Gender inequality is the overwhelming injustice of our age and the biggest human rights challenge we face. But gender equality offers solutions to some of the most intractable problems of our age.

I still remember my internship days in 2009 at Mayo Hospital: a 2400-bed hospital with high bad occupancy in Lahore, Pakistan. I visualize my senior teaching me intubation in the emergency room, saying “the patient is deteriorating, put in the laryngoscope, visualize vocal cords and intubate quickly.” Unfortunately, my first attempt at intubation on the patient failed and my senior had to reintubate the patient.

Let me start with a little exercise in imagination and think of a scenario that could happen to everybody, given the disproportionately high number of accidents happening in the national roads.  Following a really bad spinal injury you are now bound in a wheelchair.  You are lucky that the country has some good rehabilitation institutions like the Spinal Cord Rehabilitation Center (SIRC) funded by the civil society activist and intellectual Kanak Mani Dixit.

Finding it hard to understand human behavior? Tired of the urban jungle? In dire need of some peace of mind? Need some inspiration to write something creative? Or simply need some fresh air?

In two years since he assumed office, Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada has maintained a mixed legacy. He was instrumental in making the Investment Summit 2019 successful.  The Summit, which was held in Kathmandu in March, 2019 had ended with signing of 15 memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with various investors, in addition to investment commitments to 17 various projects. Khatiwada, when he was the governor of Nepal Rastra Bank, was known for maintaining financial discipline.

Algorithms will soon be a big part of human society. It is already being used to determine what people see on online platforms, detect traffic violations on the busy streets of cosmopolitan cities, suggest posts on social media, and fire unproductive employees. The general thinking is that the evaluations made by algorithms are objective and unbiased because they analyze huge amounts of data to make decisions.  This, however, is an incorrect assumption. Since people write software codes, human-biases often transfer in algorithms potentially threatening liberal democracy.

NEW YORK – After nearly two decades, 2,400 soldiers killed, another 20,000 wounded, and as much as $2 trillion spent, the United States is understandably eager to withdraw from Afghanistan. President Donald Trump wants to be able to claim in advance of the November 2020 election that he fulfilled his campaign promise to end the country’s longest war, and his Democratic challengers share his desire to extricate the US from the conflict.

China is fighting against novel coronavirus to mitigate the loss and to save the lives of its citizens. The Chinese government has made all the efforts to prevent the spread of the virus beyond highly impacted areas in China. To fight against this epidemic, China opened 1,000-bed coronavirus hospital just within a week of construction, which is amazing. China is trying to apply all the measures to control the situation. Many countries in the world are expressing solidarity with China in its fight against the virus.

HONG KONG – Last October, the 2019 Global Health Security Report included a stark warning: “National health security is fundamentally weak around the world. No country is fully prepared for epidemics or pandemics, and every country has important gaps to address.” Just a couple of months later, a new coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China—and quickly demonstrated the accuracy of the report’s assessment.

Housing has been one of the highlights of constitutional schemes on fundamental rights in Nepal, setting an ambitious target of providing homes for homeless and needy citizens. The parliament enacted Right to Housing Act (2018) to implement Article 37 of the constitution, which guarantees every person the right to appropriate housing.