Fun in Nepal

Some people never learn. Followers of Communist Mao tse'Dung are still around -- from the Islamic Republic News Agency:

Nepal Maoists abduct 60 students
Suspected Maoist rebels have abducted 60 students from a secondary school in Northwest Nepal, the police said on Thursday, reports `The Asian Age'.

The students were abducted on Wednesday from Saraswati Secondary school in Dolpa district, 475 kilometers northwest of Kathmandu, and forcibly marched to an undisclosed location for indoctrination, the police said.

"The Maoists selected 60 sturdy looking boys and girls of grades six to ten and abducted them," the police said after a teacher at the school reached the district headquarters Dunai on Thursday.

The militants regularly abduct students for indoctrination sessions and normally release them several days later.

Separately, a district security officer who declined to be named, said the militants destroyed three government buildings with explosives in southwest Nepal on Tuesday after evacuating workers.

"The rebels had forced the staff to leave and set off the explosive devices destroying the offices," the official said from the district of Doti, 425 kilometers, southwest of Kathmandu.

Nepal is a monarchy which is probably why these idiots have been able to gain traction. But hope is in the air:

...Nepal has said that it will hold "open and free" municipal elections in April 2006 and national parliamentary elections within two years.

"The King is determined to re-energize democratic institutions by restoring sustainable peace and making democracy meaningful cultured and refined," Nepal's foreign minister Ramesh Nath Pandey said in the UN General Assembly.

Time will tell...