Nepal’s floriculture business blooms

KATHMANDU, MAR 29 -A group of floriculture entrepreneurs have set up Floriculture Cooperative Limited to produce flowers collectively with the aim of fulfilling the increasing demand for flowers in the domestic and international markets, reports Kathmandu Post.

"Both demand and production have been increasing every year," said Arun Chettri, president of the Floriculture Association of Nepal. "However, we have not been able to increase quality production despite good demand from the international market."

According to the association, cut flower exports soared 140 percent to Rs. 60 million during the last fiscal year from Rs. 25 million in the previous year. Japan, Kuwait, Qatar, India and a number of European countries are the major importers.

Chettri said that the cooperative would facilitate joint investment and large-scale production. It would target international customers in particular.

"The cooperative will monitor flower cultivation and carry out studies on the possibility of growing flowers in various parts of the country," he added.

Currently, floriculture entrepreneurs produce more than a dozen types of cut flowers in Chitwan, Dhading and Kavre districts. In the Kathmandu Valley, there are nurseries in Godavari, Sankhu, Naikap, Chapagaon, Bunkmate, Jorpati  and Ichangu. According to the association, flower farming is being carried out on 105 hectares of land in 35 districts.

"Seasonal production has been increasing significantly every year, but demand during the production season is low," said Hira Sharma, manager of Flora Incorporated Trade, a wholesaler in the valley. "Summer is the best season for production, but there are few takers presently as it is not the wedding or festival season."

Increased production has also meant that flower imports from India have declined. Earlier, 75 percent of the requirement would be met by imported flowers. Imports now account for only 25 percent of the demand mainly during the Tihar festival.

Chettri said that presently output had exceeded demand as many farmers had turned to growing flowers without first doing a market study. "Around 90 percent of the farmers who are growing flowers do not know the technicalities and the market," said Chettri. "There is a good market inside and outside the country if we can produce flowers that are in demand during the season."

According to the association, Kuwait has emerged as one of the major markets after Japan for Nepali flower producers. Bagmati Flora is planning to open a wholesale outlet in Kuwait with a local partner.

In the next fiscal year, the association plans to carry out a study on potential foreign markets such as Denmark, Holland and the Gulf countries.(Writer-South Asia)

Headley Saga: Mumbai attack was a joint IB-CIA-Mossad-RSS project

Headley Saga: Mumbai attack was a joint IB-CIA-Mossad-RSS project

By Amaresh Misra

28 MarchWith the row over India getting access to David Headley growing acrimonious each day, the CIA's double agent saga seems all set to open up a can of incredible worms.First, the case unmasks the pro-US face of the Indian English media. When the Headley saga first came to light, Vir Sanghavi of the Hindustan Times carried an editorial piece claiming that if 'Headley is CIA, and knew about 26/11, the CIA knew about the attack.' In other words, Sanghavi accepted the 'conspiracy theory'–which in the eyes of the English media was 'peddled' by Aziz Burney and this author during the terrible aftermath of 26/11–that the event was a CIA/Mossad/RSS/ISI plot, reports New Delhi based Milli Gazette.

In November-December 2008, Vir Sanghavi and his cohorts in the English media attacked both Aziz Burney and this author for spelling forth the 'conspiracy theory'. Then after Headley's name surfaced, they changed tune, without of course admitting their debt to Mr. Burney or this author.

The fact of the matter is that in the 2009 Parliamentary elections, the English media was all set to project Lal Krishna Advani as India's next Prime Minister. It was the feverish anti-RSS, anti-Mossad work done by Aziz Burney and this author that went a long way in ensuring the victory of Congress and secular forces.

Now when the CIA hand behind 26/11 is slowly being unraveled, the English media is seeing red. It is again trying to portray Headley merely as a Lashkar operative, severing thus his links with the CIA.

