From Galwan Valley clash to Yarlung Zangbo River hydro project, 2020 brought to fore decades-old mistrust in India-China ties

The mistrust between India and China became clear when Prime Minister Narendra Modi pulled out of the China-backed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in November 2019.

But back then no one could have imagined that a few months down the line the two countries would be involved in a skirmish that would not only lead to casualties on both sides, but would also see them firing shots after nearly 45 years, breaking some of the time-tested methods and protocols to resolve border issues.

While the world was busy fighting against the novel coronavirus that has killed over 1.8 million and infected nearly 83 million, in June soldiers from India and China were involved in a skirmish that killed 20 on the Indian side and higher toll on the Chinese side.

After months of diplomatic and military level talks, the border issue between India and China remains unresolved and has entered into other spheres of relations. India has already banned several Chinese apps on grounds of security while reports have hinted at the govt mulling raising tariffs on Chinese products.

Growing tensions are also said to be the reason behind 39 Indian sailors who are stuck in two cargo ships anchored in Chinese waters with Beijing restricting them from unloading the cargo or change staff.

Though China has blamed COVID-19 rules and regulations for the delay, denying any links between the stranded Indian ship crew on its Chinese ports and its strained relations with India. Efforts to resolve the issue diplomatically are still underway, but it would be immature to accept Beijing's official version for the logjam, especially since other ships have been allowed to unload their cargo.

China's plan to build a hydropower project on the Yarlung Zangbo (the Tibetan name for the Brahmaputra) river in Tibet has raised anxieties in India. The project is a crucial part of China's goal of reaching a carbon emissions peak before 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060. As a riparian State, India has naturally raised concerns, but China has downplayed them by saying it would keep their interests in mind.

The border conflict, the tussle over the hydropower project on the Yarlung Zangbo River, and now the sailors row, all show one thing: that the decades-old mistrust between the two Asian giants is back. And with two nationalists leading the two countries, it's unlikely either of them will back off.

Decades-old mistrust comes to surface

India and China inherited their territorial disputes from the days of British colonial rule.

Three years after India's independence in 1947 and a year after the communists came to power in China, the new government in Beijing began strongly asserting its claims and repudiating earlier treaties, claiming they  were signed under duress, but which India maintains are fixed.

Beijing strengthened its resolve under Xi Jinping, China's most powerful leader in decades, who has sworn not to surrender even an inch of territory.

In the 1950s, China started building a strategic road on the uninhabited Aksai Chin Plateau to connect its restive regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. India objected and claimed Aksai Chin as part of Ladakh, itself belonging to the former principality of Kashmir, part of which is now occupied by Pakistan.

Relations were further strained after India allowed Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to establish a self-declared government-in-exile in the northern Indian town of Dharmsala after he fled his homeland in 1959 during an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.

The differences led to a bitter monthlong war in 1962. Firefights broke out again in 1967 and 1975, leading to more deaths on both sides. Both countries since adopted protocols including an agreement not to use firearms, but those protocols have fractured in this year's clashes. After nearly 45 years, the armies of the two countries fired warning shots following the clashes in June in Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh.

After the 1962 war, both economies have grown substantially, but China has far outpaced India while enjoying a large trade surplus with its neighbour.

The growing economic rivalry has added to territorial and geostrategic differences. India has tried to capitalise on China's rising labour costs, and deteriorating ties with the United States and Europe, to become a new base for foreign manufacturers.

India grew concerned after China recently built a road through Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir as part of Xi's signature foreign policy push, the multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, which India has vehemently opposed.

Meanwhile, India's growing strategic alliance with the US has ruffled feathers in Beijing, which sees the relationship as a counterweight against Chinas rise. Indian fears of Chinese territorial expansion are bolstered by the growing presence of the Chinese Navy in the Indian Ocean and Beijing's efforts to strengthen ties with not only Pakistan but also Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Beijing in the past few years has openly interfered in Nepal politics while Kathmandu has been continuously shuffling away from New Delhi. The current political crisis has revealed how deep these interferences run with China not only attempting to sway members of the ruling Nepal Communist Party but also the Opposition Nepal Congress Party.

Meanwhile, India is jockeying for strategic parity with China, massively ramping up its military infrastructure along the LAC. And so is China. The Galwan Valley clash was a direct result of infrastructure projects built by the two countries along the Line of Actual Control.

While India has built an all-weather Darbuk-Shyok-DBO road that not only improves access to the Daulat Beg Oldie airstrip (world’s highest landing ground) but also shortens the travel time from the airstrip to Leh to six hours from the current two days, China has reportedly started work on a helipad opposite the DBO airstrip. It is also building several other infrastructure projects, including a deep-buried complex, according to a report in India Today.

Already, India's decision to withdraw the special status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir and divide it into two federal territories, the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the Union Territory of Ladakh, has irked China.

According to The Associated Press, shortly after the Modi govt announced the decision, lawmakers in the ruling BJP began advocating taking control of some China-run areas, alarming Beijing. Their rhetoric continues even today.

What lies in the future

Border tensions between the two neighbours have persisted despite talks at military, diplomatic, and political levels. However, with strong nationalists leading both countries, the border has taken on a prominence not seen in years. And it's unlikely that the issue would be resolved anytime soon.

It remains to be seen if a full military conflict may emerge between the two countries, but both will continue with their efforts to win allies and improve their infrastructure along the LAC.

China is unlikely to dial down its salami-slicing tactics to incrementally gain territory more so in the post-pandemic world, which has presented with new opportunities to increase its influence on India's neighbours.

As for India, as the only country standing against China's military ambitions in Asia, it will be difficult to avoid conflicts such as the Galwan Valley clash or the one which has seen China using COVID-19 rules to held hostage of Indian sailors.

While Chinese soldiers maintain the occupation of Indian territory in Ladakh and up the infrastructure, the Indian Army has gained control of at least one unmanned mountain top, taking a tactical advantage over the PLA.

If diplomacy fails, guns will talk, but one hopes both countries will continue to show restraint.

With inputs from agencies

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Brexit, lockdown and a COVID-19 vaccine: UK witnesses a truly head-spinning day of change

London: Just before 3 pm on Wednesday, British lawmakers voted to ratify the Brexit trade agreement with the European Union, drawing a symbolic end to a debate that has sundered the country for more than four years.

Minutes later, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, rose in Parliament to announce that the government would put three-quarters of the population of England into the strictest level of lockdown, as a new variant of the coronavirus rampages across the country. The government also delayed the reopening of secondary schools in January.

It was a dizzying day of contrasts in Britain on Wednesday: a country propelling itself into a post-Brexit future, even as it remained in the grip of a pandemic that has recently entered a frightening new phase, exulting in a newly authorized British-made vaccine while racing to vaccinate its people against the virus.

The 521-73 vote came after a rushed, single day of debate, just a day before the agreement is scheduled to come into force. No sooner had the House of Commons approved the deal and sent it to the House of Lords, which ratified it later in the day, than attention swung back to the increasingly desperate attempts to curb the virus.

Even on the pandemic, however, the news was mixed.

Earlier Wednesday, British regulators approved a second vaccine, developed in labs at Oxford University and manufactured by AstraZeneca, which officials said gave hope for an end to the plague of infections. Hancock hailed it as a prized example of British scientific achievement but warned that it would not spare the country several more difficult weeks before the doses become widely available.

“Today is a day of mixed emotions,” Hancock said, understating the head-spinning events that unfolded with every hour.

For Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the penultimate day of 2020 summed up a year of unending turbulence. It began in January with Britain’s formal departure from the EU — a moment of triumph for a leader who won a landslide election victory by promising to “Get Brexit done” — but quickly slid into crisis, as Johnson repeatedly reversed himself in dealing with the coronavirus after being hospitalised himself.

The decision to delay the reopening of most secondary schools and colleges in England for two weeks, until 18 January represented yet another reversal, since the government had vowed to keep schools open regardless of what else it shut down. The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, said most primary schools would open on schedule on 4 January.

Public health experts generally backed the government’s action, although some said schools should be closed altogether or delayed for two weeks to reassess the trajectory of infections, which have soared since the emergence last month of a more rapidly transmissible variant of the virus.

“The numbers are too high now,” said Devi Sridhar, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh.

Britain reported 50,023 new cases Wednesday, and 981 deaths, the highest number of fatalities since April. All told, the country has recorded 72,548 deaths from the virus, the highest number in Europe.

