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A storm system spawned several tornadoes that whipped through areas of Texas and Oklahoma, causing damage to a school, a marijuana farm and other structures, Associated Press reported.

There were no reports of serious injuries following the Wednesday night tornadoes, but the system caused flooding in parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas, and more stormy weather took place Thursday.

Significant damage was reported in the Oklahoma city of Seminole, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southeast of Oklahoma City, where Gov. Kevin Stitt said damage assessments were underway after he toured the area Thursday. 

“(We’re) getting all the resources and supplies that the city wants and needs,” including generators, Stitt said. “Thank the Lord that nobody was hurt” and no deaths have been reported.

The National Weather Service said it found damage in Seminole from an EF2 tornado, which has winds speeds of up to 135 mph (217 kph), according to the Associated Press.

More than 2,900 customers remained without power in Seminole late Thursday afternoon, according to Oklahoma Gas & Electric, more than 63% of the utility customers in the city.

The Academy of Seminole took a direct hit but no one was injured, the school said on Facebook.

Video footage from Oklahoma TV station KOCO showed a tornado hit a marijuana farm in the nearby town of Maud.

Several roads and highways were closed Thursday morning in parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas because of flash flooding.

In Bixby, Oklahoma, located south of Tulsa, officials opened a temporary shelter at a church after thunderstorms flooded some homes and streets in one neighborhood. 

In East Texas, a tornado on Thursday damaged several campers and buildings at an RV park in Rusk County, Sheriff Johnwayne Valdez told KTRE-TV. The Rusk County Office of Emergency Management reported one person was injured after being hit by a tree, Associated Press reported.

On Wednesday, a “large and dangerous tornado” was spotted in the rural community of Lockett, about 170 miles (275 kilometers) northwest of Dallas, said the National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma.

The weather service said it found damage near Lockett from an EF3 tornado, which has winds speeds of up to 165 mph (265 kph). 

There were no significant injuries or deaths to residents in Wilbarger County, where Lockett is located, Sheriff Brian Fritze told KAUZ-TV. He said several homes and barns appeared to sustain extensive damage, according to the Associated Press.

Balen Shah, a rapper and structural engineer, is an independent mayoral candidate for the Kathmandu Metropolitan City. 

Shah became popular among the Nepali youths as a rapper after the Raw Barz, the first ever rap battle league in Nepal. 

He has recently made public his manifesto for the local level elections slated for May 13.

Here are the key highlights of his election manifesto: 

1.     To improve infrastructure, quality and environment of community schools and to give priority on technical education

2.     To start ambulance, having all kinds of facilities, services under the Kathmandu Metropolitan City and to operate the services through call center

3.     To conduct free home to home free health check-up for the people above 70 years of age

4.     Roads, drainages and sewages among others will be repaired by physical infrastructure ambulances through call center

5.     To connect GPS in all public transportation to track the location of vehicles

6.     To revive old water resources to bring stone spout, Dhungedhara in Nepali and Hiti in Nepal bhasa into use 

7.     To install CCTV in all public vehicles for security reasons

8.     To establish public toilets in all wards 

9.     To establish idea bank for employment and entrepreneurship promotion 

10. To launch one house one tree campaign

Also read: Balen Shah: I will implement only tried and tested plans

Heavy rain and flooding has killed 22 people, destroyed hundreds of homes and damaged crops in Afghanistan, which is already facing a humanitarian crisis, a disaster management official said on Thursday, Reuters reported.

The Taliban government, struggling to cope with the disaster that has affected more than a third of its provinces, will approach international relief organisations for help, officials said.

"Due to flooding and storms in 12 provinces, 22 people have died and 40 injured," said Hassibullah Shekhani, head of communications and information at Afghanistan's National Disaster Management Authority.

The rain and flooding was particularly severe in the western provinces of Badghis and Faryab and the northern province of Baghlan, according to Reuters.

Afghanistan has been suffering from drought in recent years, made worse by climate change, with low crop yields raising fears of serious food shortages.The weather has exacerbated problems of poverty caused by decades of war and then a drop in foreign aid and the freezing of assets abroad after the Taliban took over, and US-led forces withdrew, in August.

Shekhani said 500 houses were destroyed, 2,000 damaged, 300 head of livestock killed and some 3,000 acres of crops damaged.

He said the International Committee of the Red Cross was helping and officials would approach other international organisations for help.

The international community is grappling with how to help the country of some 40 million people without benefiting the Taliban, Reuters reported.

Nepal logged 17 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 2, 336 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 15 returned positive. Likewise, 1, 435 people underwent antigen tests, of which two were tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of the virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 15 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 217 active cases in the country. 

The Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE) plunged by 37. 06 points to close at 2, 238. 62 points on Thursday.

Similarly, the sensitive dropped by 4. 34 points to close at 432. 55 points.

A total of 3, 674, 940 units of the shares of 232 companies were traded for Rs 1. 65 billion.

At the end of the day, the total market capitalization stood at Rs 3. 18 trillion.

The Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV2 virus is intrinsically as severe as previous variants, unlike assumptions made in previous studies that it was more transmissible but less severe, a large study in the United States has found, Reuters reported.

"We found that the risks of hospitalisation and mortality were nearly identical between periods," said four scientists who conducted the study based on records of 1,30,000 COVID-19 patients, referring to times in the past two years when different variants were dominant across the world.

The study, which is undergoing peer review at Nature Portfolio and was posted on Research Square on May 2, was adjusted for confounders, including demographics, vaccination status, and the Charlson comorbidity index that predicts the risk of death within a year of hospitaliSation for patients with specific comorbid conditions.

The studies that assumed that the Omicron variant was less severe were conducted in various places, including South Africa, Scotland, England, and Canada, said the scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital, Minerva University and Harvard Medical School, according to Reuters.

They said their study could have several limitations, including the possibility that it underestimated the number of vaccinated patients in more recent COVID waves, and the total number of infections, because it excluded patients who performed at-home rapid tests.

The price of gold has risen by Rs 1, 400 per tola in the domestic market on Thursday.

According to the Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers' Association, gold is currently trading at Rs 98, 600 per tola. The yellow metal was traded at Rs 97, 200 per tola on Wednesday. 

Similarly, the Tejabi gold is now trading for Rs 98, 100 per tola in the market.

Similarly, the price of silver rose by Rs 15 per tola and is now trading at Rs 1, 305 per tola.

Sri Lanka’s economy is in dire straits with its usable foreign reserves down to less than $50 million, the country’s finance minister said Wednesday, Associated Press reported.

Ali Sabry was speaking to Parliament after returning to Sri Lanka from talks with the International Monetary Fund. He said any IMF rescue program, including a rapid financing instrument needed to urgently resolve shortages of essential goods, would depend on negotiations on debt restructuring with creditors and would take six months to implement.

Sri Lanka is on the brink of bankruptcy and has suspended payments on its foreign loans. Its economic miseries have brought on a political crisis, with the government facing a protests and a no-confidence motion in Parliament.

The country is due to repay $7 billion this year of the $25 billion in foreign loans it is scheduled to pay by 2026.

“There is a severe risk in front of all of us,” said Sabri. He said Sri Lanka’s reserves stood at $7.6 billion at the end of 2019 and fell to $5.7 billion by the end of 2020 as payments outpaced inflows of foreign currency amid the pandemic.

The reserves declined to $3.1 billion by the end of 2021, and to $1.9 billion by the end of March, he said. With foreign currency in short supply thanks to less tourism and other revenues, official reserves were tapped to pay for importing essentials including fuel, gas, coal and medicines beginning in August 2021, according to the Associated Press.

The bulk of Sri Lanka’s remaining reserves — including a $1 billion equivalent SWAP facility from China, are not usable for settling dollar-denominated payments, he said.

Sabri’s comments came a day after the country’s main opposition party issued a no-confidence motion aiming at ousting Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and his Cabinet. 

The opposition United People’s Force blames the government of failing in its constitutional duty to provide decent living standards. It accuses top government officials of excessively printing money, hurting farm production by banning chemical fertilizers to make the production fully organic and minimize import costs, failing to order COVID-19 vaccines in a timely manner and buying them later at higher prices.

A date has not yet been announced for a vote on the no-confidence motion.

The foreign currency crisis has limited imports and caused severe shortages of essential goods like fuel, cooking gas, medicine and food. People must line up for hours to buy what they can and many return home with little, if any, of what they were seeking, Associated Press reported.

Protests have spread demanding the resignations of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who heads an influential clan that has held power for most of the past two decades, and his younger brother, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. An occupation of the entrance to the president’s office by protesters demanding the Rajapaksas resign was in its 26th day on Wednesday.

So far, the Rajapaksa brothers have resisted calls to resign, though three other Rajapaksas out of the five who are lawmakers stepped down from their Cabinet posts in mid-April. 

Sabri said Sri Lanka was in the process of appointing legal and financial advisers for negotiations on restructuring its foreign debt.

“This is an economic crisis. The economic crisis has created a political crisis. It is important to resolve the political crisis in order to find solutions to the economic crisis,” Sabri said, according to the Associated Press.