This highlights the second point, that basically Headley and the CIA cannot be de-linked. Thank God the government of India put into place the NIA, a new National Investigative Agency. The NIA was set up, as the IB and other Indian agencies, especially the IB, had not only gone anti-Muslim-they had gone anti-India. This was proved in the case of Azamgarh boys picked up in and around the Batla House encounter on various bomb blasts charges. Most of the boys were products not of madarsas, but modern schools. They were youngsters in their teens; they had made a mark for themselves in professional courses and were holding jobs in the new, professional sector of the economy.

When Shri Digvijay Singh, the General Secretary AICC and the most secular leader of the India, went to Sanjarpur (under the banner of Anti-Communal Front) in Azamgarh to find out the facts for himself, he was shocked to find that Zeeshan, a boy from Azamgarh who on the fateful day of the Batala House encounter was giving his exams, had more than 50 cases slapped over him in more than three states–which meant that his parents could go on fighting cases for more than 100 years and yet Zeeshan would be in jail.

There are dozens and hundreds of Zeeshans from Azamgarh and other districts of UP, Gujarat and Maharashtra languishing in various Indian jails on unsubstantiated charges. This in fact is India's Guantanamo Bay story–that right here in the world's largest democracy the Indian security services like the IB have secret detention and torture centres where innocent Muslim youths are tortured and put to death. The IB today has been infiltrated heavily by RSS, Mossad and CIA. In fact, this one agency is an anti-national agency—it is obstructing the work of NIA and secular Indians like Shri Digvijay Singh. Soon, in India's interest, the IB will have to be closed down. All its communal officers will be hunted down and tried in a court of just law.

The IB knew about Headley—this is proved by the fact that the SIM cards used by the ten 26/11 terrorists were purchased by an Intelligence Bureau (India) (IB) informer. Till date, the investigations into the 26/11 case, which the IB is handling, have been unable to state as to how the ten terrorists got hold of the SIM cards.

The State IB chief of Maharashtra told a very senior Mumbai Police Officer just after 26/11 that he was ‘entirely in the dark about 26/11 investigations as Delhi (meaning the chief IB office) was handling it'. Basic information about 26/11 was not shared with secular Indian officers. The Headley lead would never have come to the fore had the NIA not stepped in.

IB training criminals [read here Charge-sheet against IB]
Now comes the news that the IB has set-up training camps in Gorakhpur, where it trains criminals–and then uses them to kill Muslim under-trials. The name of Chota Rajan is used as a convenient scapegoat. It is in this manner that dozens of accused in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, several other such accused in other cases, Muslim businessmen and men of influence have been eliminated on a systematic basis in Maharashtra. The latest in the long list of victims killed allegedly by IB is Shahid Azmi, the lawyer defending the accused of the 2006 Mumbai train blasts. Shahid had hit upon evidence which proved the innocence of the accused-and that is why he was bumped off, again by criminals with Nepal–Gorakhpur links!

In fact, the state of Maharashtra holds the dubious distinction of almost institutionalizing the extra-judicial killing of Muslim youth and personalities. Headley was in India months and years before the 26/11 attack; he even surveyed Pune where a blast took place as late as February 2010. It beats one’s imagination as to how the IB did not know about Headley and his movements. There can only be two scenarios: that the IB is totally incompetent–or that the IB is heavily infiltrated by CIA and Mossad: the agency knew about 26/11 and did nothing to stop it.

This places the IB at par with Headley, as executioners of 26/11 and mass murderers. There can be no other honest conclusion.

Headley holds the key to the fact that 26/11 was not just a mere Lashkar operation–that it was a joint Mossad-CIA operation, conducted with possible ISI and RSS help.

If the charge-sheet against Raj Kumar Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya, accused in the Malegaon and other blasts, is read, it is clear that there was always some sort of collusion between the RSS and the ISI. The so-called nationalists, the Hindutva forces, took money to the tune of crores of rupees from the ISI! The IB knows about this transaction but is keeping quiet!


