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CPN (Unified Socialist) Chairman Madhav Kumar Nepal has reached the North Korean embassy at Jhamsikhel in Kathmandu to take part in the memorial assembly of Kim Jong-il, father of Kim Jong Un, supreme leader of North Korea. The North Korean embassy had invited Nepal as the chief guest of the memorial assembly. North Korean Ambassador to Nepal Jo Yong Man welcomed former prime minister Nepal at the Embassy. Earlier on November 9, Ambassador Jo had held a meeting with Nepal at the latter’s residence in Koteshwor. The North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was born in Russia on February 16, 1941 and died on December 17, 2011. He had ruled North Korea from October 8, 1997 to December 17, 2011. During the program, leader Nepal praised the role played by Kim Jong Il to develop the relations between Nepal and North Korea and also for development of North Korea. Ambassador Jo Yong Man among Embassy officials was present on the occasion. Officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, were not present in the program. Nepal and North Korea have diplomatic relations. North Korea has an embassy in Nepal but Nepal does not have embassy in North Korea.

Students of Trichandra Multiple Campus staged a demonstration in the Capital on Tuesday against the decision of the government to issue an ordinance to grant amnesty to Resham Chaudhary. The students staged the demonstration outside the Campus this morning after the government decided to bring an ordinance to free Resham Chaudhary and Muhammad Alam among others who have been doing time for heinous crime. A large number of students took part in the protest program organized by the All Nepal National Free Students' Union Trichandra Campus Committee. The government has been facing widespread criticism from all quarters of life after it decided to issue an ordinance to amend the negative list in Section 116 of Criminal Procedure Code. The ordinance brought to grant amnesty to Chaudhary has already been sent to President Bidya Devi Bhandari for the authentication. NC General Secretary duo Gagan Thapa, Bishwa Prakash Sharma and leaders of various political parties have also condemned the government's move. Chaudhary has been serving a life term in the central jail for masterminding the carnage at Tikapur, Kailali, which took the lives of eight people including a toddler in August 2015. Meanwhile, the government has defended its move saying that past governments had also brought similar ordinances. Speaking at a press conference organized to make public the decision of the Cabinet meeting on Monday, government spokesperson and Minister for Communications and Information Technology Gyanendra Bahadur Karki said that the government brought the ordinance to bring political parties and groups involved in criminal activities into peaceful mainstream politics.

Several Indian soldiers were injured in a clash with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at Yangtse, Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh on December 9, The Hindu reported. Confirming that the incident has occurred, a defence official with knowledge of the matter, without giving the specifics, said that the injuries on the “Chinese side were much higher than on the Indian side.” This is the first incident of its kind after the June 15, 2020 incident when 20 Indian soldiers were killed and several others were injured in violent clashes with the PLA troops in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley. Several senior officials while confirming that the incident took place declined to comment on the specifics of the incident. There was no response from the Army to questions sent till the time of going to print. According to another source, few soldiers sustained fractured limbs during the skirmish and are said to be recuperating at a hospital in Guwahati. Around 600 PLA soldiers were present when the clashes took place, the source said. This is not the first time the area in Arunachal Pradesh has seen a face-off between the Indian and Chinese troops. Since the boundary is undefined, Indian and Chinese troops often face-off while patrolling the area. In October 2021, a similar incident had taken place when some Chinese soldiers of a large patrol team were detained for few hours by the Indian Army they engaged in a minor face-off and clashed near Yangtse, according to The Hindu. In the last few years, the Army has significantly upgrading firepower and infrastructure along the LAC in the Tawang sector and a similar effort is underway in the Rest of Arunachal Pradesh (RALP). This includes road infrastructure, bridges, tunnels, habitat and other storage facilities, aviation facilities and upgradation of communications and surveillance especially in the Upper Dibang Valley region, as reported earlier. As reported by The Hindu earlier, there has been a change in the pattern of PLA patrols, with large size patrols coming now to assert their claim while also testing India across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) which defence officials had said was to prevent any surprise or getting overwhelmed by Indian troops in case there is a flare up as the Army and Into-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). Before the 2020 standoff in Eastern Ladakh, Chinese bases have largely been much farther from the LAC. Majority of the transgressions in the last few years are in the Western sector while there is an increasing trend of transgressions in the Eastern and Middle sectors, officials has stated earlier. The LAC is divided into Western (Ladakh), Middle (Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand), Sikkim, and Eastern (Arunachal Pradesh) sectors, The Hindu reported. In Eastern Ladakh, India and China are positioned in close proximity at multiple locations along the undefined LAC for more than two years. While several rounds of talks at diplomatic and military level have eased the standoff at few points turning the areas into no-patrolling zones, there are others where the build-up continues.  

Nepali Congress General Secretary Gangan Kumar Thapa has said that it was legally and constitutionally wrong to issue an ordinance to grant amnesty to Resham Chaudhary, who is serving a life term in connection to the Tikapur carnage of August 2015. He expressed his dissatisfaction for bringing the ordinance without holding discussions within the party. Taking to Twitter on Monday, the former Health Minister said, “This ordinance is legally, politically and morally wrong. This is against the parliamentary system. The government should withdraw the ordinance at the earliest.” Leader Thapa said that the party cannot bear the burden of the wrong decision made by the government. “This is a care taker government. It cannot take decisions of far-reaching importance,” he said. The government has no legal and constitutional rights to issue the ordinance, Thapa added. He further went on to say that the government cannot withdraw the cases that are sub-judice in the court. Saying that the executive has intervened in the jurisdiction of the court and Parliament, Thapa, who was elected as a member of the House of Representatives from the recently held election, said that the government should withdraw the ordinance immediately. Chaudhary has been doing time in the central jail for masterminding the carnage at Tikapur, Kailali, which took the lives of eight people including a toddler in August 2015. A Cabinet meeting held on Sunday had decided to issue an ordinance to grant amnesty to anyone convicted of heinous crimes. Earlier today, another party General Secretary Bishwo Prakash Sharma had also objected to the government decision to bring the ordinance.