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The government and the Election Commission have agreed to hold the civil polls in one phase on May 18 (Wednesday).

During a meeting held on Tuesday, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and ministers along with the office bearers of Election Commission agreed to hold the elections on May 18.

Prime Minister Deuba had proposed to hold the elections on May 18 and the Election Commission also agreed on the date.

Emerging from the meeting, Prime Minister Deuba said that the government would soon announce the date of elections and urged the poll body to make preparations to hold the polls.

“The Government and the Election Commission have agreed to hold the local level elections on May 18. The government will soon announce the date for the poll and urged the Election Commission to make preparations to hold the elections,” PM’s press coordinator Govinda Pariyar said.

Earlier, the Election Commission had proposed the government to hold the elections in two phases—April 27 and May 5.

India and Nepal on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for construction of a motorable Bridge over the Mahakali River connecting Dharchula (India) with Darchula (Nepal) under Indian grant assistance. 

The MoU was signed by Indian Ambassador to Nepal Vinay Moham Kwatra and Secretary at the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport of Nepal Rabindra Nath Shrestha in the presence of Minister for Physical Infrastructure and Transport of Nepal Renu Kumari Yadav amid a programme this afternoon. 

The project will enhance cross-border connectivity between the Sudurpaschim province of Nepal and the Uttarakhand state of India across the Mahakali River.

This is in line with the priority shared by both the governments to expand cross-border connectivity for streamlining commercial, cultural and people-to-people exchanges. 

The construction of the bridge is planned to commence soon.

The government of Israel provided over half million syringes to Nepal to support immunization efforts.

The consignment of 5,63,000 syringes arrived via air freight on Tuesday.

Ambassador of Israel to Nepal Hanan Goder, handed over the syringes to the representatives of the Ministry of Health and Population of Nepal.

 “This is part of the international struggle against the pandemic. Israel is proud to cooperate with the Nepali efforts in this struggle,” Ambassador Goder said.

The Embassy of Israel is happy to share humanitarian aid with the people of Nepal as an act of solidarity between our two nations. We believe that this gesture would contribute to meeting 2022 Vaccination targets and bringing the pandemic under control, read a statement issued today.

Youth Association Nepal, youth wing of the main opposition CPN-UML, on Tuesday filed a case at the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) against Health Minister Birodh Khatiwada. 

Issuing a statement, the YAN has demanded action against Minister Khatiwada among others for embezzling Rs2.4 billion from the state coffers by squandering 2.4 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine. 

“The YAN demanded stringent action against Minister Khatiwada among others for embezzling Rs 2.4 billion from the state coffers,” the statement read. 

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba said that the local level elections will be held by May 19.

He said that preparations are underway to hold the elections by the third week of May without amending the constitution and Act. 

Prime Minister Deuba said so during a meeting with the newly elected office bearers of the Nepali Congress Bagmati Province. 

The term of the representative of the local levels is expiring on May 19 as per the Act. 

The Prime Minister said that the election will be held before the expiration of the tenure of the elected people’s representatives. 

 Earlier, the ruling coalition had decided to hold the local elections by mid-June.

The cases of bird flu have been confirmed at two locations of Morang in Province 1.

According to the Department of Livestock Services, the detection of avian influenza (H5N1 virus) has been confirmed at Khuniyakatta of Gramthan-1 and Budhiganga-5 through a laboratory test.

Department Officiating Director General Lekhraj Dahal said the lab samples collected from local farms were tested positive for the bird flu on January 30. The test was conducted at the Central Veterinary Laboratory, Tripureshwar through real-time PCR.

According to him, following the detection of the virus, the Department on Sunday promptly mobilized related bodies to destroy domestic fowls and other goods capable of transmitting the virus. The preventive measures were carried out through the mobilization of livestock-related bodies at the federal, provincial and local levels.

The Livestock Development Ministry has urged for the veterinary certificates for the transport of poultry and poultry related goods. Farmers have been requested to take safety measures, to regularly disinfect the farm premises, to be more attentive to other safety measures, not to let the domestic animals come into contact with wild animals, to immediately inform the nearby department of livestock services if any fowl died unnaturally. RSS

Bangladesh has sentenced two police officers to death for the murder of a former military major that cast a spotlight on extrajudicial killings by the nation’s security forces, Aljazeera reported.

The district court judge announced the verdict against Pradeep Kumar Das Liakat Ali for murdering Sinha Mohammad Rashed on July 31, 2020, near the southeastern tourist town of Cox’s Bazar.

Das and several other officers were accused of shooting dead the retired army major while he was filming a nature documentary.

“The judge said it was a premeditated murder,” prosecutor Tauhidul Ahsan told the AFP news agency. “One of them shot him dead and another kicked him with his boots as he lay dying.”

Monday’s hearing did not discuss the motive for the crime.

Details of the murder were leaked to the press and triggered outrage among the country’s military fraternity, who demanded the officers be punished.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the court to condemn Das and his co-conspirators during the sentencing.

Six more people were sentenced to life in prison for the killing, while seven others were acquitted.

Bangladesh’s rights record under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has already drawn international condemnation.

Washington last month imposed sanctions on the country’s elite Rapid Action Battalion security force, along with several former and current top officers, over accusations of extrajudicial killings.

Bangladeshi human rights researcher Mubashar Hasan said the case against Das and the other defendants only went ahead because the victim was a member of the country’s powerful military.

“Pradeep could have pretty much got away and probably would’ve got [a] presidential or prime ministerial medal by killing ordinary citizens in the name of killing drug peddlers,” Hasan, who is based in Australia, told AFP news agency.

