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Leaders of the world's seven richest nations have promised to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes" on the second day of a summit in Germany, BBC reported.

In a statement, the G7 group also said that Russia must stop blocking food from leaving Ukraine's ports. 

Addressing the summit via video-link, Ukraine's president appealed for more heavy weapons from Western allies.

G7 leaders are under pressure to be united in their approach against increasing Russian aggression.

"We will continue to provide financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support and stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes," they said in a strongly worded statement on Monday.

"We remain appalled by and continue to condemn the brutal, unprovoked, unjustifiable and illegal war of aggression against Ukraine by Russia and aided by Belarus."

The G7 leaders - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US - have been joined in Bavaria, Germany by two representatives from the European Union, according to BBC.

The high-level talks were held as Russian forces escalated their attacks on Ukraine, where officials said a busy shopping centre was struck by a missile in the central city of Kremenchuk, killing at least ten people according to the local governor.

Dialling into the luxury hotel spa where the summit is being held, President Volodymyr Zelensky asked for more heavy weapons for Ukraine and said he hoped the war would be over by the end of the year "before winter sets in". There are concerns that harsh winter conditions will make battle conditions tougher for Ukraine's troops.

He also urged Western allies to keep the pressure on Russia with more sanctions.

In their joint statement, the G7 leaders said they remain committed to "sustaining and intensifying" sanctions against President Vladimir Putin's government and enablers in neighbouring Belarus. There will be sanctions on gold and oil exports and also "targeted sanctions on those responsible for war crimes", the joint statement said.

The G7 also demanded that the Kremlin allow food to leave Ukraine's ports - and blamed Moscow for rising threats to global food insecurity as a result of the conflict, BBC reported.

Much of Ukraine's highly valued grain exports are in danger of rotting in local warehouses as Russian forces continue blocking Ukraine's ports on the Black Sea.

"We urgently call on Russia to cease, without condition, its attacks on agricultural and transport infrastructure and enable free passage of agricultural shipping from Ukrainian ports," the G7 statement says.

A BBC investigation has also found evidence that Russian forces in occupied areas of Ukraine have been systematically stealing grain and other produce from local farmers.

Russian long-range bombers struck a crowded shopping mall in Ukraine’s central city of Kremenchuk with a missile on Monday, raising fears of what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called an “unimaginable” number of victims in “one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history.”

Zelenskky said that many of the more than 1,000 afternoon shoppers and staff inside the mall managed to escape. Giant plumes of black smoke, dust and orange flames emanated from the wreckage, with emergency crews rushing in to search broken metal and concrete for victims and put out fires. Onlookers watched in distress at the sight of how an everyday activity such as shopping could turn into a horror, Associated Press reported.

The casualty figures were changing as rescuers searched the smoldering rubble into early Tuesday. Ukraine’s emergency services reported late Monday that at least 16 people were dead and about 60 wounded.

Soldiers worked into the night to lug sheets of twisted metal and broken concrete, as one drilled into what remained of the shopping center’s roof. Drones whirred above, clouds of dark smoke still emanating from the ruins several hours after the fire had been put out.

“We are working to dismantle the construction so that it is possible to get machinery in there since the metal elements are very heavy and big, and disassembling them by hand is impossible,” said Volodymyr Hychkan, an emergency services official.

At Ukraine’s request, the UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting in New York on Tuesday to discuss the attack. 

In the first Russian government comment on the missile strike, the country’s first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyansky, alleged multiple inconsistencies that he didn’t specify, claiming on Twitter that the incident was a provocation by Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly denied it targets civilian infrastructure, even though Russian attacks have hit other shopping malls, theaters, hospitals, kindergartens and apartment buildings, according to Associated Press.

The missile strike unfolded as Western leaders pledged continued support for Ukraine, and the world’s major economies prepared new sanctions against Russia, including a price cap on oil and higher tariffs on goods. Meanwhile, the U.S. appeared ready to respond to Zelenskyy’s call for more air defense systems, and NATO planned to increase the size of its rapid-reaction forces nearly eightfold — to 300,000 troops.

