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The tiger population in Nepal has increased this year, according to a recent data released by the government on the occasion of the first “Tiger Conservation Day.”

There are total of 155 adult tigers—or, about six adult tigers per 100 square kilometers. Last year, the record showed a total of 121 adult tigers in Nepal. Officials said this was a good population for breeding purposes.

This is good news for conservationists, as the worldwide tiger population is decreasing due to deforestation, encroachment and poaching. The total population is estimated to be 3,500.

The governments of Nepal and India signed a joint resolution to work together to conserve tigers. India and Nepal together hold over fifty percent of the world’s tigers.

The resolutions were signed as an outcome of the 4th Nepal-India Consultative Meeting on Trans-boundary Biodiversity Conservation, at a function held in Kathmandu on Thursday.

“Besides having common boundary, we are facing similar challenges of tiger conservation. Such relation is extremely important for combating illegal wildlife trade and landscape level conservation for tigers and other wild animals,” said SP Yadav, the joint director of the National Tiger Conservation Authority of India.

Tiger Population Monitoring was done in Chitwan National Park under the coordination of Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation and with the support of WWF Nepal and National Trust for Nature Conservation.

Authorities have said that Nepal’s habitat is best for tiger conservation, as tigers look for peaceful and dense jungles. The Nepalese government says it is committed to increasing the tiger population to 250 by 2022, which would be the next Year of the Tiger.

—Rajneesh Bhandari

Click here to view the embedded video.

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The Prime Minister’s inner suck-up reared its head early on when he allowed four US Senators to hijack the agenda. Ahead of the trip, the Senators had pressed for a meeting to discuss their call for an investigation into the release of the Lockerbie bomber; a request Mr. Cameron’s office initially rebuffed by offering to have Britain’s ambassador to the US meet with them instead. Within hours of landing however, Mr. Cameron flip-flopped and agreed to sit down with the gang.

The point here is not whether the issue was worth discussing but rather who was worthy of raising it with our Prime Minister. I bet Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t have rearranged her schedule to kowtow a bunch of lower ranking American statesmen riding a wave of British bashing ahead of a mid-term election.

The chummy joint press conference between the Prime Minister and President Obama tried to gloss over any disparities between the two leaders. But the pretence of equality was soon dashed by none other than the Prime Minister himself when he gave his view of US-British relations to an American television presenter. ‘We were the junior partner in 1940 when we were fighting against Hitler. We are the junior partner now.’ The United States didn’t enter the war until 1941. But Mr. Cameron did more than embarrass the history departments of Eton and Oxford. He belittled what was arguably Britain’s finest hour and betrayed the public trust by demeaning the nation before a foreign audience.

The Barack and Dave Show

I’m not arguing that Britain can match the US in economic size or military strength. As I’ve said before, we’re not a superpower. But that doesn’t mean our Prime Minister should tell America we’re inferior to them. Given the sacrifice of British blood and treasure in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr. Cameron’s words are all the more offensive. If we’re so ‘junior’ let another, more ‘senior’ country stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Yanks and we’ll bring our troops home.

I had hoped that when the new coalition took power, Britain’s government would grow a backbone and start putting our national interest ahead of America’s. Sadly though, David Cameron has shown that when it comes to playing lapdog, he’s no different than his labour predecessors.

Bob Shepherd is an ex-SAS soldier and bestselling author of The Circuit. His debut novel The Infidel will be published August 5th by Simon & Schuster UK. To read more posts by him, please visit www.bobshepherdauthor.com.

The government—after missing the deadline to write a new constitution—did nothing specific in the past 21 days except wait for a new government to take over. While millions of Nepalis struggled through the workday with only four hours of electric power, the three major political parties–Maoists, Nepali Congress and CPN UML–were claiming political power. But, none of the three prime ministerial candidates managed to score a simple majority.

One of them looked very familiar. Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal—“Prachanda”—was back a year after being forced to resign as prime minister after an attempt to sack the army chief was revoked by president Ram Baran Yadav.

A candidate needs to get 300 votes in his favor to win, and as none of the parties have majority, the candidates need to find coalition support. The intrigue began in early morning Wednesday, when Maoists decided to support the CPN UML if they got a two-thirds majority in the election.

By the afternoon, CPN-UML’s Jhalanath Khanal—who had joined the race thinking that Prachanda would withdraw—came close to securing the PM post after Maoists and two other parties expressed their conditional support to him. Khanal himself went to meet members of one group, the Front, asking for support. The Front declined, saying that they “will not vote as none of the candidates agreed to fulfill [our] demands.”

