KATHMANDU, Aug 3: Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa has blamed free availability of alcohol and narcotic drugs for the recent rape of a minor in Kanchanpur.

Aniruddha Chatterjee, regional director of Dow Jones was recently in Kathmandu to attend a conference to discuss about solutions to mitigate money laundering and white-collar crimes. Sagar Ghimire of Republica caught up Chatterjee on the sidelines of the conference to discuss about the risks and vulnerabilities in Nepal's financial system, challenges of compliance, and infrastructure and regulatory setup to curb such crimes, among other issues. Excerpts:

KATHMANDU, Jan 31: Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal encouraged Young Communist League, a sister-wing of his party CPN (Maoist Center), to retaliate against "rightist elements" and to begin the action from the upcoming election of the Free Student Unions at universities.

Ever since the government of Pushpa Kamal Dahal registered a constitution amendment bill in parliament on November 29th, 2016, the main opposition, CPN-UML, has been consistently opposing the rastraghati (anti-national) bill and asking for its withdrawal. But which provisions in the bill are anti-national? And what is the way out of the current political and constitutional deadlock? UML Vice-chairman Bhim Rawal, who has also served as deputy prime minister and home minister in previous governments, shared his insights with Biswas Baral and Mahabir Paudyal.