CHANGU NARAYAN, Nepal — When a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked Nepal last year, villagers in Changu Narayan ran up the steep rocky path that cuts through their town to their renowned temple. Seeing the piles of rubble, they figured their lives were over.

Less than two years later, the community is cleaning up their World Heritage Site themselves, and one of the world’s leading architects has taken on the recovery as his pet project.

“I see now our world coming back alive,” said Gyan Bahadur Bhadal, 61, one of many villagers who share responsibility for the temple’s upkeep.

In a country where locals say there are more gods than people and more temples than houses, Changu Narayan still manages to stand out among the ancient holy places. It’s believed to be the oldest Hindu place of worship in the country, its wooden walls intricately carved with hundreds of deities, perched atop a steep hill overlooking the Kathmandu Valley.

The 5th century temple is dedicated to Lord Vishnu, who locals say appeared there once. His image, in about a dozen incarnations, is carved into struts that hold up the roof. Stone lions with eagle heads guard the doors. Inside has long been a mystery: Only priests enter the two-tiered pagoda, and they don’t explore.

An April 2015 temblor that killed 9,000 people in Nepal also damaged details in Changu Narayan’s wood, stone and metal. A sharp aftershock one day later twisted the entire structure, knocking piles of bricks out of the walls, filling the courtyard.

Anish Bhatta’s family has been living and leading worship at the temple for 10 generations — some 325 years. After the earthquake, Anish did the unthinkable: He went all the way inside.

“We saw things we never imagined,” he said. “Statues as big as me, swords, so many sculptures, gold plated with big gems.”

Today the temple is guarded by military police, and propped up with questionable temporary beams.

British architect John Sanday, who led the World Monuments Fund restoration of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world, fell in love with the place decades ago. After the earthquake, he came up the Changu path with trepidation.

“I was very emotional walking into this place. The whole of the courtyard was littered with rubble. I thought, ‘Come on, John, you’ve got to pull yourself together,'” he recalled.

But then Sanday noticed wooden supports exposed by the missing brick. He saw what looked like a bedrock foundation. And he decided that of the 600 historical temples, monuments and palaces damaged by the earthquake in Nepal, this one would be his project.

“Sure, it’s peanuts, a little temple, so why is it so special?” said Sanday. “The detail. The grace. It’s one of the few World Heritage Sites that hasn’t been completely destroyed by development.”

But what really drew him to step in as technical adviser were the people of this village.

Among tourists and pilgrims, Changu Narayan’s residents pray there at dusk, kneel at the deities, bow to the gods, offer alms to the priests who stand duty at the door.

Three people died and 100 homes were damaged in Changu Village, a 30-minute drive from downtown Kathmandu, during the earthquake. Like families in the city 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) away, the Changu community grieved, cried and cleaned up rubble.

But in the hilltop village the community did something else: With rags and water, little picks and brushes, they cleaned the ancient and exotic carved brackets and facades, cleaning and repairing, bit by bit, so they could resume their worship. Now Sanday says their dedication is his inspiration. He will not allow their culture to disappear with the damaged building.

Conserving an ancient building means solving a series of incredibly complicated puzzles. Rotted or mice-chewed timbers must be replaced. An unstable and stretched government bureaucracy must remain in charge. And there’s $300,000 to raise.

For starters, with $30,000 of German support, he helped the community rebuild one of Changu’s shrines, the size of a little guardhouse. Now he’s looking at the larger temple a few yards away.

“This is a place we can save, no doubt,” said Sanday. “The people here will make sure of that.”

Story: Martha Mendoza

DAVOS, Switzerland — The gap between the super-rich and the poorest half of the global population is starker than previously thought, with just eight men, from Bill Gates to Michael Bloomberg, owning as much wealth as 3.6 billion people, according to an analysis by Oxfam released Monday.

Presenting its findings on the dawn of the annual gathering of the global political and business elites in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, anti-poverty organization Oxfam says the gap between the very rich and poor is far greater than just a year ago. It’s urging leaders to do more than pay lip-service to the problem.

If not, it warns, public anger against this kind of inequality will continue to grow and lead to more seismic political changes akin to last year’s election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

“It is obscene for so much wealth to be held in the hands of so few when 1 in 10 people survive on less than USD $2 a day,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, who will be attending the meeting in Davos. “Inequality is trapping hundreds of millions in poverty; it is fracturing our societies and undermining democracy.”

The same report a year earlier said that the richest 62 people on the planet owned as much wealth as the bottom half of the population. However, Oxfam has revised that figure down to eight following new information gathered by Swiss bank Credit Suisse.

Oxfam used Forbes’ billionaires list that was last published in March 2016 to make its headline claim. According to the Forbes list, Microsoft founder Gates is the richest individual with a net worth of USD $75 billion. The others, in order of ranking, are Amancio Ortega, the Spanish founder of fashion house Inditex, financier Warren Buffett, Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim Helu, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York.

Oxfam outlined measures that it hopes will be enacted to help reduce the inequality.

They include higher taxes on wealth and income to ensure a more level playing field and to fund investments in public services and jobs, greater cooperation among governments on ensuring workers are paid decently and the rich don’t dodge their taxes. And business leaders should commit to paying their fair share of taxes and a living wage to employees.

Max Lawson, Oxfam’s policy adviser, urged billionaires to “do the right thing,” and to do “what Bill Gates has called on them to do, which is pay their taxes.”

The ability of the rich to avoid paying their fair share of taxes was vividly exposed last year in the so-called “Panama Papers,” a leaked trove of data that revealed details on offshore accounts that helped individuals shelter their wealth.

“We have a situation where billionaires are paying less tax often than their cleaner or their secretary,” Lawson told The Associated Press. “That’s crazy.”

It’s because of this kind of inequality that trust in institutions has fallen sharply since the global financial crisis of 2008, according to Edelman, one of the world’s biggest marketing firms.

In its own pre-Davos survey of more than 33,000 people across 28 markets, Edelman found the largest-ever drop in trust across government, business, media and even non-governmental organizations. CEO credibility is at an all-time low and government leaders are the least trusted group, according to the survey.

The firm’s 2017 Trust Barometer found that 53 percent of respondents believe the current system has failed them in that it is unfair and offers few hopes for the future, with only 15 percent believing it is working. That belief was evident for both the general population and those with college education.

“The implications of the global trust crisis are deep and wide-ranging,” said Richard Edelman, the firm’s president and CEO. “It began with the Great Recession of 2008, but like the second and third waves of a tsunami, globalization and technological change have further weakened people’s trust in global institutions. The consequence is virulent populism and nationalism as the mass population has taken control away from the elites.”

Edelman highlighted how “the emergence of a media echo chamber” that reinforces personal beliefs while shutting out opposing views has magnified this “cycle of distrust.” According to the survey, search engines are trusted more as an information tool than traditional news editors, 59 percent to 41 percent.

“People now view media as part of the elite,” said Edelman. “The result is a proclivity for self-referential media and reliance on peers. The lack of trust in media has also given rise to the fake news phenomenon and politicians speaking directly to the masses.”

Edelman said business may be best-placed to help improve trust. Companies need to be transparent and honest with their employees about the changes taking place in the work-place, improve skills and pay fairly, he said.

The online survey was conducted between Oct. 13 and Nov. 16, 2016.

Story: Pan Pylas