In the two different rounds of election organized in the evening, Prachanda scored 242 votes, Nepali Congress’ candidate Ram Chandra Paudel managed 124 votes. Khanal withdrew from the voting process after being unable to secure two-thirds support.

The next election between Prachanda and Paudel will take place on Friday. “I am confident that I will win the election in the second round,” Paudel said. The lights were still on in Constituent Assembly Hall as he exited, but the rest of Kathmandu flickered and went dark.

–Rajneesh Bhandari

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I cannot begin to imagine the hell that Bill Shaw has been through. By all accounts he is a manager of impeccable integrity who believed he had paid a legitimate fine to a member of the NDS, Afghanistan’s intelligence agency. In fact, it was his attempt to obtain a receipt for the payment that resulted in his arrest and incarceration. Sadly, Mr. Shaw learned the hard way what happens to honest men in Afghanistan. He spent four months in Kabul’s notorious Pul-i-Charki prison alongside murderers, Taliban and hardcore jihadists who put a $10,000 bounty on his head.

Free thanks to his family.

Bill Shaw is not the first westerner to get caught in a web of Afghan dirty dealing nor will he be the last. Extortion, blackmail and kidnapping are endemic in the country and western security contractors, journalists and aid workers are considered rich targets. And it’s not just shady officials, crooked police officers and hooded kidnapper who pose a threat. Sometimes westerners are scammed by the ‘trusted’ local Afghan employee working alongside them (The same court that acquitted Bill Shaw found his Afghan colleague, Maiwand Limar, guilty of conspiring to defraud him).

I’m not surprised by what the Afghans did to Bill Shaw. I am however deeply, deeply disturbed that his employer and the British government allowed him to endure such a nightmare. ArmorGroup, the G4S subsidiary which employs Bill Shaw has been operating in Afghanistan since 2002. The company provides close protection and site-security for commercial, non-government and government clients including Britain’s FCO. ArmorGroup has hit some serious bumps along the way, including having a British manager shot dead during a cash-in-transit move back in 2007. In short, the firm is intimately familiar with the pitfalls of doing business in the country. The Afghans don’t play by the same rules as the west. The NDS does not have proper accounting systems to track ‘fine’ payments which mysteriously vanish into thin air. The senior managers above Bill Shaw should have understood the Pandora ’s Box he was opening when he went back to the NDS for a receipt. In my view, had they taken over the scenario earlier, events may very well have not spiralled out of control. After what Bill Shaw’s been through, ArmorGroup should make sure he never has to work another day of his life.

ArmorGroup let Bill Shaw down in my opinion. But their failure is nothing compared to the FCO which never should have allowed him to spend a single night in jail. The FCO is well aware of the flaws in Afghanistan’s judicial system because British tax payers partially fund it. The Afghan legal system does not serve the law imposed on it by the West. Like all institutions in the country, it is a pawn of powerful interests. I firmly believe the Afghan courts convicted Bill Shaw in order to curb western criticism of the country’s endemic corruption.

Why did the FCO stand by and let Bill Shaw get railroaded? I’d very much like an official answer to that question. My gut feeling is that the FCO was so focused on the greater political picture they didn’t think he was worth fighting for—that is until his family launched a high profile petition and social-networking campaign to draw attention to his plight. Shaw’s wife and daughter fought tooth and nail to make the British government stand up and listen. They even marched petitions up to Downing Street.

Bill Shaw’s family deserve every credit for his release. But not every British citizen jailed in Afghanistan has a vocal support network back home. As I write this, Anthony Malone, an ex-British soldier who went to Afghanistan in 2002 to set up a security and logistics business languishes in Pul-i-Chakri prison. Malone has already served more than two years in jail for ‘non-payment of debt’ which is NOT a criminal offence in Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, Malone recently told a reporter from the Daily Mail he’s been ‘abandoned’ by the British Embassy. Why the hell hasn’t the FCO demanded his freedom?

Cowering behind excuses of ‘diplomacy’ just won’t cut it; especially when the British government encourages British businesses to come to Afghanistan. As the experiences of Bill Shaw and Anthony Malone demonstrate, no matter how much blood and treasure Britain squanders, Afghans will never embrace the institutions imposed on them by the West. It’s time for the British government to acknowledge the limitations of what it can achieve in Afghanistan before another innocent Brit like Bill Shaw is thrown to the wolves.

Bob Shepherd is an ex-SAS soldier and bestselling author of The Circuit. His debut novel The Infidel will be published August 5th by Simon & Schuster UK. To read more posts by him, please visit www.bobshepherdauthor.com.