The government estimated that 60 percent of the new cases were from the variant, which has spread to other countries in Europe and was detected this week in Colorado. The sudden surge in cases has upended the government’s plan to keep schools open as it began a massive rollout of vaccines.

The new rules will greatly expand, starting Thursday, the areas of England under the highest tier level of restrictions, Tier 4, closing nonessential businesses, prohibiting mixing between households and telling people they should generally stay at home. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which set their own rules, have similar limits in place.

Speaking at an end-of-day news conference, Johnson balanced his enthusiasm about the new vaccine, which he has seized on as emblematic of an enterprising post-Brexit Britain, with a sober recognition that the country remained in deep crisis. He declined to rule out further changes in schools, which had been, until now, one of the only areas where the government had stuck to its guns for several months.

“My emotions, I suppose, are mixture of frustration, plus optimism, equals grim determination,” Johnson said.

It was a stark contrast from the confident prime minister who opened the debate on the trade deal in the morning by extolling it as a way to “take back control of our money, our borders, our laws and our waters.”

“We now seize this moment,” he said, “to forge a fantastic new relationship with our European neighbors based on free trade and friendly cooperation.”

Despite the lack of time for scrutiny, the ease with which the agreement passed through Parliament was a departure from the many knife-edge votes held before last year’s election, when the House of Commons was gridlocked over Brexit.

Conservative lawmakers, including a caucus of hard line Brexit supporters, rallied behind Johnson. His success in defusing the Brexiteer fringe of his party was notable, given that rifts over the EU have vexed the party for decades and Britain made substantial concessions to Brussels in the talks.

William Cash, a Conservative lawmaker who has spent his career opposing European integration, described the deal as a “true turning point in our history” and said Johnson had “saved our democracy.”

Even the Opposition Labour Party ordered its lawmakers to support the agreement on the basis that it was better than nothing, although more than 30 refused to vote for an agreement that creates new barriers to trade with European nations.

Critics note that Johnson’s deal secures little for Britain’s services sector and means added bureaucracy for British businesses exporting to continental Europe that will have to make millions of additional customs declarations.

Former prime minister Theresa May noted that lawmakers spent months rejecting every previous attempt to broker a trade deal with the European Union. On Wednesday, lawmakers approved a deal in a few hours that May said was not as good as the proposals drawn up last year by her government.

Still, Johnson achieved his political objective by increasing the country’s ability to exert its sovereignty and make decisions without being restricted by EU institutions like its Court of Justice.

Some have pointed to the swift approval of the AstraZeneca vaccine, as well as the Pfizer vaccine a few weeks ago, as a testament to that new freedom, though Britain gave those approvals while still bound by EU rules. Those rules permit all member states to approve vaccines before the bloc’s health regulator during a pandemic, but only Britain has done so.

Britain, analysts said, would have felt more pressure not to get ahead of the EU had it still been a member.

The trade agreement has no shortage of critics. Fishing workers have accused Johnson of capitulating to the EU over fishing rights. Business leaders worry about the bureaucratic burdens resulting from the deal, and that it does little for the services sector, which accounts for about four-fifths of the British economy.

Johnson, however, dismissed suggestions that the new arrangements would cause headaches for British companies.

“From the point of view of UK exporters, for instance, they’ll now have the advantage that they’ll only have one set of forms they have to fill out for export to around the whole world,” he said in an interview with the BBC, glossing over the fact that millions of new customs forms that were not required while Britain was part of the European trading bloc will have to be completed.

Opponents of Brexit, Johnson said, often warned that Britain could not diverge from the EU’s rules and still trade freely with the bloc: in other words, it could not have its cake and eat it, too.

“That has turned out not to be true,” the prime minister said. “I want you to see that this is a cakist treaty.”

Mark Landler and Stephen Castle c.2020 The New York Times Company

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Pakistan arrests 14 over demolition of Hindu temple in northwestern town of Karak

Peshawar: Pakistani police arrested 14 people in overnight raids after a Hindu temple was set on fire and demolished by a mob led by supporters of a radical Islamist party, officials said Thursday.

The temple's destruction Wednesday in the northwestern town of Karak drew condemnation from human rights activists and the minority Hindu community.

Local police said they detained at least 14 people in overnight raids and more raids were underway to arrest individuals who participated or provoked the mob to demolish the temple.

The attack occurred after members of the Hindu community received permission from local authorities to renovate the temple. According to witnesses, the mob was led by a local cleric and supporters of Pakistan's radical Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party.

Pakistan’s minister for religious affairs, Noorul Haq Qadri, called the attack on the temple “a conspiracy against sectarian harmony." He took to Twitter Thursday, saying attacks on places of worship of minority religious groups are not allowed in Islam and “protection of religious freedom of minorities is our religious, constitutional, moral and national responsibility."

The incident comes weeks after the government allowed Hindu residents to build a new temple in Islamabad on the recommendation of a council of clerics.

Although Muslims and Hindus generally live peacefully together in Pakistan, there have been other attacks on Hindu temples in recent years. Most of Pakistan’s minority Hindus migrated to India in 1947 when India was divided by Britain’s government.

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'Beginning of wonderful friendship': Boris Johnson signs post-Brexit trade agreement with EU after MPs back deal

London: Britain and the EU signed a post-Brexit trade deal on Wednesday, sealing their drawn-out divorce in the closing hours before the UK definitively ends its half-century European experiment.

Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, the heads of the European Commission and European Council, smiled at a brief televised ceremony to put their names to the 1,246-page Trade and Cooperation Agreement in Brussels.

"It has been a long road. It's time now to put Brexit behind us. Our future is made in Europe," von der Leyen said.

The leather-bound document was then flown by the Royal Air Force to London for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to add his signature, as the UK parliament held a rushed debate to ratify the deal in the dwindling time left.

Johnson gave a thumbs up after inking what he described as "the beginning of what will be a wonderful relationship between the UK and our friends and partners in the EU".

Britain will leave the European single market and customs union at 11:00 pm (2300 GMT) on Thursday, the end of a post-Brexit transition period marked by tortuous trade negotiations that culminated in the Christmas Eve deal.

Introducing an 85-page bill to implement the pact, Johnson told the House of Commons that it heralded a new chapter for Britain and the EU as "sovereign equals, joined by friendship, commerce, history, interests, and values".

The lower house voted overwhelmingly by 521-73 to back the deal, despite serious opposition misgivings, and the bill then passed the House of Lords late Wednesday in an unusually rapid one-day procedure.

London and Brussels would work "hand in glove whenever our values and interests coincide while fulfilling the sovereign wish of the British people to live under their own sovereign laws made by their own sovereign parliament", Johnson added.

Anxious wait

Michel echoed the sentiment in Brussels, vowing the two sides would work "shoulder to shoulder" on major issues, including climate change and future health pandemics.

Johnson's government only published the accompanying UK legislation on Tuesday afternoon, less than 24 hours before the debate began in parliament, underscoring the frantic dash to clear the decks in time.

The last-ditch deal averted the prospect of a cliff-edge separation which would have seen quotas and tariffs slapped on all cross-Channel trade, exacerbating strains in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, which has hit Britain harder than most.

But British fishermen have accused the government of selling them out, while services, accounting for 80 percent of the UK economy,  were largely omitted.

The City of London financial hub faces an anxious wait to learn on what basis it can continue dealing with Europe in the future.

Theresa May, whose three-year Brexit-dominated premiership ended in 2019 after she failed to win support for a closer future relationship with the bloc, voiced unease.

"We have a deal in trade which benefits the EU, but not a deal in services which would have benefited the UK," she told MPs.

'Thin deal'

However, an influential faction of arch-Brexiteers in Johnson's ruling Conservatives gave their blessing to the EU agreement on Tuesday, and the main opposition Labour party also gave its reluctant backing.

"This is a thin deal, it's got many flaws, but a thin deal is better than no deal," Labour leader Keir Starmer told MPs, accusing other opposition parties of staging an irresponsible protest vote.

Lawmakers from the pro-European Liberal Democrats and Scottish National Party voted against -- with the SNP using the issue to push for a fresh referendum on independence for Scotland.

In Edinburgh, the SNP-dominated Scottish Parliament declined to give its own consent to the Brexit deal, although First Minister Nicola Sturgeon acknowledged that would not affect the passage of the UK bill.

The agreement's impact will play out in the coming months, with UK businesses braced for customs red tape they have avoided for decades in cross-Channel trade.

Meanwhile, from 1 January, there will no longer be free movement of people from Britain to the EU or vice versa.

Under the compressed legislative calendar, the European Parliament will debate the Brexit deal after the New Year, but is expected to eventually nod it through.

