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Playing her first singles match for a year after injury, Serena Williams’ opening-round Wimbledon loss to Harmony Tan on Tuesday was hardly her most unexpected defeat, but there were plenty of signs it could be the most portentous yet, Reuters reported.

Of course nobody goes on for ever, not even Williams who has performed numerous near miracles throughout a career spanning three decades.

Still, it made for uncomfortable viewing seeing the rusty seven-times champion a faded shadow of the player who has won 23 Grand Slam singles crowns.

For having long made a habit of seeing off lesser mortals while cruising at barely half pace, on Tuesday there seemed nothing to dig into, no extra gear, nor any aura to lend an advantage.

Instead she brandished blunted tools and slumped to a three-set defeat before contemplating her future.

“That’s a question I can’t answer,” the 40-year-old said when asked if she would return to Wimbledon. “Like, I don’t know. I feel like, you know, I don’t know. Who knows? Who knows where I’ll pop up, according to Reuters.

“Today I gave all I could do ... Maybe tomorrow I could have gave more. Maybe a week ago I could have gave more. But today was what I could do. At some point you have to be able to be okay with that.

“And that’s all I can do. I can’t change time or anything,

so ...”

It is always going to be tough for Williams to walk away from the sport she has dominated. And despite falling short on her return to singles action here, she seems motivated to keep going, keeping the door open for an emotional return to New York for the U.S. Open in August.

“It definitely makes me want to hit the practice courts because, you know, when you’re playing not bad and you’re so close,” she said, seeking something positive from a bad day.

“Like I said, any other opponent probably would have suited my game better. So, yeah, I feel like that it’s actually kind of like, Okay, Serena, you can do this if you want.

“Yeah, I mean, when you’re at home, especially in New York, and the US Open, that being the first place I’ve won a Grand Slam, is something that’s always super special. Your first time is always special. There’s definitely, you know, lots of motivation to get better and to play at home.”

The water level has risen in Saptakoshi River following incessant rainfall.

The red lights are put on and red flags hoisted after the water level crosses 150,000 cusec.

Chief District Officer of Sunsari Indradev Yadav said that the water flow in the river was measured at 158, 125 cusec on Wednesday morning.

It is considered as dangerous after the water level crosses 150, 000 cusec in the river.

Arable lands and human settlements have been inundated after the concerned authorities did not open all the gates off Koshi Barrage which is under the control of the Indian government.

The Sapkota Koshi has started eroding the land of SriLanka Island as the authorities have opened all the gates of the Koshi Barrage, local Santosh Chandrabansi said.

Almost all the places of Sunsari have been inundated due to incessant rainfall. 

Most of the settlements of the southern part of Sunsari have been submerged after the flooded river gushed into the settlements and due to the poor drainage system. 

Bhokraha Narsingh Rural Municipality, Koshi Rural Municipality, Itahari Sub-Metropolitan City, Duhabi Municipality, Harinagara Rural Municipality and Barju Rural Municipality among others have been inundated due to the torrential rainfall for the past three days. 

Indradev Yadav, Chief District Officer of Sunsari, said that around 70 families of Bhokraha Narsingh Rural Municipality-5 and 7 have been displaced due to floods.

He said that Barju ward No. 5, Duhabi-12, Koshi-2, Inaruwa-4, 6 and 8 have been deluged.

It has been estimated that around 1, 000 houses have been inundated in Sunsari. 

The flood-displaced 150 families have been kept in schools and public places. 

A joint team of Nepal Army, Armed Police Force and Nepal Police have been deputed in the flood-affected areas.

As many as 367 families have been displaced due to floods and inundation triggered by torrential rainfall in Morang district so far.

DSP Deepak Shrestha, spokesperson at the District Police Office, Morang, 1,368 persons of the 367 families have been shifted to safer places by Wednesday morning.

He said that the number of displaced people could increase as the rains have not stopped yet.

According to him, the houses of the displaced families have been completely submerged.

The eight local levels of Morang including Biratnagar Metropolitan City, Capital of Province 1, have been hit hardest by the water-induced disasters.