The Headley saga has links to Abhinav Bharat and pro-Hindutva terror groups. The pro-Hindutva terror groups are widely believed to be behind the Pune blasts where a combination of RDX and Ammonium Nitrate was used. Right after the visit of Shri Digvijay Singh to Maharashtra in February 2010, the state home secretary spoke of the possibility of the involvement of Hindutva groups in the Pune blasts. Other officers, including the ATS chief Raghuvanshi, purported to be an RSS/opportunist also spoke of this possibility. But then RR Patil, the Maharashtra Home Minister whose role during 26/11 was disastrous and who was removed from his post in the wake of the attack on Mumbai (but who was restored after the 2009 assembly elections), made amazing statements ‘that those who take the name of Hindu organizations in the Pune blasts will be punished'!


How can a Home Minister make such a statement? Now we hear that Rakesh Maria, a notorious anti-Muslim officer, with pro-Israeli links, a man who has killed and tortured innocents, has been made the new ATS chief and Raguvanshi has been promoted! Secular organizations in Maharashtra were demanding that Raghuvanshi be removed and that an honest, secular officer be made the ATS chief so that Hemant Karkare's seminal work in cracking the shell of Hindutva communalism could be promoted!.


But Rakesh Maria is even worse than Raghuvanshi. It seems that the NCP in Maharashtra has taken a clear anti-Congress, anti-national line. RR Patil, who is a third grade, uncouth, thoroughly communal, NCP leader should be removed from his post. The Maharashtra chief minister should act, because if the NIA gets access to Headley, the latter's links with Hindutva organizations–and the whole RSS-Mossad-CIA-ISI-IB nexus–will be exposed. This nexus is working overtime to destabilize the Congress government and undo the commendable work done by the party under the secular leadership of Sonia Gandhi.

 
Amaresh Misra is a famed historian and chief of the Anti-Communal Front of the All India Congress Committee (AICC)

Ginkgo Biloba Hair Growth

Hair loss, these days is everybody's concern. It happened to be a time when baldness was the trait only carried by old men, but now who is not suffering from hair loss, hair thinning and baldness. Men, women of all ages, even the children are complaining of hair loss, but who to blame.

There are several factors that play important role in the loss of hair and the poor quality of hair. Genetics, Androgen hormone, pollution, processed unhealthy diet, poor circulation of scalp, skin diseases of scalp, repeated chemical exposure in form of hair dyes, gels, mousses, shampoos and certain other hair treatments like hair-perming, iron rod curling, straightening etc all contribute to bad hair texture and hair loss.

But we can't stop doing all these things, right? So there should be an option, an alternative to reduce this hair loss. There is!!!!

Many researches have shown that hair loss can be significantly reduced by the use of hot and cold hydrotherapy and with the use of certain herbal remedies, out of which Ginkgo Biloba is of great importance. When DHT attaches to a hair follicle, the follicle begins to stay shorter periods in the growth cycle.

It means that every time a new hair grows it is thinner and more fragile than before, resulting into hair follicle that stops producing hair. In case of poor blood circulation to the scalp the root is already weak, so more exposure to the environmental agents and chemical agents will make it more susceptible to breakage and fall down.

With such a case Ginkgo Biloba emerges as a perfect solution to the hair loss problem.

Ginkgo Biloba has been in use in China for more than 5 centuries, from last 2 decades even Europe is widely using this tree's extracts for various purposes. Ginkgo Biloba possess special property of helping regulate the blood circulation in a body, when the extract is taken.

Certain diseases which are caused by poor circulation are being treated with herbal remedies; most of which include Ginkgo Biloba and Cayenne pepper. Cayenne strengthens the heart giving it the ability to pump blood to the furthest reaches of the body while Ginkgo Biloba increases the blood circulation in the brain and all parts of the head.

Many diseases like thrombosis, Reynaud's phenomenon, hair loss etc which are resultant of poor blood flow are treated successfully with Ginkgo Biloba extracts.   

The use of Ginkgo Biloba will boost the blood flow to the peripheral parts of the body and the fine capillaries, both of which indicates scalp as one of the parts.

