International Sources

Reader postcard from Punakha, Bhutan - Seattle Times
Photographer’s description: The Punakha Dzong is a historic Buddhist monastery in Bhutan. Established in the 1600s, it is the winter home of the country’s Buddhist leader. We visited in May in a collaboration between the University of Washington Burn …    [read more]

Bhutanese PM to meet Manmohan Singh next week - Thaindian.com
New Delhi, June 27 (IANS) Bhutanese Prime Minister Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y. Thinley arrives here Tuesday on a four-day visit - the first by a foreign leader to India since the new government took charge last month. With the new Indian government placing …    [read more]

Making more Bhutanese employable - Kuensel Online
22 June, 2009 - Bhutan will soon get its first national human resources and development policy, which will set the pace for human resource development (HRD) and also put in place systems for the development of skills required by the country. The …    [read more]

NEPAL: Repatriation or resettlement for Bhutanese refugees? - IRIN
BELDANGI, 22 June 2009 (IRIN) - Over the past year thousands of Bhutanese refugees in Nepal have resettled in third countries - mainly the USA - but many others, especially the elderly, hope only for repatriation to Bhutan. Pahalman Bhattarai, aged …    [read more]

NEPAL: Bhutanese refugees find new life beyond the camps - IRIN
Thousands of Bhutanese refugees who are Nepalese origin, after having lived in camps in Nepal for as long as 20 years, have been resettled to the United States and six other countries with the assistance of UNHCR and IOM KATHMANDU, 10 November 2008 …    [read more]

Bhutanese refugees begin new life in Arizona - Human Rights Watch
Ganga Baral is among the first of thousands of Bhutanese refugees who will be arriving in the United States during the next several years. She and her family arrived this Spring in Phoenix from a refugee camp in the farthest eastern reaches of Nepal …    [read more]

SAFTA focus on trade in services - Kuensel Online
25 June, 2009 - The South Asia free trade agreement (SAFTA) meeting yesterday in Thimphu focused mainly on prospects and opportunities of trade in services. The minister for economic affairs, Lyonpo Khandu Wangchuk, said that the growth in trade in …    [read more]

The Pursuit of Happiness: Are We There Yet? - Huffingtonpost.com
The search for happiness is back. Increasingly chronicled in newspapers, blogs, books and TV, finding your bliss is finding its way once again into our conversations and our consciousness. Mountains have been trekked, wisdom imparted, the source of …    [read more]

Notebook on India - West Online
They start gathering at dawn, clustered under a rainbow of umbrellas as the last of the monsoon pelts them with white gobstoppers of rain. I mooch out and stand alongside, obvious. They nod. We all look out through the mist over the flat Arabian Sea …    [read more]

City ready for date with total solar eclipse - Times of India
Ahmedabad : A trip to China, a shadow band experiment and scores of programmes to sensitise people. This is just the tip of the iceberg. With hardly a month to go for the total solar eclipse, scientific community and enthusiasts have started …    [read more]

Kuensel - Bhutan’s National Newspaper

Bamboo exhibition boon to artisans

29 June, 2009 - Rinchen Wangchuk and Tshering Lham, who were in the capital recently, were all smiles yesterday as the two-day cane and bamboo exhibition wrapped up.

The artisan couple from Zhemgang, representing their fellow artisans, had not only marketed bamboo products but also sold about Nu 50,000 worth of the same.    [read more]

DANIDA funds VET reform

28 June, 2009 - Vocational and education training (VET) graduates will now have a better chance of being employed with the introduction of a new competency-based training system.    [read more]

Double- headed difficulty

28 June, 2009 - The famous Gomphu kora tshechu was celebrated with ceremony and cheer last March, but Trashiyangtse Tongzhang gewog villagers, who arranged the chadi (preparations), are confused long after the event.    [read more]

Dagana housing row resolved

28 June, 2009 - One of the national housing and development corporation’s (NHDC) buildings, which became a bone of contention between Dagana dzongkhag and the royal Bhutan police (RBP), was finally handed over to the dzongkhag last week.

The building was handed over after intervention by the home ministry.    [read more]

Buddhist Answers

28 June, 2009 - I like to involve myself in social work and help others. How can this be developed as a practice?

Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche once used this example to illustrate the dynamics of our true nature: Two children run into the oncoming traffic. We immediately reach out and grab them. We do not consider whose children they are nor do we hope for personal gain. We just reach out. That kind or response, Rinpoche says, is an expression of our true nature, our basic goodness of heart.    [read more]

Do schools overlook bullies?

27 June, 2009 - You don’t have to get hit to get hurt.And Rinchen (name changed) knows this.His classmates and juniors dread this 15-year-old Class VIII student of Changangkha lower secondary school.    [read more]

State of the Nation

27 June, 2009 - In the first annual report 2008-09 of the DPT government, Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley cited a great many achievements, some of which included an economic growth of 8.1 percent.    [read more]

Bhutan Observer

160-km drive for water
It is Saturday evening in Pasakha, Phuentsholing, and everyone is planning for a relaxed Sunday. But for Naku Dukpa, it is time to go to Shaba Tomja in Paro where his family of four lives.
Naku is an employee of Tashi Beverages. Every Saturday, he drives 160 km to Paro to do an important task. On […]    [read more]

Each day, six road accidents
On average, there are six serious vehicle accidents in Thimphu every day. Last week, there were two deaths caused by vehicle accidents.
According to the traffic division of the police, a minimum of 30 people are caught every day violating traffic rules.
Major Passang Dorji, the Superintendent Police of traffic division, said accidents could be avoided if […]    [read more]

Gearing towards community policing
Four police officers have been sent to Japan as part of setting up a pilot community policing programme.
The officers will learn and observe the crime prevention activities that have been carried out in Japan. Upon their arrival back home, they will submit their study findings to the cabinet.
If the proposal is accepted, the community policing […]    [read more]

A guide to flowers of Bhutan
The effort made by Wangchuk, an untrained Botanist, for his first book A pictorial guide to the wild flowers of Bhutan is commendable. The book is the first of its kind written by a Bhutanese author. Most people, who study taxonomy, know how daunting it is to collect data on classification and identification. The four […]    [read more]

What cable operators broadcast
With an estimated 30,000 cable subscribers and 52 cable operators in 2008, there is a growing public concern over the contents broadcast by cable operators in their local channels. There seems to be a lack of stringent regulation for content broadcast by the local channels, which is evident in the quality of their broadcast.
According to […]    [read more]

Business of giving colours and shades
C harlie Chaplin is known to have once said that clothes and make-up, which he had on during performances, made him feel the person he was. Although that may not be the case with our local celebrities, make-up does add to a person’s character.
A ccording to producer and director Tshering Wangyel, make-up artists are very […]    [read more]

Culture versus changing fashion
Bhutanese traditional dress for women, kira, has taken a transitional change over the years. From an ankle-length dress bound around the waist by a kera and strapped on the shoulders by a pair of koma and a long-sleeved blouse or wonju inside with a small coat or tego outside has now altered to waist cut, […]    [read more]

In Summary
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Democracy behind closed doors
The National Assembly is a stage and all its members merely absurd players. That is all you know in Bhutan, and all you need to know.
The NA members, excluding the two opposition members, say that live telecast of the entire proceedings should be stopped. And the reasons are undemocratic at best, and at worst, absurd.
Reason […]    [read more]

Redressing the education system
Over several years now, we have read in newspapers about redressing our education system. The core of our expressions were in form of complaints, criticism and more so the blame-games. As a positive onlooker, I have always admired those writers because they are all concerned about the future of Bhutan’s education system.
I have not been […]    [read more]

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