Mr. Gyanendra asked to settle electricity bill

Nepal's recently de-throned 'god-king' Gyanendra and his relatives will have to pay their outstanding electricity bills of more than $1 million. On 28 May this year, the democratically elected Constituent Assembly in Nepal declared the country a secular republic ending the last Hindu monarchy on earth. India once had some 460 hereditary rulers before they were forced to abdicate by Nehru's government and China ended its 3,500-year monarchy for good with the Wuchang Uprising in 1911, while Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country on earth was also declared a republic by its independence movements in 1945.

Old Nepal' s royal palace re-opens as museum