Submit your Article

The meeting of the National Assembly has been postponed yet again.

The meeting scheduled for Monday has been postponed in view of the risk of coronavirus, the Parliament Secretariat said.

Issuing a statement, Bharat Raj Gautam, General Secretary at the Federal Parliament Secretariat, said that the meeting called for Monday has been postponed. He said that the meeting has been postponed until further notice.

The meeting of the House of Representatives scheduled for today has also been postponed due to the risk of Covid-19.

A military court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has sentenced 51 people to death, several in absentia, in a mass trial over the 2017 murder of two United Nations experts in a troubled central region, Aljazeera reported.

Capital punishment is frequently pronounced in murder cases in DRC, but is routinely commuted to life imprisonment since the country declared a moratorium on executions in 2003.

Dozens of people have been on trial for more than four years over the killings that shook diplomats and the aid community, although key questions about the episode remain unanswered.

Zaida Catalan, a Swede, and Michael Sharp, an American, were investigating violence between government forces and an armed group in the central Kasai region in March 2017 when they were stopped along the road by armed men, marched into a field and killed.

Their bodies were found in a village on March 28, 2017, 16 days after they went missing. Congolese officials have blamed the killings on the Kamuina Nsapu armed group.

Unrest in the Kasai region had broken out in 2016, triggered by the killing of a local traditional chief.

About 3,400 people were killed, and tens of thousands of people fled their homes, before the conflict fizzled out in mid-2017.

Death penalty

Prosecutors at the military court in Kananga had demanded the death penalty against 51 of the 54 accused, 22 of whom are fugitives and are being tried in absentia.

The charges ranged from “terrorism” and “murder” to “participation in an insurrectional movement” and “the act of a war crime through mutilation”.

According to the official version of events, pro-Kamuina Nsapu armed fighters killed the pair on March 12, 2017, the day they went missing.

But in June 2017, a report handed to the UN Security Council described the killings as a “premeditated setup” in which members of state security may have been involved.

During the trial, prosecutors suggested that the fighters had carried out the murders to take revenge against the UN, which the sect accused of failing to prevent attacks against them by the army.

If so, those who purportedly ordered the act were not identified throughout the marathon proceedings.

Among the main accused was a colonel, Jean de Dieu Mambweni, who prosecutors say colluded with the militiamen, providing them with ammunition. He has denied the charges and his lawyers say the trial is a set-up.

Mambweni was among those originally facing the death penalty, but instead was sentenced to only 10 years in jail for “disobeying orders and failure to assist a person in danger”. His defence team said he would appeal the verdict.

Catalan’s sister, Elisabeth Morseby, said after the verdict that testimony in the case was of dubious reliability given how much time the defendants had spent together in prison and said the conviction of Mambweni was a smokescreen.

“In order for the truth to emerge, all suspects, including those higher up in the hierarchy, need to be questioned, which has not yet been done,” she told Reuters news agency.

The Mohan Baidya-led Communist Party of Nepal (Revolutionary Maoist) has decided to stage demonstrations across the country on Friday.

A Standing Committee meeting of the party held on Saturday decided to stage the demonstrations against the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and Indian encroachment among others.

Issuing a statement, party Chairman Mohan Baidya said that they have decided to stage the protests to protect the sovereignty.

North Korea conducted its largest missile test since 2017 on Sunday, sending a suspected intermediate-range ballistic missile soaring into space, seen as taking the nuclear-armed country a step closer to resuming long-range testing, Reuters reported.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff reported that a projectile believed to be a single ballistic missile was launched about 7:52 a.m. (2252 GMT) from North Korea's Jagang Province toward the ocean off its east coast.

South Korea's National Security Council (NSC), which convened a rare emergency meeting presided over by President Moon Jae-in, said the test appeared to involve an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), which North Korea has not tested since 2017.

The launch takes North Korea a step closer to fully scrapping a self-imposed moratorium on testing its longest-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), Moon said.

