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Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) Prabhu Ram Sharma held a video conversation with his newly appointed Indian counterpart Manoj Pande on Wednesday. Pande was appointed as the Chief of Indian Army on May 1.

According to the Nepal Army Public Relations Directorate, CoAS Sharma congratulated Pande through video conference and wished him a successful tenure.

During the conversation, Sharma expressed his hope that the relations between Nepal Army and Indian Army will reach new heights during the tenure of General Pande, the Directorate said.

On the occasion, Sharma also invited Pande to visit Nepal.

In reply, Pande said that he would visit Nepal at an appropriate time.

The Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE) plunged by 31. 76 points to close at 2, 275. 68 points on Wednesday.

Similarly, the sensitive dropped by 4. 90 points to close at 436. 88 points.

A total of 3, 602, 848 units of the shares of 233 companies were traded for Rs 1. 26 billion.

At the end of the day, the total market capitalization stood at Rs 3. 23 trillion.

Nepal logged 19 new Covid-19 cases and one death on Monday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 2, 373 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 19 returned positive. Likewise, 1, 448 people underwent antigen tests, of which no one were tested positive.

The Ministry said that 18 infected people recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours.

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

Five persons including a child died when a bus carrying pilgrims and a Tata Sumo collided with each other at Roshi Rural Municipality-11 in Kavre on Wednesday.

The bus bearing Indian registration number plate (UP 583 B 8181) heading towards India from Kathmandu collided head-on with the Tata Sumo (Ba 1 Cha 4210) en route to Kathmandu from Sindhuli this afternoon, DSP Hari Khatiwada, spokesperson at the District Police Office, Kavre said.

He said that 18 persons were injured in the incident and are receiving treatment in Dhulikhel.

India registered about 475,000 more total deaths in 2020 than the previous year, government data released months ahead of schedule on Tuesday showed, as the World Health Organization readies its estimates of excess COVID-19 deaths whose methodology New Delhi has opposed, Reuters reported.

Some experts estimate India's actual COVID death toll is as high as 4 million, about eight times the official figure, especially as a record wave driven by the Delta variant killed many people in April and May of last year. The WHO's estimate will be published on Thursday.

Vinod Kumar Paul, a top health official who has overseen India's fight against the pandemic, said there was nothing "dramatic" in the total death data for 2020 and that those were "absolute, correct and counted numbers".

He said the data showing 8.1 million total deaths in India in 2020 was released by the Office of the Registrar General two to three months in advance because of the attention on the country's COVID toll, according to Reuters.

"There is a public narrative in the media, based on various modelling estimates, that India's COVID-19 deaths are many times the reported figure - that's not the case in reality," he told state TV.

"We now have actual data for 2020, there is no need to do any modelling now. We will have actual, robust data for 2021 too. Modelling can lead to overestimation, absurd estimation."

The death count grew slower in the country of 1.35 billion people in 2020 than in the previous two years, the data showed.

India officially reported 148,738 COVID-19 deaths in 2020, with the tally jumping to 523,889 on Tuesday out of more than 43 million cumulative infections. Only the United States and Brazil have recorded more deaths as of Tuesday.

Countries around the world reported only 1.83 million COVID-19 deaths in 2020 but the WHO estimates excess mortality of at least 3 million globally for that year.

India has said it does not agree with the WHO's methodology, though the scientists working on the latest estimates have defended it, Reuters reported.

Nepal Community Party (NCP) has taken action against party General Secretary Netra Bikram Chand.

A special national assembly that started in Chitwan from Wednesday decided to remove General Secretary Chand and spokesperson Khadga Bahadur Bishwokarma from the party.

An assembly of Dharmendra Bastola and party secretariat member Hemanta Prakash Oli faction decided to remove Chand from the post of party General Secretary.

A meeting of the majority of the central members has appointed Bastola as the coordinator.

Earlier, Chand had expelled Bastola and Oli from the party for carrying out activities against the party.

Bastola and Oli are in favour of boycotting the local level elections while Chand is in favour of supporting independent and nationalist candidates.

A hoax bomb call created panic at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on Wednesday morning, promoting the airport officials to halt the flights for an hour.

Passengers were evacuated from the airport soon after the officials received a call from an unidentified person claiming that there was a bomb at the airport's domestic terminal.

Though a joint team from the Nepal Police and Nepal Army carried out a search operation following the information, they did not find any suspicious object.

Now, the situation is under control and the flights have also resumed, an airport official said.

CPN-UML cadres vandalized a vehicle carrying the candidates of Nepali Congress in Hupsekot Rural Municipality of East Nawalparasi.

Laxmi Pandey and Purna Sigh Rana, who had filed their candidacies for the post of president and vice-president respectively in Hupsekot Rural Municipality, were injured in the incident, DSP Santosh Pathak, Information Office at the District Police Office said.

The duo, who had sustained injuries on their head, have been sent to Chitwan for treatment.

The UML cadres attacked the Nepali Congress cadres along with Pandey and Rana while they were returning home after carrying out election campaign at ward no. 3, police said.

At least three cadres of UML were also injured in the clash. They are receiving treatment at the Madhyabindu Hospital.