Pak forces kill key planner of Peshawar school massacre

Kathmandu, June 18: Nepal's National Assembly on Thursday unanimously passed the Constitution Amendment Bill to update the country's political and administrative map incorporating three Indian territories. 

The new map also includes land controlled by India. It requires President Bidhya Devi Bhandari's approval.

India, which controls the region - a slice of land including Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh and Kalapani areas in the northwest - has rejected the map, saying it is not based on historical facts or evidence.

India has termed as untenable the "artificial enlargement" of territorial claims by Nepal after its lower house of parliament on Saturday unanimously approved the new political map of the country featuring areas which India maintains belong to it.

The National Assembly, or the upper house of the Nepalese parliament, unanimously passed the constitution amendment bill providing for inclusion of the country's new political map in its national emblem.

The bill was passed with all the 57 members present voting in its favour.

The dispute

The latest border dispute between the countries began last month after India inaugurated Himalayan link road built in a disputed region that lies at a strategic three-way junction with Tibet and China.

The 80km (50-mile) road, inaugurated by Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, cuts through the Lipulekh Himalayan pass, considered one of the shortest and most feasible trade routes between India and China.

The road cuts the travel time and distance from India to Tibet's Mansarovar lake, considered holy by the Hindus.

But Nepal says about 19km of the road passes through its area and fiercely contested the inauguration of the road, viewing the alleged incursion as a stark example of bullying by its much larger neighbour.

Nepal, which was never under colonial rule, has long claimed the areas of Limpiyadhura, Kalapani and Lipulekh under the 1816 Sugauli treaty with the British East India Company, although these areas have remained under the control of Indian troops since India fought a war with China in 1962.

Jun 1: The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday.

"In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy," said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy's coronavirus contagion.

"The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago," he told RAI television.

Italy has the third-highest death toll in the world from COVID-19, with 33,415 people dying since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21. It has the sixth-highest global tally of cases at 233,019.

However new infections and fatalities have fallen steadily in May and the country is unwinding some of the most rigid lockdown restrictions introduced anywhere on the continent.

Zangrillo said some experts were too alarmist about the prospect of a second wave of infections and politicians needed to take into account the new reality.

"We've got to get back to being a normal country," he said. "Someone has to take responsibility for terrorizing the country."

The government urged caution, saying it was far too soon to claim victory.

"Pending scientific evidence to support the thesis that the virus has disappeared ... I would invite those who say they are sure of it not to confuse Italians," Sandra Zampa, an undersecretary at the health ministry, said in a statement.

"We should instead invite Italians to maintain the maximum caution, maintain physical distancing, avoid large groups, to frequently wash their hands and to wear masks."

A second doctor from northern Italy told the national ANSA news agency that he was also seeing the coronavirus weaken. "The strength the virus had two months ago is not the same strength it has today," said Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at the San Martino hospital in the city of Genoa.

"It is clear that today the COVID-19 disease is different."