Pending that, EU member states gave their green light on Monday for the accord to take provisional effect before the New Year's Eve deadline.

 

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Happy New Year 2021: Know which place ushers into new year first and which comes last

While for the first time in years, the New Year celebrations are going to be muted down to help control the spread of a fatal virus, a new year remains to be the harbinger of hope and positive changes, hence 2021 will be welcomed across the globe.

Due to the time difference across zones, clocks would strike 12 at different times and celebrate the new year hours before and after. Here is a chart to know which places are the first to usher in 2021 and which places will be the last:

Tonga

This archipelago on the South Pacific is actually the first to ring in the New Year, reported The Sun. Tonga is seven and half hours ahead of India and thus will celebrate New Year at 4.30 pm IST on 31 December.

According to Time and Date.com, Samoa and Christmas Island/ Kiribati are also one of the first places to celebrate a new year.

Baker Island and Howland Island

When the celebrations have been nearly over across the world, these small outlying islands in the United States get to begin their festivities. Baker Island and Howland Island will observe New Year at 5.30 pm IST on 1 January, as per a Hindustan Times report.

Just before them are the American Samoa Islands that celebrate New Year at 11 am GMT or 4.30 pm IST on 1 January.

In the middle of these extremes, New Zealand is one of the earliest countries to get their celebrations started. Soon, followed by most of Australia as the famous firecracker show from Sydney greets out TV screens every year.

After the southern hemisphere, Japan, Korea and a few other nations ring in the new year being about three hours and thirty minutes ahead of Indian Standard Time. China, Philippines, and Singapore soon follow up an hour later, with Thailand, Cambodia and large parts of Indonesia in tow. It is shortly after Bangladesh and Nepal, that India and Sri Lanka usher in the new year. Pakistan follows half an hour later.

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India’s 'strategic inaction’ might be best policy as China ties itself up in knots trying to untangle Nepal’s mess

For a country that claims “it never interferes in the internal affairs of other countries”  — a claim that sounds increasingly incredulous — China’s meddling in Nepal during the Himalayan state’s latest political crisis has been blatant and unapologetic.

With its rise in power, Beijing has appeared increasingly disinterested in sticking to one of the key tenets of its foreign policy that professes “abstention from intervention or interference in the internal affairs of another country”, as spelt out by former premier Zhou Enlai at the 1955 Bandung conference.

To a certain extent, it is inevitable for an emerging superpower to throw its weight around and intervene in the domestic politics and policies of other nations to protect its burgeoning interests. China, the presumptive superpower, is no exception. Even so, its recent machinations in Nepal carry an air of desperation as it seeks to navigate the complex dynamics of Nepal’s domestic politics, betraying a sense of urgency and frustration as its carefully laid schemes are at danger of coming unstuck.

The grammar of chaos and anarchy that dominates the multi-party democratic system in Nepal is seemingly getting the better of Beijing’s carefully constructed plans. China had engineered a merger of rival communist outfits — Pushpa Kamal Dahal-led CPN (Maoist Centre) and the KP Sharma Oli-led CPN-UML — in 2018 to put in place a China-friendly government in Kathmandu to safeguard its interests and investments. For a while, it worked swimmingly.

The ruling Nepal Communist Party led by Prime Minister Oli opened the door to Chinese investments worth billions of dollars and Belt and Road connectivity projects. In 2019, Nepal signed a transit protocol with China that allowed it access to seven Chinese sea and land ports for third-country trade, reducing dramatically its dependence on Indian ports.

China kicked off 35 projects under the BRI framework in Nepal that includes infrastructure development, energy, construction of integrated check posts, free trade area and irrigation. Chinese money flew in for a series of hydropower projects along with an investment of $130 million in a cement plant in Nepal that is expected to produce 3,000 tonnes of cement each day, notes professor Hari Bansh Jha in VIF.

Besides, the groundwork for the mega trans-Himalayan Kyirong-Kathmandu-Pokhara-Lumbini railway project covering 287 km is already underway that alone may set Nepal back by $8 billion — one-third of the nation’s GDP. Nepal is hungry for FDI but the cost for many of these projects are prohibitive, and therefore the risk of Nepal falling into China’s debt-trap like so many other Asian nations, is high. In the last fiscal, over 90 percent of Nepal’s FDI came from a single source — China. Beijing pledged nearly $500 million in financial aid to Nepal in October 2019 when Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a visit.

This pouring of massive resources bought Beijing unprecedented clout in Kathmandu. Subsequently, Nepalese prime minister Oli’s pro-China tilt and policies came along with antagonistic positions against India.

In June this year, Nepal’s Parliament passed an amendment to the Nepalese constitution, laying claim over the disputed territories of Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura — that are under India’s control for the last 60 years  — as part of its new map. Nepal’s unilateral cartographic aggression was accompanied by frequent provocative statements from Oli who increasingly relied on anti-India nationalism to mitigate factionalism within his party and political challenges from rival Dahal (Prachanda), the NCP co-chair and a former prime minister. So dramatic has been Oli’s tilt towards Beijing that while he conjured up fantastic charges against India, he dismissed off-hand allegations made by Nepal’s Opposition leader that China was encroaching on Nepali land in Humla district and building infrastructure to solidify its claim.

Things were going well for China, but the factionalism within NCP became deeper due to Oli’s refusal to honour the power-sharing pact with Prachanda. Poor administrative response to the pandemic, Nepal’s economic downturn, rising unemployment and Oli’s sharp turn towards authoritarianism upstaged the balance of power. The power tussle between Oli and Prachanda resulted in a situation where the Oli faction became a minority in the ruling NCP and the prime minister faced increasing pressure to step down.

Sensing that his position was becoming untenable, beleaguered Oli in a stunning move that has since been called a Constitutional coup, dissolved the lower house of Parliament on 20 December, two years short of its five-year tenure.

The proximate cause of the move seemed to be Oli’s attempts to appoint former home secretary Prem Kumar Rai as the chief of Nepal’s top anti-corruption watchdog. Oli’s rivals suspect that the prime minister was planning to target Prachanda and his associates.

In the end, Oli had lost the majority in key sections of the ruling party: central secretariat, standing committee and the central committee. Oli had calculated that if he is forced to relinquish the chair, he won’t let Prachanda sit on it either. Facing resignation and a no-confidence motion from 90 lawmakers, Oli dissolved the Parliament and got President Bidhya Debi Bhandari to announce polls in April-May 2021.

In a subsequent address to the nation, Oli defended dissolution of the Parliament. He blamed his rivals for not allowing the government to function and said that instead of “unfair practices behind closed doors and reach a compromise” he felt that a “fresh mandate is the best democratic alternative.”

Nepal was thrown into political turmoil that may last months. This week, each of the rival political stakeholders — the Prachanda-Madhav Kumar Nepal-led faction of the NCP, Opposition party Nepali Congress led by Sher Bahadur Deuba and even the Janata Samajwadi Party took out separate protests. According to a BBC report quoting the police, at least 10,000 people were on the streets to participate in one of the marches, one of the most intense protests the country has seen since Oli dissolved parliament.

While protests were happening on the streets, the Supreme Court was busy hearing a bunch of petitions filed against Oli’s move to dissolve the Parliament. The court’s ruling may further add to Nepal’s instability. As Sudha Ramachandran writes in The Diplomat, should the Supreme Court “declare the dissolution of parliament as constitutionally valid, then Oli will continue at the helm of the interim government until general elections. Protests may then gather further momentum. The possibility of Oli deploying force to quell the unrest cannot be ruled out. He is also likely to get ordinances passed to strengthen, perhaps even prolong, his grip over power. All this means a period of prolonged uncertainty for Nepal.”

This is bad news for China that has repeatedly stepped in whenever the ruling NCP has been threatened by internal strife. Hou Yanqi, China’s activist envoy in Kathmandu has spent the better part of her tenure ensuring that the fragile peace holds up between the warring factions of ruling NCP. Just in May, she held a series of meetings with the NCP leaders without informing foreign ministry officials in contravention of diplomatic code. No institutional records were kept of those meetings that were explained as “both sides exchanging views on fighting Covid-19 pandemic” by Chinese embassy officials.

During a recent visit to Kathmandu to “bolster military cooperation between Nepal and China”, Chinese defence minister Wei Fenghe — hastily sent by Beijing following a series of high-level visits by India — declared that China “firmly supports Nepal to safeguard its national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

China presumably has little confidence in its own words. Notwithstanding Wei’s solemn proclamations, it has taken upon itself the responsibility of “safeguarding Nepal’s sovereignty”. Since the dissolution of the Parliament by Oli, China pressed Hou into service again who met with the President and the bickering factions without much success.

