With the COVID-19 pandemic bringing to a halt economic and broader development activity around the world, the World Bank has projected that remittances to low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) will fall sharply in 2020—by about 20 percent. Nepal, where remittance contribution to GDP in 2019 was equivalent to 27.3 percent according to the World Bank, has lost nearly 50 percent of remittances in past two months compared to the same period last year according to the Nepal Rashtra Bank, the country’s central bank’s report published in May 2020.

NEW YORK – The United States finds itself confronting several daunting challenges simultaneously. There is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already claimed nearly 120,000 lives and shows little sign of abating in large swaths of the country. The economic impact has been devastating, with some 40 million currently out of work and the Federal Reserve projecting that many of them will remain unemployed for a prolonged period.

Several of the journalists who have been attacked by police recently are foreign correspondents working for overseas outlets.

With COVID-19, the scope of teaching and learning has drastically changed all over the world. Real face-to-face education delivery has all changed into virtual classrooms and interactions. This has posed more challenges than opportunities, especially in the developing and poor nations.

The efforts we make to avoid all male panels can lead do a variety of benefits, from discovering better experts, enriching the conversation, inspiring younger women, to fostering new expertise.

Monsoon is just at the doorstep. Few towns and cities are already submerged. The coming days are going to be more tough and cruel. This year we are in no different condition. The situation is rather worse. We have to prepare and fight multiple disasters, while we are already threatened by COVID-19 pandemic.

Have you ever heard a Brahmin man murdered for marrying a Dalit woman? At least, I have not. Love is blind, it is said. But I say love has eyes of caste, race, ethnicity, religion, sex, wealth, and geography. The provision of the constitution that all adults, irrespective of their gender and caste, can choose their partners sounds like a false promise.

After weeks of anger and frustration, a group of young people took to the streets of Baluwatar to demand accountability from this government. The COVID-19 response from this government has been dismal: testing rates are low, RDTs reign over PCR tests, quarantines are poorly managed – hotbeds for disease-- and there seems to be no real strategy to address the impending economic fallout and the long-term management of returning migrant workers. Nepali Congress MP Gagan Thapa rightly repeated what was being said all over social media the last few weeks yesterday in parliament: Where did the $1.3 billion spent on COVID-19 response go? Are the border quarantines fast becoming ‘concentration camps’? A series of failures have emerged as a result of what seems to be a reactive approach to governance.

In the month of December 2019, a unique and mysterious disease outbreak in the Wuhan city of China caused respiratory illness. It has since then spread globally, resulting in the pandemic. COVID-19  is a highly contagious cause of coronavirus. The infected patients have reported mild to  severe acute respiratory syndrome. Common symptoms of the disease include fever, cough and shortness of breath. Other symptoms may include fatigue, muscle pain, diarrhea, sore throat, loss of smell and abdominal pain. While a majority of the cases result in mild symptoms, some progress to severe health problems, causing severe viral pneumonia and multi-organ failure.

LONDON – I recently re-read and reflected on everything I have written for Project Syndicate since the start of this year. Two commentaries, in particular, stood out. In January, I suggested that without a new surge in productivity, the world would struggle to achieve the same level of economic growth in the 2020s as it did in previous decades.