The increased circulation will hence bring more oxygen and more nutrients to the scalp, these nutrients are basically essential vitamins A and E along with some other important nutrients which are in our blood after digestion but are not transported to the right place to act, just because of lack of circulation.

So when a hair follicle gets it right amount of oxygen and necessary nutrients it will automatically start hair repair and will promote hair growth. Result will be the hair we all desire to have; shiny, healthy and full of life!!! 

Ginkgo Biloba  leaf and Plants available in Kashmir/India

More details: http://chenabindustries.blogspot.com

Ginkgo Improves Circulation and Brain Function

Ginkgo Improves Circulation and Brain Function
by Ken Babal, C.N.

For at least 5000 years, Ginkgo biloba (pronounced as ging-koh bi-lo-bah) has been recommended in Chinese medicine as being good for the heart and lungs, as well as coughs, asthma, and acute allergic inflammations.

Ginkgo is the world’s oldest living tree. Darwin called it a "living fossil." A form of Ginkgo first appeared around 300 million years ago and flourished throughout the time of the dinosaurs. It is a very hardy tree, resistant to pests and pollution, and can live as long as one thousand years. In the U.S., it is often planted as an ornamental tree along freeways because of its durability. In Japan and China, it is a familiar sight around temples.

It is the subject of intense worldwide research and over five million Ginkgo prescriptions a year are written in Europe alone with sales exceeding more than $500 million. In numerous clinical trials involving geriatric patients, remarkable success has been demonstrated using Ginkgo extract to treat cerebral insufficiency (insufficient blood flow to the brain).

The symptoms of cerebral insufficiency include short-term memory loss, dizziness, headache, ringing or buzzing in the ears, lack of alertness and depression. In several studies without a control group, the symptomatic improvement was found to be 60 to 78%. In double blind studies, results were equally impressive with an improvement rate which ranged between 44 and 92%. Participants who took placebos showed a 14 to 44% rate of improvement.

In long-term studies, Ginkgo produced no side effects and there was no decrease in its effect over time. Like nature, however, Ginkgo is slow in acting, taking four to eight weeks before benefits may be noticed. Improvements are gradual, but continue for up to a year or more.

The positive effect of Ginkgo biloba extract in geriatric patients has led many health practitioners to advocate its use in all people over 50. The benefits, however, are not limited to the geriatric group. In healthy young women, reaction time in performing a memory test was significantly improved after administration of Ginkgo extract (Int. J. Clin Pharmacol Res, 1984). Brain waves monitored on an EEG machine one hour after taking a high dose of Gingko biloba show stronger alpha and beta brain wave patterns.

Ginkgo’s ability to improve blood circulation to the brain and extremities makes it useful for many conditions. Hundreds of scientific studies performed over the past 50 years have demonstrated its effectiveness in treating hearing and vision problems, impotence, edema (water retention), varicose veins, leg ulcers, and circulatory diseases such as stroke and intermittent claudication (pain while walking). In animal studies, Ginkgo extract increased the ability of acetylcholine, a brain chemical, to bind to a receptor site. Reduced receptor binding of this neurotransmitter has been reported in Alzheimer’s disease.

Ginkgo biloba has certain active components to which its beneficial properties are attributed. A consistent pharmacological action can be expected when a 50:1 concentration made from the leaf is standardized to contain 24% ginkgo-flavone-glycosides and 6% terpene lactones. The terpene lactones are made up of ginkgolides and bilobalides.

Most research on Ginkgo has focused on the complex molecule Ginkgolide B, the terpine lactones believed to be responsible for many of the plant’s potent healing properties. The principle mechanism for the therapeutic action on Ginkgolide B appears to be its ability to inhibit PAF (platelet activating factor). PAF has been implicated in asthma and other allergic reactions.

Ginkgo extract can play an important role in improving circulation and mental acuity in people of all ages. For young people, this may translate to enhanced learning ability. In the elderly, it can mean a keener perception of life and improved mental functioning.