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Dahlia Yehia, 25, arrived in Nepal on July 20 to serve in Pokhara, where she was killed by a teacher named Narayan Paudel, according to Hari Bahadur Pal, the Kaski District Police superintendent:. Police said Paudel confessed to beating Yehia to death, putting her body in a sack and dumping it in the river. Paudel, who met Yehia through a Couchsurfing website, said he killed her August 4, the superintendent said. Her body has not been recovered. The site connects travelers with local hosts for accommodations. Yehia, an art teacher, was backpacking through Nepal, according to the Facebook page of...

Kathmandu -- The church in Nepal is on the edge as Nepal struggles to finalize its much-awaited new constitution amid sporadic protests, violent clashes and shut downs in several districts over demarcation of the provinces under the draft constitution.   "There is lot of tension, both good news and bad news for us on the constitution [making] front," Father Silas Bogati, vicar general of the Vicariate of Nepal told Aleteia August 19 — a day after as a young protester died in police firing.   On the positive side, Father Bogati pointed out that: "At least church and Christianity will...

Nepal: HPI Note: This report is from a Christian website. Christians and Muslims in Nepal are criticizing the draft version of a new constitution that bans religious conversion. Spurred to action by the recent earthquake, Nepal's government introduced the draft for public comment on June 30, Reuters reported. The draft states that "any act which may be contrary to public health, public decency or morality or incitement to breach public peace or act to convert another person from one religion to another or any act or behavior to undermine or jeopardize the religion of each other is not allowed and...

Nepal reopened its most popular trekking trail to tourists on Thursday after international experts said it was safe, three months after two devastating earthquakes led the government to close most hiking routes. Miyamoto International, a California-based structural engineering company, said in a report that quake-related damage in the Annapurna region “was very limited”. Less than 1 percent of the route and 3 percent of guest houses along the Annapurna circuit were damaged, it said, adding the report for the Everest region would be completed shortly.

A Nepal hospital said Friday that CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta incorrectly reported that he operated on an 8-year-old girl after the country’s devastating earthquake in April. A top official at the Bir Hospital in Kathmandu, Dr. Ganesh Bahadur Gurung, said Friday that the girl, Salina Dahal, never had brain surgery and has recovered from minor head injuries. Gupta, a practicing brain surgeon, reported days after the April 25 earthquake that he operated on Dahal. CNN said Thursday that it is working to verify the identity of Gupta’s patient, following a published report that he never treated the 8-year-old...

Whether recent events in Greece, Tunisia and even Calais have a long-term impact on tourism, beyond the immediate effects of changed and cancelled bookings, remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that the 7.8 magnitude earthquake Nepal suffered on 25 April, and its severe aftershocks, served a crushing blow to the country’s industry. Yet already, just two months later, Nepal is gearing up to tell the world it’s back in the travel business. Nepal’s government is desperate to change the narrative after April’s disaster, which killed almost 9,000 people, in time for the peak tourist season in October...

Professor VD Mishra said that new researches have revealed that agricultural practices in India started in Mesolithic period (6-7,000 BC), much before the Neolithic period (4000 BC) as is generally believed. This discovery has proved that agriculture in India started simultaneously with other parts of the world. He said that Sativa rice, discovered from excavations at Chopni in Belan valley, has proved that India did not lag behind in agriculture... Joshi said that encroachments around historical monuments should be stopped because it harms our heritage. Citing an example, he said that Gwalior Fort could not be declared World Heritage due...

Divers find ruins of mythical city off India Explorers believe they have discovered remains of a mythical city off the coast of India. According to legend it was swallowed up by the sea about 2,000 years ago. An expedition from the Scientific Exploration Society and India's National Institute of Oceanography discovered the ruins off the coast of Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu. Structures which appear to be man-made were found at depths of five to seven metres. Local legend tells of a great city containing seven temples, so beautiful that the jealous gods sent a flood to engulf it. Author Graham...

The recent International Conference on Harappan Archaeology produced an unexpected announcement from archaeologists BR Mani and KN Dikshit, both of the Archaeological Survey of India, who claim that new dates from excavations show the Harappan culture began around 2000 years earlier than previously thought.The ruins of the Harrapan city of Mohenjo-daro remained undocumented for over 3,700 years, until their discovery in 1922 by Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay, an officer of the Archaeological Survey of India. He was led to the mound by a Buddhist monk, who reportedly believed it to be a stupa. Image: Wikimedia commons Redating of Harappan culture Based on...