Beijing’s next move was to rush a four-member delegation led by Guo Yezhou, vice-minister of the International Liaison Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC). The CPC’s foreign affairs department runs as a parallel power centre, sharing much of the work that China’s foreign ministry does, only at a more granular level and outside the ambit of formal international relations.

A unique tool of the ruling CPC, the International Liaison Department has been described by India’s former foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale as “virtually a parallel foreign office, which not only systematically cultivates foreign personalities and their families in traditional ways but also plants its people as diplomats inside Chinese embassies so they can influence politics and policies in democracies under legal cover. Originally designed to work with fellow communist parties, it’s become a much broader group targeting any organization it thinks might prove a useful tool.”

The sending of Gou — who was apparently instrumental in forming the alliance between Oli and Prachanda’s Communist outfits in 2018 and knows all the Nepalese leaders well — is an indication that China is feeling threatened by the turn of events and wants to control the outcome.

Beijing’s preferred outcome would be to prevent a vertical split in the ruling NCP and resolve the issue so that the clock can be turned back. China is keen to preserve and consolidate the gains that it enjoyed under the NCP government in Kathmandu and perceives that in the case of elections, the Oli or the Prachanda factions will not be able to return to power on their own in the 275-seat House without taking help from Deuba’s NC, that is perceived to be in India’s corner. China is therefore anxious to prevent a split.

Reports indicate that the Chinese are offering large amounts of money to the bickering sides to ensure a patch up and during the spate of meetings with Nepalese leaders of every stripe, the Chinese delegation has made it clear that Beijing is “not happy with Oli’s move to dissolve the Parliament leading to split in the largest party (that) might serve the interest of the southern neighbour (India),” reports Times of India. Beijing has also warned that this turmoil would “negatively impact the China-funded projects and investments in Nepal”.

The result of frantic meetings with the warring NCP leaders is unclear. Some reports suggest a twin solution of either reinstating of the House and reunification of the factions or contesting mid-term elections through an alliance. Media in Nepal reports of a “unity formula” to keep the party intact.

The bottom line is that China wants the Communist factions to stay united but even after moving mountains, engaging with Nepalese leaders over four days, threatening sticks, dangling carrots and moving mountains, China’s preferred outcome seems out of reach. It seems the high-level Chinese delegation that returned on Wednesday, failed to ensure a patch up and subsequently China might be looking at recalibrating its Nepal policy.

China’s frustration with the turn of events is evident. Its foreign ministry spokesperson forgot its commitment of not interfering in internal affairs of other nations and advised Nepal to “properly manage internal differences” by “looking at the big picture”, which presumably translates to ‘preserving Chinese interests’.

China’s state-run media is piqued that Chinese interference in Nepal’s domestic politics is a talking point in India. Global Times, for instance, tied itself up in knots while defending Chinese moves in Nepal. In an article, it claimed CPC “always upholds principles of non-interference”, then claimed China’s role in solving Nepal’s “intra-party conflicts” is “entirely reasonable and legitimate”, then ended up declaring that it is none of India’s business.

India has so far watched the developments carefully from the sidelines, calling the dissolution of Parliament “internal matters for Nepal to decide as per its democratic processes.” This is one of the rare instances where ‘strategic inactivity’ might be the best option to pursue. Instead of wading into the mess, it would be better for India — the favourite whipping boy of Nepalese politics — to let the crisis play out.

This is not to say that China, for all its apparent discomfort at this stage, is out of the game in Nepal. It is far too invested and possesses enough influence to still force a favourable outcome. What is of note, however, is that frequent and intense political interference in domestic politics of sovereign states may not always be a useful strategy. This holds true for India as well.

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Yearender 2020: From Pranab Mukherjee, Sushant Singh Rajput to Diego Maradona, prominent personalities who passed away this year

The year 2020 was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic which saw millions of people around the world losing their livelihoods, and often their lives. Apart from them, the world also lost some of the most influential and celebrated people due to a variety of reasons. From politicians to sportspersons, authors, musicians and actors, the year 2020 saw some of the biggest stars departing the world.

In January, news broke of both American professional basketball player Kobe Bryant and celebrated author Mary Higgins Clark passing away. The celebrated sports star died when the helicopter, flying him, and seven others, including his daughter, slammed into a hillside outside Los Angeles on 26 January.

Mary Higgins Clark breathed her last at the age of 92 on 31 January in Naples, Florida, of natural causes.

February saw celebrated Bengali actor and former All India Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Pal passing away after a cardiac arrest. Legendary actor Kirk Douglas, who was known for films like Spartacus and Lust for Life, passed away at the ripe old age of 103 as well.

In the month of March, legendary footballer PK Banerjee, who was suffering from respiratory problems due to pneumonia passed away, while the world also saw former UN Chief Javier Perez de Cuellar's death as well.

April saw three deaths that shook the world. Veteran star Rishi Kapoor passed away after a prolonged battle with cancer, while the versatile Irrfan Khan, known for his varied portrayals and nuanced performances too breathed his last. The actor was suffering from colon cancer. April also saw the death of legendary footballer Chuni Goswami.

Renowned astrologer Bejan Daruwalla passed away in May at a private hospital in Ahmedabad. The month also saw music composer Wajid Khan passing away due to kidney ailments.

The biggest news in June was the untimely demise of popular actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Kannada film actor Chiranjeevi Sarja died due to a cardiac arrest as well.

June also saw the death of filmmaker Basu Chatterjee, who was best known for Choti Si Baat, Rajnigandha and Baaton Baaton Mein.

Choreographer Saroj Khan breathed her last in July. Veteran actor Jagdeep had appeared in more than 400 films but is best known for his role as Soorma Bhopali in Sholay.

The month of August saw Rajya Sabha member and former leader of Samajwadi Party, Amar Singh pass away from kidney ailments. He was undergoing treatment in Singapore. Renowned poet and lyricist Rahat Indori passed away in August as well.

August saw two more notable deaths. One was legendary classical vocalist Pandit Jasraj, while the second was former president Pranab Mukherjee.

In September, veteran politician Jaswant Singh breathed his last. The month also saw Telugu actor Jaya Prakash Reddy passed away after cardiac arrest. Another shocker was the demise of legendary singer SP Balasubrahmanyam. He was 74 and had contracted the coronavirus. US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who became the court's second female justice. Known for being a towering women's rights champion, she passed away at the age of 87.

October saw the world lose its favourite James Bond, as Sir Sean Connery breathed his last. He died in his sleep while in the Bahamas. He was 90.

Bengali actor and thespian Soumitra Chatterjee passed away in the month of November. He had been tested positive for COVID-19 after which he was hospitalised and was 'critical'. The legendary actor was felicitated with the Padma Bhushan, Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, besides winning three National Film Awards. He was also conferred with France's highest civilian award, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Football fans were left in shock when Argentine football player Maradona bid adieu to the world on 26 November 2020. He was 60. The player died of a heart attack. Earlier in the month, Maradona had undergone brain surgery.

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China clamps down on hidden hunt for coronavirus origins; AP probe reveals pattern of govt secrecy, top-down control

Mojinag: Deep in the lush valleys of southern China lies the entrance to a mine shaft that once harboured bats with the closest known relative to COVID-19.

The area is of intense interest because it may hold clues to the origins of the coronavirus that has killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide but has become a black hole of no information because of political sensitivity.

A bat research team that visited recently had their samples confiscated, two people familiar with the matter said. And a team of Associated Press journalists was tailed by plainclothes police in multiple cars who blocked access to sites in late November.

More than a year since the first known person was infected with the coronavirus, an AP investigation shows the Chinese government is strictly controlling all research into its origins while promoting fringe theories that the pandemic originated elsewhere.

The government is monitoring scientists’ findings and mandating that the publication of any research first be approved by a new task force managed by China’s cabinet under direct orders from President Xi Jinping, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press. A rare leak from within the government, the dozens of pages of unpublished documents confirm what many have long suspected: the clampdown comes from the top.

The AP’s investigation was based on interviews with Chinese and foreign scientists and officials, along with public notices, leaked emails, and the unpublished documents from China’s State Council and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It reveals a pattern of government secrecy and top-down control that has been evident throughout the pandemic.

“They only select people they can trust, those that they can control,” said an expert who works with the China CDC, declining to be identified out of fear of retribution.