Biratnagar Metropolitan City, Belbari, PathariShanishwori, Urlabari and Sunbarsi Municipality and Kanepokhari, Gramthan Budhiganga and Jahada Municipality have been affected the most.

DSP Shrestha said that 63 families of Biratnagar-7 and 8 have been displaced due to inundation so far. He said that hundreds of families have been affected in Biratnagar.

As many as 1, 400 families of Biratnagar and Katahari have been affected due to the Singhiya River.

Police said that eight families of Belbari-6, 150 of Katahari-1, 120 of Jahad-1 and 2 and 26 of Budhiganga-1 have been displaced.

Chief District Officer of Morang Kashiraj Dahal said that the floods have damaged houses and various physical infrastructures like bridges and roads among others.

Do you sometimes get a random craving for a spicy bowl of noodles? Well, if you do, we suggest you visit Ghangri Karpo Noodles in Boudha. The place has probably the best keema (minced meat) noodle in town. Its perfectly balanced keema on top of well-cooked noodles served with soy sauce and chili-flakes is a delicious delight you will find nowhere else. While you are there, you might also want to give their spicy ramen a try, which is equally yummy. 

Their special:

Keema Noodles 

Spicy Ramen 

Opening hours: 9:00 am to 8:00 pm 

Location: Boudha, Kathmandu

Meal for 2: Rs. 500

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A four-storey residential building collapsed in India's financial capital of Mumbai overnight, killing at least 11 people, with more feared trapped under the rubble, officials said on Tuesday, Associated Press reported.

Part of the building, located in a crowded suburb in the central part of the city, crumbled to the ground at around midnight on Monday, the city's civic body BMC said.

Rescue workers were working to pull out debris and rubble until late on Tuesday, with work hampered by heavy rain.

Building collapses are common in Mumbai during monsoon season, mostly due to poor construction, according to Associated Press.

Sri Lanka has suspended sales of fuel for non-essential vehicles as it faces its worst economic crisis in decades, BBC reported.

For the next two weeks, only buses, trains and vehicles used for medical services and transporting food will be allowed to fill up with fuel.

Schools in urban areas have shut, while officials have told the country's 22 million residents to work from home.

The South Asian nation is in talks over a bailout deal as it struggles to pay for imports such as fuel and food.

Sri Lanka is the first country to take the drastic step in halting sales of fuel to ordinary people "since the 1970s oil crisis, when fuel was rationed in the US and Europe and speed limits introduced to reduce demand", Nathan Piper, head of oil and gas research at Investec, told the BBC.

He said the ban underlined the steep rise in oil pricing and limited foreign exchange reserves in Sri Lanka. 

Many of the island's residents don't know how they will cope without fuel. There have been long queues at filling stations across Sri Lanka for months. 

Chinthaka Kumara, a 29-year-old taxi driver in Colombo, thought the ban would "create more problems for people". 

"I'm a daily wage earner. I've been in this queue for three days and I don't know when we will get petrol," he told BBC Sinhala.

Drivers have been asked to go home, with tokens distributed aimed at rationing scarce fuel stocks. Some kept queuing, but others couldn't. 

"I was in a queue for two days. I got a token - number 11 - but I don't know when I will get fuel," S Wijetunga, a 52-year-old private sector executive, told the BBC. 

"I need to go to the office now, so I have no option but to leave my vehicle here and go in a three-wheeler." 

Kenat, a motorised rickshaw driver in the Colombo suburb of Kotahena, said people like him were being "destroyed".

"Our family used to have three meals a day. Now we eat only twice a day. If this continues, it will come down to one meal," he told BBC Tamil.

Donald Trump rebuffed his own security’s warnings about armed protesters in the Jan. 6 rally crowd and made desperate attempts to join his supporters as they marched to the Capitol, according to dramatic new testimony Tuesday before the House committee investigating the 2021 insurrection, Associated Press reported.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a little-known former White House aide, described an angry, defiant president that day who was trying to let armed protesters avoid security screenings at a rally that morning to protest his 2020 election defeat and who later grabbed at the steering wheel of the presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol.