Das has been accused by rights groups of masterminding more than 170 murders in the country’s south.

Russia accused the West on Monday of “whipping up tensions” over Ukraine and said the US had brought “pure Nazis” to power in Kyiv as the UN Security Council held a stormy and bellicose debate on Moscow’s troop buildup near its southern neighbor, Associated Press reported.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield shot back that Russia’s growing military force of more than 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders was “the largest mobilization” in Europe in decades, adding that there has been a spike in cyberattacks and Russian disinformation.

“And they are attempting, without any factual basis, to paint Ukraine and Western countries as the aggressors to fabricate a pretext for attack,” she said.

The harsh exchanges in the Security Council came as Moscow lost an attempt to block the meeting and reflected the gulf between the two nuclear powers. It was the first open session where all protagonists in the Ukraine crisis spoke publicly, even though the UN’s most powerful body took no action.

Hours later, the Russian government sent a written response to a US proposal aimed at deescalating the crisis, according to three Biden administration officials. The officials all spoke on the condition of anonymity. A State Department official declined to offer details of the response, saying it “would be unproductive to negotiate in public” and that they would leave it up to Russia to discuss the counterproposal.

Although more high-level diplomacy is expected this week, talks between the US and Russia have so far failed to ease tensions in the crisis, with the West saying Moscow is preparing for an invasion. Russia denies it is planning to attack. It demands pledges that Ukraine will never join NATO, a halt to the deployment of NATO weapons near Russian borders and a rollback of the alliance’s forces from Eastern Europe. NATO and the US call those nonstarters.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the US of interfering in his country’s internal affairs and seeking “a classic example of megaphone diplomacy.”

Thomas-Greenfield countered that the US has held over 100 private meetings in the past few weeks with Russian officials and European and Ukrainian colleagues and “it’s now time” for a discussion in public.

To Russia’s assertion that the US called the meeting to make all council members feel uncomfortable, she retorted, “Imagine how uncomfortable you would be if you had 100,000 troops sitting on your border.”

After the council gave a green light for the meeting, Nebenzia accused the Biden administration of “whipping up tensions and rhetoric and provoking escalation.”

“You are almost pulling for this,” he said in his speech to the council, looking at Thomas-Greenfield. “You want it to happen. You’re waiting for it to happen, as if you want to make your words become a reality.”

He blamed the US for the 2014 ouster of a Kremlin-friendly president in Kyiv, saying it brought to power “nationalists, radicals, Russophobes and pure Nazis” and created the antagonism that exists between Ukraine and Russia.

Nebenzia pointedly left the council chamber as the Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya started to speak. “How long Russia will pressure, will pursue a clear attempt to push Ukraine and its partners into a Kafka trap?” Kyslytsva asked.

The vote on holding an open meeting passed 10-2, with Russia and China opposed, and India, Gabon and Kenya abstaining. Nine “yes” votes were needed for the meeting to go ahead.

The US and its allies had pressed to hold the meeting Monday, the last day of Norway’s rotating presidency of the council, before Russia takes over Tuesday for the month of February.

Any statement or resolution by the Security Council is extremely unlikely, given Russia’s veto power and its ties with others on the council, including China.

After all 15 council members spoke, the US and Russia sparred again, with Thomas-Greenfield saying she was “disappointed” in Nebenzia’s comments, stressing that Russian threats of aggression are “provocative.”

US President Joe Biden said in a statement that the meeting was “a critical step in rallying the world to speak out in one voice” to reject the use of force and seek military de-escalation.

At the start of a White House meeting with the ruling emir of Qatar, Biden said the US continues to engage in “nonstop diplomacy,” but “we are ready no matter what happens.”

The State Department on Monday ordered the departure of families of American diplomats in Belarus, where Russia is deploying troops, tanks and other materiel in what Moscow says is a military exercise. 

Western officials fear Russia’s troop buildup could use Belarus as a jumping-off point to invade neighboring Ukraine, especially its capital, Kyiv, from the north. Tens of thousands of other Russian troops already are staged elsewhere along Ukraine’s borders. 

Belarus officials already have pushed most US Embassy staff out of the country, leaving fewer family members to be affected by Monday’s order. The US has also drawn down its diplomatic presence in Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken are expected to speak by phone Tuesday, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry. A senior State Department official confirmed the Russian account. 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will visit Ukraine on Tuesday for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and will also speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin to urge him to “step back,” Johnson’s office said. Johnson says he is considering sending hundreds of British troops to NATO countries in the Baltic region as a show of strength.

Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress said Monday they were still divided over some of the timing in draft sanctions legislation against Russia. A Republican push to impose sanctions on a Russian natural gas pipeline to Germany, Nord Stream 2, even before any new Russian push into Ukraine was a main sticking point, lawmakers said. The Biden administration argues for waiting after any invasion, saying sanctioning Nord Stream now could alienate an ally, Germany, and remove the deterrence power of that sanctions threat.

On Sunday, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez, said that in the event of an attack, lawmakers want Russia to face “the mother of all sanctions.” That includes actions against Russian banks that could severely undermine the Russian economy and increased lethal aid to Ukraine’s military. 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday the administration was encouraged by the bipartisan effort in Congress “to hold Russia accountable.” The administration has previously expressed concern that preemptive sanctions could diminish their leverage on Russia, but the White House sounded warmer to the prospect as the Foreign Relations Committee moves to act.

“Our view is that sanctions can be an effective tool of deterrence, and the deepening sell-off in Russian markets reflects our message to Russia,” Psaki said.