The World Bank is mulling over abandoning the $37-million solar plant project after a parliamentary committee took a decision that would further delay implementation of the project, which is already one-and-a-half years behind its schedule.The Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts on Tuesday directed Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), the project implementing agency, to scrap the deal with contractor hired to roll out the project and restart the procurement process to appoint a new contractor. The committee issued this instruction stating the previous procurement process had violated the provisions of the Public Procurement Act while appointing Chinese company Raijin Energy Co to install the solar plant.

This instruction is likely to prompt the multilateral lender to lose its appetite to fund the 25MW solar plant, as it is not willing to go through another protracted procurement process which has already consumed over two years.

“This would run contrary to the project’s original objective of supporting Nepal’s energy crisis action plan,” said a source close to the World Bank Office in Nepal, referring to the government initiative to end crippling energy shortage that is hitting industrial production and households as well.

The World Bank in February 2015 had agreed to provide $130 million to build solar stations to the government to supply electricity in the Kathmandu Valley and reduce electricity leakage. Out of that amount, $37 million was earmarked for installation of solar plants at Devighat and Trishuli of Nuwakot district.

Although the solar plants’ installation was supposed to be completed within a year of signing the aid agreement, NEA took around two years to award the contract, as the entire contractor selection process was dragged into controversy.

Initially, previous NEA managing director Mukesh Raj Kafle had unilaterally decided to hire a Chinese company to build the project. After the Chinese contractor was deemed “technically unqualified”, new NEA Managing Director Kulman Ghising decided to hand over the project to Raijin Energy.

But Ghising was barred from hiring Raijin, as a complaint was lodged at the Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts stating the construction cost of Rs3.7 billion proposed by Raijin was Rs680 million more than the cost proposed by the contractor favoured by Kafle.

NEA Chief Ghising said the project is likely to be abandoned as the World Bank is highly unsatisfied with the time overrun. “Now, the project will go ahead only if the government decides to build the project on its own,” said Ghising.

Public Accounts Committee Chairman Dor Prasad Upadhyay, however, said their intention was not to stop project’s implementation, but to control irregularities while rolling out the project.

“We want NEA to start fresh bidding process and strictly follow the Public Procurement Act while appointing the contractor,” said Upadhyay.

The foreign ministers of Asean are expected to draft a joint statement on countering terrorism and violent extremism, at a time this year’s host the Philippines is battling the Islamic State-inspired Maute terrorists in Marawi city.

In a press briefing at Malacañang on Tuesday, Foreign Affairs spokesperson Robespierre Bolivar said countering terrorism and violent extremism is “high on the agenda” of the Asean foreign ministers who will be meeting in Manila from Aug. 2 to 8.

“Definitely, counterterrorism and violence [are] high on the agenda of the Asean, and we expect the ministers to have a fairly extensive discussion on the topic,” Bolivar said.

Asked if the Asean foreign ministers and other foreign ministers from participating countries will make a consensus, Bolivar said a joint statement on terrorism and violent extremism is “in the works,” although he declined to provide more details.

“I think there’s one in the works, but I can’t really go to the details. But I think that’s an expected outcome,” Bolivar said.

Bolivar made the statement as the Philippines hosts this year’s Asean foreign ministers’ meetings and other related meetings, even as government troops are still battling Maute terrorists in Marawi city in Mindanao, which is placed under an extended martial law until the end of the year.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano will lead the 50th Asean Foreign Ministers’ Meetings, the 18th Asean Plus Three Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (with Japan, China and Korea), the 7th East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, and the 24th Asean Regional Forum (ARF).

During the ARF, Cayetano will lead the 10 Asean foreign ministers, as well as 17 foreign ministers from participating countries, including US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.//AFP

The communist government has been on the warpath against wrongdoers in an industry plagued by favouritism and dodgy loans — part of a broader drive against corruption in the country.

A total of 16 people from various private and government-owned banks are accused of deliberate misconduct, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said on its website without elaborating.

The bankers allegedly colluded with the private Vietnam Construction Bank to skirt the law to secure millions in loans, causing $660 million in losses, state media reported.

The group “deliberately violated state regulations on economic management, causing serious consequences”, MPS said.

The two most senior bankers named are Tram Be and Phan Huy Khang from Sacombank, one of the country’s leading private banks. Both were arrested Tuesday.

Be is the former bank deputy chairman and belongs to one of Vietnam’s richest families, who earned much of its fortune in logging, real estate, farming and jewelry.

Khang was CEO from 2012 until he was sacked last month along with Be.

Several people have already been punished.

In September last year 36 former Vietnam Construction Bank employees were given jail terms of up to 30 years, after they were accused of secretly withdrawing millions of dollars from clients’ accounts to use for loans or keep for themselves.

Vietnam has achieved several years of solid economic growth of five per cent or higher, making it one of the best performing economies in Southeast Asia.

But soaring public debts, bloated state-owned enterprises and rampant official corruption have threatened progress.

Several high-profile bankers are currently awaiting trial or serving lengthy prison terms.

