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The Sri Lankan cabinet has approved constitutional reforms that will limit the powers of the president in a move aimed at appeasing the protesters calling for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to quit over the country’s worst economic crisis in decades, Aljazeera reported.

The decision to amend the constitution to clip the president’s wide-ranging powers was taken in a cabinet meeting on Monday, Dinouk Colombage, media adviser for Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

A draft of the so-called 21st amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution gives some powers back to the parliament and restores independence to commissions in key decision making.

“The 21 amendment was tabled and passed in cabinet today,” tourism minister Harin Fernando said in a tweet, adding that the proposal will now be sent to the country’s parliament where it needs the votes of two-thirds of its members.

In October 2020, less than a year after becoming the president, Gotabaya, with the help of his elder brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, had moved the 20th amendment in parliament, which gave the presidency sweeping powers.

The changes then allowed the president to hold ministries as well as appoint and fire ministers. It also made the president the appointing authority of the elections, public service, police, human rights, and bribery or corruption investigation commissions.

Sri Lanka has been ruled under a powerful executive presidential system since 1978, but a reformist government in 2015 clipped much of the president’s powers and gave them over to the parliament and independent commissions, saying successive presidents had been more authoritarian, according to Aljazeera.

As the country reeled under its worst ever economic crisis, largely blamed on the powerful Rajapaksas, President Gotabaya had hinted at giving in to the demands of reducing his powers to assuage the protesters.

The removal of the Rajapaksas from public office had been one of the main demands of the months-long protests over the economic crisis in the island nation of 22 million people.

Economic mismanagement and the COVID-19 pandemic have left Sri Lanka battling its worst financial problems in seven decades, and a shortage of foreign exchange has stalled imports of essentials including fuel, food and medicines.

On Monday, a nine-member International Monetary Fund (IMF) team arrived in the commercial capitalof Colombo for talks with Prime Minister Wickremesinghe on how to structure what will be the country’s 17th loan programme with the global lender.

In a statement shared with Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s office said he also held discussions with Chinese officials over the crisis and “reiterated Sri Lanka’s adherence to the ‘One China Policy'”.

“He also stated that Sri Lanka was looking forward to discussing the debt restructuring with China,” the statement said, adding that China reassured Sri Lanka of donating rice to “help ease the food crisis”.

Sri Lanka suspended payment on $12bn of foreign debt in April and is seeking up to $3bn from the IMF to put its public finances on track and access bridge financing, Aljazeera reported.

But public distress at the prolonged shortages is growing. Thousands of students from state universities marched in Sri Lanka’s main city of Colombo on Monday to demand the president and prime minister resign.

The protesters blocked an entrance to the finance ministry on Monday and police had to help out an official due to attend the IMF talks.

Scientists say that climate change was likely to have made the rains that unleashed catastrophic flooding across Bangladesh worse, Reuters reported.

While South Asia's monsoon rains follow natural atmospheric patterns, the rains will become more erratic and torrential as global temperatures continue to climb, scientists say.

It would take months to determine exactly how much of a role climate change played in last week's heavy rains.

But scientists note that warmer air can hold more water vapour before rain clouds eventually burst, meaning more rain eventually pours down.

"The strong monsoon winds in the Bay of Bengal can carry a lot more moisture," said Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. "The large amount of rainfall that we see now might be a climate change impact."

The South Asia monsoon season, from June to September, is governed by several, overlapping patterns in the ocean and atmosphere, including the El Nino-La Nina weather cycle and the Indian Ocean Dipole. Currently, those systems are driving strong, southwesterly winds over the Bay of Bengal, according to Reuters.

But the monsoon patterns have shifted in recent decades, as the average temperature for Bangladesh has risen at least 0.5 degrees Celsius since 1976.

"Instead of having moderate rains spread out through the monsoon season, we have long dry periods intermittently with short spells of heavy rains," Koll said. "When it rains, it dumps all that moisture in a few hours to a few days."

On Tuesday, Bangladeshi troops were navigating dinghys through brackish floodwaters to rescue those in need or deliver food and water to some of the 9.5 million people marooned. Officials say at least 69 people have died in the disaster.