Zelenskyy said the mall presented “no threat to the Russian army” and had “no strategic value.” He accused Russia of sabotaging “people’s attempts to live a normal life, which make the occupiers so angry.”

In his nightly address, he said it appeared Russian forces had intentionally targeted the shopping center and added, “Today’s Russian strike at a shopping mall in Kremenchuk is one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history.” He said Russia “has become the largest terrorist organization in the world.”

Russia has increasingly used long-range bombers in the war. Ukrainian officials said Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers flying over Russia’s western Kursk region fired the missile that hit the shopping center, as well as another that hit a sports arena in Kremenchuk.

The Russian strike echoed attacks earlier in the war that caused large numbers of civilian casualties — such as one in March on a Mariupol theater where many civilians had holed up, killing an estimated 600, and another in April on a train station in eastern Kramatorsk that left at least 59 people dead.

“Russia continues to take out its impotence on ordinary civilians. It is useless to hope for decency and humanity on its part,” Zelenskyy said, Associated Press reported.

Kremenchuk Mayor Vitaliy Maletskiy wrote on Facebook that the attack “hit a very crowded area, which is 100% certain not to have any links to the armed forces.”

The United Nations called the strike “deplorable,” stressing that civilian infrastructure “should never ever be targeted,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. Group of Seven leaders issued a statement late Monday condemning the attack and saying that “indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians constitute a war crime. Russian President Putin and those responsible will be held to account.”

The attack coincided with Russia’s all-out assault on the last Ukrainian stronghold in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk province, “pouring fire” on the city of Lysychansk from the ground and air, according to the local governor. At least eight people were killed and more than 20 wounded in Lysychansk when Russian rockets hit an area where a crowd gathered to obtain water from a tank, Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said.

Forty-six people were found dead in and near a tractor-trailer and 16 others were taken to hospitals in a presumed migrant smuggling attempt into the United States, officials in San Antonio said, Associated Press reported.

It’s among the deadliest tragedies to have claimed thousands of lives of people attempting to cross the US border from Mexico in recent decades. Ten migrants died in 2017 after being trapped inside a truck that was parked at a Walmart in San Antonio. In 2003, 19 migrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of San Antonio.

A city worker at the scene in on a remote back road in southwest San Antonio was alerted to the situation by a cry for help shortly before 6 p.m. Monday, Police Chief William McManus said. Officers arrived to find a body on the ground outside the trailer and a partially opened gate to the trailer, he said.

Of the 16 taken to hospitals with heat-related illnesses, 12 were adults and four were children, said Fire Chief Charles Hood. The patients were hot to the touch and dehydrated, and no water was found in the trailer, he said.

“They were suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion,” Hood said. “It was a refrigerated tractor-trailer, but there was no visible working AC unit on that rig.”

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the 46 who died had “families who were likely trying to find a better life.” 

“This is nothing short of a horrific human tragedy,” Nirenberg said, according to Associated Press.

Those in the trailer were part of a presumed migrant smuggling attempt into the United States, and the investigation was being led by US Homeland Security Investigations, McManus said.

Three people were taken into custody, but it was unclear if they were absolutely connected with human trafficking, McManus said.

Big rigs emerged as a popular smuggling method in the early 1990s amid a surge in US border enforcement in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, which were then the busiest corridors for illegal crossings. 

Before that, people paid small fees to mom-and-pop operators to get them across a largely unguarded border. As crossing became exponentially more difficult after the 2001 terror attacks in the US, migrants were led through more dangerous terrain and paid thousands of dollars more.

Heat poses a serious danger, particularly when temperatures can rise severely inside vehicles. Weather in the San Antonio area was mostly cloudy Monday, but temperatures approached 100 degrees.

Some advocates drew a link to the Biden administration’s border policies. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, wrote that he had been dreading such a tragedy for months.

“With the border shut as tightly as it is today for migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, people have been pushed into more and more dangerous routes. Truck smuggling is a way up,” he wrote on Twitter.

Stephen Miller, a chief architect of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, said, “Human smugglers and traffickers are wicked and evil” and that the administration’s approach to border security rewards their actions, Associated Press reported.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican running for reelection, was blunt in a tweet about the Democratic president: “These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies.”

