Word: nepal
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...bronze bells are ringing in the temples of Bhaktapur, about ten miles outside Kathmandu, and people are lighting small wax candles. The morning after King Gyanendra went on television late Monday night to announce that he was capitulating to popular protests by restoring Nepal's parliament - an announcement that put an end to a nineteen-day cycle of protests, curfews, tear gas, rubber bullets and several deaths - the people of this ancient town of temples and palaces, which was once the capital of a medieval kingdom of Nepal, are offering thanks to the gods...
...curfew, are now jammed with noisy pickup trucks, buses, and cars draped with red banners. Drums are beaten and horns are blown. Many of the trucks and cars are going towards the house of Girija Prasad Koirala, an 84-year old two-time prime minister of Nepal who has been picked to lead his country once again by Nepal's political parties...
...stay open - has meant that very little food or fuel has come into Kathmandu for nearly twenty days. The result: there is barely three days' supply of fuel left in the city, prices have shot up for food staples, and the hardship is ruining the lives of many in Nepal, already one of the world's poorest countries. Nepal's economy was expected to grow by just 2.5% this year before the strike began; it is certain to grow by much less now. "We have apologized to the people for the hardships caused by the movement," says Arjun Narasingha...
...offer does manage to defuse the crisis, it won't come a day too soon, because the movement for democracy in Nepal is at an ominous tipping point. For the first two weeks of this struggle, picking the good guys out from the bad has seemed to be relatively easy: a long-suppressed people has risen up in courageous protest against a remote and autocratic monarch who repeatedly unleashed a brutal police on them. But the longer the demonstrations for democracy go on,the greater the danger that the mass movement turns into a tyranny itself. By Monday...
...knew the strike was coming, and stocked up on a month's worth of food. Standing nearby and watching without a word, Mohammad Farooq, a construction worker, suddenly blurts out in bitterness, once the protestors have gone away. "Look here, if the construction workers and the poor of Nepal were asked, they would want this strike to end right this moment," he says. "The local politicians have food stocked up; we are poor, and we have nothing with us. As for those stories they're telling you about food being given on credit by the shopkeepers, I can tell...