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Peeved over the Nepalese Parliament’s approval of the US-funded USD 500 million grant agreement despite its persistent opposition, a concerned China said on Monday that Washington should not undermine the sovereignty of other countries through “coercive diplomacy”, The Print reported.

Much to the surprise of Beijing, Nepal’s Parliament on Sunday ratified the contentious US-funded USD 500 million Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact along with an Interpretive Declaration a day ahead of the February 28 deadline set by Washington, ending months of debates, protests and polarisation in the Himalayan nation.

“We noted the decision and the declaration by the Nepalese parliament,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a media briefing here in response to questions from the official media about the Interpretive Declaration, which was passed along with the US aid highlighting Nepal’s sovereignty.

Senior leader of the ruling Nepali Congress Ram Chandra Poudel has said that the declaration includes the statements that the MCC is not part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy, Nepal’s constitution will be above any provisions of the MCC and the country will perceive it purely as economic assistance.

“China has stressed repeatedly that international formal cooperation should follow the principle of mutual respect, equal treatment and fully respect the sovereignty of the country concerned and the will of its people,” Wang said.

“It should not interfere in other country’s internal affairs to engage in coercive diplomacy, undermine other sovereignty and interest out of selfish interests,” he said, adding that Beijing always supported Nepal choosing an independent path of development.

The MCC is a bilateral United States foreign aid agency established by the US Congress in 2004. It is an independent agency separate from the State Department and USAID.

The District Administration Office clamped a curfew in Surkhet, provincial capital of Karnali Province, after the protests against the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) turned violent.

The DAO decided to clamp the curfew after the demonstrators vandalised and torched party offices of various parties and police posts.

The curfew will be clamped from 8:15 pm on Monday till 7 pm on Tuesday.

The government has expressed its commitment not to allow Nepali land to be used against any nation.

A Cabinet meeting held on Monday thanked all the parties and lawmakers among others who helped endorse the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and said that the government would not allow Nepali land to be used against neighbouring countries or any nation.

The Cabinet made such a decision at a time when doubts were harbouring about the use of Nepali land against neighboring India and China after the endorsement of the MCC.

"Nepal is committed to not allow Nepali land to be used against India and China among other countries in line with foreign policy of Nepal to maintain friendly relations with all the countries," government spokesperson and Minister for Communications and Information Technology Gyanendra Bahadur Karki said.

Deadly with extreme weather now, climate change is about to get so much worse. It is likely going to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer, gloomier and way more dangerous in the next 18 years with an “unavoidable” increase in risks, a new United Nations science report says, Associated Press reported.

And after that watch out. 

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said Monday if human-caused global warming isn’t limited to just another couple tenths of a degree, an Earth now struck regularly by deadly heat, fires, floods and drought in future decades will degrade in 127 ways with some being “potentially irreversible.” 

“The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,” says the major report designed to guide world leaders in their efforts to curb climate change. Delaying cuts in heat-trapping carbon emissions and waiting on adapting to warming’s impacts, it warns, “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

Today’s children who may still be alive in the year 2100 are going to experience four times more climate extremes than they do now even with only a few more tenths of a degree of warming over today’s heat. But if temperatures increase nearly 2 more degrees Celsius from now (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) they would feel five times the floods, storms, drought and heat waves, according to the collection of scientists at the IPCC.

Already at least 3.3 billion people’s daily lives “are highly vulnerable to climate change” and 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather, the report says. Large numbers of people are being displaced by worsening weather extremes. And the world’s poor are being hit by far the hardest, it says. 

More people are going to die each year from heat waves, diseases, extreme weather, air pollution and starvation because of global warming, the report says. Just how many people die depends on how much heat-trapping gas from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas gets spewed into the air and how the world adapts to an ever-hotter world, scientists say.

“Climate change is killing people,” said co-author Helen Adams of King’s College London. “Yes, things are bad, but actually the future depends on us, not the climate.”

With every tenth of a degree of warming, many more people die from heat stress, heart and lung problems from heat and air pollution, infectious diseases, illnesses from mosquitoes and starvation, the authors say. 