China’s foreign ministry said in a fax that “the novel coronavirus has been discovered in many parts of the world” and research should be carried out “on a global scale".

China’s leaders aren’t alone in politicising research into how the pandemic started. In April, US president Donald Trump shelved a US-funded project to identify dangerous animal diseases across Asia. Research into COVID-19’s origins is critical to preventing future epidemics, and the move severed ties between Chinese and US scientists. Although the World Health Organization says it will send a team to China in January to investigate, its members and agenda had to be approved by China.

The probe into how the coronavirus first emerged started in the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, a sprawling complex where many of the first human cases were detected.

In mid-December last year, Huanan vendor Jiang Dafa noticed people were falling ill, including a worker who helped clean carcasses at a stall who later died.

At first, the China CDC moved swiftly.

On 1 January, the market was ordered shut, barring vendors from fetching their belongings, Jiang said. Internal China CDC data shows that by 10 January, researchers were sequencing environmental samples.

In late January and early February, as the virus spread rapidly, Chinese scientists published a burst of research papers on COVID-19. Then one paper proposed without concrete evidence that the virus could have leaked from a Wuhan laboratory near the market. It was later retracted, but it raised the need for image control.

An internal notice from a China CDC lab issued on 24 February put in new approval processes to standardise publication under “important instructions” from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Other notices ordered CDC staff not to share any data, specimens, or other information related to the coronavirus with outside institutions or individuals.

In early March, China’s cabinet, the State Council, centralised all COVID-19 publication under a special task force. The notice, obtained by the AP and marked “not to be made public”, was sweeping in scope, applying to all universities, companies, and medical and research institutions. It said communication and publication of research had to be orchestrated like “a game of chess” under instructions from Xi and guided by propaganda and public opinion teams.

The order went on to warn that those who publish without permission, “causing serious adverse social impact, shall be held accountable".

After the secret orders, the tide of research papers slowed to a trickle. Though the China CDC returned to collect some 2,000 samples from the market over the following months, nothing was published.

On 25 May, China CDC chief George Gao said no animal samples from the market had tested positive, ruling it out as the source.

With the market proving a dead-end, scientists turned their attention to hunting for the virus at its likely source: bats.

Nearly a thousand miles away from Wuhan, bats inhabit a maze of underground limestone caves in Yunnan province. The coronavirus’ genetic code is strikingly similar to bat coronaviruses, and scientists suspect COVID-19 jumped into humans from a bat or an intermediary animal.

Chinese scientists quickly started testing animals suspected of carrying the coronavirus. Records show scientist Xia Xueshan received a 1.4 million RMB ($214,000) grant to screen animals in Yunnan for COVID-19. In February, his team took samples from animals including bats, snakes, bamboo rats, and porcupines.

But the government restrictions soon kicked in; data on the samples has not been released.

Today, the caves in Yunnan home to the closest viral relative of the coronavirus are under close watch. Security agents tailed the AP team in three locations and stopped journalists from visiting the cave where researchers identified the bats responsible for SARS.

Chinese state media has instead aggressively promoted theories suggesting the virus originated elsewhere, such as via frozen seafood, a hypothesis WHO and others have dismissed.

The government is also limiting and controlling the search for the first human cases through the re-testing of flu samples.

Hundreds of Chinese hospitals collect samples from patients with flu-like symptoms, storing them for years. The samples could easily be tested again for COVID-19, although politics could determine whether the results are made public, said Ray Yip, the founding director of the China CDC.

Researchers in the US, Italy, France, and elsewhere have already combed through some of their archived samples to identify the earliest cases of COVID-19 in late 2019. But in China, scientists have only published retrospective data from two Wuhan flu surveillance hospitals, out of at least 18 in Hubei province and more than 500 across the country.

The little information that has trickled out suggests COVID-19 was circulating beyond Wuhan in 2019, a finding that could raise awkward questions for Chinese officials about their early handling of the outbreak.

Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance said identifying the pandemic’s source should not be used to assign guilt.

“We’re all part of this together,” he said. “Until we realize that, we’re never going to get rid of this problem.”

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Argentina's Senate passes bill legalising abortion in landmark moment for women's rights

Buenos Aires: Argentina’s Senate passed a law legalising abortion in Pope Francis' homeland early Wednesday after a marathon 12-hour session, a victory for the women’s movement that has been fighting for the right for decades.

The vote means that abortion will be legalised up to the 14th week of pregnancy, and also will be legal after that time in cases of rape or danger to the mother’s life. It will have repercussions across a continent where the procedure is largely illegal.

The measure was passed with 38 votes in favor, 29 against and one abstention, after a session that began late Tuesday.

It was already approved by Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies and has the support of President Alberto Fernández, meaning the Senate vote was its final hurdle.

“Safe, legal and free abortion is now the law,” Fernández tweeted after the vote, noting that it had been an election pledge.

“Today, we are a better society that expands women's rights and guarantees public health,” he added.

Argentina is the largest Latin American country to legalise abortion and the vote was being closely watched. With the exceptions of Uruguay, Cuba, Mexico City, Mexico's Oaxaca state, the Antilles and French Guiana, abortion remains largely illegal across the region.

Outside the Senate, pro- and anti-abortion rights activists gathered, with the bill’s supporters wearing the colour green that represents their abortion rights movement. Backers waved green flags as Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who presided over the debate, announced the result, shouting “legal abortion in the hospital” as the measure was passed.

Argentina until now has penalised women and those who help them abort. The only exceptions were cases involving rape or a risk to the health of the mother, and activists complain even these exceptions are not respected in some provinces.

Just hours before the Senate session began Tuesday, the pope weighed in, tweeting: "The Son of God was born an outcast, in order to tell us that every outcast is a child of God. He came into the world as each child comes into the world, weak and vulnerable, so that we can learn to accept our weaknesses with tender love.”

A previous abortion bill was voted down by Argentine lawmakers in 2018, but this time it was backed by the center-left government. The outcome of the latest vote, however, had still been considered uncertain. That was partly due to the fact that the political parties, including the governing Peronist movement, gave their legislators freedom to vote as they chose. Two of the 72 senators were absent, and 43 of the remaining 70 senators were men.

Argentina’s feminist movement has been demanding legal abortion for more than 30 years and activists say the bill's approval could mark a watershed in Latin America, where the Roman Catholic Church's influence has long dominated.

“Our country is a country of many contradictions,” said Ester Albarello, a psychiatrist with a network of health professionals that supports the bill, who was among the demonstrators outside the congressional building. “It is the only one in the world that brought members of its genocidal military dictatorship to justice with all the guarantees. But we still don’t have legal abortion. Why? Because the church is together with the State.”

Also outside the legislature, a group that calls its members “defenders of the two lives” set up an altar with a crucifix under a blue tent.

Opponents of the bill, separated by a barrier from its backers, watched glumly as the vote unfolded.

“These politicians aren’t representing the majority,” said opponent Luciana Prat, an Argentine flag covering her shoulders. “In all the polls, people are against this.”

Supporters said the bill seeks to eradicate the clandestine abortions that have caused more than 3,000 deaths in the country since 1983, according to figures from authorities.

In addition to allowing abortion within the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, the legislation also will establish that even after that period, a pregnancy can be legally terminated if it was the result of rape or if the person’s life or integral health was in danger.

It will allow conscientious refusal to participate in an abortion for health professionals and private medical institutions at which all doctors are against the procedure. But they will be required to refer the woman to another medical center. Conscientious objection also could not be claimed if a pregnant woman’s life or health was in danger.

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US confirms first case of UK COVID-19 strain in Colorado; patient has no travel history, says governor's office

Washington: The US state of Colorado has recorded what is reportedly America's first case of the particularly infectious coronavirus variant that emerged recently in Britain, the governor said Tuesday.

"Today we discovered Colorado's first case of the COVID-19 variant B.1.1.7, the same variant discovered in the UK," Colorado governor Jared Polis tweeted.

He attached an official statement from his office and state health officials that said the individual is a "male in his 20s who is currently in isolation in Elbert County and has no travel history."

The individual had no close contacts, the statement said, but the situation will continue to be monitored "very closely" and authorities are working to identify other potential cases through contact tracing.

The Washington Post reported that the Colorado case is the first known infection of the variant virus to be recorded in the United States. The first two variant cases on the North American continent were discovered in Canada over the weekend.

Fears have been raised by the new strain of COVID-19, which experts say is potentially more transmissible.

