Nomad at the desk!

US mob drama The Departed has won four Oscars, including best film and best director for Martin Scorsese, who had missed out on five previous occasions.

Dame Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker collected best actress and actor, and there were three Academy Awards for Mexican fairytale Pan’s Labyrinth. Alan Arkin won best supporting actor for Little Miss Sunshine, which was also best original screenplay. And Jennifer Hudson earned best supporting actress for Dreamgirls.

Scorsese said he was “overwhelmed” as he clutched his award and asked: “Could you double-check the envelope?” Dame Helen, who had earlier said it was “amazing” to be nominated for best actress for The Queen, was thrilled about her victory. “All kids love to get gold stars, and this is the biggest and the best gold star that I have ever had in my life,” she said. Whitaker – who won for his portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland – struggled for words before pulling out a pre-written speech.

Environmental film An Inconvenient Truth was best full-length documentary, and Melissa Etheridge’s I Need to Wake Up – one of the tracks from that movie – won best original song. Dreamgirls lost out in that category, despite having three of the five nominations, but it did win best sound mixing.

There was a sound editing award for Letters From Iwo Jima, while Babel had top original score. And staying with soundtracks, a lifetime achievement Oscar was given to Italian composer Ennio Morricone for his “magnificent and multi-faceted contributions to the art of film music”. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was presented with the Academy Award for best visual effects, while Happy Feet was best animated film. Also receiving Oscars were German production Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), named best foreign-language film, plus Marie Antoinette, for best costume design.

The Danish Poet was best animated short film, while West Bank Story collected best live-action short film. The Blood of Yingzhou District, a Chinese film about the effects of Aids, won best documentary short. US comedy star and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres presented the glittering ceremony at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. She teased the gathered nominees by joking that “everything is on the line for you”, reminding them not to make fools of themselves because “there’s a billion people watching right now”.

Multiple OSCAR Winner

4: The Departed

3: Pan’s Labyrinth

2: An Inconvenient Truth

2: Dreamgirls

2: Little Miss Sunshine

Irate microbus owners protesting against the beating up of a microbus driver by Maoist cadres on Tuesday staged demonstrations and obstructed traffic in Lalitpur’s Kupondole area for five hours since early morning.

According to the protesters, driver Saroj Shrestha and conductor Tirtha Shrestha of a microbus (Ba 1 Ja 5916) plying the Lagankhel-Ratnapark route sustained serious injuries after being beaten up by the cadres of Maoist affiliated Tamang Mukti Morcha (TMM) yesterday.

According to the victims, the TMM cadres, who had boarded the vehicle at Kupondole, began beating up the after the conductor refused to accept a torn 10 rupee note while collecting fares.

The driver and the conductor further claimed that the cadres took them to their party office where they were tied up and meted out further beatings.

Meanwhile At least 14 people were killed and 31 injured as a Birgunj bound bus from Kathmandu veered off the road to plunge into the Trishuli river at the Prithvi Highway‘s Darechowk stretch in Chitwan in Monday night.

The injured have been rushed to Kathmandu and Bharatpur and are undergoing treatment at the Bir Hospital in the capital and Bharatpur’s Bharatpur Hospital and Medical College. According to the police, most of the travelers in the bus were Indian nationals. The bus fell some 130 metres down from the highway.

I was passing through Maitighar Mandala and I saw one hoarding board just below the hoarding board of “Hinsha Birodh, Shanti Athot” on Rhesus Monkey’s export to University of Washington, US in the name of research. There’s picture of monkey with research tools added to it’s body/head and saying Stop Monkey Business.

Following the Indian ban on the export of rhesus monkeys for use in bio-medical research, Western research labs now seem to be eyeing Nepali monkeys. Washington National Primate Center (WNPC) and its Nepali counterpart, Nepal Natural History Society (NHS), have established a breeding centre for Nepali rhesus monkeys at Lele, Kathmandu Valley. The monkeys in future are to be exported to the US and undergo painful and sometimes deadly tests.

Rhesus macaques are preferred subjects for biomedical and behavioral research primarily because of their willingness to breed in captivity. But often monkeys are caged in solitary confinement and develop self-injurious habits such as biting their own bodies, hair-pulling, and repetitive motions.

Animal rights activists express concern that Nepal’s decision will open the floodgates to export Nepali monkeys and other animals to countries like Japan and Germany, for medical research. The decision comes at a time when research institutions are increasingly finding alternatives to the use of non-human primates in research, which is why a growing number of countries have banned such research.

Critics allege that the US is looking for lab monkeys to conduct bio-terrorism experiments. The government can earn up to US $300 per monkey for sale to American labs. Nepali Government should not allow Nepali monkeys to die a slow and painful death there just for the sake of enriching a few dollars.

Monkeys and snakes aren’t the only animals under threat. Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation spokesperson Mohan Prasad Wagle says the government will facilitate the commercial breeding of other wildlife species like crocodiles, black bucks, pheasants, barking deer, spotted deer, sambar deer, hog deer and various kinds of birds.

Let’s be united to save Nepali Monkey and other animals from painful deaths and deadly tests. In the past also, America and other developed countries have used Nepali people or animals to test their products like Hepatitis Vaccine, Family Planning methods like pills etc. among others. We Nepali either human or animal are not subject to tests and research. Let’s start it with pressuring government to stop monkey business.