An elderly woman has died after a Thursday night accident in which a sport utility vehicle, driven by a Bhutanese resettled in Worcester, MA, smashed through the front door of her Park Avenue house.

The Telegram & Gazette, a local news outlet in Worcester, quoted police as saying that Rosemary Turner, 83, of 182 Park Ave., died at UMass Memorial Medical Center — University Campus, just a couple of hours after the 2008 Nissan Pathfinder careened into her home.

The online further mentioned that a 53-year-old man standing in the doorway of the victim’s house suffered a broken ankle in the accident and was also taken to UMass Memorial. Police did not identify the injured man.

According to police, the driver, Hari Dhakal, 39, of Worcester, MA was not hurt. It is further reported that Turner was standing by the door with the male victim when the accident occurred. Police said the woman was pinned under the vehicle.

Police said Dhakal was traveling west on Institute Road about 8 p.m. when he crossed into the roadway’s intersection with Park Avenue; slammed over a traffic island, and into the house.   Investigators said that Dhakal told them that his brakes failed.

Police said the injured man had come to visit Turner and she was answering the door when the accident occurred. Police said alcohol does not appear to be a factor in the crash, but speed might be.

The Nissan was taken to Police Headquarters at Lincoln Square so the vehicle’s operational systems could be checked out.

An autopsy was scheduled for yesterday to determine the exact cause of Ms. Turner’s death. Officials said it took Fire Department personnel about 45 minutes to free the woman from the wreckage.

Mentioning the statement by witnesses, the Telegram & Gazette said that the Nissan was traveling at high speed down Institute Road when it failed to make the turn onto Park Avenue.

Despite repeated attempts, BNS could not confirm the details of the accident independently. BNS contacted some potential Bhutanese sources in Worcester, all of whom appeared unaware of the accident until the filing of this report.

Jigmi Yoser Thinley, the prime minister of Bhutan, doesn’t feel the need for formal relations with the US if the two countries can mutually cooperate without these.

“If we can have all kinds of interactions, relations and cooperation with the US, as with Germany and France, with which we have no diplomatic relations, what is the purpose (of such relations with Washington)?” the prime minister said in an interview to IANS.

Thinley officially took charge of the foreign ministry April 9, months after the former foreign minister remained away from office for medical reasons. He said diplomatic relations were not relevant any longer in a globalised world.

“There was a time when diplomatic relations signified one’s position vis-à-vis conflicting powers, choosing sides. It’s no longer the case,” Thinley told IANS.

On April 7, US Ambassador to India Timothy J. Roemer visited Thinley’s office in capital Thimphu to discuss “ways to further strengthen the ties between our two countries”.

Thinley said he had hosted many State Department officials, Congressmen and Senators for informal talks since he became head of the government in April 2008 after the country’s first fully democratic elections.

Bhutan is often referred to as the “Last Shangri La”. Rather than inviting foreign investment, it relies on revenues from tourism, agriculture and power generation while preserving the nation’s serenity and distinctive culture.

Bhutan has a constitutional mandate to maintain at least 60 percent of the country’s land as forest at all times. It requires all buildings to conform to the traditional Tibetan architecture. It has a national dress code. To control the number of foreign visitors, it requires each tourist to pay a tariff of $200 a day.
Such measures have set this predominantly Buddhist country apart from the rest of the world.

Bhutan, however, has compulsions behind its foreign policy of keeping the US at a safe distance. Being a small country of roughly 700,000 people locked between Asian giants India and China, Bhutan feels compelled to mark its borders with its distinctive cultural expressions.

The sense of susceptibility rose especially after China occupied Tibet in 1950 and Sikkim, formerly a Buddhist monarchy like Bhutan, became one of the Indian states in 1975. Bhutan shares borders with Tibet and Sikkim.

Though a member of the UN since 1971, Bhutan has let only two countries to have residential embassies, India and Bangladesh.

Formerly a protectorate of British India, Bhutan has had warm relations with India since the latter’s independence in 1947. Bangladesh is landlocked Bhutan’s gateway to the ocean. Thimphu has remained loyal to India, Bhutan’s largest development partner.

However, the prime minister denied that Tibet’s and Sikkim’s loss of independence had any bearing on Bhutan’s foreign policy.

“Whatever may have happened, in terms of the examples you raised, I make no judgments as to their justifications and so on. But Bhutan… has survived and it has been respected as a sovereign, independent country thus far.”

In a globalising world, “we have even less reasons to fear in terms of the future of our security”.

Bhutan has diplomatic relations with only those countries in the West that are seen as non-partisan as well as non-intruding – Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland and Austria.

Thimphu maintains relations with Muslim-majority countries as well, like Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Maldives in the region, and oil-rich Arab nations like Bahrain and Kuwait. Bhutan has ties also with Spain, Canada and Latin American countries like Brazil.

Courtesy : IANS, April 21, 2011

The Camp Management Committee (CMC) of Beldangi camp regretted for restricting refugees from going outside the three Beldangi camps, Friday.

An all-party meeting under the chairmanship of Chief District Officer of Jhapa, Sashi Shekhar Shrestha, at the community forest office this morning reached an understanding that CMC did a mistake by not allowing the refugees to move out of the camps.

“The CMC felt sorry for the decision and expressed regret in front of representatives of various stakeholders including the UNHCR and Jhapa CDO,” one of the participants told Bhutan News Service after the meeting.

According to the source, the government authority queried the CMC for deciding to breach social norms and values by executing ‘no movement’ of the refugees outside the camp.

The meeting also decided to remove all animals from the camps at the earliest possible time.

Meanwhile, the local community urged the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to find an alternative for carbon briquette claiming its remains have polluted the environment and even destroyed crops when washed away during the raining season.

Responding to the concern, the UNHCR representative said discussions have been underway as he cited the briquette has also adversely affected the refugees in camp.

The CDO also instructed the Armed Police Force and Nepal Police to immediate arrest those accused of mercilessly beating two refugee youths on Tuesday and bring them into a book.

Following the agreement, transportation and movement of refugees outside the camps have resumed.

Reported by Tulsi Upreti from Beldangi-I camp for BNS