NEPAL SUPREME COURT SCRAPS RULING NCP

The Supreme Court of Nepal on Sunday scrapped the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) and revived the two original parties that had joined hands in 2018 to form the ruling party. With this decision, the original ruling alliance between the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist-Centre) has been re-established. Prime Minister Oli’s faction has welcomed the decision.

A joint bench of Justices Kumar Regmi and Bam Kumar Shrestha took away the name of the ruling NCP because of a case filed by Rishi Kattel, leader of the Communist Party of Nepal. Mr. Kattel had filed a writ petition arguing that the “Nepal Communist Party” formed following the merger of the CPN (UML) and the CPN (Maoist Centre) in 2018 had copied his party’s name.

“We respect the decision given by the honourable Supreme Court. The joint bench has quashed our 2018 alliance and restored the previous political parties. So as of now Prime Minister Oli as the leader of CPN-UML is the leader of the largest political formation in Parliament with 121 members. Mr. Prachanda as the leader of the CPN (Maoist-Centre) will have 53 members,” said Dr. Rajan Bhattarai, Foreign Affairs Adviser to PM Oli.

The verdict has scrapped the party but the fate of the three internal organs — Secretariat, Standing Committee and the Central Committee — is not yet clear as several members of the two alliance partners had amalgamated and thrown a challenge to Mr. Oli’s authority within the NCP. The decision of the Supreme Court has revived the CPN-UML and the CPN-Maoist Centre but the composition of the two parties may not be like before. The decision also puts an abrupt end to the infighting between the Prachanda-Nepal faction of the NCP and Mr. Oli. Mr. Prachanda had argued that his faction should be recognised as the real NCP but the verdict has closed that argument as well.

BLINKEN OFFERS PLAN TO BOLSTER AFGHAN PEACE PROCESS: REPORT

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is proposing a series of steps to help jumpstart Afghanistan's stalled peace process between the government and Taliban, according to a letter from Mr. Blinken to Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani published on Sunday by Afghanistan's TOLONews.

The letter calls for bringing the two sides together for a U.N.-facilitated conference with foreign ministers and envoys from Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, India and the United States “to discuss a unified approach to supporting peace in Afghanistan.” Mr. Blinken also calls for holding talks between the Afghan government and Taliban in a senior-level meeting in Turkey in the coming weeks to hammer out a revised proposal for a 90-day reduction in violence.

The Secretary of State has also called on special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad to share with both the Afghan government and Taliban written proposals to help accelerate discussions, according to the TOLONews report.

Mr. Blinken also made clear in the letter that the Biden administration continues to consider a “full withdrawal” of the roughly 2,500 U.S. forces in the country by the May 1 deadline negotiated by Trump administration.

“We have not made any decisions about our force posture in Afghanistan after May 1,” the State Department said in a statement. “All options remain on the table.” Afghanistan presents one of the new administration's most difficult foreign policy decisions. The U.S. public is weary of a war nearly 20 years old, but pulling out now could be seen as giving the Taliban too much leverage and casting a shadow over the sacrifices made by U.S. and coalition troops and Afghan civilians.

Mr. Blinken urged Mr. Ghani to quickly embrace the proposal and underscored his concern that the security situation in the country could quickly deteriorate as the weather warms in Afghanistan.

SWISS NARROWLY PASS MUSLIM 'BURQA BAN'

Swiss voters on Sunday narrowly backed a ban on full face coverings in public places -- a decision hailed by supporters as a move against radical Islam but branded sexist and racist by opponents.

Official results showed that 51.21 percent of voters, and a majority of federal Switzerland's cantons, supported the proposal.

Some 1,426,992 voters were in favour of the ban, while 1,359,621 were against, on a 50.8 percent turnout.

The so-called anti-burqa vote comes after years of debate in Switzerland following similar bans in other European countries -- and in some Muslim-majority states -- despite women in Islamic full-face veils being an exceptionally rare sight in Swiss streets.

Even though the proposal "Yes to a ban on full facial coverings" did not mention the burqa or the niqab -- which leaves only the eyes uncovered -- there was no doubt as to what the debate was about.

Campaign posters reading "Stop radical Islam!" and "Stop extremism!", featuring a woman in a black niqab, have been plastered around Swiss cities.

Rival posters read: "No to an absurd, useless and Islamophobic 'anti-burqa' law".

The ban would mean that nobody could cover their face completely in public -- whether in shops or the open countryside.

But there would be exceptions, including for places of worship, or for health and safety reasons.