Excavations reveal 7,000 year-old Harappan sites Staff Report PESHAWAR: Gandi Umar Khan, around 55 kilometres west of Dera Ismail Khan, is the most important archaeological site of the Indus Valley civilization in the North Western Frontier Province. Gandi Umar Khan is spread over an area of 220 by 200 meters and has a maximum height of 8.5 metres. The site was discovered in 1997 by the University of Peshawar. The Directorate of Archaeology and Museum NWFP conducted an extensive survey of the Gomal Plain in March 2003 and discovered 95 sites out of which exist 53 sites of different periods...

Lost civilisation from 7,500 BC discovered off Indian coast Archaeologists have found a civilisation dating back to 7,500 BC off India's western coast. The find is 5,000 years older than any previously unearthed civilisation in the subcontinent. Researchers uncovered pottery, beads, sculptures, a fossilised jaw bone and human teeth at the Gulf of Cambay site.(DNA tests?) Previously, the oldest known civilisations were the Harrapan and Indus Valley communities - which date from around 2,500BC. Murli Manohar Joshi, minister for human resources and ocean development, told The Times of India: "The findings buried 40 metres below the sea reveal some ...

Evidence of an ancient "lost river civilisation" has been uncovered off the west coast of India, the country's minister for science and technology has announced. Local archaeologists claim the find could push back currently accepted dates of the emergence of the world's first cities. Underwater archaeologists at the National Institute of Ocean Technology first detected signs of an ancient submerged settlement in the Gulf of Cambray, off Gujarat, in May 2001. They have now conducted further acoustic imaging surveys and have carbon dated one of the finds. The acoustic imaging has identified a nine-kilometre-long stretch of what was once a ...

The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say. Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia may be the best known of the first great urban cultures, but the largest was the Indus or Harappan civilization. This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Seato the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10 percent of...

The dawn would have illuminated the pools of blood, as the villagers emerged to count their dead. For all of the night of February 24, 2000, residents of the hamlet of Lanjote had bunkered down, hoping not to be hit by artillery fire arcing across the LoC. The 16 bodies on the streets, though, bore evidence of the precision savagery of the knife, not the shell: 90-year-old Mohammad Alam Wali, and a young couple, Mohammad Murtaza and Kali Begum, had been decapitated. Limbs were severed; heads hacked. The youngest victim, Ahmad Niaz, was just two. With deliberation, it seemed, the...

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyKathmandu, Nepal --- May 28, 2015 … IsraAID, Israel’s largest, private, global humanitarian organization, has launched its “A Roof for All” program to provide safe and sturdy transitional shelter for thousands of displaced families who have lost their homes as a result of the last two devastating earthquakes in Nepal. Hundreds of thousands of people are displaced, living on the streets and in open areas in make-shift tents and shelters unprepared for the heavy storms and flooding of the imminent monsoon season. There is critical cause for concern that a secondary disaster could quickly unfold...

What kind of man or woman risks their lives for strangers? Eric Seaman of Murrieta, Calif., was 30. He had two children, and was a U.S. Marine sergeant. His wife, Samantha Seaman, told CNN, "Last week I got an email telling me that he felt purpose and that he delivered 10,000 pounds of rice ... and I know that right before he passed away, I know that he helped somebody."

The helicopter was among the relief teams that have been working to help Nepalese after a 7.8-magnitude quake. Relief teams from have been working for weeks to provide water, food, shelter and medical assistance for Nepalese [Reuters] The Nepalese army has said a rescue helicopter has spotted the wreckage of a missing US Marine chopper in the mountains northeast of Kathmandu. Army chief of army operations Major-General Binoj Basnet said on Friday no signs of life could be seen from the air, but could not give any information about the six Marines and two Nepalese army soldiers who were on...

Four days after Nepal was shaken by its second deadly significant earthquake in less than three weeks, nerves were rattled there by another quake Saturday afternoon. The U.S. Geological Survey indicated the magnitude-5.7 tremor was strong enough to inflict significant damage on poorly constructed buildings. It was felt in northern India. Neither injuries nor deaths have been reported, possibly because so many structures were already toppled by the April 25 magnitude-7.8 earthquake that killed more than 8,000 people and injured more than 19,000. The region was hit Tuesday by a quake that killed over 125 people and injured over 2,500.

My wife is an ICU nurse in the Air Force. She is part of a Critical Care Air Transport Team that just deployed to Nepal to assist in the earthquake recovery. Please send a prayer out for her and her team. Her name is Captain April Oliver, and she is the best wife/nurse/ you could ever ask for.

The wreckage of a US military helicopter that went missing in Nepal has been found, the Nepalese army says. The helicopter went missing earlier this week while delivering aid near the Chinese border, with six US marines and two Nepali soldiers on board. Maj Gen Binoj Basnet told AFP agency that it was not known if there were any survivors. The editor of the Nepal Times, Kunda Dixit, said the wreckage was found 56km (35 miles) from Kathmandu.