More than 3,000 cases of the variant have already been reported in the UK and dozens of countries in Europe and around the world, according to the EU health agency ECDC.

In South Africa, more than 300 cases of another variant have been recorded. Three cases of that strain variant have been confirmed in Europe, two in the UK and one in Finland, but all three have been connected to people returning from South Africa.

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UK approves Oxford-AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine; Britain to get 40 million doses by end of March

London: The coronavirus vaccine designed by scientists at the University of Oxford and produced by AstraZeneca was on Wednesday approved for human use by the UK’s independent regulator.

The approval by Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) means the vaccine is both safe and effective.

The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) was already lining up thousands of medics and volunteers to be ready to deliver jabs up and down the country.

The vaccine, which also has a tie-up with the Serum Institute of India, was being evaluated by the MHRA after the final cut of data was submitted by the government last Monday.

It comes as a senior UK scientist pinpointed the Oxford vaccine as a real gamechanger, which could see the country achieve herd immunity as a result of vaccination against the deadly virus by the summer months of 2021.

"The people that have been vaccinated will be protected within a matter of weeks and that's very important,” Professor Calum Semple, a respiratory disease expert and member of the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), told the BBC.

Britain has ordered 100 million doses of the jab, with 40 million expected to be available by the end of March.

AstraZeneca chief Pascal Soriot has stressed that researchers have found the "winning formula" using two doses of the vaccine, ahead of the final results being published.

He has raised hopes that the jabs are more effective than first thought and should be effective against a new variant of the coronavirus that is now causing havoc in most parts of the UK.

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In 2020, Gen Naravane's trips to Nepal, West Asia helped bolster military diplomacy, but major challenges remain

Towards the latter part of the year 2020, army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane broke new ground by undertaking multiple visits to foreign countries.

These visits would help to bolster India's military diplomacy and to take forward its strategic objectives on multiple fronts. They are also expected to help secure India's strategic interests in the context of an increasingly assertive China.

In 2020, General Naravane undertook at least four foreign tours which had diplomatic overtones — a visit to Myanmar along with foreign secretary Harsh Shringla in October, Nepal in November, and West Asia and South Korea in December.

Here is a look at the significance of each of these visits.

Myanmar

General Naravane visited Myanmar on 4 and 5 October, along with foreign secretary Harsh Shringla. The visit took place just days after Shringla had a detailed foreign office consultation with his counterpart in Myanmar. It also took place weeks before parliamentary elections in Myanmar, in which Aung San Suu Kyi's party won a majority.

The meeting assumed significance as Myanmar's dependence on China has been increasing in recent years, and Beijing is also said to be pushing some strategic projects along with the China-Myanmar Economic Project, as noted by News18.

In this context, India and Myanmar discussed "maintenance of security and stability in their border areas and reiterated their mutual commitment not to allow their respective territories to be used for activities inimical to each other," according to an official statement.

Nepal

Exactly a month after the Myanmar trip, General Naravane visited Nepal from 4 to 6 November. At the time, India was seeking to resettle relations with the Himalayan nation after bilateral ties came under severe strain following a bitter border row.

During the visit, the Indian Army chief was conferred with the honorary rank of 'General of the Nepal Army' by Nepalese President Bidya Devi Bhandari at an event in Kathmandu.

India also confers the honorary rank of 'General of Indian Army' to the Nepal Army Chief.

Naravane also gifted medical equipment to the Nepali army, including X-ray machines, computed radiography systems, ICU ventilators, video endoscopy units and anaesthesia machines.

The ties between the two countries had come under strain after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated an 80-km-long strategically crucial road connecting the Lipulekh pass with Dharchula in Uttarakhand on 8 May.

Nepal protested the inauguration of the road claiming that it passed through its territory. Days later, Nepal came out with the new map showing Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura as its territories.

West Asia

On 8 December, the Indian Army chief embarked on a visit to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. According to a statement by the Indian Army, the visit was historic as it was the first time that an Indian army chief visited both the countries.

During the visit, General Naravane discussed issues of bilateral defence cooperation with General Fahd Bin Abdullah Mohammed Al-Mutir, Commander Royal Saudi Land Forces, the Indian Army’s Additional Directorate General of Public Information had said in a tweet.

He also received a Guard of Honour at headquarters of the Royal Saudi Land Forces.

In the UAE, the army chief discussed bilateral defence cooperation and issues of mutual interest with the UAE’s Commander of the Land Forces Major General Saleh Mohammed Saleh Al Ameri.

General Naravane’s visit comes in the midst of fast-paced developments in the Gulf region including normalisation of Israel’s relations with several Arab countries as well as situation arising out of the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

For India, strengthening ties with Gulf countries is a crucial part of its 'Necklace of Diamonds' strategy meant to counter Chinese influence in its neighbourhood, as noted by Business Line.

South Korea

General Naravane is presently on a three-day trip to South Korea aimed at deepening strategic ties with the country amid mounting concerns over China's military muscle-flexing in the region.

On Monday, the army chief interacted with Minister of National Defence Suh Wook, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Won In Choul and Minister of Defence Acquisition Planning Administration Gang Eun Ho, officials said.

An article in The Indian Express quoted an army source as saying that India considers South Korea to be a high-quality manufacturer of defence-related equipment in sectors such as aeronautics, shipbuilding, electronics, missile technologies, miniaturisation and software. The source was also reported to have said that South Korea "has the potential to be the principal partner in developing the Indian defence industry base”.

The major areas of concern for South Korea include increasing Chinese hegemony in the South China Sea and security of sea lines of communication, and the country considers India as a stabilising influence in the Indian Ocean region, a military official told PTI.

The South Korean military is considered one of the strongest professional forces globally and it often operates alongside the US troops as well as carry out exercises regularly with American and other regional armed forces.

With inputs from PTI

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Iran begins first human trial of locally made COVID-19 vaccine; three receive injections in Tehran

Tehran: The first study of the safety and effectiveness of a coronavirus vaccine in Iran began Tuesday, state TV reported, with dozens due to receive the domestically developed shot even as details about its production remained slim.

The vaccine, the first in the country to reach human trials, is produced by Shifa Pharmed, part of a state-owned pharmaceutical conglomerate known as Barekat. The company's website describes it as involved in the large-scale production of antibiotics and penicillin, without offering any details about its coronavirus research, results of animal trials or previous vaccine development since its founding in 1995.

Iran has struggled to stem the worst virus outbreak in the region, which has infected over 1.2 million people and killed nearly 55,000.

The study, a Phase 1 clinical trial, will enroll a total of 56 volunteers to receive two shots of the Iranian vaccine within two weeks, according to Hamed Hosseini, a clinical trial manager. Results are to be announced roughly a month after the second shot. Three people received the first injections on Tuesday in a ceremony at a Tehran hotel attended by the country's health minister.

State TV announced that none of the injections had so far caused any "fevers" or "bodily shocks."

"I am happy that the scientific process went ahead in a proper way," said Tayebeh Mokhber, daughter of the Setad Foundation chairman, who was the first to get jabbed. "I hope the conclusion will be health for our people."

The Setad Foundation, controlled by the office of Iran's supreme leader, oversees the Barekat conglomerate.

The treatment, dubbed Coviran, is a so-called inactivated vaccine, meaning it is made of a coronavirus that's been weakened or killed by chemicals, similar to how polio immunizations are made. Leading Western vaccines, like the shot made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, use newer, less-proven technology to target the coronavirus' spike protein using RNA.

Iranian authorities expect to the vaccine to hit the market by late spring 2021, an extremely aggressive timeline. Before this year's fast-tracked development of coronavirus vaccines, the usual methods of testing a vaccine for safety and efficacy with mass trials could take up to a decade.

With government-funded research into viral proteins and genetics accelerating the development of vaccines worldwide, countries have approved vaccines for emergency use and launched inoculation programs at record-breaking speed.

American drug makers Pfizer and Moderna received endorsements after reporting their vaccines were more than 90% effective at protecting against the coronavirus in large, advanced clinical trials. China and Russia approved their vaccines for emergency use while still in late-stage testing. Their early interim data, although promising, lacks clarity and raises questions about vaccine efficacy.

Iran has not elaborated on its regulatory approval process or plans for more advanced trials.

President Hassan Rouhani has said Iran is cooperating with a "foreign country" to produce another vaccine expected to run in tests in human volunteers in February, without offering further details.