He noted that this month's flurry of missile tests was reminiscent of the heightened tensions in 2017, when North Korea conducted multiple nuclear tests and launched its largest missiles, including some that flew over Japan.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has said he is no longer bound by that moratorium, which included a stop to nuclear weapons tests and was announced in 2018 amid a flurry of diplomacy and summits with then-US President Donald Trump.

North Korea's rulers suggested this month they could restart those testing activities because the United States and its allies had shown no sign of dropping their "hostile policies."

"The United States condemns these actions and calls on (North Korea) to refrain from further destabilizing acts," the US military's Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement after Sunday's launch.

A US State Department spokesperson said the launch demonstrates the threat posed by North Korea's unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes, and called on Pyongyang to engage in "sustained and substantive" dialogue.

BIGGER MISSILES

It is unclear if IRBMs were included in Kim's moratorium, but those, too, have not been tested since 2017.

South Korea's JCS and Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno separately said the missile is estimated to have reached an altitude of 2,000km and flown for 30 minutes to a distance of 800km. IRBMs typically have ranges of 600 to 3,500 miles, while ICBMs have ranges exceeding 3,500 miles.

Missile experts said the data could indicate a test of an IRBM such as the Hwasong-12, which was last tested in 2017, or a new type.

"Regardless of whether it’s a IRBM or ICBM, this is a strategic missile of some sort and clearly not the same as the prior tests in the January 2022 test series to date," George William Herbert, an adjunct professor at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies and a missile consultant, said on Twitter.

The launch could make January the busiest ever for North Korea's missile programme, which analysts say is expanding and developing new capabilities despite strict sanctions and United Nations Security Council resolutions that ban the country's ballistic missile tests. read more

Its latest launches included a test of two short-range ballistic missiles and their warheads on Thursday, and an updated long-range cruise missile system tested on Tuesday.

'RAMPING UP TESTS'

The test comes less than a week before the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, which is North Korea's main political and economic partner. Pyongyang has said it would be skipping the Games because of the COVID-19 pandemic and "hostile forces."

"Kim seems to be ramping up tests in bid to pressure both Washington and Beijing over sanctions just ahead of the Olympics," said Uk Yang, research fellow at Center for Foreign Policy and National Security.

The tests would also appear to be the final nail in the coffin for Moon's last-ditch push for a peace deal with North Korea before he leaves office in May, Uk added.

"It's clear that North Korea is saying inter-Korean relations will need to start from scratch," he said.

In an address ahead of the New Year, Kim Jong Un called for bolstering the military with cutting-edge technology at a time when talks with South Korea and the United States have stalled. read more

Since then, North Korea has tested a dizzying array of weapon types, launch locations, and increasing sophistication as denuclearisation talks remain stalled. read more

Jagang Province was the site of two launches this month of what North Korea said was a "hypersonic missile," which could reach high speeds while flying and maneuvering at relatively low altitudes, but the ranges reported on Sunday were higher and farther than those earlier tests.

"The ballistic missile launch and the ones before it are a threat to our country, the region and the international community," Matsuno said. "This series of launches violate U.N. resolutions and we strongly protest this action by North Korea."

South Korea's NSC condemned the launch as a violation of the resolutions and a challenge to international peace efforts, using stronger language than previous tests, when it typically expressed "strong regret."

The tests appear aimed at modernizing North Korea's military, bolstering national pride ahead of several major North Korean holidays, and sending a message of strength as the country grapples with economic crises caused by sanctions and COVID-19 lockdowns, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha University in Seoul.

"The Kim regime hears external discussions of its domestic weaknesses and sees South Korea’s growing strength," he said. "So it wants to remind Washington and Seoul that trying to topple it would be too costly."

Kim visited a munitions factory last week, where he called for "an all-out drive" to produce "powerful cutting-edge arms," and its workers touted his devotion to "smashing ... the challenges of the US imperialists and their vassal forces" seeking to violate their right to self-defence.