Authorities have also targeted other sectors in their anti-corruption drive. Former state oil executive Trinh Xuan Thanh handed himself into police Monday after an 11-month manhunt.

Also on Monday officials proposed that deputy trade minister Ho Thi Kim Thoa be stripped of her post for suspected wrongdoing at a state-owned lamp factory.

Despite Vietnam’s vow to crack down on corruption, analysts have said prosecutions and punishments are often spurred by political infighting rather than a genuine commitment to reform.

The book, “Breaking The Silence: Voices Of Moderation — Islam In A Constitutional Democracy”, is a collection of essays whose publication was organised by a group of prominent Muslim Malaysians pushing a more tolerant form of Islam.

The ban, signed by Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, said that printing or possessing the book was “likely to be prejudicial to public order” and “likely to alarm public opinion”.

Anyone breaching the ban on the book — which was published in neighbouring Singapore — can be jailed for up to three years.

Malaysia routinely bans books, movies and songs that may contain sensitive material regarding religion or sex, but critics say the government has been clamping down harder in recent times.

The book was the brainchild of a group of high-ranking former civil servants and diplomats known as the “G25” — for the number of its founding members — which was formed to push back against intolerance, and some of the essays were written by its members.

Chandra Muzaffar, one of the authors featured in the collection, said the ban showed the government’s “authoritarian approach to Islam”.

“It’s a collection of essays which is intended to show that extremists and bigoted thinking on matters pertaining to the practice of Islam in the country should be combated in an intellectual manner,” he told AFP.

Marina Mahathir, a rights activist and daughter of former long-serving premier Mahathir Mohamad, said the ban — signed last week — was aimed at silencing government critics.

“It is about silencing anybody who has a different view,” she said.

Critics say the government clampdown on anything deemed un-Islamic has accelerated in recent times as Prime Minister Najib Razak’s party seeks to appeal to its Muslim Malay base amid speculation elections could be called in the coming months.

In July the hit song “Despacito” was banned on state TV and radio due to its racy lyrics after pressure from an Islamic political party.

More than 60 per cent of Malaysia’s population of over 30 million are Muslim, but the country is also home to significant religious minorities.

The impoverished Southeast Asian nation has long been a destination for sex tourists, with minors often the victims of a flesh trade aided by endemic corruption.

A CNN report broadcast on 25 July featured three girls who were reportedly rescued from the sex trade by Agape International Missions (AIM), a charity founded by an American pastor which has been operating in the country since 1988.

The girls had first appeared in a 2013 documentary by CNN on Svay Pak, a poor suburb on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, before the network decided to pay them another visit this year and follow up on their fate.

Until a crackdown in the early 2000s Svay Pak hosted a huge red light district notorious for child sex slaves and the documentary showed the trade still existed a decade on.

The head of the charity, American pastor Don Brewster, was quoted in last week’s report as saying that Svay Pak was “at one point the epicentre” of the child sex trade.

He said things had dramatically improved in recent years but that some trade in minors still occured behind closed doors.

But Hun Sen, one of the world’s longest serving leaders, took exception to the report.

“I cannot accept the insult by an NGO that was broadcasted on CNN… that said in Cambodia mothers sold daughters to be prostitutes,” he told a graduation ceremony.

“This is an insult that cannot be tolerated. At any cost, this organisation must leave Cambodia. We cannot let them stay anymore,” he added.

AIM did not respond to requests for comment.

Hun Sen and nationalists seized on an early version of CNN’s online report which described the girls as Cambodian, when in fact they either spoke Vietnamese or Khmer with a thick Vietnamese accent.

CNN later removed the word Cambodian from their headline.

The network did not respond to an AFP request for comment but told the Cambodia Daily it “stood by its reporting”.

Many of Svay Pak’s poorest and most vulnerable inhabitants are indeed Vietnamese migrants.

But police raids, court cases and efforts by charities show ample evidence over the years that children from impoverished Cambodian families are also at risk of sex trafficking.

Hun Sen has long jousted with local and international NGOs, which he accuses of meddling in Cambodian affairs.

In 2015 he drove through a controversial and broadly-worded law that allows authorities to shutter any NGO that harms national security or the “traditions and culture” of Cambodia.

A lawyer representing Gard’s parents Connie Yates and Chris Gard told judge Nicholas Francis at London’s High Court that “time had run out” and they had made their decision after seeing the 11-month-old’s latest brain scans.

Judge Francis had been due to rule on whether there was enough new evidence to allow the parents to take the baby, who suffers from a rare genetic disorder, to the US for a type of treatment that has never been used on a human being.

But the couple broke down in tears as their lawyer Grant Armstrong told the court: “It is no longer in Charlie’s best interest to pursue this course of treatment.

“Charlie has suffered severe muscular atrophy” and “the damage to his muscles was irreversible,” he added.

British doctors believe Gard’s brain damage is “severe and irreversible” and have said the baby “may be suffering”.

The couple had fought a long legal fight to allow them to take their child out of London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, but lost in both Britain’s Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

The ruling led to the intervention of both US President Donald Trump and Pope Francis, who offered to help the baby.