And when the events at the Capitol spiraled toward violence, with the crowd chanting to “Hang Mike Pence,” she testified that Trump declined to intervene.

Trump “doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong,” Hutchinson recalled hearing from her boss, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Hutchinson’s explosive, moment-by-moment account of what was happening inside and outside the White House offered a vivid description of a president so unwilling to concede his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden that he acted out in rage and refused to stop the siege at the Capitol. It painted a damning portrait of the chaos at the White House as those around the defeated president splintered into one faction supporting his false claims of voter fraud and another trying unsuccessfully to put an end to the violent attack.

Her testimony, at a surprise hearing announced just 24 hours earlier, was the sole focus at the hearing, the sixth by the committee this month. The account was particularly powerful because of her proximity to power, with Hutchinson describing what she witnessed first-hand and was told by others in the White House, according to Associated Press.

Hutchinson said that she was told Trump fought a security official for control of the presidential SUV on Jan. 6 and demanded to be taken the Capitol as the insurrection began, despite being warned earlier that day that some of his supporters were armed.

The former aide said she was told of the altercation in the SUV immediately afterward by a White House security official, and that Bobby Engel, the head of the detail, was in the room and didn’t dispute the account. Engel had grabbed Trump’s arm to prevent him from gaining control of the armored vehicle, she was told, and Trump then used his free hand to lunge at Engel.

That account was quickly disputed. Engel, the agent who was driving the presidential SUV, and Trump security official Tony Ornato are willing to testify under oath that no agent was assaulted and Trump never lunged for the steering wheel, a person familiar with the matter said. The person would not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

As the events of Jan. 6 unfurled, Hutchinson, then a special assistant to Meadows, described chaos in White House offices and hallways. Trump’s staff — several of whom had been warned of violence beforehand — became increasingly alarmed as rioters at the Capitol overran police and interrupted the certification of Biden’s victory.

Trump was less concerned, she said, even as he heard there were cries in the crowd to “Hang Mike Pence!” Hutchinson recalled that Meadows told aides that Trump “thinks Mike deserves it.” The president tweeted during the attack that Pence didn’t have the courage to object to Biden’s win as he presided over the joint session of Congress, Associated Press reported.

The young ex-aide was matter-of-fact in most of her answers. But she did say that she was “disgusted” at Trump’s tweet about Pence during the siege. 

“It was unpatriotic, it was un-American, and you were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie,” Hutchinson said, adding that, “I still struggle to work through the emotions of that.” 

Trump denied much of what Hutchinson said on his social media platform, Truth Social. He called her a “total phony” and “bad news.” 

Members of the panel praised Hutchinson’s bravery for testifying and said that other witnesses had been intimidated and did not cooperate.

“I want all Americans to know that what Ms. Hutchinson has done today is not easy,” said Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican who led questioning.

Some of Hutchinson’s former colleagues, too, dcfended her account. Mick Mulvaney, who preceded Meadows as Trump’s chief of staff, tweeted that he knows Hutchinson and “I don’t think she is lying.” Sarah Matthews, a former Trump press aide who has also cooperated with the committee, called the testimony “damning.” 

As she described the scene in the White House after the election, Hutchinson depicted a president flailing in anger and prone to violent outbursts. Some aides sought to rein in his impulses. Some did not.

At one point on Jan. 6, Hutchinson said, White House counsel Pat Cipollone barreled down the hallway and confronted Meadows about rioters breaching the Capitol. Meadows, staring at his phone, told the White House lawyer that Trump didn’t want to do anything, she said, Associated Press reported.

Earlier, Cipollone had worried out loud that “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable” if Trump went to the Capitol after his speech at the rally, Hutchinson recalled. 

Before the crowd left for the Capitol, Hutchinson said she also received an angry call from House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who had just heard the president say he was coming. “Don’t come up here,” McCarthy told her, before hanging up. 

Hutchinson told the panel that Trump had been informed early in the day that some of the protesters outside the White House had weapons. But he responded that the protesters were “not here to hurt me,” Hutchinson said.