said the disabling of the plane’s transponders suggest whatever happened to Flight MH370 was a well-planned event.

The transcript reveals messages relayed between the cockpit and air traffic controllers during the period when the plane is believed by some to already have been sabotaged.

Most of the records shows how banter between Hamid and air traffic controllers and Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was “perfectly routine”.

But one aspect of the conversations in the cockpit between before the flight vanished on March 8 struck investigators as odd. A message was delivered at 1.07am, confirming the plane was flying at 35,000 feet.

Higher studies are becoming crucial and selecting where to study is perhaps one of the most important decisions you’ll ever take in your life. We bring to you the list of top 10 Engineering Colleges which will help you get an idea of what these universities have to offer.

KATHMANDU, MAR 23 - As the international search continues for the missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft, another of its plane on a schedule flight (MH-114) from Kuala Lumpur with 180 passengers and crew members on board escaped disaster while landing at the Tribhuvan International Airport ( TIA ) on Friday night.

A flock of ducks struck aircraft’s windshield as it touched down on the runway, leaving the southern tip of the runway 02 strewn with broken glass, airport authorities said on Saturday. The incident took place at 10:45pm. There were no reports of injuries.

The airline’s cockpit crew, however, did not immediately inform the Air Traffic Controller (ATC) about the incident. The flight captain later confirmed “suspected bird-hit”, but only after a Jet Airways crew reported it to the airport authority.

“The incident came to light after a pilot of Jet Airways, which landed minutes after Malaysia Airlines, informed us of sighting pieces of glass on the runway,” said an ATC on condition of anonimity.

Upon inspection, TIA officials found at least 10 dead ducks along with pieces of glass on the runway. The debris was cleared and airport resumed its normal operations after half an hour.

The officials found two more dead ducks during a routine inspection early on Saturday morning. “It’s the first time that we have seen so many ducks in the airport area,” said an official.

Some officials said that they could be migrating ducks from Taudaha.

The airline cancelled a return flight to Kuala Lumpur that was scheduled at 11:00pm on Friday. All passengers who were booked on the flight were subsequently transferred to Soaltee, Annapurna and Hyatt Regency hotels. The plane took off for the Malaysian capital at 3:30pm on Saturday after necessary repairs.

Meanwhile, the ATC official said that they have notified the TIA general manager about the incident, recommending action against the Malaysia Airlines pilots for failing to report the incident in time.

“The pilots should have informed the airport authority immediately to prevent any untoward incident,” the official said.

More than 75 bird strike incidents have occurred during take-off or landing at the TIA since 1990. Three of them resulted in major damage to aircraft. While a Thai Airways Airbus A300 in 1996 and a Bangladesh Biman DC-10 in 2010 escaped an accident,19 people were killed when Sita Air Dornier crashed in September 2012.

NEW DELHI, MAR 14 - Ram Kumari Bomjan from Rautahat district arrived in New Delhi five months ago with a dream of flying to New Zealand, only to be duped by her agents.

Bomjan, who is staying at Everest Hotel in Paharganj, New Delhi , gave Rs 1.5 million to her agents one year ago. “They are trying to cheat me by producing fake work permit for Hong Kong or telling me that they would send me to Canada instead,” she said.

Bomjan sold her land and borrowed money to pay them. “I cannot go back to my village. Nor can I fly to a foreign country in the lack of documents. My known agents are out of contact,” she rued, adding that she does not have money even to pay the hotel.

About a dozen others are left in the lurch in the Indian Capital after their agents duped them on the pretext of sending them to New Zealand. Of late, India has grown as a transit for sending Nepali foreign job aspirants abroad.

The victims have sought anonymity of the agents fearing that they will be unable to recover the money.

After the government created barriers in the travel of migrant workers to Gulf countries via Indian routes, Nepali workers are being trafficked to countries such as New Zealand, Syria, Uganda, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kenya and Tanzania through Indian routes.