The report lists mounting dangers to people, plants, animals, ecosystems and economies, with people at risk in the millions and billions and potential damages in the trillions of dollars. The report highlights people being displaced from homes, places becoming uninhabitable, the number of species dwindling, coral disappearing, ice shrinking and rising and increasingly oxygen-depleted and acidic oceans. 

Some of these risks can still be prevented or lessened with prompt action. 

“Today’s IPCC report is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change.”

Nepal logged 180 new Covid-19 cases and one death on Monday.

With this, the country's active caseload mounted to 1,116,371. Similarly, the death toll has climbed to 11,936. 

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 5,218 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 119 returned positive. Likewise, 3 ,123 people underwent antigen tests, of which 61 tested positive.

The Ministry said that 400 infected people recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours.

As of today, there are 8,235 active cases in the country. 

The Ministry said that 8,021 people are staying in home isolation while 214 are in institutionalized isolation.

Nepal and India signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for a long term supply of Urea and DAP fertilizers from India to Nepal under a G2G arrangement.

Shri Rajesh Kumar Chaturvedi, Secretary (Chemical and Fertilizers), Government of India from the Indian side and Govinda Prasad Sharma, Secretary (Agriculture and Livestock Development) from the Nepali side signed the MoU.

The virtual meeting to sign and exchange the MoU on Monday in the presence of Shri Mahindra Ray Yadav, Minister for Agriculture and Livestock Development, Government of Nepal and Shri Vinay Mohan Kwatra, Ambassador of India to Nepal, officials of the respective Ministries and Embassies of both India and Nepal.

During the meeting Shri Rajesh Kumar Chaturvedi highlighted the close and multi-faceted nature of India-Nepal ties and hoped that the MoU will further boost bilateral cooperation in the agriculture sector by supporting Nepal’s economy and food security.

The signing of this MoU is expected to help address the recurring fertilizer shortages in Nepal and enable improved agricultural productivity for the direct benefit of Nepali farmers.

The MoU is yet another milestone in the bilateral economic cooperation and also an important reflection of the priority attached by India to its partnership with Nepal.  

As many as 244 Nepalis affected by the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict have safely reached their destinations.

The Non-Resident Nepali Association (NRNA) formed a high level committee to support and rescue the Nepalis affected by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Issuing a statement on Monday, the committee said that the Nepalis have left Ukraine and reached Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and Moldova.

Similarly, 154 people have reportedly got stuck along the borders towards Poland ( 130), Slovakia ( 12), Romania( 10) and Moldova ( two) and they are likely to cross the borders by this evening.  

According to the NRNA Ukraine, 40 Nepali families are permanently residing in Ukraine.

A meeting of the committee headed by its chair and Nepal’s Ambassador for Germany Ramkaji Khadka decided to take necessary initiatives to transport those Nepalis affected by the conflict to safer locations.  

The ambassador apprised the meeting that the Embassy had so far issued a travel permit for 34 Nepalis displaced from Ukraine since the recent developments there.  RSS

CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal expressed his happiness over the endorsement of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) with an interpretative declaration.

Speaking at a press conference organised at his residence in Khumaltar on Monday, he said, “I am very happy that the MCC has been endorsed from the Parliament. Now, the country has been saved from being driven into deep conflict.”

Dahal defended the proposals and stances put forward by him and the party earlier on the US aid project.

He said that the $500 million US grant project was dragged into the controversy after then Minister for Foreign Affairs Pradeep Gyawali during his visit to the United States said that Nepal has also become a part of the Indo Pacific Strategy.

Chairman Dahal said that he floated an alternative to ratify the MCC by endorsing the resolution motion after the then taskforce of the Nepal Communist Party suggested that the MCC should not be passed in its current form. But, the then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli ignored his idea, he claimed.

Dahal claimed that he had an agreement with Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba to table the resolution motion to pass the MCC.

“I had also suggested Nepali Congress and UML forge consensus to endorse the MCC to safeguard the constitution and the country,” he claimed.