News stories by Kunda Dixit

KATMANDU, Jan 29 (IPS) - The increased frequency of climate-induced weather extremes and public opinion pressure are forcing even major fossil fuel exporting countries in West Asia to make a big push towards renewable energy.

KASKI, Nepal, Jan 17 (IPS) - Nepal's future may not be in hydropower, as most assume, but actually in the dung heap. A new industrial-scale biogas plant near Pokhara has proved that livestock and farm waste producing flammable methane gas can replace imported LPG and chemical fertiliser.

The people of Nepal are justifiably proud that their country was never colonised, even though most other countries in the region were under the British. The joke in Kathmandu is that the British in India took one look at the mountains to the north, and didn't bother conquering Nepal because they found it ungovernable, writes Kunda Dixit, editor and publisher of the Nepali Times newspaper in Kathmandu.

The shaky amateur video shows the leader of Nepal's Maoist party, Prachanda, boasting how he tricked the UN into thinking his army was 35,000 strong when it had only 7,000 guerrillas and admitting he lied to everyone about his commitment to democracy and the peace process, and that his real goal is total control of the army and the state, writes Kunda Dixit, editor and publisher of the Nepali Times newspaper in Kathmandu.

MANILA, Dic 24 (IPS) - The magazine covers and newspaper headlines were unanimous in 1994: 'Asia Ascendant', 'Asia Unleashed', 'The Rise and Rise of Asia'.

KATHMANDU, Nov 24 (IPS) - NEPAL'S COMMUNIST ALLIANCE, WHICH EMERGED AS THE LARGEST PARTY IN LAST WEEK'S PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS, IS RUNNING INTO DIFFICULTIES AS IT TRIES TO COBBLE TOGETHER A GOVERNMENT WITHOUT SUFFICIENT MAJORITY.

KATHMANDU, Nov 23 (IPS) - A portrait of Lenin gazing sternly down from the wall behind him, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Nepal, Madhav Nepal, does not look like a man whose party has just emerged victorious in elections.

KATHMANDU, Nov 22 (IPS) - The worst disaster in Nepal's mountaineering history that took the lives of 11 climbers last week has raised questions about safety and rescue procedures in the country.

KATHMANDU, Nov 18 (IPS) - In the next week or so, Nepal's king Birendra could be swearing in a communist prime minister.

MANILA, Nov 08 (IPS) - For Joey Ayala, the most famous and successful of a new breed of Filipino ethno-musicians, the 'hegalong' is not just a musical instrument: it is an icon for a "new state of being".