Acharya leaves for NZ

KATHMANDU: As a special envoy, foreign secretary Gyan Chandra Acharya left for New Zealand on Sunday to attend the state funeral of Sir Edmund Hillary. The state funeral is being held at a ceremony in Auckland, New Zealand, on January 22. Charge d’Affaires at the Embassy of Nepal in Canberra, Australia, Shankar Bairagi will accompany Acharya in the ceremony, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. — RSS

Students’ campaign

Kathmandu: The Dipendra Search Republican Students’ Awareness Campaign launched by the Maoist student wing on January 6 concluded on Sunday. The Kathmandu District Committee and Campus District Committee had jointly organised the 16-day campaign to create awareness about those missing student leaders and creating awareness about the Constituent Assembly polls. According to vice-president Bijay Dev Bhattarai, two teams comprising 25 members each had reached different parts of the villages lying at the outskirts

of the Valley. — HNS

Workshop on quake

Bhaktapur: Narayan Man Bijukchhe, president of the Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ party, on Sunday stressed on the need to research and find technologies to construct earthquake-resistant buildings to avoid loss of property and human life. Inaugurating a workshop on ‘Earthquake Engineering’ organised by Post Graduate Department of Earthquake Engineering under Khowpa Engineering College and Structural Engineers’ Association Nepal, he said engineers should devote their time on research to innovate technologies to construct earthquake-resistant buildings. Dr Rajan Suwal, principal of the college, said everyone should know about early preparedness. — HNS