Migrants — largely from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — have been expelled more than 2 million times under a pandemic-era rule in effect since March 2020 that denies them a chance to seek asylum but encourages repeat attempts because there are no legal consequences for getting caught. People from other countries, notably Cuba, Nicaragua and Colombia, are subject to Title 42 authority less frequently due to higher costs of sending them home, strained diplomatic relations and other considerations.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 557 deaths on the southwest border in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, more than double the 247 deaths reported in the previous year and the highest since it began keeping track in 1998. Most are related to heat exposure. 

CBP has not published a death tally for this year but said that the Border Patrol performed 14,278 “search-and-rescue missions” in a seven-month period through May, exceeding the 12,833 missions performed during the previous 12-month period and up from 5,071 the year before, Associated Press reported.

The Supreme Court (SC) on Sunday issued an interim order directing the government to make arrangements for the prisoners to vote in the upcoming elections.

Responding to a writ filed jointly by the students of Kathmandu School of Law--Nishant Malla and Pradesha KC--a single bench of Justice Sapana Pradhan Malla issued the order to the government to make arrangements for the inmates to vote.

Malla also ordered the government to collect the names of the jailbirds eligible to vote.

Troops in Sri Lanka handed tokens on Monday to people queueing for petrol amid a severe fuel shortage in the nation battling its worst economic crisis in seven decades, while schools shut in Colombo and public employees were asked to work from home, Reuters reported.

With its foreign exchange reserves at a record low, the island of 22 million is struggling to pay for essential imports of food, medicine and most critically, fuel.

"I have been in line for four days, I haven't slept or eaten properly during this time," said autorickshaw driver W.D. Shelton, 67, one of those who received a token meant to hold his place in the queue for when fuel becomes available.

"We can't earn, we can't feed our families," added Shelton, who was 24th in line at a fuel station in the centre of Colombo, but set to stay there as he had no petrol for the journey to his home just 5 km (3 miles) away.

It was not immediately clear how far the government could stretch its fuel reserves. The stockpiles stand at about 9,000 tonnes of diesel and 6,000 tonnes of petrol, Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera said on Sunday, but no fresh shipments are due.

The government has told employees to work from home until further notice, while schools have been shut for a week in the commercial capital of Colombo and surrounding areas.

Fuel station queues have grown rapidly since last week. "This is a tragedy, we don't know where this will end," Mr Shelton said, according to Reuters.

Public transport, power generation and medical services will get priority in fuel distribution, with some rationed to ports and airports. 

A team from the International Monetary Fund is visiting Sri Lanka to hold talks on a $3-billion bailout package. Although the Indian Ocean nation is hoping to reach a staff-level agreement before the visit ends on Thursday, that is unlikely to unlock any immediate funds.

Nepal reported 41 new Covid-19 cases on Monday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 2, 337 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 36 returned positive. Likewise, 1, 021 people underwent antigen tests, of which five were tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of the virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 20 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 208 active cases in the country.

The Judicial Council suspended Kathmandu District Court Judge Raj Kumar Koirala on Monday.

Koirala was dragged into controversy after the audio recording has been leaked to the media where he and lawyer Rudra Pokharel are heard discussing at what price Ichchha Raj Tamang, founder of Civil Savings and Credit Cooperatives Society Ltd, can be released.

The Judicial Council suspended him by forming a probe committee.

The notice about the formation of the probe committee was published in the Nepali Gazette on Monday.

The Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE) index plunged by 23. 85 points to close at 1,933.13 points on Monday. 

Similarly, the sensitive index fell by 7. 02 points to close at 375.82 points.

A total of 5,641,540 units of shares of 229 companies were traded for Rs 2. 04 billion.

Likewise, all sub-indices saw red in today’s market except for Life Insurance and Investment.

Meanwhile, CYC Nepal Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha Limited was the top gainer today with its price surging by 9.99 percent. Likewise, Unnati Sahakarya Labhubitta Bittiya Sanstha Limited was the top loser with its price dropped by 10 percent. 

At the end of the day, total market civilization stands at Rs 2. 75 trillion.