Last week's heavy rains, which caused Bangladesh's rivers to breach their banks, followed less than a month after the neighbouring Indian state of Assam was hit by similar rain-triggered flooding, which killed at least 25 people there, Reuters reported.

Bangladesh is considered one of the world's most climate-vulnerable countries, with a 2015 analysis by the World Bank Institute estimating about 3.5 million Bangladeshis are at risk of river flooding every year. The floods also threaten the country’s agriculture, infrastructure and clean water supply.

The region's countries "all suffer if there’s no rain. They suffer when there’s too much rain," said Anders Levermann, a climate scientist at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Columbia University. "What they would need is a steady rainfall, as we had in the past and as is threatened now under global warming."

Russia has warned Lithuania of "serious" consequences after it banned the rail transfer of some goods to the Russian territory of Kaliningrad, BBC reported.

Russia "will certainly respond to such hostile actions," senior security official Nikolai Patrushev said. 

Lithuania says it is only following the EU sanctions imposed over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Kaliningrad - a strategic region where Russia's Baltic Fleet is headquartered - has no border with mainland Russia.

The western territory was annexed from Germany after World War Two in 1945 and is bordered by EU and Nato members Lithuania and Poland.

The region - where an estimated one million people live - relies heavily on imports of raw materials and spare parts from Russia and the EU.

Regional governor Anton Alikhanov said the ban would cover around 50% of the items that Kaliningrad imports.

During a visit on Tuesday to Kaliningrad, Mr Patrushev said the blockade by Lithuania was instigated by the West "in violation of... international law".

The secretary of Russia's Security Council warned that "appropriate measures" would be taken "in the near future".

"Their consequences will have a serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania," he added, without giving any further details, according to BBC.

Earlier on Tuesday, the EU ambassador was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry over the blockade.

Last week, the Lithuanian authorities announced they would ban goods subject to EU sanctions from passing through their territory to Kaliningrad.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said: "It's not Lithuania doing anything: it's European sanctions that started working from 17 June... It was done with consultation from the European Commission and under European Commission guidelines."

The EU has echoed Lithuania's statement, saying that the country is just implementing sanctions imposed by the EU as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The sanctions list includes coal, metals, construction materials and advanced technology.

As a member of the Nato military alliance, Lithuania is protected by collective defence treaties, BBC reported.

US state department spokesman Ned Price said the US was standing by Lithuania, adding that the country's commitment to Nato's Article 5 - which views an attack on one member state as an attack on all - was "iron clad".

Trump supporters threatened election officials and their families after they refused to quash his 2020 defeat, a congressional panel has heard, BBC reported.

The speaker of Arizona's statehouse, Rusty Bowers, told the committee probing last year's Capitol riot that the harassment continues to this day.

A Georgia voter counter said she was afraid to leave home after ex-President Donald Trump specifically targeted her.

The House of Representatives panel accuses Mr Trump of an attempted coup.

The select committee has conducted a nearly yearlong investigation into how Trump supporters invaded Congress on 6 January 2021 to disrupt lawmakers as they certified Democrat Joe Biden's election victory.

On Tuesday, in the fourth public hearing so far, the panel heard from election workers in the states of Arizona and Georgia. Mr Biden defeated Mr Trump in both states, which had previously backed Republicans for the White House.

"We received... in excess of 20,000 emails and tens of thousands of voice mails and texts, which saturated our offices and we were unable to work, at least communicate," Mr Bowers, speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, told the select committee.

The witness - who campaigned for Mr Trump in 2020 - said the threats and insults have continued with protesters outside his house attempting to smear him as a paedophile.

"It was disturbing, it was disturbing," Mr Bowers said, according to BBC.

He recalled Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani at one point telling him: "We've got lots of theories, we just don't have the evidence."

The panel also heard testimony from Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who became the targets of conspiracy theories in their jobs as election workers in Fulton County, Georgia.

Although Mr Biden won the state by nearly 12,000 votes, Mr Trump and his supporters spread unfounded claims of mass voter fraud. 

In recorded messages, Mr Trump had called Ms Moss "a professional vote-scammer and hustler", alleging the mother-daughter duo cheated to help Democrats.

"I've lost my name, I've lost my reputation, I've lost my sense of security," Ms Freeman said through tears, in video presented by the committee on Tuesday.