UNIONS CALL TO SHUT MYANMAR ECONOMY, NLD OFFICIAL DIES

Myanmar’s major trade unions called on members to shut down the economy from Monday to support a campaign against last month’s coup, turning up the pressure on the junta as security forces cracked down on demonstrators staging widespread protests. “To continue economic and business activities as usual...will only benefit the military as they repress the energy of the Myanmar people,” an alliance of nine unions said. “The time to take action in defence of our democracy is now. We call for...the full extended shutdown of the Myanmar economy,” they said in a joint statement. A spokesman for the military did not answer calls seeking comment.

The call by the unions came as an official from the party of deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi died overnight in police custody. The cause of death of National League for Democracy official Khin Maung Latt was not known. Ba Myo Thein, a member of the upper house of parliament which was dissolved after the coup, said reports of bruising to Khin Maung Latt’s head and body raised suspicions that he had been abused. “It seems that he was arrested at night and tortured severely,” he said. “This is totally unacceptable.” Police in Pabedan, the Yangon district where Khin Maung Latt was arrested, declined to comment.

EU NATIONS GOT A THIRD OF MODERNA COVID-19 SHOTS SO FAR, DATA SHOW

European Union member states have received only about a third of the quarterly target for Covid-19 vaccines produced by Moderna Inc., according to a delivery schedule published by a Hungarian official on Facebook.

The bloc is slated to receive 10 million of the shots in the January-March period, with deliveries set to accelerate later in the year, the data show. That compares with just over 3.4 million distributed so far to member states since the vaccine was approved in January, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

The schedule refers to the 160 million doses procured by the EU in November, before a deal last month to buy an additional 150 million shots both this year and next. The EU has been under pressure to speed up a sluggish vaccine roll-out that’s lagged several peers, including the US and the UK.

Gergely Gulyas, the cabinet minister to Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary’s government, published the schedule in defense of a decision to opt out of additional purchases.

Nationally procured vaccines from China’s Sinopharm and Russia’s Sputnik V will allow Hungary to inoculate all of its population aged over 18 by the third quarter, Gulyas said in the Facebook post. That gives little reason to buy supplies via the EU that would probably only arrive after that time, he said.

YEMEN'S HOUTHIS FIRE MISSILES, DRONES AT SAUDI OIL FACILITIES

Yemen's Houthi forces fired drones and missiles at the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil industry on Sunday, attacking a Saudi Aramco facility at Ras Tanura in an assault the kingdom said was aimed at the security and stability of global energy supply.

The Saudi energy ministry said an oil storage yard at Ras Tanura, the site of an oil refinery and the world's biggest offshore oil loading facility, was attacked with a drone but there were no casualties or property loss.

It added that shrapnel from a ballistic missile fell near Aramco's residential compound in Dhahran.

Saudi state media earlier said the Saudi-led military coalition battling the Houthis had intercepted 12 armed drones aimed at "civilian targets" without specifying a location in the kingdom as well as two ballistic missiles fired towards Jazan.

The U.S. mission in Saudi Arabia issued an advisory, citing reports of possible missile attacks and explosions on Sunday evening in the tri-city area of Dhahran, Dammam and Khobar in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province.

That attacks forced Saudi Arabia to temporarily shut down more than half of its crude output.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said on Sunday that the group had fired 14 drones and eight ballistic missiles in a "wide operation in the heart of Saudi Arabia".

MEGHAN MARKLE SAYS U.K. ROYALS REFUSED TO MAKE HER SON A PRINCE DUE TO SKIN COLOUR CONCERNS

Meghan has told Oprah Winfrey that she was silenced by the royal apparatus and that it became clear at a certain point that some were willing to lie to “protect other members of the family.”

The Duchess of Sussex differentiated between parts of the actual members of the royal family and those who worked for them. “The queen has always been wonderful to me,” Meghan said.

Sunday’s interview special opened with Meghan describing how naive she was about the ground rules of royal life before she married her husband, Harry, nearly three years ago. “I didn’t fully understand what the job was,” she said. She also noted that she did not know how to curtsy before meeting Queen Elizabeth II for the first time, and didn’t realise it would be necessary.

Sunday night’s airing of a two-hour special hosted by Oprah Winfrey will provide the first, and unprecedented, peek into the couple’s departure from royal duties and the strains it has placed on them. Audiences in the United States are seeing it first; it will not air until Monday night in Britain.

“I will say I went into it naively because I didn’t grow up knowing much about the royal family,” Meghan said.

“They didn’t want him to be a prince or princess, not knowing what the gender would be, which would be different from protocol, and that he wasn’t going to receive security,” Meghan said in an interview aired on CBS late on Sunday.

“In those months when I was pregnant, all around this same time, so we have in tandem the conversation of, you won’t be given security, not gonna be given a title and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born,” said Meghan.

Asked who the conversation was with, she said: “I think that would be very damaging to them.”