In particular, women are said to be trafficked to Kenya and Tanzania for work at dance bars. More than 300 Nepali women are said to be working in bars and pubs in the countries.

Dozens of complaints of foreign employment fraud have been lodged in the Nepali Embassy in New Delhi , Akhil Bharat Nepali Ekata Manch and Help Nepali Mission in India.

Khaganath Adhikari of the Nepali Embassy said no objection letters from the embassy are required for Nepali workers to go to Gulf countries via India and that they have informed authorities at Indian airports about the matter.

Adhikari, however, said that airport officials, except those based in New Delhi and Mumbai, might not be aware of it, thus letting Nepali workers fly to Gulf countries illegally.

Nepalis are being trafficked to Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda due to the provision of on-arrival visas, said Hikmat Thapa, coordinator of the Non-Resident Nepali Association for Africa.

Nepali Ambassador to South Africa Arun Prasad Dhital stressed the need for Nepali workers to be aware of the rackets trafficking Nepali workers to African countries on tourist visa and leaving them there in the lurch.

Chief Secretary Leela Mani Poudyal recently directed the Department of Foreign Employment to collect the details of Nepalis who are in African countries.

KUALA LUMPUR/PERTH, MAR 22 - Two weeks after a Malaysia Airlines airliner went missing with 239 people on board, officials are bracing for the "long haul" as searches by more than two dozen countries turn up little but frustration and fresh questions.

The international team hunting Flight MH370 in the remote southern Indian Ocean returned on Saturday to an area where suspected debris was spotted by satellite earlier this week.

Six aircraft and two merchant ships are scouring the area, though Australian officials have cautioned the objects, one up to 24 meters (72 feet) in length, may not be related to the missing aircraft or might have sunk.

China, Japan and India are sending planes and Australian and Chinese navy vessels are steaming to the zone, more than 2,000km (1,200 miles) southwest of Perth.

"Weather conditions in the search area are good, with 10 km (six miles) of visibility," said Australian Maritime Safety Authority Sam Cardwell.

Aircraft and ships have also renewed the search in the Andaman Sea between India and Thailand, going over areas that have already been exhaustively swept to find some clue to unlock one of the biggest mysteries in modern aviation.

Malaysian officials have been realistic about their ability to lead the operation with a global dynamic that some have said is beyond the country's technical capabilities and expertise.

"This continues to be a multinational effort coordinated by Malaysia, involving dozens of countries from around the world," Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a briefing on Friday.

Malaysia welcomed "all assistance to continue to follow all credible leads", said Hishammuddin, who is also acting transport minister.

He said searchers were facing the "long haul" but were conscious that the clock was ticking. The plane's "black box" voice and data recorder only transmits an electronic signal for about 30 days before its battery dies, after which it will be far more difficult to locate.

Investigators suspect the Boeing 777, which took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing shortly after midnight on March 8, was deliberately diverted thousands of miles from its scheduled path. They say they are focusing on hijacking or sabotage but have not ruled out technical problems.

The search itself has strained ties between China and Malaysia, with Beijing repeatedly leaning on the Southeast Asian nation to step up its hunt and do a better job at looking after the relatives of the Chinese passengers.

Hishammuddin has rejected complaints that the country has botched search efforts or refused to share vital information with other governments.

For families of the passengers, the process has proved to be an emotionally wrenching battle to elicit information, their angst fuelled by a steady stream of speculation and false leads.

In a Beijing hotel where the bulk of Chinese families have been awaiting information, the deadlock prompted rage over perceived Malaysian incompetence.

For a handful of Chinese families who chose to be flown to Kuala Lumpur to be closer to the heart of search operations, the flow of information has been no more fluid.

On Wednesday, grief erupted into anger when several family members unfurled a protest banner in front of a throng of journalists, demanding the truth from the Malaysian government. The ruckus prompted police to escort the relatives, including a distraught mother, away from the briefing room.

By Friday, the Chinese families who had been staying at a resort south of Kuala Lumpur had to decamp to another hotel as they were displaced by customers for the upcoming Malaysian Formula One grand prix.