"Do you know what it feels like to have the president of the United States target you?"

Ms Moss said she faced "a lot of threats wishing death upon me", and that the harassment - including racial abuse - had "turned my life upside down".

"I no longer give out my business card. I don't want anyone knowing my name."

Ms Moss said she is reluctant to go anywhere, including the supermarket, and has gained about 60lb (27kg) in weight, BBC reported.

She told the committee that Trump supporters had visited her grandmother's home, looking for her and hoping to make a "citizen's arrest".

Lawmakers also heard from Republican poll organisers in Georgia about their difficulty in stamping out conspiracies fanned by Mr Trump.

Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia, told the committee that fighting the election scam claims "was like a shovel trying to empty the ocean".

His boss - Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Mr Trump repeatedly pressed to "find" the votes he needed to win the state - ticked through a laundry list of allegations made by the Trump team in legal action against the state.

"In their lawsuits, they alleged 10,315 dead people [voted]," Mr Raffensperger said, but a thorough review found a total of only four.

The secretary said further investigation had debunked other claims about illegal votes by underage and non-registered voters, as well as convicts.

"We had many allegations and we investigated every single one of them."

The hearings have attempted to tie the former president directly to the efforts to overturn the election, according to BBC.

At Tuesday's hearing, the committee chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, said: "A handful of election officials in several key states stood between Donald Trump and the upending of American democracy."

His deputy on the committee, Liz Cheney, a Republican, said: "We cannot let America become a nation of conspiracy theories and thug violence."

Nepal reported 19 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 1, 731 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 14 returned positive. Likewise, 1, 083  people underwent antigen tests, of which five were tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 10 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 124 active cases in the country.

CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli has said that there should be a national consensus among major political parties on the fundamental issues of foreign policy and international relations.  

Speaking at a program organized by the Association of Former Nepali Ambassadors (AFNA) he said stability in the domestic polity is a prerequisite for the effective and smooth functioning of external relations.

The former prime minister further added that Nepal should present itself with a reliable and trustworthy policy and behavior while dealing with neighboring countries. The main opposition leader was of the view that Nepal should present all its issues in a frank and clear manner with neighboring countries. He said only an open and frank exchange of dialogue can bring about cordiality in bilateral relations.

 “If there was not internal political upheaval, the map row with India would have been already resolved,” said Oli who as a prime minister took the initiative to issue a new political map incorporating Kalapani, Lipulekh, and Limpiyadurha. In the bilateral talks with the Indian counterpart, I had presented all the issues in a free and frank manner, he said. 

The former Prime Minister Oli laid emphasis on the need of resolving problems by holding discussions if any problem surfaces in foreign relations. He shared, "Nepal should present itself with reliable and trustworthy policy and behavior before the neighboring countries. Dual characters should not be shown. We should not play any card on the issue of international relations."

The UML chair clarified that although any country may be small in population and geography, Nepal could hold discussions with all countries of the world without any hesitation as the sovereignty of each country is equal.

Oli further added that the government is not consulting with the main opposition party while taking vital decisions related to foreign policy. There is a tradition of soliciting the views of opposition parties before the prime minister's foreign visit but the current government has not reached out to us, he said. 

Lucky Sherpa, former Ambassador and general secretary of AFNA informed that their plan of holding a series of dialogues on foreign policy issues of Nepal.

“We plan to hold a series of dialogues with leaders of major political parties to forge a national consensus on key fundamental issues of foreign policy,” she said. She further added that matters related to foreign policy should not be politicized and there should be broader consultations and discussions before taking a decision on key foreign policy matters. 

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The Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE) gained 39. 93 points to close at 1,924.74 points on Tuesday.

Similarly, the sensitive index plunged by 8. 90 points to close at 375. 09 points.

Meanwhile, a total of 3,765,516 unit shares of 231 companies were traded for Rs 1. 25 billion.

In today’s market, all sub-indices saw green. Life Insurance topped the chart with 203. 18 points.

Meanwhile, Adhikhola Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha Limited was the top gainer today, with its price surging by 9. 99 percent. NIC Asia Balanced Fund was the top loser as its price fell by 2. 93 percent.

At the end of the day, total market capitalisation stood at Rs 2.45 trillion.