The government has touted Iran's domestic vaccine research, repeatedly alleging that tough American sanctions undermine efforts to purchase foreign-made vaccines and launch mass inoculation campaigns like those underway in the US and Europe. While US sanctions do have specific carve-outs for medicine and humanitarian aid to Iran, international banks and financial institutions hesitate in dealing with Iranian transactions for fear of being fined or locked out of the American market.

Still, Iran retains routes to imported vaccines, including through COVAX, an international program designed to distribute coronavirus vaccines to participating countries around the world. On Monday, Iran said it expects a group of US-based benefactors to ship thousands of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine in the coming weeks.

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Bangladesh Navy ships take 1,804 Rohingya refugees to isolated island that surfaced 20 years ago

Dhaka: Seven Bangladesh navy ships carrying 1,804 Rohingya refugees arrived Tuesday at an isolated island where they will be relocated despite concerns among human rights groups about their safety.

They reached Bhashan Char island, 21 miles (34 kilometers) from the mainland, after a four-hour naval journey from the port city of Chittagong, government official Mohammed Khurshed Alam Khan said.

He said authorities at the island received 433 men, 523 women, and 848 children. Authorities insist all were willing to be relocated and no pressure was placed on them. But several human rights and activist groups say some were forced to go.

It was the second group of Rohingya refugees transferred from crowded, squalid camps in Cox's Bazar district to the island. Authorities sent the first group of 1,642 on 4 December despite calls for a halt by human rights groups.

Rear Admiral Md Mozammel Haque, commander of the local navy, said the number of refugees willing to join the second phase of relocation “exceeded their expectations".

He said the authorities were initially expecting to relocate around 1,200 refugees, but 1,804 chose to go.

The island surfaced only 20 years ago and was not previously inhabited. It was regularly submerged by monsoon rains but now has flood protection embankments, houses, hospitals, and mosques built at a cost of more than $112 million by the Bangladesh navy.

The island’s facilities are designed to accommodate 1,00,000 people, just a fraction of the million Rohingya Muslims who fled waves of violent persecution in their native Myanmar and are currently living in the camps in Cox’s Bazar.

International aid agencies and the UN have opposed the relocation since it was first proposed in 2015, expressing fear that a big storm could wash over the island and endanger thousands of lives.

The United Nations also voiced concern that refugees be allowed to make a “free and informed decision” about whether to relocate. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have urged the government to cancel the plan.

An influential Cabinet minister and general secretary of the governing party, Obaidul Quader, said Monday that the Rohingya are being moved to the island because their repatriation to Myanmar has been delayed. He said refugees who were earlier taken to Bhashan Char have expressed satisfaction.

About 7,00,000 Rohingya Muslims fled from Buddhist-majority Myanmar to Bangladesh after August 2017, when Myanmar’s military began a harsh crackdown on the minority group following an attack by insurgents. Security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings, and burning of thousands of homes.

Bangladesh has attempted to start sending refugees back to Myanmar under a bilateral agreement, but no one was willing to go.

The Rohingya are not recognized as citizens in Myanmar, rendering them stateless, and face other state-sanctioned discrimination.

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Five killed, at least 20 injured after 6.3 magnitude earthquake strikes Croatia

Zagreb: A strong earthquake hit central Croatia on Tuesday, destroying buildings and sending panicked people fleeing into rubble-covered streets in a town southeast of the capital. Authorities said five people were killed and at least 20 were injured.

The European Mediterranean Seismological Center said a magnitude 6.3 quake hit 46 kilometers southeast of Zagreb. It caused widespread damage in the hardest-hit town of Petrinja. The same area was struck by a 5.2 quake on Monday.

Officials said a 12-year-old girl died in Petrinja, a town of some 25,000 people. Another four people were killed in villages near the town, according to the state HRT television. At least 20 people were hospitalized, two with serious injuries, officials said. "The center of Petrinja as it used to be no longer exists," HRT reported, saying people remained inside collapsed buildings.

"My town has been completely destroyed. We have dead children," Petrinja Mayor Darinko Dumbovic said in a statement broadcast by HRT. "This is like Hiroshima - half of the city no longer exists."

Marica Pavlovic, a resident, said the quake felt "worse than a war." "It was horrible, a shock, you don't know what to do, whether to run out or hide somewhere," she told The Associated Press.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and other government ministers arrived in Petrinja after the earthquake. "The biggest part of central Petrinja is in a red zone, which means that most of the buildings are not usable," Plenkovic said.

He said the army has 500 places ready in barracks to house people, while others will be accommodated in nearby hotels and other places. "No one must stay out in the cold tonight," the prime minister said.

Officials later toured a damaged hospital in the nearby town of Sisak, which was also badly hit by the earthquake.

Plenkovic said the hospital's patients will be evacuated in army helicopters and in ambulances. Health officials said a baby was delivered in a tent in front of the hospital in the aftermath of the earthquake.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Twitter that she spoke with Plenkovic and instructed an envoy to travel to Croatia as soon as possible.

As a Mediterranean country, Croatia is prone to earthquakes, but not big ones. The last strong quake struck in the 1990s when the picturesque Adriatic coast village of Ston was destroyed.

Regional TV channel N1 reported from Petrinja that a collapsed building had fallen on a car. The footage showed firefighters trying to remove the debris. A man and a small boy eventually were rescued from the car and carried into an ambulance.

Fallen bricks and dust littered the streets as emergency teams used rescue dogs while looking for survivors in the rubble. A woman was found alive some four hours after the earthquake, rescuers said.

The Croatian military was deployed in Petrinja to help with the rescue operation.

Croatian seismologist Kresimir Kuk described the earthquake as "extremely strong," far stronger than another one that hit Zagreb and nearby areas in the spring. He warned people to keep out of potentially shaky old buildings and move to newer areas of the city because of aftershocks.

In the capital, people ran into the streets in fear.

The earthquake was felt throughout the country and in neighboring Serbia, Bosnia and Slovenia. It was felt as far away as Graz in southern Austria, the Austria Press Agency reported.

Authorities in Slovenia said the Krsko nuclear power plant was temporarily shut down following the earthquake. The power plant is jointly owned by Slovenia and Croatia and located near their border.

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Nepal crisis: Ready to forget everything if KP Oli accepts mistakes, says chairman of Prachanda-led NCP faction

Kathmandu: Chairman of the ruling Nepal Communist Party's rival faction Madhav Kumar Nepal said on Tuesday that the party could still be united if Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli was willing to accept his mistakes, as thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Kathmandu against the dissolution of Parliament.

Madhav Nepal made the comments while addressing a massive protest rally organised by his faction in Kathmandu, which was attended by former prime ministers Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda' and Jhala Nath Khanal.

"We are ready to forget everything if Oli accepts his mistakes," Madhav Nepal, the former prime minister who has replaced Oli as chairman of the Prachanda-led faction, told the rally.

He also accused Prime Minister Oli of practising anti-democratic activities by making decisions against the Constitution and the general public.

"All the political parties, intellectuals, teachers, students, and the public are on the streets against the unconstitutional move of the Oli-led government. The lower house will soon be revived," Madhav was quoted as saying by My Republica newspaper.

Nepal plunged into a political crisis on 20 December after Prime Minister Oli, known for his pro-Beijing leanings, in a surprise move, recommended dissolving the 275-member House, amidst a tussle for power with Prachanda.

Acting on the prime minister's recommendation, President Bidya Devi Bhandari dissolved the House the same day and announced fresh elections on 30 April and 10 May, sparking protests from a large section of the NCP led by Prachanda, also a co-chair of the ruling party.

Addressing the rally, Prachanda said that Prime Minister Oli's recent move to dissolve the House of Representatives is aimed at killing federalism and republicanism which were achieved after decades of struggle by the people.

"The act of dissolving parliament is totally unconstitutional. It has taken the country toward another round of political instability.

"We did not even imagine that we would be forced to take to the streets against Oli's regressive move. Now, we have to fight collectively against this move," said Prachanda, who claims control over the ruling party after removing Prime Minister Oli from the posts of the party's parliamentary leader and chair.

"People had given us (the NCP) the mandate to ensure political stability with social justice so that we could move toward achieving a socialism-oriented system," he said, adding that unfortunately, "Oli's abrupt decision to dissolve parliament without holding any discussion in the party has only invited political chaos."

Prachanda said that Oli has attacked the Constitution and republicanism that were achieved after a great struggle.

"I had personally taken initiatives for a merger between the two Communist parties and approached Oli for the same. At that time, he agreed to accept federalism, secularism, and republicanism although I was well aware of his political ideology and the fact that he was against federalism and republicanism he started to work against the spirit, ideology, principle, and norms of a communist party," he said.