"Tonight all the government could give us was old information. But of course we, the families, want to hear new updates," Malaysian Hamid Ramlat, the father of a passenger, told reporters after emerging from a briefing on Thursday night.

Some experts have argued that the reluctance to share sensitive radar data and capabilities in a region fraught with suspicion amid China's military rise and territorial disputes may have hampered the search.

Two people familiar with the investigation said the search had been slowed in some cases by delays over the paperwork needed to allow foreign maritime surveillance aircraft into territorial waters without a formal diplomatic request.

Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said on Friday he was grateful for the search craft offered by China and others.

Australian rescue coordinators are awaiting confirmation of the planes and ships offered before they are included in any search schedules, AMSA's Cardwell said.

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA, MAR 21 - Search planes joined a freighter early Friday to scan rough seas in one of the remotest places on Earth after satellite images detected possible pieces from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the southern Indian Ocean.

In what officials called the "best lead" of the nearly 2-week-old aviation mystery, a satellite detected two large objects floating about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) off the southwestern coast of Australia and halfway to the desolate islands of the Antarctic. The area is so remote is takes aircraft longer to fly there — four hours — than it does for the search.

The development raised new hope of finding the vanished jet and sent another emotional jolt to the families of the 239 people aboard.

Australian authorities said in a statement early Friday that the search had turned up nothing so far. Efforts were resuming with the first of five aircraft — a Royal Australian Air Force P3 Orion — leaving the base in Western Australia for the search around dawn. A civilian Gulfstream jet and a second Orion were expected to depart later Friday morning and a third Orion was due to fly out in the early afternoon to scour more than 13,000 square miles (35,000 square kilometers) of ocean.

A U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft was scheduled to leave the base at about 4 p.m. (0600 GMT), but like the other planes, it will have enough fuel for only a few hours before returning to Perth.

"It is a very long journey to the site and unfortunately, aircraft can only have one or two hours over the search area before they need to return to the mainland for fuel," Warren Truss, who is currently Australia's acting prime minister while Tony Abbott is overseas, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. He said that weather conditions in the area were poor and may get worse.

"And so clearly this is a very, very difficult and challenging search. Weather conditions are not particularly good and risk that they may deteriorate," Truss said.

One of the objects on the satellite image was 24 meters (almost 80 feet) long and the other was 5 meters (15 feet). There could be other objects in the area, a four-hour flight from Australia, said John Young, manager of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's emergency response division.

"This is a lead, it's probably the best lead we have right now," Young said. He cautioned that the objects could be seaborne debris along a shipping route where containers can fall off cargo vessels, although the larger object is longer than a container.

Truss said officials were working to get more satellite images and stronger resolution to help searchers get a better sense of where the objects are and how far they've shifted since the initial images were captured. "They will have moved because of tides and wind and the like, so the search area is quite broad," Truss said, adding that marker buoys were dropped to help get a better understanding of what drift is likely to have occurred.

The Norwegian cargo vessel Hoegh St. Petersburg, with a Filipino crew of 20, arrived in the area and used searchlights after dark to look for debris. It will continue the search Friday, said Ingar Skiaker of Hoegh Autoliners, speaking to reporters in Oslo.

The Norwegian ship, which transports cars, was on its way from South Africa to Australia, he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said another commercial ship and an Australian navy vessel were also en route to the search area.

Satellite imagery experts said the lead is worth investigating.

"It would be very nice if you could see a whole wing floating there, then you could say, 'OK that's an airplane,'" said Sean O'Connor, an imagery analyst with IHS Jane's. In the case of these satellite images, "you can't tell what it is" so closer examination is critical.

