Kathmandu – Nepal has imposed a 10-year mountaineering ban on an Indian couple who faked photographs purporting to show them at the top of Mount Everest, an official said Tuesday.

Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod, both police constables, said they reached the top of the world’s highest mountain on May 23. But fellow climbers cast doubt on their claim, saying their photos at the summit were doctored.

Nepal’s tourism department initially certified their claim but later conducted an investigation.

“Our investigation shows that the couple faked their summit. We have imposed a 10-year ban against them from climbing any mountain in Nepal,” tourism department chief Sudarshan Prasad Dhakal told AFP of the decision made on Monday.

Dhakal said an analysis of the photos submitted by the couple showed they had superimposed themselves and their banners on photos taken by another Indian climber of his Everest summit.

“Despite several attempts to get clarifications from them, they did not co-operate with us during the investigation. The two Sherpas that assisted them are also absconding,” Dhakal said.

“The ban should serve as a warning for mountaineers to follow ethics,” he said.

#MaharashtraPolice feeling proud of Tarkeshwari and Dinesh Rathod for being the first Indian couple to climb Everest pic.twitter.com/ihJV1JltaN

— Prof.RamShinde (@RamShindeOffice) 7 June 2016

Many of those who reach the top of the 8,848m mountain have gone on to make money or forge careers as motivational speakers and authors.

A total of 456 people, including more than 250 foreigners, summited Everest during the recently-ended spring season, after two consecutive years of deadly disasters that led to almost all attempts being abandoned.

Mountaineering is a major revenue-earner for the impoverished Himalayan nation. This year’s string of successful summits is expected to boost the industry, which was left reeling after an earthquake last year killed almost 9,000 people nationwide.

Hundreds fled Everest last year after an earthquake-triggered avalanche at base camp killed 18 people.

Only one climber reached the top in 2014 after an avalanche killed 16 Nepali guides that year.

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan – A van driven by a suicide bomber exploded after ramming through a gate at the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday, wounding three people, authorities said.

“As a result of the explosion, only the suicide bomber terrorist died. Security guards were injured,” Kyrgyzstan’s Deputy Prime Minister Jenish Razakov told journalists at the scene.

Razakov said the three wounded were all Kyrgyz employees of the Chinese embassy and that they had been taken to hospital. Local medics said their injuries were not serious.

Police sources told AFP that a Mitsubishi Delica van smashed through a gate at the embassy Tuesday morning before blowing up in the centre of the compound close to the ambassador’s residence.

A police source confirmed that the vehicle was driven by a suicide bomber and described the incident as a “terrorist attack”. Body parts thought to be from the attacker were found several hundred metres from the blast site, a source said.

The security service of the ex-Soviet Central Asian nation – which borders China – said an “explosive device” had been placed inside the vehicle, an official said.

Local residents told AFP that the blast had blown in their windows and caused their houses to shake.

Pictures posted on social media purporting to be from the embassy showed a gate smashed open and debris inside the compound.

An AFP journalist close to the scene said that damage could be seen on the embassy buildings and that police had cordoned off the area as emergency services worked.

Law enforcement officials also blocked traffic on one of the city’s main highways and were checking vehicles.

Employees from the Chinese and nearby American embassy on the edge of the city were evacuated, the Kyrgyz emergency service said.

Impoverished majority-Muslim Kyrgyzstan has a history of political instability and battling Islamist extremism.

The economically troubled ally of Russia has seen two governments overthrown and ethnic violence claim hundreds of lives since it gained independence in 1991.

The authorities regularly announce that they have foiled attacks planned by the Islamic State group in the country.

Security forces last year said they had engaged in several deadly shootouts with suspected “terrorists” in Bishkek.

Officials say that some 500 Kyrgyz are thought to have joined the ranks of Islamic State fighting in Syria and Iraq.

Chinese officials in the country have previously been targeted, with one shot dead in 2000 in an attack blamed on radicals from China’s Uighur minority.

Violence has plagued China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, the homeland of the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, in recent years, sometimes spreading beyond it.

Beijing blames the violence on separatist Islamist terrorists, with overseas connections, while rights groups point to what they say is discrimination and controls over the Uighurs’ culture and religion.

