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Police have opened fire to take a drug smuggler under control at Gothatar in the Capital on Wednesday.

The Kathmandu Valley Crime Investigation Office said that a team deployed from the Office opened fire in retaliation after the brown sugar smuggler tried to attack the security personnel.

The arrestee has been identified as Indian national Mohammad karim.

He sustained bullet injuries in his thigh.

Police have also arrested a Nepali national.

It has been learnt that police also recovered a pistol and its three rounds of bullets from Karim’s possession.

Further investigation into the incident is underway, police said.

A policeman, who had been deployed as a security guard of visiting the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres to the Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal, has died of altitude sickness.

The deceased has been identified as Assistant Sub-Inspector Tikaram Dhungana.

After complaining of health problems, Dhungana was taken to Pokhara by a rescue helicopter this morning.

Upon his admission to a hospital in Pokhara, he was declared dead at 9:40 am, said Deputy Superintendent of Police Shrawan Kumar BK.

Dhungana, who reached the Base Camp by a helicopter, complained of respiratory problems upon returning on foot, it has been said.

He was posted at the police post in Ghandruk of Annapurna Rural Municipality in Kaski district.

The UN Secretary General had reached the Base Camp on Tuesday morning.

Nepal Army and Nepal Police personnel were deployed for his security.

A man has been arrested again less than five months after he got amnesty on the Republic Day.

Chitwan police apprehended Ram Chandra Thapa (55) on the charge of allegedly issuing threats to a person to demand ransom.

President Ram Chandra Paudel, on the recommendation of the government, on May 29 on Republic Day had pardoned the remaining jail terms of Thapa.

Police had nabbed Thapa, a permanent resident of Hetauda Sub-Metropolitan-City-2, Makwanpur and currently residing Bharatpur Metropolitan City-9, on various charges time and again in the past.

He was detained on the charge of robbery recently and was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Chitwan police claimed that Thapa had demanded Rs 2.5 million with Somraj Subedi, an owner of a pharmacy at Pulchowk in Bharatpur Metropolitan City-9, by issuing threats.

“Thapa started asking for money with Subedi from Wednesday (October 15). Police arrested him on Monday,” DSP Bijay Raj Pandit of the District Police Office, Chitwan said.

The District Police Office, Chitwan by organizing a press conference on Tuesday said that Thapa was arrested from near Malpotchowk in Bharatpur-10.

DSP Pandit said that Thapa has asked Rs 2.5 million with Subedi.

Somraj Subedi said that Thapa had called him at around 6 pm on October 25 and asked for Rs 2.5 million by speaking in Hindi language.

“He threatened to kill me and my son for failing to pay the amount. The next day, he said that it would be fine if he was provided Rs 2 million,” he said. “Later, I informed the police and they arrested him.”

DSP Pandit said that it was the fifth time Thapa, who had come to collect the money, was arrested.

Ahead of COP28, which is taking place in the UAE from Nov 30 to Dec 12, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has pledged to draw the attention of the international community about the unfolding climate crisis in the Himalayas.

Nepal’s political leaders and environmentalists say COP28 is the best platform to highlight the issues of climate change in the Himalayas. Gutterres is likely to flag this issue at COP28, which will immensely help to internationalize the mountain agenda.

After a visit to the Everest region, he urged the international community to stop the madness of climate change. “The rooftops of the world are caving in,” he said, noting that Nepal had lost nearly a third of its ice in just over three decades. Nepal’s glaciers melted 65 faster in the last decade than in the previous one, said Guterres.

The UN chief further said, “Today from the base of Mt Everest, I saw for myself the terrible impacts of the climate crisis on the Himalayas. As temperatures rise, glacier melt increases—threatening the lives and livelihoods of entire communities.”

In the Everest region, the UN head held interactions with local communities and learned about the multifaceted impact of climate change in their daily lives and livelihoods.

Glaciers in the wider Himalayan and Hindu Kush ranges are a crucial water source for around 240 million people in the mountainous regions, as well as for another 1.65bn people in the South Asian and Southeast Asian river valleys below, according to AFP.

The glaciers feed 10 of the world’s most important river systems, including the Ganges, Indus, Yellow, Mekong and Irrawaddy, and directly or indirectly supply billions of people with food, energy, clean air and income, AFP reports.  “I am here today to cry out from the rooftop of the world: stop the madness,” Guterres further said.

“The glaciers are retreating, but we cannot. We must end the fossil fuel age,” he said. Hardest hit are the most vulnerable people and the world’s poorest countries, which have done little to contribute to the fossil fuel emissions that drive up temperatures.

“We must act now to protect people on the frontline, and to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, to avert the worst of climate chaos,” Guterres said. “The world can’t wait.”

“Melting glaciers means swollen lakes and rivers flooding, sweeping away entire communities,” he added. But all too soon, glaciers will dry up if change is not made, he warned. “In the future, major Himalayan rivers like the Indus, the Ganges and Brahmaputra could have massively reduced flows,” he said. “That spells a catastrophe.”

Though the impact of climate change on mountains is devastating, it does not figure prominently in the global summits like COP. For a long time, Nepal has been raising this issue in the international platforms asking all stakeholders to take this matter seriously.

While addressing the 78th UNGA, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal said climate vulnerable mountainous countries like Nepal have been bearing the severe brunt of climate change. 

The Himalayas are the source of freshwater for over two billion people, PM said: Global warming has induced rapid receding of ice in our Himalayas. It has not only eroded the health of our mountains but also endangered the lives and livelihoods of millions of people living downstream.