Nepal

KATHMANDU, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- The rescue operation was halted on Monday evening as one more body and the black boxes were recovered earlier in the day at the crash site of a passenger plane in central Nepal, officials said.

"We have wrapped up the rescue operation for today," said Brig. Gen. Krishna Prasad Bhandari, spokesperson of the Nepal Army.

"The recovery of one additional body, the flight data recorder and the flight voice recorder is our achievement today," Bhandari told Xinhua.

POKHARA, Nepal (AP) — A plane making a 27-minute flight to a Nepal tourist town crashed into a gorge Sunday while attempting to land at a newly opened airport, killing at least 68 of the 72 people aboard. At least one witness reported hearing cries for help from within the fiery wreck, the country’s deadliest airplane accident in three decades.

POKHARA, Nepal (AP) — Search teams retrieved the flight data and cockpit voice recorders Monday of a passenger plane that crashed on approach to a new airport in Nepal’s Himalayan foothills, officials said. At least 69 of the 72 people aboard were killed in the crash, whose cause is unknown.

Rescuers are still searching the debris, which is scattered down a 300-meter (984-foot) gorge, for the three missing people who are believed to be dead.

KATHMANDU, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- A total of 68 bodies had been recovered after a local passenger plane carrying 72 people crashed in the Pokhara region in central Nepal on Sunday, and the effort was continuing to find four others, officials said.

"We have found the dead bodies of 68 people so far," Jagannath Niroula, spokesperson of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), told Xinhua.

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Authorities in Nepal said 68 people have been confirmed dead after a regional passenger plane with 72 aboard crashed into a gorge while landing at a newly opened airport in the resort town of Pokhara. It’s the country’s deadliest airplane accident in three decades.

The country’s Civil Aviation Authority posted the announcement to Twitter Sunday, while rescuers were scouring the crash site near the Seti River, about 1.6 kilometers (nearly a mile) away from Pokhara International Airport.

KATHMANDU, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal won a vote of confidence comfortably in the House of Representatives on Tuesday evening, two weeks after he took office as the head of a new coalition government.

Dahal, also known as Prachanda, won the support of 268 lawmakers in the 275-strong lower house, much more than the 138 votes needed to pass the trust motion.

Lawmakers from the Nepali Congress, the largest party in the chamber which did not join the seven-party coalition, voted in favor of Prachanda as well.

KATHMANDU, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- Chinese experts arrived in the Nepali capital Kathmandu on Tuesday for feasibility study of the China-Nepal cross-border railway, a move described by the Nepali side as a new step for the project.

The six-member team was greeted at the airport by Wang Xin, charge d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Nepal, and Aman Chitrakar, spokesperson for Nepal's Department of Railways.

KATHMANDU, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- Pushpa Kamal Dahal, chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center), took office as the country's new prime minister on Monday afternoon.

"President Bidya Devi Bhandari has administered the oath of office and secrecy to Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal," Sagar Acharya, spokesperson for the President's Office in Kathmandu, told Xinhua.

"Three deputy prime ministers and four ministers also took the oath today," he said.

KATHMANDU, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Charles Sobhraj, a convicted killer who police say is responsible for a string of murders in the 1970s and 1980s, was released from a Nepal prison on Friday after nearly two decades behind bars.

The 78-year-old French national is suspected of killing more than 20 Western backpackers on the "hippie trail" through Asia, usually by drugging their food or drink in the course of robbing them.

He left Nepal early on Friday evening on a regular flight to Doha en route to Paris, said Katak Rawal, a Kathmandu airport official.

KATHMANDU, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- Nepal's President Bidya Devi Bhandari on Sunday called on the political parties to make a claim for a new coalition government within seven days, nearly one month after the country went to the polls.

The president made the call three days after the Election Commission presented her the final report on the general elections held on Nov. 20, in which no single party has won a majority of seats in the federal House of Representatives and the seven provincial assemblies.