Another analyst said the debris is most likely not pieces of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. There have been several false leads since the Boeing 777 disappeared March 8 above the Gulf of Thailand en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

"The chances of it being debris from the airplane are probably small, and the chances of it being debris from other shipping are probably large," said Jason Middleton, an aviation professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

The development marked a new phase for the anguished relatives of the passengers, who have been critical of Malaysian officials for what the relatives say has been the slow release of timely information. While they still hope their loved ones will somehow be found, they acknowledged that news of the satellite images could mean the plane fell into the sea.

"If it turns out that it is truly MH370, then we will accept that fate," said Selamat Bin Omar, the father of a Malaysian passenger. The jet carried mostly Chinese and Malaysian nationals.

But he cautioned that relatives still "do not yet know for sure whether this is indeed MH370 or something else. Therefore, we are still waiting for further notice from the Australian government."

Malaysian officials met with the relatives Thursday night in a hotel near Kuala Lumpur, but journalists were kept away. After the meeting, groups of people left looking distraught.

Hamid Amran, who had a child on Flight 370, said questions asked at the meeting made it "apparent that Malaysia's military is incapable of protecting its own airspace."

He believes "that my child and all the other passengers are still alive. I will not give up hope."

Malaysian Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said the relatives in Kuala Lumpur were being given updates by high-level officials "two or three times a day."

"We do take care of the next of kin," he said, adding that if the debris is located "close to Australia, we will obviously make arrangements to fly the next of kin there."

A group of Malaysian government and airline officials flew Thursday night to Beijing to meet families there.

Young said the ocean in the search area is thousands of meters (feet) deep.

DigitalGlobe, a Longmont, Colo.-based company, said it provided the images to Australian officials. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority released two images of the whitish objects. They were taken March 16, but Australian Air Commodore John McGarry said it took time to analyze them.

"The task of analyzing imagery is quite difficult, it requires drawing down frames and going through frame by frame," he said.

The hunt has encountered other false leads. Oil slicks that were seen did not contain jet fuel. A yellow object thought to be from the plane turned out to be sea trash. Chinese satellite images showed possible debris, but nothing was found.

But this is the first time that possible objects have been spotted since the search area was massively expanded into two corridors, one stretching from northern Thailand into Central Asia and the other from the Strait of Malacca to the southern Indian Ocean.

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein made it clear Thursday that although international search efforts are continuing both on land and in sea in the northern and southern hemispheres, the effort is mostly concentrated south of the equator over the vast Indian Ocean.

Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanation for what happened to the jet, but have said the evidence so far suggests it was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next.

Police are considering the possibility of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or anyone else on board.

33 people have been killed in a car bomb attack in northwestern Pakistan today. This is the third blast to hit the city of Peshawar in a week. According to local authorities, a bomb was planted in a parked car and detonated by remote control. The attack occurred in a crowded market in the city’s oldest bazaar near a mosque.

The blast damaged the mosque, shops and vehicles as well. Last Sunday, two suicide bombers had blown themselves up in a crowd of worshippers at a church, killing 85 people. On Friday, 19 people were killed when a bomb planted on a bus carrying government employees exploded in the outskirts of the city.

No militant groups have taken responsibility for the attack yet but the blame is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban. The new government of Nawaz Sharif is planning to hold talks with militant groups to stop the violence but the hardliners want to establish a Islamic state and have demanded withdrawal of US forces from the region.

China is celebrating Mao’s 120th birth anniversary with noodles and fireworks. President Xi Jingping marked the occasion by visiting Mao’s preserved corpse. The founder of the People’s Republic led the country for 27 years until his death in 1976. Although he is revered by many Chinese, his political and economic campaigns have received condemnation by critics. Mao’s failed campaigns led to tens of millions of deaths.

The ruling Communist Party has been trying to balance both praise and acknowledgement of his mistakes. Mao has also emerged as a rallying point for those disappointed with the inequality and widespread corruption in the country. According to media reports,  police have detained pro-Mao activists in various provinces in the country for protesting against the current leadership.

The government had allocated a budget of US$320 million to celebrate Mao’s 120th birth anniversary. Most of the funds were used for firework display which lasted for more than four hours and thousands were served noodles as well.