Charlie suffers from a rare form of mitochondrial disease, which causes progressive muscle weakness in the heart and other key organs.

Scores of supporters holding blue balloons gathered outside the court for Monday’s hearing, with Armstrong saying the parents now “want to establish a foundation for Charlie’s voice to be heard”.

Judge Francis paid tribute to the parents “for the love and the care they gave to their child Charlie”.

“No parents could have done more for their child,” he said.

“(The explosion) seems like a suicide blast targeting police, but we are still ascertaining the nature of the explosion,” the city’s commissioner Abdullah Khan Sumbul said.

He told AFP at least 20 people had been killed and 35 wounded.

Meanwhile a spokesman for the Lahore police, Syed Hammad Shah, put the toll at 25 dead with 40 injured.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan warned the toll could rise in a press conference held minutes after the attack.

Most of the casualties were police officers and some bystanders, he said.

“It is not yet confirmed if it is an incident of terrorism or an accidental explosion,” the interior minister added.

Provincial law minister Rana Sanaullah also said the nature of the blast was not confirmed, but said it had appeared to target a vegetable market crowded with shoppers.

Lahore has been hit by significant militant attacks in Pakistan’s more than decade-long war on extremism, but they have been less frequent in recent years.

The last major blast in the city was in March last year, when 75 were killed and hundreds injured in a bomb targeting Christians celebrating Easter Sunday in a park.

A bomb also killed 14 people in Lahore in February during a wave of attacks across the country, denting optimism that Pakistan’s security situation was improving.

In April, seven were killed in an attack in the city targeting a team that was carrying out the country’s long overdue census.

Pakistan’s security has dramatically improved since the powerful army cracked down on militancy in the wake of the country’s deadliest ever attack in 2014.

That assault saw gunmen from the Pakistani Taliban storm a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing more than 150 people, the majority of them children.

It shook a country already grimly accustomed to atrocities and prompted the military to step up an operation in the tribal areas, where militants had previously operated with impunity.

Explosions caused by gas cylinders — which are used for cooking as well as in cars — are also common in Pakistan. A blast in Lahore in February was initially thought to be a militant attack, but turned out to be a gas explosion.

The city of around six million people is Pakistan’s cultural hub and the capital of its most powerful province, Punjab.

Duterte devoted large chunks of his annual State of the Nation Address to pushing his law-and-order policies that have made him hugely popular with many Filipinos but have been condemned by human rights groups and other critics.

“No matter how long it takes, the fight against illegal drugs will continue because that is the root cause of so much evil and so much suffering,” Duterte told lawmakers from both houses of Congress.

“The fight will be… unrelenting despite international and local pressures. The fight will not stop until those who deal in it understand that they have to cease, they have to stop because the alternatives are either jail or hell.”

Duterte swept to victory in last year’s presidential elections after promising an unprecedented crackdown on drugs in which tens of thousands of people would die.

Since he took office on June 30 last year, police have reported killing nearly 3,200 people in the drug war.

More than 2,000 other people have been killed in drug-related crimes, according to police data.

Rights groups say many of those victims have been killed by vigilante death squads linked to the government, and that Duterte may be overseeing a crime against humanity.

In a speech that lasted more than two hours, Duterte repeatedly hit back at his critics, including United Nation officials, ex-US president Barack Obama and prominent local media organisations.

– ‘Retribution’ –

=================

Duterte on Monday also urged lawmakers to reintroduce the death penalty.

“I ask congress to act on legislation to reimpose the death penalty on heinous crimes, especially illegal drug trafficking,” Duterte said.

He said capital punishment was about “retribution” as much as deterrence.

“In the Philippines, it is really an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. You took a life, you must pay it to die. That is the only way to get even.”

The lower house of Congress this year passed a bill to bring back the death penalty for drug-related crimes, but the Senate has yet to approve it.

The death penalty was abolished in the Philippines in 2006 following a campaign by the influential Catholic Church.

Duterte also defended his decision last week to extend martial law across the southern region of Mindanao until the end of the year, to combat what he said was a rebellion by militants backed by the Islamic State group.

The militants have been occupying parts of the southern city of Marawi for more than two months, defying a US-backed military campaign that has claimed more than 600 lives.

“I declared martial law in Mindanao because I believed that was the fastest way to quell the rebellion at the least cost of lives and properties,” Duterte told lawmakers.

On the foreign policy front, Duterte promoted his decision to pursue warmer relations with China despite a long-running row over rival claims to parts of the South China Sea.

Duterte thanked China for offering to fund infrastructure projects, and even build some bridges across the major river in Manila for free.

Critics of Duterte have said the president is sacrificing Philippine interests in return for short-term Chinese investment or aid.

But Duterte insisted there were many long-term benefits to establishing closer ties with China as he repeated wide-ranging grievances against the United States, the Philippines’ former colonial ruler and mutual defence partner.

“We cultivated warmer relations with China through bilateral dialogues, leading to the easing of tensions and improved negotiating environment on the West Philippine Sea,” Duterte said, referring to the South China Sea by its local name.