Prachanda said that Oli eventually turned autocratic, imposed hegemony in the party, and even did not bother to consult other leaders before blatantly dissolving the Parliament.

"Oli's tyranny will not last long because the people will firmly protest against his recent political move," he said. Prachanda said it was not Parliament but the Oli-led government that had actually been dissolved for its wrong political move.

He expressed hope that Parliament will be reinstated through the Supreme Court's verdict. "I have faith in the court. I hope that the Supreme Court will honour the emotions of the people. I cannot even imagine that the apex court will go against the wish of the people," he said.

Nepal's Supreme Court on Friday issued a show-cause notice to the Oli-led government, asking it to submit a written clarification over its decision to abruptly dissolve the Parliament. The five-member Constitutional bench headed by Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana asked the government to submit an original copy of the recommendations made by it to dissolve the House and the decision made by the President to authenticate the government's recommendations within 10 days.

Prachanda, meanwhile, also accused Oli of having made several efforts time and again to split the NCP but had failed in the past one year even as the country was battling the COVID-19 pandemic. The agitation will not stop unless the regressive move taken by Oli is neutralised, he added.

The Prachanda-led faction organised protest rallies at various places, including Koteshwor, Lagankhel, Tripureshwor, Maitighar, Thamel, Chabahil, Teku, New Baneshwor, Kupandol, Lainchaur, Naxal, Bagbazar and Ratnapark.

On Monday, thousands of the Nepali Congress supporters held demonstrators in all the 165 constituencies represented in the House to protest Prime Minister Oli's move to dissolve the parliament.

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Russia admits COVID toll third-worst in the world; deaths due to virus three times higher than official figure, say officials

Moscow: Russia on Monday said its coronavirus toll was more than three times higher than it had previously reported, making it the country with the third-largest number of fatalities.

For months President Vladimir Putin has boasted about Russia's low fatality rate from the virus, saying earlier this month that it had done a "better" job at managing the pandemic than western countries.

But since early in the pandemic, some Russian experts have said the government was playing down the country's outbreak.

On Monday Russian officials admitted that was true.

The Rosstat statistics agency said that the number of deaths from all causes recorded between January and November had risen by 229,700 compared to the previous year.

"More than 81 percent of this increase in mortality over this period is due to COVID-19," said Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova, meaning that over 186,000 Russians have died from COVID-19.

Russian health officials have registered more than three million infections since the start of the pandemic, putting the country's caseload at fourth-highest in the world.

But they have only reported 55,265 deaths -- a much lower fatality rate than in other badly hit countries.

Russia has been criticised for only listing Covid deaths where an autopsy confirms the virus was the main cause.

Alexei Raksha, a demographer who left Rosstat in July, told AFP last week that the Russian health ministry and the consumer health ministry falsify coronavirus numbers.

Rosstat's new figures mean that Russia now has the world's third-highest COVID-19 toll behind the United States with 333,140 and Brazil with 191,139, according to an AFP count.

The figures came as authorities hold out against reimposing a nationwide lockdown in the hopes of buttressing a struggling economy even as the country is battered by a second wave of infections.

Russia's government predicts the economy will shrink by 3.9 percent this year, while the Central Bank expects an even deeper decline.

During his annual end-of-year press conference earlier this month, Putin rejected the idea of imposing the kind of lockdown many European countries introduced going into the Christmas holidays.

"If we follow the rules and demands of health regulators, then we do not need any lockdowns," he said.

While strict measures have been imposed in some major cities, authorities in many regions have limited restrictions to mask-wearing in public spaces and reducing mass gatherings.

But many Russians flout social distancing rules and in recent weeks the country's outbreak has overwhelmed poorly funded hospitals in the regions.

Vaccine scepticism

Russia has instead pinned its hopes on corralling its outbreak by vaccinating people en masse with its homemade Sputnik V jab, named after the Soviet-era satellite.

The country launched a mass vaccination programme earlier this month, first inoculating high-risk workers aged between 18 and 60 without chronic illnesses.

Over the weekend people older than 60 got the green light to receive the shot.

On Monday Sputnik V's developer, the state-run Gamaleya research centre, said that around 700,000 doses had so far been released for domestic use.

However Russia has not said how many people it has vaccinated so far, and according to recent surveys by state-run pollster VTsIOM and the Levada polling agency only 38 percent of Russians plan to get the shot.

 

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Nepal crisis: China's Guo Yezhou invites Nepali Congress chief Deuba to attend CPC's 100th anniversary

Kathmandu: Guo Yezhou, a vice-minister of the Communist Party of China, on Tuesday met the main opposition Nepali Congress chief Sher Bahadur Deuba and discussed the latest political developments in the country following the dissolution of Parliament by Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.

"The meeting between the four-member delegation led by Guo, the vice minister of the International Department of the CPC, and former prime minister Deuba also focused on relations between Nepal and China," The Kathmandu Post quoted shadow foreign minister Narayan Khadka as saying.

They discussed the latest political developments in Kathmandu, the paper said.

"Guo conveyed an invitation to Deuba from Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit China on the 100th anniversary of the CPC next year," said Dinesh Bhattarai, former foreign relations advisor to Deuba when he was prime minister.

On his part, Deuba congratulated President Xi, the CPC and the people of China on the occasion, said Bhattarai.

The CPC will organise a grand function to mark the occasion in Beijing next year. They discussed matters of bilateral interest and concern, said Bhattarai. Both Khadka and Bhattarai were present during the meeting between the Chinese delegation and Deuba.

Guo also lauded the contribution made by Nepali Congress' founding president and the first elected prime minister BP Koirala in improving relations between the two countries.

Deuba said that the friendship between the NC and the CPC goes back decades and nurtured since the premiership of Koirala.

In 1960, when Koirala was the prime minister, Nepal and China signed a peace and friendship treaty, the first boundary protocol, resolved the dispute over Mount Everest and gave a new direction to the Nepal-China ties, Bhattarai said.

Guo, who personally knows many Nepali leaders, met Deuba after holding talks with President Bidya Devi Bhandari, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, Nepal Communist Party (NCP) chairs Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda' and Madhav Nepal, former prime minister Jhananath Khanal and leader of the Janata Samajbadi Party Baburam Bhattarai.

Besides assessing the ground situation, the Chinese side also discussed possible political ramifications of house dissolution, whether it will have an impact on stability and development of Nepal, status of Nepal-China ties, progress made in China-funded projects, implementation of past accords and agreements, among others, according to leaders who met the CPC delegation.

Nepal plunged into a political crisis on 20 December after Prime Minister Oli, known for his pro-Beijing leanings, in a surprise move, recommended dissolving the 275-member House, amidst a tussle for power with Prachanda.

Acting on the prime minister's recommendation, President Bhandari dissolved the House the same day and announced fresh elections on 30 April and 10 May, sparking protests from a large section of the NCP led by Prachanda, also a co-chair of the ruling party.

A wary China rushed Guo to Kathmandu after its high-profile ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqi failed to sort out differences between Oli and Prachanda.

China is not happy with the split in the largest communist party of Nepal, according to sources. Guo is trying to patch up differences between the two warring factions of the ruling party — one led by Oli and the other led by Prachanda — during his four day stay in Nepal, media reports said.

Earlier, Gou travelled to Kathmandu in February 2018 when Oli-led CPN-UML and Prachanda-led NCP (Maoist Centre) — were all set to merge and form a unified communist party following the victory of their alliance in the 2017 general elections.

Later in May 2018, the two communist parties merged and formed a new party named NCP. Guo is assessing the situation of the ruling party and encouraging both factions of the NCP to seek some kind of common ground for party unity.

This is not the first time that China has intervened in Nepal's internal affairs. In May and July, Hou held separate meetings with the president, the prime minister and other senior NCP leaders, including Prachanda, when Oli was facing mounting pressure to step down.

A number of political party leaders had termed the Chinese envoy's series of meetings with the ruling party leaders as interference in Nepal's internal political affairs. China's political profile in Nepal has been on the rise in recent years with billions of dollars of investments under its multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, including the Trans-Himalayan Multi-Dimensional Connectivity Network.

Besides the investments, China's ambassador to Nepal Hou has made open efforts to garner support for Oli. The CPC and NCP were regularly engaged in training programmes. In September last year, the NCP had even organised a symposium, inviting some CPC leaders to Kathmandu to impart training to Nepali leaders on the Xi Jinping thought ahead of the visit of the Chinese president, his first to Nepal, according to a Kathmandu Post report.

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