Today's Chatpat: October 30th, 2023

1. The UN Secretary General is busy with his Nepal vacation as he travels to Everest, Pokhara and our temples. As usual,the UN makes a big noise about climate change, lack of adequate health care, education and infrastructure in
developing countries but can't seem to do anything about it. And as for global conflicts, the UN requests warring
factions to stop the bloodshed but that's all it can do and only sends in peacekeepers after everything has been
destroyed.

2. Israel is hell bent on destroying Gaza and is now picking a fight with Elon Musk as well. Musk wants to provide his Starlink internet services to international aid organizations working in Gaza but Israel says it will do everything it can do stop Musk's services. Gaza is without communication and internet services since Friday. So far, no one seems to stop Israel from taking revenge on residents of Gaza for Hamas' brutal attack on Israelis three weeks ago.

3. According to government data, almost a third of total deaths in Nepal is attributed to heart diseases and chronic respiratory diseases whereas 14% of total deaths were due to maternal, neonatal nutritional and communicable diseases. The capital is expected to see a ten-fold increment in respiratory illnesses in children and senior citizens in the coming years as Kathmandu tops the charts for the most polluted cities in the world. The average life span of Kathmandu Valley residents will certainly be down by by ten years.

4. The Dashain festival is officially over and most educational and all financial institutions are open now. Our government institutions are open but as usual, they function as if they only work for a few hours a day and most service seekers do have a hard time navigating the rooms for each signatures of some officer and need to waste the whole day or even weeks to get their job done or will be asked for chiya kharcha if they want express services. The bureaucracy has not changed a bit in the past thirty years and is more corrupt than the previous Panchayati regime.

5. The ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 is in full swing and it seems India is the only unbeaten team so far notching 6 wins in 6 matches. It pretty much looks like India, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia will be playing in the semifinals even with 3 matches remaining for all teams. England seems to be the biggest dud so far with one win in six matches along with Bangladesh. 10 teams are competing in the World Cup and play each other once, 9 games each and the top four teams advance to the semifinals. The final is on 19th November, 2023.

For more daily briefings, do visit www.nepalcares.com/guff