Seeking state power : the communist party of Nepal (Maoist)

Political violence is a tool of both state and non-state actors, and replacing it by political methods of conflict management is essential to making sustainable peace. Increasing numbers of academics study “armed groups” from the outside, rarely engaging directly with them to hear their own points of view, rationales, and understandings of their context. This report follows the history of the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN), focusing on key turning points and tactics in relation to political developments. Exclusive interviews were carried out with Maoist leaders, and the main policy maker of the CPN (M), a key figure in peace negotiations with the state

Seeking state power : the communist party of Nepal (Maoist)

Political violence is a tool of both state and non-state actors, and replacing it by political methods of conflict management is essential to making sustainable peace. Increasing numbers of academics study “armed groups” from the outside, rarely engaging directly with them to hear their own points of view, rationales, and understandings of their context. This report follows the history of the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN), focusing on key turning points and tactics in relation to political developments. Exclusive interviews were carried out with Maoist leaders, and the main policy maker of the CPN (M), a key figure in peace negotiations with the state

The social fabric of the Jelbang killings, Nepal

Sixty-eight people from the village of Jelbang in western Nepal are documented to have died in the course of the decade-long ‘People’s War’, making it perhaps the village that suffered the highest number of casualties in the entire country. This paper, which is based on empirical research and the analysis of secondary data, examines the circumstances behind the unusually high number of deaths in Jelbang. The analysis shows that the killings were due to a complex interplay of events, personalities and timing as well as particular interrelationships between the central administration and its local representatives and the state security forces. In an atmosphere of impunity, and with the support and facilitation of the administration, the police brutalised the local population

Clinical study of nasal allergy

Eight hundred twenty-six patients with allergic rhinitis were clinically analyzed in our clinic from 1980 to 1984. The incidence of this disease did not increase in relation to the number of outpatients. More than half of the allergic patients visited our clinic before reaching the age of 20. Intracutaneous tests to housedust and Japan ceder were positive in 74.5% and 26.0% patients, respectively. In more than half of the patients positive to house dust allergen, the onset of allergic symptoms occurred by the time the patients were 14 (male) and 19 (female) years old

Differences among epitopes recognized by neutralizing antibodies induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19 vaccination

Summary: SARS-CoV-2 has gradually acquired amino acid substitutions in its S protein that reduce the potency of neutralizing antibodies, leading to decreased vaccine efficacy. Here, we attempted to obtain mutant viruses by passaging SARS-CoV-2 in the presence of plasma samples from convalescent patients or vaccinees to determine which amino acid substitutions affect the antigenicity of SARS-CoV-2. Several amino acid substitutions in the S2 region, as well as the N-terminal domain (NTD) and receptor-binding domain (RBD), affected the neutralization potency of plasma samples collected from vaccinees, indicating that amino acid substitutions in the S2 region as well as those in the NTD and RBD affect neutralization by vaccine-induced antibodies. Furthermore, the neutralizing potency of vaccinee plasma samples against mutant viruses we obtained or circulating viruses differed among individuals. These findings suggest that genetic backgrounds of vaccinees influence the recognition of neutralizing epitopes

Comparison of Rapid Antigen Tests for COVID-19

Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR)-based tests are widely used to diagnose coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). As a result that these tests cannot be done in local clinics where RT-qPCR testing capability is lacking, rapid antigen tests (RATs) for COVID-19 based on lateral flow immunoassays are used for rapid diagnosis. However, their sensitivity compared with each other and with RT-qPCR and infectious virus isolation has not been examined. Here, we compared the sensitivity among four RATs by using severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) isolates and several types of COVID-19 patient specimens and compared their sensitivity with that of RT-qPCR and infectious virus isolation. Although the RATs read the samples containing large amounts of virus as positive, even the most sensitive RAT read the samples containing small amounts of virus as negative. Moreover, all RATs tested failed to detect viral antigens in several specimens from which the virus was isolated. The current RATs will likely miss some COVID-19 patients who are shedding infectious SARS-CoV-2

Eyes wide shut?: persistent conflict and liberal peace interventions in Nepal and Sri Lanka

The decisive, albeit different, endings of armed conflict in Sri Lanka and Nepal and subsequent post-war developments challenge key assumptions about conflict that have informed post-Cold War international efforts to produce peace in such conflict zones. International intervention—including in Sri Lanka and Nepal—characterises armed conflict as sustained by specific political economies that can only be stably resolved by establishing liberal democracy and market economics. This paper examines liberal peace engagement in Sri Lanka and Nepal to challenge a crucial assumption of the persistent conflict thesis, namely the separation between political contestation and armed conflict. It argues that the divergent post-conflict outcomes of continuing ethnic polarisation in Sri Lanka and constitutional reform in Nepal reveal strong continuities in the dynamics of pre-war, war and post-war politics. This continuity challenges the presumed separation of politics and violence that drove international engagement to produce liberal peace and suggests that such engagement, far from encouraging reform, may have (inadvertently) sustained conflict in both cases