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Minister for Forests and Environment Pradeep Yadav has said that his Ministry is committed to addressing the climate change problems. Addressing the inaugural session of the First Assembly of Climate Action Campaign here today, he said that since becoming the minister he has made decisions on and run various programs for minimizing the climate change and greenhouse gas emission. Minister Yadav added that works have been moved ahead to that end on a war footing. “We have been working at a war-footing to tackle the problem of climate change and the cooperation of all sides is necessary in this connection,” he said. The Minister also on the occasion gave information on other works carried out by the Ministry towards mitigating climate change. Nepal is a state party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, the Minister said and reiterated that it has kept climate change mitigation as its main priority. He further said that policies, strategy, laws, regulations and plans on climate change minimization have been formulated while the National Climate Change Policy, 2076 is under implementation. Stating that the country has adopted the policy of zero emission of Green House Gas by 2045 AD, Minister Yadav informed that works have also been moved ahead toward meeting this target. He also pointed out the need of national and international support for implementing Nepal’s the ‘ambitious’ commitments and programs. The Forests and Environment Minister expressed regrets that although all the nations came together to addressing the climate change issues and also made various commitments for the same, they have not worked in keeping with these commitments. “All states are one on tackling the problem related to climate change and they have also expressed commitment to take various measures for mitigation and adaptation. However, this problem is not being handled as per the commitments and this is a matter of concern,” he said. Reminding that a mountainous and least developed country like Nepal is at high risk of adverse impact of climate change, Minister Yadav stressed on the need of the mountainous countries to work together for addressing the problem. More than 100 environment experts, representatives and youth of several organizations working in the climate change sector from Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan are participating in the two-day event.

The Nepal government on Wednesday expressed deep condolences over the loss of lives and property due to recent earthquakes in Sichuan, China. “Our heartfelt condolences at the tragic loss of lives and property due to the quakes,” read a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Our thoughts and prayers are with those families who lost their dear ones and are affected by this natural calamity,” the statement further read. At least 65 people died and dozens were injured after an earthquake hit China's southwestern Sichuan province on Monday.

A document describing a foreign government’s military defences, including its nuclear capabilities, was found in the FBI’s search last month of former US President Donald Trump’s Florida home, according to a report in the Washington Post.

The US newspaper, which cited people familiar with the matter, did not identify the foreign government discussed in the document, nor did it indicate whether the foreign government was friendly or hostile to the United States. Trump representatives and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Reuters news agency. The FBI recovered more than 11,000 government documents and photographs during its August 8 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, according to court records. According to the Post report, some of the seized documents detailed top secret US operations that required special clearances beyond top secret clearance, Aljazeera reported. Some of the documents are so restricted that even some of the Biden administration’s most senior national security officials were not authorised to review them, the Post said. National Intelligence Director Avril Haines said late last month she would conduct a “classification review” of the documents seized by investigators during the search of Mar-a-Lago, as well as “an Intelligence Community (IC) assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure of the relevant documents”. The US Justice Department is investigating Trump for removing government records from the White House after he left office in January 2021 and keeping them at his Florida estate, according to Aljazeera. Trump and his allies have denied any wrongdoing, saying at various times that some documents may have been inadvertently removed from the White House, or claiming that Trump had already declassified the documents. On Monday, a federal judge agreed to Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review records seized in the FBI search, a move that is likely to delay the Justice Department’s criminal investigation.

Despite several challenges plaguing the bilateral relationship of late, India and Nepal are all set to upgrade their bilateral trade and transit ties under which Kathmandu will be given access to some of the key Indian ports along with enhanced reach for its agriculture produce, ThePrint has reported.

Under its ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy the Narendra Modi government has decided that it will now allow Nepal to export and import goods from two of India’s strategic ports—Mundra Port in Gujarat and Dhamra Port in Odisha—under the yet to be revised transit treaty, negotiations for which are going on, diplomatic sources told ThePrint.

Such a move, according to sources, will not only give Nepal enhanced entry into the Indian markets but will also enable Kathmandu to use India as a gateway to access other markets in Southeast and Central Asian regions, said a source, who wished to not be identified. This has been a long-pending demand by Nepal, which had been pushing India for such an upgradation in both the trade as well transit treaties that were signed decades ago, The Print reported. The agreement was initially finalized as ‘The Treaty of Trade and Transit’ that was signed between the friendly neighbors in September, 1960. Thereafter, in 1978, the treaty was split into two—trade and transit. Both these treaties get automatically renewed every seven years. The last time these two treaties were reviewed was in October 2016, without any changes.

The trade treaty allows Nepal unilateral duty-free access to the Indian market even as India remains Nepal’s largest trading partner. However, Nepal continues to complain that it has not been able to penetrate the Indian markets for its good due to various non-tariff barriers.

Currently, Nepal is allowed to use only the ports of Kolkata and Visakhapatnam.