Kyrgyzstan and the other ex-Soviet Central Asian nations have come under fire for using a purported terror threat to silence criticism of their secular regimes.

Kyrgyzstan is gearing up to mark 25 years since independence from the Soviet Union with celebrations in Bishkek on Wednesday.

BANGKOK – Predominately Buddhist Thailand has opened its first halal hotel as it hopes to attract more Muslim visitors and boost one of the few bright spots in its economy.

Nearly 30 million foreign tourists came to Thailand last year but only about 658,000 were from the Middle East, according to industry data.

The four-star Al Meroz hotel in Bangkok, which opened in November, hopes to play its part in changing that, and to cash in.

“There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. It’s a huge market,” said the hotel’s general manager, Sanya Saengboon.

“Just one per cent of that market is enough for us to thrive.”

The Al Meroz, which boasts mosque-like architecture, has two prayer rooms and three halal dining halls.

Rooms cost from 4,000 baht all the way up to 50,000 baht (S$158 to S$1,967) a night, said Mr Sanya.

A guest at the hotel, Mr Aamir Fazal, said access to a halal hotel was a comfort to Muslim travellers in Thailand where halal food can be hard to find.

“It’s a really nice experience. It’s the first halal hotel here and I find that amazing,” said Mr Fazal, 28, a security officer from Australia.

Eager to tap into a growing Muslim tourist market, Thailand launched a mobile application last year which helps tourists search for halal eateries and Muslim-friendly attractions.

Parts of Thailand’s south, near the border with Muslim Malaysia, are majority Muslim.Many Malaysians pop over the border for short visits but a low-level separatist insurgency in the far south, that has included bomb attacks in border towns frequented by Malaysian tourists, has dented business there.

A series of bomb attacks in more mainstream tourist towns south of Bangkok this month, in which four people were killed and dozens wounded, has led to fears that the insurgency is spreading.

Thailand saw a 10-per-cent increase in arrivals from the Middle East in 2015 compared with 2014, data from the Department of Tourism showed.

Explore exciting places in Bangkok

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MANILA – The Philippines is looking into operating the country’s only nuclear power plant, built four decades ago at more than US$2 billion (S$2.73 billion) but never used, to ensure the long-term supply of clean and cheap electricity, its energy minister said.

The Southeast Asian country is joining more than two dozen other countries looking to add nuclear power to their energy mix, including neighbours Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand.

Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi said on Tuesday reviving the mothballed 620-megawatt nuclear plant in Bataan province, northwest of Manila, will require a US$1 billion investment.

Nuclear generation is one of the options for the Philippines to meet its growing power needs, with annual electricity demand expected to rise by an average 5 per cent until 2030, he said.

“We have to weigh all our options, with emphasis not just on meeting capacity requirements, but sustainability and environmental obligations as well,” Cusi said, speaking at the opening of a three-day international conference on nuclear power in Manila.

Cusi will revive a government task force created in 2007 to study nuclear power as an alternative to imported fuel oil and coal, which currently provide more than half of the country’s energy mix.

He said technical experts, including those from the International Atomic Energy Agency, have been invited to help the country identify the next steps and come up with a”well-informed” decision.

Cusi is not committing any timetable for the study, but he expects the move to reignite protests against the project, especially by environmentalists and the Catholic Church arguing restarting the plant is unsafe and expensive.

“We need to move away from fossil fuels like coal but nuclear energy is not safe and will also harm the people and environment,” said Zaira Patricia Baniaga of the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice in a statement issued before the conference.

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AFP, Reuters

The late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos order the plant built in 1976 in response to rising energy prices and it was finished in 1984.

The facility never started generating electricity after it was declared unsafe because it sits on a major earthquake fault line and lies near the Pinatubo volcano, which was dormant at that time.

Pinatubo’s 1991 eruption had no effect on the Bataan plant, 70km away, but the project was mothballed in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

A decade ago Manila looked into reopening the plant but the 2011 Fukushima nuclear incident renewed concerns about safety.

30 years after the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe

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Reuters, AFP