Nepal's Maoist-led government has withdrawn criminal charges against thousands of Maoist leaders and cadres, including the premier and several ministers, media reports said Monday.

Nepal’s Maoist-led government, which aspires to transform the impoverished Himalayan nation into a developed country, is under tremendous political pressure.

Agitating journalists in Nepal have sought the arrest of two Maoist trade unionists involved in the attack on a newspaper office in their four-point charter of demands put forward to the government.

Activists of Nepal's ruling Maoist party Sunday attacked a media house in the capital, assaulting staffers, including journalists and the chief executive officer, ostensibly over a report carried by one of its publications that criticised the Maoist labour unions.

Nepal's Maoist prime minister has pledged that former rebels will return land and property they seized during the country's bitter civil war, officials said.

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepal's Maoist-led government formed a multi-party panel on Tuesday to supervise the rehabilitation of more than 19,000 ex-guerrillas housed in U.N.-monitored camps under a 2006 peace deal, a minister said.

A month after a Nepali journalist working for a Maoist daily went missing, what could be the remains of his body were found Friday in a remote forest. Jagat Prasad Joshi, himself a Maoist activist, had spent eight years underground during the 10-year People’s War launched by the Maoists from 1996 when the party was banned, its publications shut down and its leaders hunted down by security forces.

The massive election win last April by Nepal's former rebel Maoists put them in the position to set the government agenda, and bring about drastic changes they promised during their campaign. But their initial proposals on education – to end private investment in schools and distribute academic certificates to Maoist fighters – have left many Nepalese worried.

Nepali Prime Minister and Chairman of Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) Prachanda said that his party would quit the government by mid-January and wage a fresh struggle if the Nepali Congress (NC), the main opposition party, refused to lend it a helping hand, The Kathmandu Post reported on Monday.

Kathmandu, Nov 5 (IANS) The Nepal Army is seeking to recruit 2,400 new soldiers, unmoved by deepening controversy about the fate of Maoist guerrilla fighters.Along with the soldiers, the army is also seeking to hire 27 assistant Hindu priests and 457 “followers”, whose duties would range from looking after the horses in the army to washing clothes.

The United Nations condemned an attack on a Kathmandu publishing house by activists from Nepal’s ruling Maoist party as an assault on freedom of speech and called on authorities to protect journalists. Dozens of supporters of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) entered Himalmedia’s offices two days ago in search of the author of a recent article and physically attacked journalists including publisher Kunda Dixit, the UN said.

This will be the Maoist chief's fifth foreign trip in almost as many months. Besides China, he has been to India twice and to the US in September to attend the UN General Assembly.

A dispute at a Hindu temple in Nepal that has required riot police to keep the peace is not about religion or tradition, but simply a matter of money, officials and pilgrims at the site have told AFP.

As protests escalated, Nepal's Maoist government was forced late Wednesday to temporarily revoke its sacking of the Indian priests who have officiated at the temple for generations.

The officially atheist Maoists won elections last year and dismissed Nepal's Hindu monarchy, with Prachanda, the Maoist leader and new prime minister, replacing the king as patron of Pashupati, the country's holiest Hindu temple.

Local priests and their supporters claim that the temple's trust -- now controlled by the secular Maoists -- decided to remove the Indian priests without consultation or proper legal permission.

Nepal’s former Maoist guerrillas, who came to power pledging revolution and progress, have now endorsed a decision to switch over from the existing calendar to an ethnic one that will take the former Hindu kingdom back more than eight centuries.

Protesters in Katmandu burned tires and smashed car windows Wednesday to protest the deaths of two young men who were allegedly abducted by the youth wing of Nepal's ruling Maoists.

Nepal's Maoists Prime Minister Prachanda faced public ire when a group of students greeted him with black flags and pelted stones on
his convoy as he was on his way to Tribhvuan University to attend a function.

Bhutan has sounded a massive security alert after the killing of four forest rangers in a powerful landmine explosion by Nepal-based Maoist guerrillas, officials said on Thursday.

Kathmandu (PTI): In a major decision, Nepal's Maoist-led government has asked country's ambassadors to India, the US and the UK to immediately return to Kathmandu.

China has announced a $2.61-million military assistance package to Nepal to enhance its influence over the Maoist-ruled Himalayan country--a move that will have the mandarins at India's Foreign Office raise their eyebrows, media reports said.

Nepal's former Maoist rebels have said they will return land and property they seized during a decade-long civil war as part of a peace deal that brought them into the political mainstream